I was the only one working and paying for the apartment, her hobbies, and school, but things like the above would escalate into long arguments that I would ask to defer. The problem was, I would sometimes forget details that were important to her if we postponed an argument for a few days, so she wanted to have them now and that was disruptive of my work (I WFH, she studies from home). I might miss an entire day of work because of some minor thing that exploded into a 6 hour argument, while I was trying to disengage the whole time, but couldn't.
A couple weeks ago I had enough, and decided I needed more autonomy, and moved out. I didn't want that to be the end of relationship, but for her it was the end.
Not sure what my point is, I just wanted to get it off my chest. Sometimes these seemingly minor things may just be a sign of deeper incompatibilities.
In my personal experience both in my own relationships and viewing the relationships of others, I feel like the domestic partner can often feel trapped and/or unfulfilled. It’s easy for the breadwinner to say “I bust my ass all day and I make all the money so that we can have this life”, but the other partner in this arrangement becomes totally at the will of the breadwinner. The breadwinner could change jobs or decide to move or divorce and continue working, but the domestic partner is totally effed. It isn’t an equal partnership unless the domestic partner truly feels agency. And until that point this underlying resentment will come bursting up like new islands in an archipelago, until the situation is resolved or dissolved.
Edit: the sibling comment regarding narcissism is also worth reading! I don't know your situation. Labeling someone as a narcissist is a nuclear option because it means you don't really see them as fully human anymore, but it can be appropriate if you have a large body of evidence.
6 hours arguments that need to happen right now are a pretty big red flag...
These are classic manipulation tricks of narcissists.
And the fact that she allows herself to engage in a 6 hour argument during workdays knowing or not caring that it will absolutely fuck up your entire focus and ability to concentrate for days and bring you closer and closer to burnout and not being able to actually work speaks volumes on how much she cares about you and what she is after in these relationships in general.
She doesn't want an equal she wants a servant. She wants a slave. Both physically and emotionally. Every second... She defines the rules of the game and you obey and play. It's a given. Your whole life with her is her play...
Ugh... I say F that life.
You need to celebrate the day you dodged that bullet. Not everyone has a mental courage to throw those human-sized parasites out of their lives.
People can live 40 years blaming themselves for not satisfying narcissists enough, they reshape their whole identities and morale in the process trying to shove themselves into a shape that will hopefully satisfy ever evolving demands of a narc and never getting satisfied with their lives in the process or becoming self-enclosed philosophers but in most cases just plain miserable...
They finally divorce, while the narcissist will happily jump onto the next victim berating and destroying the personality of the previous victim ignoring the fact that that person's whole life and identity was a sacrifice on the altar of the "wants" of a literal demon.
It's a vicious cycle.
Narcissists should be pariahs in any social circle. Their ability to deliver huge amounts of damage and mess somebody up mentally for years is so underrated that I believe whoever comes in contact with such a person has an obligation to not only immediately jump out of that relationship but also warn others about that person.
Just like coming in contact with COVID you tell others around you about the danger, you should do exactly the same about narcissists.
I wish you all the best and hope now you are more than well equipped to spot these creatures.
And don't forget to transfer the knowledge to your children to break the circle.
- lots of arguments about things you considered small
- issues focused on “disrespect”, which is a perception thing that she had 100% control over
- needed to resolve issues immediately
- “resolution”, if it happened, took up to six hours with no option to end on your side
It sounds like she has some major issues that probably warrant professional help.
To be fair, you may have issues as well (e.g., things that are “minor” to you may be a big deal to most people).
If you want to resolve this internally, I recommend going to a relationship counselor/psychologist alone and just doing a reality check. Make sure you present her side to the counselor as reasonably as possible.
You will probably find a few things you could do better, but you will probably also find that you were being controlled by someone with major issues.
Fwiw, I think ending this relationship was a good idea.
There are things you can do to fix this. They require work on both sides, obviously, but it can be done. But unless you have way more self-awareness than I do, it's not likely that you're just going to pick them up out of thin air. The good news is, this is stuff you can learn.
If you prefer to read a book on this topic, the one I'd recommend is:
The New Rules of Marriage
by Terrence Real
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000NJL7RS
But I really do strongly recommend therapy in these situations. This is the sort of thing where the therapist can help you figure out whether you both have fault or if one person is really over the line. And then you're not responsible for convincing your parter that X thing they're doing is unreasonable.
I've learned for myself to evaluate things as honestly for myself as possible. If she is any way right, I will immediately apologise and end the fight. But if I feel I'm right I will say how it is, even if it is hard to express and not give in. I will not escalate beyond necessary, but never give in. I will reevaluate arguments she gives, but only when I'm alone and at ease. I'm willing to deescalate, without giving in. This works for me (now).
If she does not contribute on an somewhat equivalent level to the relationship in your own measure...run. Relationships should be mutually beneficial. Don't let others take advantage of you.
It sounds like the situation wasn't working for her at all and it's for the best that it's over. Either she's overreacting or living with you was just impossible. Sometimes two people just don't mesh and it's not worth forcing it.
If a minor thing can explode into a 6 hour argument, then there's no salvaging this relationship. Your partner was simply not ready for it. It's not even a red flag. It's like a Soviet Army marching on your lawn.
Run, run, run, because you deserve better.
> A couple weeks ago I had enough, and decided I needed more autonomy, and moved out
I don't know how long your relationship lasted, but I'm glad you made the right choice in the end.
In this case, I would congratulate you for dodging the bullet. It seem to me, you was not the problem in that relationship.
I am even close to guess she was verbally abusive. And if not, then actually damaging to you.
You're very right that what you see is a sign of incompatibilities.
And I suspect both would just as incorrect, at least by omission. The glass thing is a useful article hook, but it's unlikely that it encompasses the sole reason their marriage fell apart. There is a deeper issue here, about neither side being willing to sacrifice for the other that likely really lies at fault.
I like the idea that a really good relationship is a 60/40 compromise, where both sides are struggling to be the 60. It sounds like both sides of this marriage were struggling to be the 40.
After that encounter I changed my mental model of finding someone to marry from finding someone perfect for me to arainging my own marriage. By that I meant that I wanted to find someone generally compatable but also willing to work together. It turns out I found that person on that same trip, and we have now been married for 7 years, but that is a long off topic story.
For sure, each side needs to always be trying to compromise more than the other.
They had communication issues, but it wasn't anything huge, it was all small cuts like the glass by the sink, or the socks casually left at the foot of the bed, letting the trash bin overfill... All these little things that display a casual air of thoughtlessness.
I think a lot of people would be well served to make a simple list of the life tasks that each partner currently performs. Then (where work schedules are possible), switch for 60 days. Anyone can grab groceries one day and it is no big deal. Force the other person to plan weeks of meals, keep the pantry stocked, etc. shines a bigger light on the unseen work and value each partner is providing. I learned this lesson the hard way and am better for it. Empathy is hard won and we need more of it. Apologies to my ex-wife for not being the person I didn't yet know I could be.
You can see this at the outbreak of COVID where many women had to step back from jobs because they suddenly had a massively increased load of child care that by default fell onto their shoulders.
The article is about someone coming to the realization of the ugly situation they are putting their spouse into, one that is extremely common. Don't try and devalue that by turning it into a "both sides" debacle.
The 'trial period' in a relationship should be a time frame in which both partners try to figure out if they're in a win-win situation or not.
Incidentally, this is why economic collapse at the societal level leads to so many divorces. Yes, that sounds transactional, but that's the reality of marriage, it's as much an economic partnership as it is an emotional one. Not necessarily a great idea for everyone, too.
If a bridge is under unsustainable strain, a single rivet failure can lead to a catastrophic collapse of the whole thing, even though everything just looked okay a moment ago.
Many people fall into the trap of ignoring the desired behavior and chastising the undesired behavior.
Because the desired behavior is so normal and benign to one party. But its clearly not to the other party.
If the glass was in the dish washer or washed and put away, I could imagine many couples experiencing no conditioning towards repeating that behavior.
> It was about consideration. About the pervasive sense that she was married to someone who did not respect nor appreciate her.
I'm picturing a therapist helping a refugee from Objectivism by suggesting to "compete on making the greater compromise, within a threshold" because that's easier to explain to them than cooperation.
And he says as much in the article. It's frustrating to read all these comments that are clearly written without reading the entire thing!
Perhaps I'm misreading your comment, but in my experience feeling that you are doing most of the compromising can easily lead to resentment. Looking at things as a zero-sum game in which you are either compromising or getting things your way at a certain ratio is intrinsically competitive.
In my opinion, both in marriage and in other social settings, relationships grow stronger when both feel that they are working together towards a common goal that satisfies all parties. This takes more work than a simple "your way or my way" approach, but it leads to all parties feeling seen and heard (because they are!).
If youre happy with the life youve built together and love your partner theres no way you leave it over something like this.
I dont buy the "it shows disrespect" argument.
Shes going to be with somebody else in a years time.
But when youre in a bad situation and the other person isn't giving you a good reason to leave sometimes you have to get creative.
Ive done it, and its been done to me.
Breaking up is hard, for both sides. Sometimes it can be something singular (e.g. an affair) that can make it easy to digest, but sometimes it's so vague, it's such an overwhelming collection of things that span such a great amount of time, that even trying to enumerate them is a slide backwards. It's like death by a thousand pinpricks, but there's no clear indication that things are dead until you're already waaayyy past the point - like a frog being slowly boiled.
I'm 99% sure she would never even mention the glass if you asked her why she left. The author said his marriage "... bled out from 10,000 paper cuts." The glass was 1 minor thing amongst far too many things.
Marriage is a partnership, not a series of trade offs (in practice it will look like this, but it cannot be seen as this). Both sides should be grateful for the changes they make for one another as well as respect one another when they can’t change. In the case of the latter, it takes two people who believe in committing to one another no matter what. If two people marry without committing to the idea of a life long partnership it’s not going to work.
* Major Marriage Crimes excluded, sometimes people do change and there’s nothing you can do
> I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt.
The author correctly identified the underlying dysfunctional belief[1], but fails to address it head on. Instead he finds ways to thematically "care more".
> I could have communicated my love and respect for her by not leaving tiny reminders for her each day that she wasn’t considered.
While, not untrue, without addressing the root-cause ie: the dysfunctional belief, there will continue to be an underlying friction between the internally held belief and the behaviors he wants to perform. This can work in the short-term, but only by confronting the dysfunctional belief can a long-term change be made[2]. Presumably there were many other manifestations of his dysfunctional belief in his marriage that were not listed but which played out in similar ways.
1. From this list of dysfunctional beliefs apply to more than only parent-child relationships http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/dysfunctiona...
2. Based on only the information available in the article. Inferences based on a limited amount of information are always subject to what the author reveals and no more.
Why is it necessary for the other person to give you a "good" reason to leave? Why not just be honest and say "this is not for me, I'm leaving"?
Anyway, women will even journal this shit for the lawyer's benefit. There are guidebooks sold on the matter.
This article is not literally about the dirty dish. It's not even about compromise. Rather, the article is really about having healthy communication with your partner.
The author's wife was trying to communicate to him: "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me."
But he wasn't hearing it. Not really. Now maybe his wife wasn't communicating as effectively as she could. But the author seems to indicate that she was and that he could have done more to recognize what she was saying and to empathize with her. He didn't get it, and now he clearly regrets it. It's too bad a healthy relationship didn't come out of that, but sometimes there's just too much damage.
My wife and I have been together for 33 years, married for 26 of those (we met in HS). I'm extremely fortunate that she's empathetic, compassionate, and has the patience of Job. Because it turns out that for a large portion of our marriage, I behaved like an asshole. She's not confrontational, while I thrive on it. We had a rule never to let a day end angry at each other, but mostly due to faults on my side she wasn't always heard because I wasn't open to listening to her. This built a lot of resentment. It came to a head years ago, but we worked through it and our relationship is healthier than it's ever been.
"You're not wrong Walter; you're just an asshole."
The hard work in a relationship isn't compromise. That's table stakes. The hard work is communication.
We are always told "Accept your significant other rather than trying to change them." Why does not that apply here?
Edit: I'll add, after a moment of reflection, that it's possible that the wife herself did not really understand the reason why the dirty dish irritated her so much. So all that occurred to her to do was complain about it and dig in her heels. The real reason might be that she feels doubts about her husband's commitment to her, and that manifests in being angry about dirty dishes.
So often we are taught that men and women are not different, but they are. This could be taught in high school in a personal relationship unit in health class. But it isn't. To the extent it's discussed, it is mostly focused on physical abuse. Mothers can also teach it to their sons, but I'm not sure many do. Mine certainly did not, and I had to learn it the hard way.
We've come to accept the one who professes "hurt" must always be bowed to. And at first this makes sense. We SHOULD be empathetic to other's pain, suffering, annoyances and irritations and we should try our best to smooth out relations and get along. But this dynamic creates a power imbalance. The one who complains, the one who is slighted is now given control over those they claim slight them. And this power is often abused.
This is the "two way street" part. It's trying not to offend when you speak..but being CHARITABLE when you listen; meaning you interpret the words/actions of someone in the best possible manner, give them the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he worked hard, had moments of stress and liked the dish by the sink? Shouldn't she just let the little stuff go? The point is... if it's always one sided, always one person not letting it go, or always one person not being empathetic to the condition of others.. it's bound to fail.
The whole "you're not wrong but you're an asshole" can go for the one slighted as much as the one not-intending-to-but-doing-so-anyway slighter.
My biggest problem about the author isn't even the content - but the whole thing is phrased the way it is for clickbait bc he's trying to sell a book.
My point is... relationships are about mutual-ism Mutual-ism that exists without having to keep score.
When it was initially brought up I said: "I know it bothers you, but there is something up with my brain where I will know to do it, get distracted and completely forget as if the thought had never entered my mind. However, whenever I do remember, I will." Granted this allows me leeway when I just cannot be bothered but I avoid pushing the envelope and I'm pretty good the majority of the time.
I'd also like to mention that author speaks with such a staggering lack of empathy that I'm willing to bet it was a lot more than just the dishes. I wouldn't confuse cognizance of the issue with having addressed it.
Too often for me, I have tried to figure out a solution to a problem, when someone was just trying to let me know how they feel.
I think there’s some sort of an analogy around a leaky canoe.
Like: Is the person hoping for a friendly wave, some hints on stopping the leak or for you to get into the canoe and help bail the water out?
I think the problem goes deeper than communication and listening: _he was valuing his judgement above hers_.
(There’s a word for people who are only willing to listen to their own advice/judgements and not comply with anything that doesn’t make _sense_ to them: headstrong.)
Maybe he valued his judgement higher because his judgement was rational and her point of view was irrational (based on emotions). I think this is a typical problem rational minded people (like HN readers) are likely to face in interpersonal relations. Especially if they have a belief system that values rationality above everything else.
I think this is the important piece of the article. It highlights the lack of good communication.
At some point, someone asked about his biggest regret. We all expected some business blunder, but he said that he was offered an executive position by Kraft to lead their Asian segment, and that his wife really did not want him to take the job because it would require them to move to that region. He regretted not listening to her, because it ended up being the catalyst that dissolved their marriage.
We were all stunned silent, and you could tell that he was genuinely remorseful and so vulnerable in that moment. There are only a handful of moments in that internship that I vividly remember, but that was by far the most impactful one.
Reminds me of a class I took at the University of Illinois, it was a seminar in entrepreneurship for engineers, if I remember correctly.
I believe a CEO of a $100M+ company came in and gave a speech. His first slide had a PowerPoint, on which he put something like, "3...2...1." Then he said, "3 wives, 2 divorces, and 1 heart attack. That's the real cost of entrepreneurship." I've remembered it ever since.
Conscious memory seems to favor the positives. Unconscious memory favors the negatives. If you quickly raise your hand near a person who has been physically abused a child, even as an adult they may instinctively recoil. But if you ask someone about their lost relationship, they will often speak of the great things of their partner, ignoring the (perhaps incomprehensible or inarticulable) negatives.
Life is hopefully quite long. Relationships involve 2 (+?) people. During one's life, one hopefully changes a lot. Picture vectors in two dimensions. People who pair up are vectors that cross at one moment (brief) or run somewhat parallel for a period. Try as we might, adjusting our trajectories, it's practically impossible to maintain a parallel path without giving up some or all of our own development.
So realistically in our modern times, relationships are based on a period of relatively parallel trajectories. And when the distance between those vectors becomes to great, it's time to stop trying to maintain a connection. That involves some feelings of sadness, but it also offers new possibilities.
Dumb, snarky, about to be fired, me: "So. What you're saying is... She's single?"
My own father is the perfect example of a man who cannot deal with these minor irritations. My mother complies with his requests and their relationship is maintained.
If you read the article, it's not that the irritation is minor. Of course it's a very small task. The issue is that the (often male) partner never chooses to act differently for the sake of their partner. If it isn't difficult to do the task, why don't you just do it? If your wife asks you to put the dishes in the dishwasher, why don't you just do it? It's not hard and will make her happy.
Obviously some people will have very unreasonable standards/requests. However, I think it's more common that one partner repeatedly refuses to do anything differently for the sake of their partner, argues about it, and then wonders why their relationship is so bad.
When I say I’m ready to leave, that means I could be in the car in 30 seconds. When my wife says she is ready to leave, that means she’s ready to start getting ready to leave. I’ve learned just to pad 20 minutes into departure times.
In my current relationship, I used to complain about my partner never doing the dishes. I eventually stopped giving a shit because I realized I created most of them and it really wasn't much more effort to do a few more. And generally just realized the way to fix most problems is to just fix them.
Eventually one day he flipped out over them. We have come to an unpleasant compromise. Once a month, he gives me a week notice, he's going to throw it all out, and then he does. I've come to accept it, since there isn't much he gets bothered by otherwise.
The willingness to listen and change yourself is what signals your love. Because everything else is much easier.
If it is actually a problem, then yes, insist on it being fixed. If it is actually minor, maybe adjust your expectations and get over it.
After all, that's also a form of listening and adjusting yourself. It's important to know that in relationships you can't expect to get your way all of the time, and that you don't automatically get your way just because you're the one with a grievance.
So, you know, be smarter than I've been. When she says that something bugs her, don't filter her statement through what bugs you or through what you expect to bug people. Instead, listen.
The only thing I got out of the article was that he was married to a control freak who liked to keep them off balance all the time.
On the one hand, I think this can lead to ruin in its own way. It cedes all ground to the most neurotic or controlling partner. It breeds resentment in the one who has to make all the concessions. Instead, I would suggest that these conflicts should be resolved explicitly and deliberately. Sometimes that will lead to one person reminding themselves to put the glass in the dishwasher. Sometimes it will lead to the other person reminding themselves that it doesn't matter. Either way, as long as it's a resolution that is mutually agreed and balanced with all of the other minor concessions that each is making, I think it's OK.
On the other hand, a variant of this is a good rule even in non-intimate relationships. If something takes you trivial time or effort, and means a lot to someone else, DO IT. Even for a total stranger. It increases the total "good karma" (but without the moral weight) in the system. Sooner or later, if enough people keep doing it, some of that will come back to you. Something that might have seemed onerous becomes less so because of someone else's minor generosity. IMO the fact that this isn't a common habit, that it's even discouraged by the dominant "everything should be strictly transactional" dogma (ignoring actual results from game and complexity theory), degrades life a bit for everyone.
P.S. Lest anyone claim I'm being inconsistent, changing yourself is hard. It's not a minor effort, like taking one moment to do someone a small favor. They're very different scenarios.
Then they express gratitude, and before you know it, you’ll get a favor like that back on something you really care about.
Do you keep changing yourself to meet their every whim, maybe they should just let it go, it's just a glass?
Above all, marriage is a series of compromises: you give up something for something else. You can't have it all.
Personally, I put up with my wife's problematic-for-me but not-for-her small habits, because we have a family and the well being of us and our children is priority. Loving the other person includes giving them room to breath, and chasing them after their small habits is suffocating...
But, fast forward to today, I learned not to care. I learned that the decision is easy: Either I accept that she is like that, or I get out of the door. I am free to go whenever I want (as we don't have kids), and after meditating over that choice I've realized that those "bad" things don't really matter. After accepting that, I became happier and less "confrontative" with her.
> it's with the other person that was bothered with something so minor...usually these minor things are excuses that cover deeper problems.
seems to point the blame at the other person. Really the marriage was probably screwed for nebulous confusing reasons, they both could feel it without really being able to express it coherently, so they fought proxy battles over dishes and other chores.
Bread winners often have this trait: I make all the money, and I can only do that by working my butt off. So you need to take care of all the other things. No questions.
This is why the dishes is such a huge deal now: Since the ACTUAL conversation is banned (by the man) the only thing the wife was able to bring up is anything that causes her to do MORE work for him. She now has to wash and put away the glass. It's a problem not because of that task, but because she got lesson-ed years ago on the bread winner crap and it's non-stop marriage poison forever after.
Every time she sees him spend a few minutes glazing at a window or "browsing hacker news" (for example lol) or just not doing anything - that's feeding the fire too - because why couldn't he help with the unseen tasks she's been given and IGNORED for.
> She now has to wash and put away the glass.
No she doesn't. She can just leave it there. She can leave her own glasses there, too.
The pressure to keep the counter clean isn't coming from the husband. He doesn't give a damn how many dishes are on the counter. It's coming from an expectation of femininity that she's internalized: "a wife is supposed to keep the counter free of dishes". The husband isn't helping her meet this expectation, but he isn't imposing the expectation on her, either.
I'm not married, but I see this theme in a lot of fights over household chores: it's not that the husband expects his wife to do all the chores, it's that he doesn't actually believe the chores need to be done.
I'm the breadwinner. I pay 100% of the bills, excluding the 'I went to buy potato chips and ice cream'
I WFH so I also tend to do the majority of chores. Which when I get burnt out or get sick I don't get as many chores done and the house goes to shit. Only ending up punishing myself really.
I also have to 100% of the time decide what's for dinner and either order or cook it. My partner's incapable of making decisions.
My areas of the house(my office for example) are kept orderly and clean. I try my best to keep the rest of the house clean.
But when I leave a pot on the stove over night, I'll hear about it.
It’s all about dignity and respect really. Take that away from your partner and they’ll resent you, no matter how much pove there is between the two of you.
I think the biggest thing is we never speak harshly to each other. If we aren’t exactly kind we apologize, but we never speak to each other or our children in ways I hear others do all the time. That is the love killer.
But it always baffles us whenever we spend time with another couple (including our own parents) and they are so short with each other. As you say, harsh.
We come away from those gatherings wondering, is this really how people live? Seems to be.
The simple reality is that I genuinely have a hard time accepting existence without her around. Since that is the case, some things have to be ignored for the sake of 'peace at home'. It goes both ways. I myself am not perfect.
The glass was never the real issue. It’s a sign for the relationship going off the rails. Not a sign that the author should just put the glass away blindly. It might be a sign that the author can listen more. Or it could be a sign that the woman doesn’t love him enough, or frankly isn’t capable, of letting the little things go. The glass is just the tip of the iceberg.
wow.... this isn't a marriage lesson, it's a basic human etiquette lesson. Listen to what someone is telling you and try to see things from their perspective. At least the author does call out their own immaturity with respect to this:
"I think I believed that my wife should respect me simply because I exchanged vows with her. It wouldn’t have been the first time I acted entitled. What I know for sure is that I had never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife’s respect."
It sounds very formulaic but it really helps to deescalate the situation. It's much more difficult to escalate a fight if your partner says they are hurting.
If you try to communicate something hundreds of times and it's not getting through, it isn't the recipient that is at fault.
Other ways to put it: "Would taking 10 seconds to do this now make my wife 1% less stressed?" (If so, do the thing to make her less stressed.)
"Is it worth starting a fight vs spending the same time just fixing the problem?"
"Would spending $COST_OF_THING make my wife happy for a day / make a fond memory of us together?" (Hence why I encourage my thrifty wife to spend a bit of money on semiprecious jewelry or clothes for herself that she enjoys)
"If I cheap out on $COMMMONLY_USED_ITEM, will my wife and I be annoyed by its limitations / bad user experience for years?"
Granted, I am fortunate to be able to pay the bills and have a little extra for the occasional splurge for my wife. And my wife is kind and understanding and I love her dearly. But I learned long ago that doing a little bit extra / spending a bit more for a quality item pays dividends in reducing friction and annoyances daily.
Those daily annoyances add up over time, and not in a good way. Make yourself aware of them, and then fix them. Cut down on stressors so you can spend more mental bandwidth on your wife and kids.
A couple years ago, my wife was complaining once again about someone using scissors and not bringing them back to their proper storage place. "How can we have 3 pair of scissors and none of them are here when I need to use one?" This didn't bother me but hearing her complain about it did bother me. After a couple attempts to reason, "it isn't that big of deal to track a pair down" or "how often do we really use them?", I decided that abundance was a better solution. I found a 4 pack of decent scissors for about $12.
So for $12 dollars I have never heard that complaint again because even if someone walks off with one and doesn't get it back right away there are several more. So my wife doesn't doesn't experience that frustration and it keeps her from getting fixated on something as insignificant as the location of pair of scissors. And, I have already decided that if it happens again I will buy another pack. They are surprisingly good scissors for $3 each.
I think my broader point was that we as humans are sometimes irrational about certain annoyances in life. And, if I can find a way to spend some money and just solve the issue that is probably a good use of money.
An addition to this unrelated to marriage - if it takes 10 seconds, why isn't it already done instead of considering whether to do it or not?
I have a personal rule that unless I have another issue that requires attention right now (like working from home being work time, etc) If it take 5 minutes or less to do it I just do it right away and never let myself say 'I'll do it later' because 1/2 the time you don't do it later, and its easier to just finish it right away and never worry about it again.
Dishwasher finish? It takes 3 minutes to put away the dishes. Now your dishwasher is empty so it takes 5 seconds to put away dirty dishes. Dishwasher full? take 20 seconds to put in some detergent and get it started. 3 minutes + 10 seconds means you never have to deal with dirty dishes on the counter or in the sink.
And just to make this slightly more startup-related as well: as team members, we also have "love languages", ways we communicate respect and appreciation to each other. Sometimes we speak different languages and don't understand each other. That breaks the team.
Everything becomes another tool of manipulation. "My love language is 'acts of service', so if you don't take out the trash, you don't love me." That's just straight up emotional manipulation.
Whereas it should be "My husband prepares my coffee and oats every morning. This is how he shows he loves me."
In the first, it's all about how one can use a concept to get what you want. In the second, it's about recognizing what's already being given and what it means.
There should be a rule, where you can learn about this and other concepts, but you are never allowed to talk about it with people you have a relationship with.
As an example from the article, if the author recognized from the beginning that putting the dishes into the dishwasher made his wife feel loved, he would do so, his wife would be happy, and he would feel happy, starting a virtuous cycle.
And it's all fun and games until you're about 40. At which point a man needs a family to take care of. So it's the most existential catch 22 situation in your life. You cannot win but you have to play.
So the cost is high, so what? You could get divorced, lose half of everything you own, and have to pay ((your salary) - (her salary)) for the rest of your life. But what's the point of money if not to buy experiences?
Now we can't stop aging, but we shouldn't lie to ourselves that physical attractiveness doesn't matter.
The Halo effect is a real thing.
Exactly. I don't expect my partner to start unbalding. Or to shake those last few pounds that start haunting us when our metabolisms slow down. But my God, I will leave him if he starts wearing stained sweatpants, or adopts the "well I'm bald on top so that means the rest doesn't need a haircut" idea that some men seem to get.
Wow this new person is stupid, I miss intelligence.
And often - whoa, she's yelling at me for the same things. It wasn't the aging that made her this way, it was me.
Ideally, you'd like to hear from a success. And at the risk being the horn-tooter, (married for 15+ years), when I read this I'm like "sigh, okay, where to begin..."
(As in, I can't even respond to it directly; I'd have to be like, "no, ask me a precise question and I'll see if I can answer it to the best of my ability.)
1. Misery is a function of expectations management. As is said, every relationship is different. Expectations could range everywhere from
"You are an adult and this is your house, too. Clean up after yourself like an adult who owns a house."
to what is common in our house,
"Housework gets done when it gets done. Fortunately we live in an area that doesn't have roaches."
It is notable that the author does little more than speculate on his wife's expectations. After that many disagreements, not fully understanding the other person's expectations is a big red flag. We can argue all day long as to whose responsibility the understanding is; that is also a big red flag.
2. It's not about the work you do, it's about the work you make. This one is a big deal to me, since I grew up in a family that expected me to clean up after them. All the laundry, dishes, yard and additional housework was my job starting when I was 10. And no matter how well or poorly I did, chances were high that I was going to get hit for something. Note that the author does not provide any of this context. His wife very well may have been looking forward to spending the rest of her life with a partner who was an adult who didn't leave crap laying around, knowing that it would somehow magically reappear clean in its designated storage location. Or she could just be uptight.
3. No relationship of any kind is fire and forget. It is a daily commitment to a complicated matrix of rules and accommodations, all of which has a cost. If a person does the cost/benefit analysis of doing this work and decides it's not worth it, hurt feelings and financial implications aside, it's not worth it. This is not only true of marriages, it's also the case for friendships, family, employers and coworkers. We're making hundreds of these calculations every day. It's a thing we do to feel safe. When the benefit does not outweigh the cost, you don't feel safe. That's bad for everyone's health.
4. It takes 5 positive experiences of someone to reconcile one negative one. I think I read another comment that was adjacent to this. I see this as sort of an economy of deposits and withdrawals, and that's not a particularly original analogy. At the end of the day, we are social animals; both small and large gestures of allegiance foster an environment of safety and comfort. Our lizard brain needs these things.
5. Capuchin monkeys prefer grapes. Fairness is a reflex. It is not rational and does not respond to logic. Though I can respect, "I might want to use it again."
I think that here lies the issue. Is this the only way that you show that you value their thoughts / opinions? If so, the problem was never with the cups. If not, then this is how you comfort / reassure your partner and not "lets agree to disagree." From that place you have a conversation where you both figure out how to best make the both of you happy. E.g. "we'll get a special/specific cup which looks like it belongs in this area and you can leave it here as long as its empty and only use that cup." There are always various compromises that can be made as long as you have that conversation and are both looking for the best for each other.
The husband could have said "I understand that this is a small thing that really bothers you and even though I don't understand, it's clearly an asymmetrical thing in terms of my effort vs. your being bothered, so I will put the cup away."
The wife could have just as easily said "I understand that this cup bothers me more than you think it should, if you're really that deadset on not putting it away can we find some other way to compromise?"
But who knows, maybe she tried to explain that to him a bunch of different times and even when she was saying "it's not about the cup it's about not feeling listened to" he still just heard "it's about the cup"
The only settings that come to mind where this level of "adherence" is maintained are prisons or abusive households where everyone is in fear of punishment, and where punishments can even be handed out by the warden for no reason at all.
I don't know that it's one-sided. The author may have asked their spouse to similarly adjust behavior in various ways; if they were amenable to that, but didn't get a corresponding response on their own pet peeves, that'd be an imbalance that'd stew over time.
> For example, what if you were just about to put the glass in the dishwasher but the doorbell rings?
Doing it very occasionally and doing it all the time are likely to have substantially different impacts on the spouse.
"I blew my hand off with a firecracker and that makes me an explosives expert, buy my book" is a suitable parallel here.
Yes, I know, it wasn't "just" the dishes. Neither of them actually wanted to be married to each other, they just wanted a live-in sex partner.
that doesn't mean it's all his fault, but we don't know what her attempts to resolve the issue were.
My takeaway is that I can sit and pout that my partner shouldn't be overreacting to a glass and I can sit and pout and say why should I be the one to change, why can't he change.
Or I can stay married. If I'm going to get caught up in my marriage being 'fair' I'm going to lose. There have to be times when I 'lose' because I give in and he doesn't. I have to trust that there will be times when he 'loses' because he's giving in when I don't.
It's that trust that's important. Not each little niggling fight but a trust that the other person is going to value you over valuing some abstract concept of fair. If I show a willingness to overcome my preferences for his sake, then he's going to be more willing to overcome his preferences for my sake.
It's easy to get stuck on fair but that turns hundreds of little things into battlegrounds.
If I trust that he's a loving caring person than I should be willing to lose. If I don't trust that, then we're already done.
If it's important to one of us, then we just do that. I don't have to agree with her that it's important to do it her way. If I don't really care what happens when I'm done with a glass, I do the thing she wants. The hard part of this is letting go of "being right" and just doing the thing that's important to your partner even if you don't think it should be important. But you really can decide to do this.
Only if it's important to both of us do we have to keep arguing about it or figure out a compromise. Those issues are luckily rare.
«Do you want to be right, or do you want to have a relationship?»
My wife in our last home the day we moved in. I threw a shirt on top of our bed. 100% it was on the bed. Some point after it managed to hit the ground. Totally wasn't me. She brings me to the shirt on the ground and says that since I didn't care I cant ever complain if she does it. You can expect that my side of the bedroom is neat and orderly and well...
So in the process of buying our current home. She explains that she needs a new start. That our previous home didnt feel like a home and so keeping things clean will be done at the new house. Do you expect there was any change?
Flipside, I never ever criticized or anything along those lines. Never said a word. I'm not perfect and I don't expect flawed me will ever get a perfect spouse. Shit will go wrong. No reason to ever get pissed off or even criticize.
Reminds me of my relationship with my mother living with her as an adult because I got very sick.
She would fight tooth and nail for an apology over things like this. Even if it was a minor thing that only happened once. In the end, she would consistently make me feel like a horrible person even though I _did_ contribute to helping in the house, if not perfectly. My emotional hurt was never accepted as valid, but anything that would trigger my mom was considered huge. It felt so one-sided.
I was eventually asked to leave my parents house. As a single guy with health issues that make getting by tough, the sort of relationships issues described in this article makes me despair about ever getting married, even though it is something I'd very much like.
The problem is that seeing the dish was one of his wife's primary interactions with him, and it was a negative one. She doesn't see him most of the day, I'm guessing, but she still sees the one glass on the otherwise pristine countertop and knows it's him. It causes a slight bad mood, which carries over to the time she does see him, which then puts him in a bad mood.
The solution is to literally count good interactions you have with your partner during a day or week. It could be by being unexpectedly tidy or with small surprises or even just being excited and happy and lighting up a room for no reason. If that count starts to average less than one, your are in real trouble.
What won't work is driving the small annoyances down to zero. Sorry, ain't gonna work. There's always something to be annoyed about.
That being said, if your partner seems to care a lot about one thing, at least make some effort just because you care. But do it because you want them to be happy, not to systematically eliminate possible causes of divorce, because it's not gonna save you.
If you are going to go to war over something, make sure it is worthy of doing so.
In his example: what is the harm in the drinking glass being there? Is it occupying space of others? Is it preventing others from doing something? Is it a burden on anyone? Or is it an aesthetic choice?
If it's an aesthetic choice, you need to get over it.
We have a fairly open house plan. There aren't many choke points. Except one. There's a corner of a wall that is about 5 to 7 feet from the corner of a kitchen island. If you are coming in from the side door, it is the one place you have to cross to get to the rest of the house. Almost every day, my wife will park her rolling bookcase right there.
Conversely, she's pretty lax on where she leaves her dirty laundry. But it's confined to the area beside her side of the bed and it doesn't encroach beyond that. I can't really stand having all that about. My clothes go straight into a hamper. But we both mostly do our own laundry, her getting her clothes off the floor is mostly an aesthetic choice. I let her live her life in that regard.
"Leaving the glass on the counter is disrespectful to me" is kind of a toxic mindset. It kind of says "You must conform to my ideas of acceptable behavior". It's a bit controlling.
"Treat each other's needs and priorities as equal to our own"
If you don't think it's hard, try it. I don't mean just respecting each other's time and attention in a general sense, which BTW I've come to believe is a good rule for all interactions. I mean treating their habits and preferences and pet peeves, no matter how silly they seem to you, as seriously as your own. Also, no double standards anywhere in your life together. No matter how exhausted or aggravated you are yourself at that moment. Consistently doing that takes a lot more self discipline than most people have. I can't say we've always succeeded, but after 26 years I'd say it has been worth the effort.
N.B. I'm not saying you shouldn't have your own preferences and habits and pet peeves. I'm totally not into that "become one person" thing; my wife and I are in fact pretty notoriously independent and happy to do our own separate things e.g. at social gatherings. There will be conflicts between your priorities and theirs. I'm just saying that those conflicts should be resolved starting from a position of equality.
i'd go a step further and say that we each are responsible for each others needs and priorities. at least the important ones. my job is to enable and support your needs and priorities, and your job is to enable and support mine.
your needs are actually more important than my own.
this of course only works if we both understand, agree and respect on what each others needs and priorities are. which requires open communication.
because if you take advantage of me fulfilling your needs while you ignore my needs then the relationship will fail.
If you've read pretty much any book on communications (not limited to relationships), they'll have an example similar to this. And they never suggest "compromise" as a solution (at least not until you break through the communication problem).
This is literally a "textbook" communication problem.
Here is quote from the article: "Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong."
I'm not married, so I dunno if it works, but it sure sounds like sensible advice at least.
It would be very enlightening to also read the article written from the perspective of the partner. I suspect that partner would not focus on the glass but the lack of empathy shown by the other side, and the erosion of trust that causes over time.
Looking back I think the problem was also partially with me not accepting smaller things ; but there is such a thing as death by a 1000 paper cuts.
Mostly it reeks of asking the other partner to finish the job. I'd wager this guy didn't do the dishes more of than not either. A lot of men genuinely don't help out around the house and don't understand why it upsets their wife so much.
From a gender roles inversion perspective this would be like if your wife bagged up the trash from the bin and then just left it next to the bin instead of taking it out. So now you have a dirty bag of garbage on the floor until someone decides to take it out. Almost a worse situation than just leaving the bin full.
Regardless of whether an issue is petty or not, if a spouse indicates it bothers them for whatever reason, and the other spouse just basically ignores it, this is a recipe for disaster.
This week, I've been reading "How we love" [0]. I'm only on the first chapter, but it has resonated with me:
> Every marriage has nagging problems calling for our attention. Many people end up thinking their relationship is difficult because they married the wrong person. But the fact that many people are on to their second and third marriages proves that no marriage is tension free. Sometimes our marriages seem to run fairly smoothly—until we hit a crisis or face difficult circumstances. Stress always makes underlying problems more apparent.
The authors talk about "core behaviours" (such as leaving the glasses by the sink in the article) that trigger conflict in a relationship:
> A core pattern is the predicable way you and your spouse react to each other that leaves each of you frustrated and dissatisfied. Some are married a few years before it is apparent, but sooner or later couples can readily identify the same old place where they get stuck. Maybe it’s the same complaints that come up again and again without ever getting resolved or a familiar pattern of fighting, no matter what the topic.
They then tie in your behaviours to how you were treated in childhood and I believe (I haven't gotten there yet) help you understand? alleviate? the sources of conflict.
> Marriage is the most challenging relationship you will ever have, and to think otherwise is to live in denial. When you are with someone day in and day out, you can’t hide. Your weaknesses become quite visible, and old feelings from the distant past are stirred. The physical nearness of your mate triggers old feelings as you look to him or her to meet many of the needs your parents were originally supposed to meet.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Love-Expanded-Discover/dp/0735...
Of course, this is completely unsatisfactory to a man. Men torture themselves trying desperately to think of the reason why her feelings changed. Was it that thing I said 2 years ago? Would it have been different if I did a thing on that one morning 6 months ago? Surely if I can figure out why this happened then there will be a solution.
But not everything is a problem that can be fixed.
She left you because she felt like it. You just have to accept it. There is no reason and there's nothing you could have done differently. It sounds callous, but once those feelings are gone, it's no more callous than you not being in love with any of the other women on earth.
Men and women do not feel love in the same way. No woman will ever love you as deeply as you love them. This is the sad reality of being a man. It's getting tough out there, guys.
"There is only one reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink, and it’s a lesson I learned much too late: because I love and respect my partner, and it really matters to them."
Others have pointed out the corollary - that you can choose to accept behavior as well as modify your own - but this too seems fairly indispensable for a long term partnership.
This is surprisingly, to me at least, a mostly solved problem. When I started having conflicts with my wife over similar issues I dug into the research and found that most of this is surprisingly easy, in principle. In practice it's a lot harder but reading a handful of books goes a long way.
Perhaps it was not the intent, but that really sounds like he thinks the solution here would have been to cover up the evidence. Not to, say, figure out how to reconcile their feelings and preferences.
I'm not sure if it makes me more or less an expert—I screw up stuff like this all the time, but I do recognize that I am screwing this up.
My take: it's not about the dirty glass. It's not about faking that you care. It's not even about communicating, because if they were to read each other's minds in this situation, she'd discover that she was right all along.
My best guess: there was a problem, and no will or desire to solve it. It's the visible manifestation of the same lack of will to solve other problems, the same lack of interest in figuring out what the other person wants/needs and doing what is necessary to make it happen. From her point of view, the dirty glass issue is proof that he's not going to work to make anything go better. From his point of view, it's proof that she's willing to throw out the whole marriage rather than address what's underneath that surface-level problem. Maybe she's afraid of looking petty, which ironically ended up making her look even more petty if you just look at the surface.
If this couple were to open up enough to each other to attack the real underlying issues, would the dirty glass continue to be placed by the sink? Who knows. Who cares? I doubt either of them would, or ever did.
Every marriage needs a functional conflict resolution process, and they never found or made one. (It's tricky, because in the first M years you can just have sex with each other and then it's all good. The next N years you can have a big blowout fight and then it's better. M and N overlap. So the need only becomes critical after some number of years.)
I would suggest my process, except I haven't worked it out either. I can say that it depends on the specific two people involved. Stuff like love languages may be sufficient for some couples, but it barely starts to address what's needed for my relationship.
In my own case, as a single I was living into 1/4 of the cost of my married life. Because my car was not good enough, my house was not good enough, my clothes weren’t good enough for my salary I got into the overpriced premium for literally the same life.
Soon after my then spouse entered the “why should I work phase if your can afford to pay it all” and decided to stay at home and “find myself again”
I couldn’t bring my friends over because they are dirty, loud or annoying.
I couldn’t travel alone because “I was going to cheat”, so every business trip I had to take during my married live I had to pay to bring my ghost.
After a very stressful divorce I’m back to where I started and cry of happiness when I leave a dirty underwear in the bathroom and no one screams at me.
A lot of people don't realize this but here it was again. The author wanted to be right ("my view is correct, glass near the sink is not important"). The author lost being happy at the cost of being right since their spouse left.
For me and my wife, most our fights are when we are tired or stressed. When we are relaxed we can more or less shrug off the little annoyances, maybe saying a reminder that gets some response, but neither of us care enough about the matter to pursue it further.
That's not to say we don't have real disagreements, but generally we're able to talk real disagreements out to the point where we more or less respect each other's point of view.
I think if we were better at dealing with stress, we wouldn't have any real fights. But if wishes were fishes, we'd all have a feast
After many years of me watching her take everything I washed or put away out and redo it, even emptying the dishwasher just to reload it and wash the dishes became a 'normal' thing. I gave up trying and just leave dishes in the sink or next to it because no matter what I do, she will redo it.
I wait till she's out of town and do a deep clean on the kitchen just so I know it's finally cleaned the way it should be.
She leave him by anything but that.
That was the tip of the iceberg in a big comfort zone.
Details do matter, in that point the author is right but the article is a huge expression of rationalization to cover up deeper issues.
If she would be happy to have him, do you think she would f* care about dishes? She would be proactive and happy to help by cleaning that herself. And offering to cook and more.
Sorry but the text is not defensible in any possible angle. That publication is nothing but a glorification of superficiality disguised as an allegedly clever insight.
Some other things being harder before ironically maybe us better at accepting that sometimes situations end with nobody getting what they want, and learning how to reach "good enough".
Worth it...
(Need to research what is a "good therapist" for both of you - oh and doing it on Zoom makes it a whole lot easier to fit into busy lives - some benefits of Covid)
I don’t give marriage advice to young girls, but if I were to..I would tell them to run..not walk away..if the potential mate cannot clean up after themselves.
To me, it’s a ginormous red flag if a full grown adult is messy..can’t make the bed..doesn’t pick up after themselves, leaves dirty dishes all around.
There is also a cultural caveat to this. I am Indian and boys are coddled more than girls(in my generation). A man who cannot take care of his mess screams mommy issues. There are other cultures too where boys are more prized than girls. I suspect it is not so much in the west. It seems like all kids here are raised by the state in public schools. I have some other thoughts but it’s best I keep them to myself.
My first thought was to suggest that no one should be taking marriage lessons from someone whose marriage has failed. The author includes himself as well when he says ‘this is how well intentioned people fall apart’. That is laughable to me. This is a passive aggressive dude who shouldn’t be married in the first place. She was honest in expressing her expectation and he wasn’t.
My second thought is that all marriages are short lived. When children are born, couples become child rearing partners. These partnerships last as long as the children are alive and mostly children outlive the parents.
Many marriages fray when parents become empty nesters or when tragedy strikes. And this is absolutely natural and necessary for sanity of human beings. The expectation of long perpetual marriages until death do them apart is macabre and the seed for future co dependency issues.
Renegotiating marriage terms every 3-5 years is the one of the ways to maintain healthy marriage partnerships. Marriages(long partnerships) and monogamy are not compatible with human nature. If that’s the desired outcome, there has to be an external force acting upon it continually to maintain integrity.
As far as ‘the little things’ are concerned, it is no different from what one may experience with room mates. I would recommend putting everything in writing and if possible, have separate rooms and/or bathrooms plus a shared bedroom. But that doesn’t make marriages natural either. Long successful marriages are not one long partnership..it is a series of multiple short term contracts negotiated between partners.
Well granted I couldn't see what was going on, but just from the article its hard to find him at fault if like many relationships one of the partners is constantly finding faults in his basic unthinking trivial behaviors. I'm pretty sure that two people living together can find things about the other person that irritates them. That is not really a problem unless its willful (aka he is creating a real problem for the other person, or intentionally subverting them, etc). The much larger problem is the person who cannot control their emotions enough to recognize that the other person isn't doing it willfully and deal with it, without constantly trying to reprogram the other person. Sure maybe in a loving relationship both people try to avoid the behaviors that irritate the other person, but at the end of the day it seems this is a never ending road. A person can teach themselves to put the dishes in the washer, or turn off the light, but frequently this takes time, and sometimes old habits die hard. And then there needs to be an endpoint, and an understanding environment in place to succeed.
So, the constant nagging, complaining and taking it personally when the other person fails? That isn't the fault of the person who fails to live up to an artificial and constantly changing set of requirements.
The long term result of living like this and trying to constantly improve yourself to some standard being set by your partner? Its just going to be intense hatred when ten, twenty, thirty years later you wake up and realize that you have changed everything about yourself and they are still not satisfied.
So, no, unless it was willful, he isn't the one at fault here, she is for inventing things that bother her, and then getting upset when he doesn't agree that dishes need to be prewashed, or placed in the dishwasher individually rather than as a batch, etc. Because when he lived alone or with his parents it was perfectly ok to put them next to the sink and reuse them, and then run the washer when the sink got full, and now its suddenly not.
So, frankly he sounds like the lucky one. Lucky she moved on so he can focus on what he thinks matters rather than trying to meet this other persons standards and being punished for failing.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes...
Same concept more or less. Not saying the Atlantic lifted this, just funny to see “doing the dishes” at the core of another marriage discussion.
It is SO NICE for my partner and I to have a week where we can just kick back and not worry about keeping the house clean. Highly recommended!
That being said there are some pie dishes in the sink right now I CANNOT. GET. CLEAN. My hands hurt from scrubbing haha
You always ultimately make the choice whether these demands, whether too many or not, are worth it. You decide.
Dan Savage does a brief talk about this titled the Price of Admission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1tCAXVsClw
Controversially, if there is one thing I have found people live to regret most it's apologizing. It has taken a while to articulate, but I think apologies are a broken concept because they are what we offer transactionally when we are at a disadvantage, they're an unsatisfying, forced declaration of kind of moral bankruptcy and submission, which is the exact opposite of what someone who loves you wishes for you, or wants from you.
I consider that what I really mean is, "I took this specific thing for granted and what I mean is I don't take it for granted, and thank you for it." Acknowledging and thanking someone for what you recieved from them adds value to a relationship, whereas an apology just asks to write it off. The same may be true for promises as apologies are mainly an artifact of breaking them. Taking responsibility for our own happiness and converting apologies into recognition and thanks before uttering them seems a lot more sustainable and likeable than being introspective and trying to change and compromise. Maybe I'm out of touch, but something about the article rubbed me the wrong way.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
I use the space bar to page down on longer articles. But on this one it scrolls one sentence too far. The scroll doesn't know about the top banner....
Surely I'm not some super rare whacky outlier in this, and surely the webdevs at The Atlantic are proud professionals - so why doesn't it work correctly?
Chrome on Mac.
It’s not the toothpaste cap. You can argue about the toothpaste cap all you want, but really, truly, it’s not the toothpaste cap.
A show that I recently watched is called "Scenes from a Marriage", and it starred Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. Best marriage education I ever got.
Did he go all passive-aggressive over those items? Did he discuss them with her? Would she consider changing her behavior, even minor?
It takes two to tango.
I remember a guy who planned to join the Marines when I was a kid. Every time I saw him he was doing push-ups. All the time. A neighbor - who was ex-military or maybe even a Marine himself - told me that was all well and good but had limited utility. If you go can do 100 push-ups when you go through boot camp they'll make you do 110. They want blood.
Most marriages end because of neglect. A decreasing investment in each other. Surely a true investment, say planning a weekend trip together, would make his wife feel so appreciative and happy that the wine glass is forgettable. I should add though that investments go both ways.
Investing (time, love, money) in a relationship is a must-do, but as much as this is common sense, it's still no guarantee for success. For the simple reason that often the underlying love is not there, or long gone. It's now replaced with the currency of obsessive continuous validation.
To me, acceptance is a core condition of true and unconditional love. I love my wife dearly as she is. Flaws and annoyances included. I don't judge her or try to change her in any way, I'm a live and let live kind of guy. She can be her total self with me. If today she'd slip, stop doing her part of tasks, turn into an alcoholic, whichever...I will love her regardless. She'll do none of these things as she's not that type.
She accepts me as I am. Which is pretty important because I'm ungovernable, it's genetic. I'll do everything and anything, just don't package it as an order. I do things out of free will, as does she. When you care deeply about somebody, you see what needs to be done. Surely I might get it only 80% right, but that's good enough. We're not running a business here. And in the rare case where either of our flaws pose a real issue, I guess we can just talk about it. That's what reasonable people that love each other do, instead of turning it into a passive aggressive power play where you keep score cards.
We're a perfectly happy relaxed couple that can't remember our last fight. We even need to do joke fights as we struggle hard to think of something worthwhile to argue about.
The point being, don't ever come home to a second boss. Don't keep scores. Don't obsess over changing the other. It's unhealthy and a massive signal for a lack of underlying deep love.
Sexist as it may sounds, in my group of friended couples, the pattern of the ultra dominant wife seems too consistent to ignore. I know these guys. They're not perfect, but pretty great. They work full time, do a reasonable job at chores, they minimize things outside the family (like drinking with buddies), are very involved with their kids, and then...well, the day is over. And it still isn't enough. It never is. Don't get stuck that way.
Or as my dad summarized my relation: fuck son, you got lucky.
Sincerely,
Armchair HN therapist
It seems something like 1/3 of the comments are coming up with reasons why "it's not about the dirty dish" when the author repeatedly makes this same point in the sub-headline and throughout the article. In at least one point where a comment reply violated HN guidelines by stating that the commenter clearly hadn't read the article, the original commenter stated that they had, so it seems unlikely to me that it's just people commenting on the headline itself.
Given that the author blames his divorce on poor communication, perhaps this shouldn't surprise me?
Am I missing the point?
> But she never did. She never agreed.
Your rights end where mine begin. And by that, I mean "my intolerance trumps whatever your opinion is".
That means the most flexible people, often the most rational, have to accept the intolerance and lack of flexibility of others to coexist.
I don't like my kitchen counter cleaned with a rag that becomes dirty upon first use and then adds bacteria on multiple following uses. I would rather the counter keep only the germs it currently has. Or better yet, I would prefer it be cleaned with a fresh towel or even light detergent and very hot water.
I don't like the toothpaste bottle to be buried in a basket under my wife's nightly consumables, such that when I go to bed later I have to dig through a lot of stuff to find the toothpaste. I would rather the bottle be left on the counter where both people can find it. But that bottle on the counter is a no-no. So I bend, but it pushes me a little more away every night.
> It was about consideration
I do not believe that consideration was the issue with TFA's wife. TFA had valid reasons for leaving a glass on the counter. Wife lacked consideration and pragmatism.
As an alien to earth, I realize my perspective may be warped. But it makes sense to me.
And as such, I think the problem with most relationships is ignorance and lack of ability to reason.
Reasons people feel how they feel:
- there is a practical time/money/pain cost between the alternatives
- there is a habit which is hard to change
- there is a behavior with no forethought and no post-evaluation
Some things have assessable costs. I could come up with any number of examples, but one very silly example would be parking. If I choose to park behind someone on a driveway instead of beside or on the street, it will take the starting and moving of my car (time, fuel, and minor wear and tear cost) to move my car out of the way so they can leave. Now in the larger consideration, perhaps there is no side-by-side room, and the street option is risky. Then it's a matter of risk balancing and personal time cost.
Some things are just habits, often learned from our upbringing. Someone who grows up with a particular scarcity will be extra sensitive to waste on that resource. Even when the resource is no longer restricted (what's the right word I'm looking for?), the habit remains. "Don't use so much water!". "Yes, but it takes 60 seconds for the hot water to reach the faucet, and proper washing requires (debatable) water temperature." Or "nothing should be left on the counter", so the toothpaste goes into a bin beneath many other things. So whomever comes next to brush must dig for the toothpaste. Amusingly (passively-aggressively) my solution to the toothpaste problem was to buy a freaking lot of them and get a new one each night, allowing them to pile up.
Finally, there are just behaviors we learned as kids before we had reason. Some things must be done a very specific way, and other things can be done any way. Unfortunately, two people from different families will have different combinations of specific and any. Then it comes down to realization of the behavior and rational analysis of the pros and cons, and perhaps then the alternatives.
Many many years later, I married a woman who had been through decades of horrible long term relationships (including one where he pointed a shotgun at her), and vowed to never ever get married.
We both decided to take another chance at it, agreeing that in our marriage we would communicate everything as soon as possible. In the years since, we've had two cases of harsh words: One where she repeatedly did something that upset me and I said nothing about it, until finally I blew up at her one day. Another, where she'd been under extreme stress and blew up at me (yeah, we can be embarrassingly dumb, but hey, we're human). And besides that, not so much as a disparaging remark. We're together 24/7, never spending more than an hour or two apart (we're both home all day). We'll probably end up becoming one of those cute old couples who still hold hands at 80.
We make a point of never communicating in a blame-like way. I.E. "Please can you find a way to avoid doing X? I know it might not make sense why but it drives me nuts." or "When you do X, it makes me feel like Y. Can we find something else that works for both of us?" These turn into discussions to drill down into exactly where the problem lies, and then figuring out what changes we can make (one, the other, or usually both) to make things work better. It's a constant process.
We're all human, and we all have our quirks. They're not logical, but yet they exist and we can't change them. Being in a relationship is about empathy and communication. You're a team, so you really need to figure out how you can maximize your collective power.
When people say "It's about sacrifice", they're half-right. It's not about pushing yourself into smaller and smaller boxes to accommodate their large footprint. It's about making some sacrifices or changes to work around the quirks that the other person can't change (CAN'T, not won't). You support your partner where they have weaknesses, and you build up their strengths. Even if you look at it from a purely mercenary point-of-view, this makes sense.
Morale is vitally important. People have their down days, and you really need to be attentive to that. It's on you to see them through the down times and make sure they come out the other side okay. Note: I'm not talking about "cheering them up" (although that is sometimes a valid strategy); I'm talking about validation of their feelings. I'm talking about being there, in solidarity with them in their dark times, even if there's nothing else you can do to help. It's also important to celebrate their triumphs, and in general just let them know how much you appreciate them.
Being in a team (I mean REALLY in a team) is about being attentive to each others' needs, strengths, fears, and demonstrating to them that you have their back, no matter what. If you can't trust your teammates implicitly, you're not a real team.
Marriage / long relationships absolutely do need some compromise, that is an universal fact. There are some things you just have to outgrow and admit that your strong stance on them is not at all important. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn't feel that to be a sacrifice. It did, and still does, feel like I grew as a person.
Another fact: never go to bed grumpy with your partner. And I really do mean NEVER as in "no but-s". Doesn't matter if you haven't slept in 50 hours and did 4 shifts back-to-back and now want to die. No. Go get coffee and water and start talking until you work it out. Never let negative emotions towards the relationship grow inside each of you. Never skip important talks. That is what is I think most important in relationships.
Is that what most people mean when they say "marriage is work from both sides"? I hope so because if not then their definition sounds awfully depressing. But to me it's not work at all; I love my woman and would throw myself in front of a speeding truck to protect her.
Having to communicate extra when we disagree on something does not feel like a sacrifice at all. It feels like investing in the relationship to continue thriving. It doesn't feel like removing harmful weeds from your garden (chore); to me it feels like putting even better soil nutrients and richer water on the plants (nurture). It's chore vs. nurture; to me it feels like the latter. Sometimes it's both at the same time.
As some other commenters alluded to, don't look for a "perfect" partner in the sense of your own bias about what is "perfect". Life and people have millions of ways to surprise you positively. Let some more chaos and randomness in your life and you will be left flabbergasted why didn't you do it sooner.
