I’ve been married for 10 years and love my husband. He is kind, great with the kids and hard-working. But his humour is generally based on quotes from comedy sketches (often reciting the entire sketch) and long anecdotes that get triggered by a word. If someone is talking about cake, it’s always, “Here is the funny 10-minute cake anecdote.” It’s how his whole family communicate.

I find myself increasingly irritated by how these anecdotes and quotes from comedy shows dominate time with our friends and family. When he doesn’t rely on these fallback jokes, he can be really witty and make me laugh. But when he tells the same stories again, I find him less attractive.

I know that having in-jokes is fun and I don’t want to ask him to drop all his humour, but I find myself avoiding him at get-togethers; if I hear those punchlines one more time, I might scream. He doesn’t see the problem. I don’t want to be horrible and controlling or make him self-conscious.

Although he is thought of as a nice guy, he doesn’t have many close friends. Generally, he is friendly with the husbands of my friends, but only sees them when I organise something. I worry that by always being in entertainer mode, he’s not allowing people to know the real him. His older brother is similar and this recently became a problem when he needed friends due to a health scare. He seemed very lonely, and lamented his lack of confidants. I worry my husband may end up the same way.

I wondered why this was a problem now? You’ve been married for 10 years – what’s triggered you to write to me and when did you start getting irritated?

I talked your problem through with relationship and family therapist Armele Philpotts (bacp.co.uk). She pointed out that when our partners are driving us mad, it helps to turn things around and try to work out what nerve is really being hit.

It’s a given that long-term relationships need work and some things won’t get resolved, but looking at why certain things wind us up, and others don’t, may be helpful. How do the rest of the family feel about his anecdotes? Philpotts said that, in one study, “69% of disagreements are unsolvable and marriages that work recognise this and focus on the important issues”.

For you, I recognise that this is an important issue, however petty it may seem to others. That’s because its roots must hit on something pretty big in you. Philpotts asked you to look at what emotions surface when your husband does the “recycled humour” as opposed to the “more spontaneous humour”. You may need to drill down to find out what those are.

“Could you ask him,” suggested Philpotts, “what he is getting out of repeating these stories? What does it mean for him? [Comfort? Ties to his family way of doing things?] And how does this compare with him being spontaneously witty?” It may help you get perspective on it, but you need to be careful and ask this out of curiosity, rather than criticism.

You clearly fear he is on a similar path to his brother, but they are different people. What scares you so much about your husband not having close friends? Do you think he overly relies on you?

We often try to control others when we feel out of control ourselves. There was something in your longer letter that hinted, I thought, at possibly feeling overwhelmed and overly responsible within the family – might that be accurate? I asked Philpotts if there was something you could say to yourself when these moments of irritability occur – right in the heat of them – and she suggested you think: “What do I need in this moment?”

The answer might surprise you. Is it a hug, recognition, a rest? I tried this myself in situations where I felt irked and what came up surprised me. Mine included: “I need: understanding/to be listened to/a rest/someone to say, ‘It’s OK.’” But each of these reactions had very little to do with the actual thing that was annoying me; so instead of thinking about the irritation, shift the focus and see what comes up for you.

If you need to talk about this with your husband, go easy – you’re right to be wary of being controlling. We all repeat things and it’s horrible to be made to feel self-conscious, as you recognise.

• Send your problem to annalisa.barbieri@mac.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

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