About 10 years ago, I had a internship at Newell Rubbermaid. As part of the experience, the entire group of interns across all the brands got to have lunch with the CEO and basically ask him anything we wanted.
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.
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."
Plenty of people who were never entrepreneurs suffer the same or worse.. and do so while earning a tiny pittance of what CEOs make.
Lack of money causes all sorts of additional stress on families as well... including health issues from not being able to afford health care, or only getting poor quality healthcare, or not being able to afford preventative care, eating poorly, living in dangerous/polluted areas, not being able to afford to send your kids to college, not being able to afford vacations, etc..
Not to mention the stress of being treated like shit or replaceable cogs by the people above you in work environments that are unhealthy or unsafe.
One of my favourite books is called, "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" (2010) which is the true story of a high-end book thief.
There's a scene in the book where the author is interviewing the thief in prison during one of his (several) custodial sentences, and the conversation goes something like this:
Author: You're intelligent, erudite, charming. Why don't you become a lawyer or something?
Thief: It takes about 10 years to become a lawyer, with undergrad, law school, articleing, etc. I don't want to do any of that. But say I did, a partner at a top firm makes what, $600k? That's around what I'm alleged to have made this year
Author: But what about the strain on your family?
Thief: Because lawyers don't get divorced?
It continues like this for awhile as the thief very persuasively argues the risk adjusted returns of high-end larceny
Yeah but the (insert suffering in group) had it tougher than (out group). We can always compare and find someone or something that has it worse. What’s the point in bringing it up, that we can’t feel sorry for someone who has suffered because someone else has perhaps suffered more in our estimation?
No one has nor should have a monopoly on sympathy.
Presumably said CEO wasn't in much danger of poverty though. The entrepreneurship caused his troubles. That other things also could is beside the point.
Well, we can quote statistics and cite studies, but the point is that the entrepreneur himself attributed his failed marriages and heart attack to the entrepreneurship.
"the entrepreneur himself attributed his failed marriages and heart attack to the entrepreneurship"
Of course he did, as it made his enormous wealth seem like the result of great sacrifices.
You see this all the time.
Why do the rich deserve all their money? Because they made such great sacrifices and took all those tremendous risks. It's self-aggrandizement and self-justification.
Low wage workers make sacrifices and take risks just as great (or greater) all the time, but no one is going to pay hundreds of dollars a plate to hear them give a keynote speech humblebragging about how they worked so hard they had 3 heart attacks during their minimum wage jobs (from which they probably got fired for having to miss work), or how their marriages broke up... which happens all the time.
FWIW, I remember him sounding quite dejected and sincerely questioning whether it was all worth it. It didn't seem like a "I failed big time and now I'm living on top of the world" kind of opening. I still feel sad when I think about it.
That's not to disagree with you, we often overlook the struggles and challenges of people in lower economic classes or less prestigious positions. More just to say I didn't get that humble brag vibe at all.
Oh, and I also don't know if he got paid, as I think he was an alumnus and it may have just been a volunteer speech. Again, I know there are other speeches in which people do get paid and follow the pattern you outlined, just saying I don't think this was one of them.
Many would argue that material poverty is less important than poverty of the soul. This is why poor countries are often much happier than rich countries.
Solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments you give to a human. As you get richer your status will isolate you from other people because you don't share their particular kind of suffering.
One of the biggest problems is the fact that anything you can do can be done better by paying someone else to do nothing but the thing you want to do yourself.
It's hard to sympathize with people feeling isolated because they're rich. They could at any time remedy their situation and return to the world of normal people. They choose to be in that situation.
Mark Cuban had a different perspective when he was younger.
“I went through girlfriends (who threatened) — ‘It is your business or me,'” the Shark Tank investor recalled. “And I was like — ‘What is your name again?’ It was just non-stop.”
I'm not endorsing that comment. I just thought it was interesting to see how a notable entrepreneur approached relationships. He did later get married after achieving financial success, and presumably knows his wife's name.
To me, statements like this perfectly illustrate a situation where at least one side wants a form of companionship besides "potential life partner", and that is totally ok if everyone involved is aware of that.
In the US our culture tends to really emphasize dating as a step towards finding the mythical "one" and getting married, and it's "bad" to have sex or really any form of intimacy unless you are in a relationship.
When you are younger this is normally the assumed basis for a relationship, and complicates having any form of companionship that is not based on "Maybe we should tie our lives together forever!".
Obviously as we get older and gain experience with the varied forms relationships can take it's easier to realize (and even admit/discuss!) that one partner is really looking for more of a good friend with benefits situation than a "life partner audition".
I translate "It is your business or me" as "I require more of your attention than I have been getting to continue investing myself in this relationship" - which is also very valid.
If sex work was not so stigmatized, arranging the attentions of a high class escort for a year would probably leave everyone involved much happier.
(I am not talking about simply sex here, but talking, attending parties, all the normal early date stuff, but starting from a position of "I want a companionship, but I can't invest my time in a relationship right now. I do happen to other assets I can invest instead if you are interested? )
I appreciate this comment. Something I've currently struggled with is the tension between a private life (romance, family, etc) and a public life (running a business, podcast, politics). I find that sometimes a private life wants me to care about those few people more than all the other people and a public life wants me to care about all people equally. Maybe that story of the CEO stuck with me and has added to the fear I feel about becoming too public (will lose my romance and family), and may be why I've hidden more and more from public life.
Anyway, I'm grateful for you showing another side to this, thank you.
The people I know who have been successful at both simultaneously have extremely rigid boundaries between their business and personal lives, to the point of being different people at work and at home. Even they almost universally eventually discover they're not as available to their children as they thought they were, however. Caveat emptor.
It's a question of what you live for and where you find your worth. If you live for other people, and you find your worth in them, then you will direct your path accordingly.
If you find your worth from within, or perhaps from without in a very broad sense (making something big that the world needs/wants/admires), then 1:1 is not so important.
This reminds me of big law firms - I briefly worked at a gigantic law firm and it seemed the closer to partner an attorney was the more divorces, mistresses, and extreme health problems that attorney would have.
I keep this in mind too when cancelling plans or trips in order to do 'important' corporate work. The business will never remember you did a day from now; but your partner sure as hell will.
Thanks for saying this. I spent years worried if I took an hour or two or a day during 'busy' times, and it turned me into a liar, because I said I do things or be somewhere and often times I did not because of work. It is always a 'busy' time.
It took years, several jobs, and therapy before my eyes were open. Nobody cares, you are a human and have a life, if your employer does not understand that you need a new one.
I see my friends do this all the time and I just want to slap them in the face and tell them to snap out of whatever trance they are in. They work long hours, they are no longer making the time to take care of themselves, or keep up with people they love. They complain how terribly they hate their situation and how depressed it is, but they continue working those 60 hour weeks and bending over backwards to terrible bosses as if that is how it simply is and there is nothing better. It's making me depressed just seeing them slide off like this, all because of these shit jobs they put themselves into. And its not like they can't find other work either, they have good experience, but are so beaten down by the current job that they can't muster energy to commit to a job search on top of that 60 hour work week. You almost have to rip the bandaid off and just quit with nothing lined up.
I'm in my notice period with nothing concrete lined up right now. (I'm job hunting - in the middle of several interview processes - but no offers yet.)
I am lucky enough to have savings and a very supportive partner, and even so it is stressful. Certainly without either or both of those things I would likely still be sticking it out at the current job (especially with the various things that were offered when I handed in my notice). I sympathise with those that feel trapped.
It's a challenge to recognize those times that your need to work constantly is what you want to do (excited about a technical challenge, avoiding something at home, on an ambition kick), and your boss wouldn't blink an eye if you took the week off rather than work 80 hours.
This hit me when moving from a start-up to a FAANG. There is effectively an infinite amount of work for me to do on any given day, so at some point I just have to decide to stop - if I don't, I'll just end up tired tomorrow with an equally infinite amount of stuff still to do.
Depends on the business school. At INSEAD we had a whole elective class devoted to personal psycological decisions like this to get people thinking about what kind of trade offs they wanted to make.
I wish that had been an option for me as a CS student.. it was hard for me to learn it in the real world where you get lots of "work hard, play hard" speeches.
Marrying a successful and ambitious 20-something in no way commits one to be fine with the same ambitious person uprooting family’s life a decade or two later and moving to the other side of the world. Family is about shared sacrifice for its well being, and sometimes (in fact, usually) one needs to sacrifice their career for the family. That’s life.
I can share the converse example. My uncle had a once in a lifetime opportunity to get training in the US and get a promotion at his company. His wife did not want him to leave for 6 months. He did not get the training or the promotion. He fell way behind his colleagues that did. Fast forward 20 years, and he was unable to give his children a good education, whereas his colleagues who got promoted, did.
He gets really sad and jaded when he talks about that decision.
I put this real-life story in contrast, just to prove that it's not just about "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable". For the trivial stuff like putting away your shoes or your socks, fine. But some decisions make a career and determine the future success of your offspring.
> "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable"
My father gave me one specific piece of advice that stuck with me through the entirety of the time I can remember, and it also helped me out quite a lot in life. The advice wasn't directly related to marriage or anything like that, it was about making major decisions in general. I didn't truly understand what it meant at the time, but once I realized it, it hit me like a truck and put a lot of things in perspective.
He said "Always listen to everyone's opinions, but always make your own decision."
Being a teenager at the time, I misinterpreted it as "listen to what everyone else says and then do your own different thing." A very typical non-conformist teenager take. But much later on, I realized that it meant something entirely different.
What he actually meant: "You should consider others' opinions when making a major decision, as it can let you make a better and more informed one. If you picked a decision that aligned with what someone else advised, that's absolutely fine. But, in the end, you own that decision and the consequences. You cannot hide behind a 'so and so advised that, which is why I made it' excuse. You are responsible for it, and you cannot blame people who provided their perspective for the resulting outcome."
Thinking about this piece of advice when making major life decisions helps me a lot. Both with pulling the trigger on it in a more informed way and accepting the eventual outcome.
> I put this real-life story in contrast, just to prove that it's not just about "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable". For the trivial stuff like putting away your shoes or your socks, fine. But some decisions make a career and determine the future success of your offspring.
The advice is good but is lacking. It should have been
"Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable. But in the end, you have to make the decision yourself and take responsibility for it".
I remember reading about this in David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man.
I agree, of course, but I never meant to imply that the answer here is “always do what your wife tells you to”. My point is simply that one should be prepared to sacrifice career for family. Sometimes, as in your uncle’s example, it might turn out that a better decision for the family would have been to make a different sacrifice instead. But that’s just another life’s lesson: hindsight is always 20/20.
>Marrying a successful and ambitious 20-something in no way commits one to be fine with the same ambitious person uprooting family’s life a decade or two later and moving to the other side of the world.
Oh please. The writing was on the wall. If he's playing the "climb the corporate ladder" game nobody should surprised when he draws the "manage the Mongolian division" card. Expecting him to give that up when climbing the corporate ladder is the life he's chosen is somewhere on the spectrum from foolish to selfish.
Likewise if your boyfriend is mechanically inclined don't wake up one day complaining about the fleet of project cars and the heavy equipment that are cluttering up your property. You knew that was the life you were signing up for looked like.
There's a reason literally every culture has a litany of proverbs for women about not trying to change their men (and there's similiar but different proverbs for men).
Marrying a successful, ambitious man does not, in any way, mean that a woman should defer completely to every single career decision a man makes. I'm sure this executive's schedule was already plenty demanding without the burden of moving to another country.
Haha the parent post literally said that it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then complain about said ambition. The ambition, implicitly,
being wanting to move to Asia for a job. It seems to me if a woman isn't allowed to complain about moving continents for a job, she's not allowed to complain about anything, and this is, therefore, not a strawman.
So with that logic... if he gets a huge opportunity to run the Asian division which he feels compelled to take despite her objections, then she is not allowed to ask for smaller concessions such as "hey, can you turn off the work phone on Saturdays"? You linking those together doesn't make sense.
I don't see any problem with that, I'm not the one who said it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then have problems with moving to Asia. I don't see any conflict at all between loving someone's ambition and also wanting other things from the relationship.
Supporting one's spouse does not mean acquiescing to every opportunity afforded the other. Things are a little different when we're talking about matters of shelter/food/health, but in this situation we're talking about an international relocation of an already successful businessman. He was pursuing personal career and experience outcomes, he wasn't trying to drag his family above the poverty line.
And besides, it's pretty clear HE regrets the decision. Maybe learn something from the person who lived the experience.
> Everything changes all the time without exception. Getting used to change serves everyone.
This statement is meaningless. Change in life is constant, but everything doesn't change all the time. You weaponize this statement as if to say we - or at least one spouse - should abdicate their agency in their own or their shared life.
I find your comment pretty agressive ("Maybe learn something from the person", "This statement is meaningless")...
Which is pretty ironic because if saying "everything changes constantly" is meaningless, what about your advice to "learn" from a comment on the internet about a man he doesn't know at all that "regrets" something neither of us really know about ?
One example has zero value as a "life changing lesson" and one can regret objectively awful things (regretting the feeling while high on drugs, etc).
> Which is pretty ironic because if saying "everything changes constantly" is meaningless, what about your advice to "learn" from a comment on the internet about a man he doesn't know at all that "regrets" something neither of us really know about ?
The OP's statement was a truism used - in this instance - to critique the wife for not "adapting to change". I think I made that pretty clear in my comment. If you can apply that BS truism here, why not elsewhere? Why not just always go with the flow, never have desires or motivations of your own? Why ever object to undesired life changes?
It bothered me, as you can tell. It's not advice based in the reality of a shared life. Telling someone unhappy with the direction of their life that "getting used to change serves everyone" is terrible, borderline offensive advice. The worst takeaway is to blame the woman for not going along to get along, which dijonman2 sure seemed to be doing to me.
I'll take the critique of my own comment, though my point remains: the person who wrote the article was trying to impart a life lesson they learned a hard way, and I encourage that user (and all of us) to reflect on it and potentially learn something. My "maybe" wasn't passive aggressive by intent, it was meant to be interpreted literally, albeit not expressed in a very considerate way.
I get your point better now, thanks for the clarification.
I agree we should try to improve things that can be improved, but I guess this example's extreme nature (international relocation) makes it difficult to have a nuanced talk about couples' intra-dynamics...
The thing is, he was likely already providing incredibly well for the household and didn't need to move the whole family to Asia. If I pulled some crazy shit like that, I'd hope my wife reminds me who I'm working for and why.
Money isn’t free. The person earning needs to be supported. Running a house is work but I wholeheartedly reject the notion of someone both working and supplicating their partner. This is abuse.
People also change and / or realize what they thought they'd like turns out to not be what they like. You can't know you will like a situation until you are living it.
I think entering a new job is similar, I may think I'm going to really like the job, but then when I'm actually doing the job I realize there are things I didn't consider and don't like it. Luckily, I can quit a job easily. In a marriage - you have to grow together if you want it to work.
There is a book which describes exactly what the author of the article realized too late, it's better to learn it via reading than in hindsight:
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Believe it or not, some people enter enter into marriage as equals, and view each other as teammates working together and respecting each other’s input into major life decisions.
It's ironic to me when men marry for any reason besides wanting a docile helpmeet and then complain that their partners have real ambitions, opinions, and goals.
People seem to gloss over the fact that while she married an ambitious man, he also married her. If he did not want her to have equal say in their life (note this is his and hers life being impacted!) he should not have married her.
Marrying someone with ambitions doesn't mean the ambitious spouse gets full control over where the other partner lives and the relationships the other partner can have. A partnership is not a contract to have the needs of one partner subsumed by whoever happens to be more ambitious. You don't know what they communicated before deciding to get married. Strange to not be able to imagine being on the other side of it
> Marrying someone with ambitions doesn't mean the ambitious spouse gets full control over where the other partner lives and the relationships the other partner can have.
Not the OP nor GP, but I think the person who sought after an ambitious spouse is equally responsible for understanding the trade-offs.
The term “married to their career/job” was an old term when I was a child growing up in the 1970 and 1980s.
That ambition comes at a veey well-known cost.
I’ve also read and heard more than my fair share of dissolved marriages, because the main provider was always working; but how many spouses are willing to live far beneath their means, to accommodate for a better work life-balance?
> how many spouses are willing to live far beneath their means, to accommodate for a better work life-balance?
Approximately zero spouses who complain about glass-dishwasher-alignment will sacrifice by lifting the breadwinner's burden. Sorry, folks. Everyone is entitled to self-realization and higher meaning, however, if you're being supported by someone who works 40, 50, whatever hours per week, suck it up and move the glass. Any other position simply is a symptom of major problems further up in the paragraph and has nothing to do with glasses, dishwashers or anything else.
> Approximately zero spouses who complain about glass-dishwasher-alignment will sacrifice by lifting the breadwinner's burden.
There, the fault lies
with the provider in either choosing the wrong spouse; they should have been pickier.
Or being an unaware jack-ass. For the latter, it helps to list out the responsibilities, to make sure the division of labor is equitable.
Or marriage counseling.
> however, if you're being supported by someone who works 40, 50, whatever hours per week, suck it up and move the glass.
An ambitious worker—the topic I’m responding to—isn’t putting in a mere 40 hours a week. More like 60 to 80 hours if not more.
Those workers also face divorce for being inattentive, but they’re also playing catch-up for the house; car; private schools and the general lifestyle that comes so easily to compensate for the extra income.
There is no “sucking it up” unless you have a time machine or don’t need to sleep.
This does not sound like trade off for ambitions. More like ignoring her strong preference and then being shocked it turned out to be straw that broke camels back.
Maybe this is my pessimistic view, but most relationships don't last. Some of the ones that do last only because of complacency or discipline (but they arguably should dissolve).
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.
Valuable lesson for all of those interns that....there may be a million other things going on between two people. Unless you get both sides of the story, you only have one side of the story.
Applies to CEO's as much to janitors.
I mean, moving whole family without consent of partner indeed tend to break relationships. Not being able to take major promotion do cause resentment too, but damm, if my partner moved me to region I don't want to, I would be pissed.
But still, I can't imagine not being willing to move to any first world country that my senior executive spouse got transferred to -- as a senior corporate executive they've have a ton of resources at their disposal to make the move as easy as possible.
I have a good job that I like, but if my wife told me her company was moving her to Japan for a while, I'd jump at the opportunity.
We live where we live because we're 10 minutes from my wife's two sisters, my wife's parents, and 3 cousins our kids love to play with. Generally, I think the only way we're moving is if they move first. Because my wife's whole family is here. And she spends multiple days per week with them. As do our kids.
The idea that she should be supportive of me tearing her away from this support structure is questionable.
Obviously if something came up we would discuss things. But I don't expect her to like it. Even if it involved a pay raise. Even if it involved moving somewhere she would love to live. Because these people aren't there.
The idea that a well compensated, educated adult can't survive without an extensive support structure for a few years is questionable. Hell, I haven't had a support system at all - my family was actively abusive and antagonsitic to me, and yet I was able to successfully build a career, family, and so on.
It's just as likely codependancy as it would be support.
>The idea that a well compensated, educated adult can't survive without an extensive support structure for a few years is questionable.
Financially, sure. In terms of mental health and feelings of isolation (especially for the wife, who won't have a high-flying career to distract her/build new contacts in), it's absolutely a problem.
It sounds like your old "support system" wasn't actually that supportive for you? That isn't the case for everyone. I'm glad you were able to make a big improvement :)
>I have a good job that I like, but if my wife told me her company was moving her to Japan for a while, I'd jump at the opportunity.
Do you have kids? What's your relationship with your family like? How good/irreplaceable are your friendships?
For a lot of people, dropping all of these things are inconceivable. I know my aunty was reduced to tears when her son (who is expecting a baby) moved from Woodend to Canberra. To her, it meant seeing her grandkids a couple of times a year rather than spending time with them every week.
> I can't imagine not being willing to move to any first world country that my senior executive spouse got transferred to -- as a senior corporate executive they've have a ton of resources at their disposal to make the move as easy as possible.
I can see it easily. After move, all your friends and all your life are far away. You have to change habits, language, adjust to different culture. You are very likely to be super lonely most of time. And you loose actual support network where you live. You can get some paid one, but that is something different. If she worked or had other ambitions (entirely possible she did not), those are likely gone after the move.
Many people like and have build their lives. And many if not most don't want to uproot and change everything.
A lot of folks are misinterpreting this article, or just using it as a jumping off point to get something off their chest.
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.
Thanks for writing this. I have a question for you, since my marriage ended for reasons similar to this author's. Why is the wife's desire more important than his? In other words, why must the husband live the way the wife wants and compromise is not acceptable (especially if they share cleaning responsibilities) -- compromise could look like "sometimes I do it her way, sometimes I do it my way." Why can't a partner let go of the little things and accept that living with another person (spouse or roommate) means you don't get to set all the rules on how both of you live?
We are always told "Accept your significant other rather than trying to change them." Why does not that apply here?
If it is unimportant to you, and important to her, then splitting the difference doesn’t mean doing it your way half the time.
If it instead is important to both of you, then you have a fundamental problem that you need to sit down and work through.
Maybe there is a compromise that will leave both of you happy. Maybe one of you is willing to try changing. Or maybe you have an irreconcilable difference and need to split up.
Honestly if you are both ready to consider divorce before you change your dishwashing behavior, that’s a pretty big warning sign that things aren’t on the right track.
An example: I don’t give a shit about clothes on the bedroom floor. No one but me and my wife ever sees them. But it bothers her. It costs me very little to dump the clothes in a hamper, and makes her much happier. So I put my clothes in the hamper as much as I can remember to, and she gives me grace the times I forget. Happily together for 20 years so far.
He did mention that he would never care to change his behavior and had two reasons to continue doing it. I guess that doesn't mean it's the hill he would go to die on. I do struggle with the same thing, at what point is it something that's no longer a conversation, you should just change because the other person decided they cared enough about it. Having the wife end a marriage over it also seems ridiculous. If people can't come to realize they are asking for something silly but it's a big deal to them, that seems like that partner's problem. If I just sit around and say everything is "important", does that mean I get to have it my way all the time?
I entered into my marriage assuming my partner was negotiating in good faith. If she says something bugs her, it bugs her. Collectively we can either spring for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for her, or I can pick up my pants after I shower.
If your partner needs to have their way in all things, then there may be a deeper trust issue to resolve and/or they might not be ready for a committed relationship.
Edit: rereading above I can see it coming off as a little flippant. At the core I believe we all have things we do and feel that are not rational. I don’t think you can reason your way out of them. You can’t rationally argue away a feeling. You can do therapy to try to change it, or you can remove the negative stimulus.
This is an extreme example/edge case and if that's truly the case you are either not participating in good faith or would likely benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. You're approaching the topic of a healthy marriage from game theory where your spouse is another player/opponent, not from empathy and good-faith participation or even just as a team with a common goal.
Is your goal to "have it your way all the time", or is it to have a healthy and loving marriage with your spouse? If you approach it from the latter perspective, the question doesn't really make any sense.
To be fair, it’s not really about coldly «saying something is important». I think the question is really better restated as:
What if one person just feels more strongly about things (most or all of the time)? Should feelings always trump? Should feelings always be allowed to trump rationality/proportionality in a marriage conflict?
PS:
> You're approaching the topic of a healthy marriage from game theory
I feel like this moves the goal posts but that's fine, this is a more legitimate question.
This is the actual hard part of the marriage/relationship that the commenter higher-up is talking about. Compromise is table stakes. Communicating well with your partner, making sure they are an equal participant and making sure they feel heard and valued is what's important.
Again, focusing on who is going to "win" is not a healthy perspective in my opinion. Questions like "do feelings beat rationality?" Is the same thing as saying "does paper beat rock?" The purpose of the article was not that dishes and minor arguments about dishes on the counter resulted in a divorce. The point is that she felt belittled and unheard. He was winning the dish battles, but lost his marriage.
>Should feelings always trump?
No! But they might! Each marriage and relationship is different and they change over time (as people tend to do). For one couple this could be true, but that doesn't really mean anything. Again, this approach is thinking about marriage as a series of small arguments to win, with your spouse as the opponent.
Compromise is table stakes. Whether the dishes got done or not really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not these people got divorced, the issue was a lack of communication and one partner not feeling heard.
This is a less-bad framing of the earlier question, but it still suffers from the same flawed perspective. The goal is to have a healthy and happy marriage where both individuals feel heard and respected and like a team.
What if you feel more strongly about something than your partner? Do you feel like your thoughts and feelings on the matter are being heard? (Note: feeling heard is not the same as "I got my way") Do you feel like an equal team member in the decision? It's okay to feel annoyed or frustrated at the result, that's part of life, you don't always get your way. But it's a huge difference between "I felt like my opinion was fully heard and considered, even if we didn't decide on my point of view." and "I felt dismissed, belittled, and unheard. $spouse/boss/friend/person didn't really listen to what I had to say and I don't feel valued."
It was not so much a question on _who_ is going to win, as to _what_ is going to win. In other words: What are deemed legitimate criteria, and even the most important criteria, in a conflict? It’s a question of value systems. Making feelings paramount, like several above suggested, seems like a pragmatic quick fix. If one part obviously feels so much stronger than the other, why shouldn’t the other just give way? But it is not without its problems. Stronger feelings doesn’t mean more right, and doesn’t mean the holder has a more justified basis for being accommodated. Even though it may patch things up more easily in the short term.
There’s also a personality component: some people tend to feel more strongly about most things, and others may not feel particularly strong about anything (although they are not void of feelings/opinions). Causing relational skew. The latter person giving way, to smooth things over, and to not stir strong feelings in the other, can turn out to blow up hard in the long run.
But yeah, as you say: HOW something is done is oftentimes just as important as WHAT is done (the outcome).
> The latter person giving way, to smooth things over, and to not stir strong feelings in the other, can turn out to blow up hard in the long run.
You're still approaching this as "A's feelings vs B's rationale". The original article is highlighting one (common) path this takes: one person's feelings are not being heard and they feel devalued and belittled. But you're still approaching it as partner vs partner rather than as a team vs the issue with a goal of everyone feeling loved, heard, and understood.
It is on both sides to make sure that the other person feels heard and an equal partner. If person B feels like their rationale isn't being considered at all, or that their feelings are not, it's the same situation.
>The latter person giving way, to smooth things over,
A valid feeling is that they are giving a lot. Their partner feels strongly about things ABC, but there's no free lunch. Changes to your behavior obviously have consequences. Folks are giving specific examples like "My spouse cares about laundry being in the hamper, I don't really so I don't mind putting in the extra effort to make them happy." But if one feels like they are giving more than they are getting, that's a communication issue beyond whether the dishes get done. The same as the person who feels strongly not being heard.
Your example: "can turn out to blow up hard in the long run" is necessarily different. There's resentment implicitly brewing. Maybe the spouse often starts these conversations more aggressively. Something like "Why can't you ever put your clothes away?" It starts off aggressive, is accusatory, and assumes that the spouse is acting in bad faith.
Put more succinctly, if things do blow-up in the long run then there's a similar communication failure that has occurred and one member of the partner ship doesn't feel like a capable and equal partner in the eyes of their spouse.
HOW something is done: how these feelings and thoughts are communicated is not just as important oftentimes, but is absolutely more important always. Specifically for small stuff like dishes, laundry, etc. "What" wins is entirely irrelevant and will vary from issue to issue and couple to couple.
If it's something more consequential like having children, parenting values, financial values, etc. that's more fundamental that the topic here and is likely just two people who are incompatible with irreconcilable values.
> You're still approaching this as "A's feelings vs B's rationale".
Not necessarily. I also wrote:
«If one part obviously feels so much _stronger_ than the other, why shouldn’t the other just give way?
…
some people tend to feel _more strongly_ about most things, and others may not feel particularly strong about anything (although _they are not void of feelings/opinions_).»
I’m thinking about the degree of feelings involved. (No one is fully and solely rational, after all.)
I suppose the statement I made is slightly imprecise, but the framing is still A's feelings and rationale vs B's feelings and rationale. Which is the entire paradigm I'm saying is bunk and pointless.
> What if one person just feels more strongly about things (most or all of the time)? Should feelings always trump? Should feelings always be allowed to trump rationality/proportionality in a marriage conflict?
It depends if to you “marriage” is a business transaction or an emotional relationship.
Though there are likely to be problems if you a x your partner envision it differently.
> If I just sit around and say everything is "important", does that mean I get to have it my way all the time?
Is the implication here that your spouse views their marriage as a game they need to “win”, and saying “this is important” are the magic words they need to say to win?
Or are they sincerely trying to compromise and saying “I’m
trying to meet you halfway but this is genuinely important to me”?
Right, you do this small act of service because you are in love with your partner. Ideally not even because it makes her happy, but because it makes you happy to make her happy.
The upshot of the article, IMO, is that they were no longer in love.
And that lack of love became most apparent by observing all the tiny acts of service that people in love do for each other, and people who are merely co-habitating and perhaps also co-parenting, do not give a flying fuck about and use as a safe thing to argue about instead of admitting the truth.
You omit the fact to some people _anything_ is important and for some nearly _nothing_ is. That would lead to a de facto master/slave-like relationship.
People's desire to shape the relationship (and hence their partner's) is asymmetrical.
In your example, you don't mention what _you_ made her change to compromise with something _you_ felt was important (and i don't want any answer, as it's something private). It just that it sounded like the classic "married with children"/"the simpsons" premise...
I'm in a marriage and I struggle with this same question. I sometimes feel like the things my wife cares about are essentially endless. Like if I bend to "her way" and put effort into consistently placing the dirty cup in the dishwasher, next week something new comes up. Then it's the clothes on the floor of my side of the bed or not hanging my jacket or not putting my shoes away perfectly in the closet. At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
I found the article really well written and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to it. Consideration for our partners and compromise is a tricky and interesting domain. I'm realizing more and more that there can be a lot of complexity behind benign everyday situations like a dirty cup beside the sink. Like how can a dirty dish even perturb somebody so much in the first place? Is it related to some trauma or childhood conditioning? Can it be addressed somehow?
Start a notes checklist on your phone of what you could have done to prevent the situation in the first place.
It will grow to probably over 40-50 things over the course of two months. And you will start to realize as you read the list the types of themes that are upsetting and stressful to her.
This has helped but your mileage may vary, it is illuminating though…
Thanks for the clarification...but you qualifying her demands as "ideals" clearly shows you're taking one of them as being perfect and always-right and the other as needing to be re-educated. This is not a solid foundation for a relationship, to take your house metaphor.
A towel should not be left on the floor, anyone can agree, but on less obvious topics none of them can be credited as the unique source of Truth.
> At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
If you are not the one with the issues, then it sounds like your wife may be an Obsessive Compulsive Personality Type - this type of personality has a need for orderliness, neatness, perfectionism and mental and interpersonal control. Basically, their thinking is that they have "figured out" a process for doing something, and if that process is not followed to the dot, it will not result in the desired optimal / perfect result (this causes them anxiety, which makes them feel that they are losing control over their life / relationship, and they become even more obsessed and compulsive to "regain" control).
They are a bit difficult to live with, even if they can be really wonderful, caring and loving human beings. Often some counselling for anxiety (consider cognitive behaviour therapy), and insights into how their unrealistic expectation and actions can be troubling in a relationship can often make them more empathetic to the other person in a relationship, and smooth things over.
(Be wary, as my assumptions about your wife could be quite wrong. Best to consult a therapist).
Yes, I think you're quite right with the OCD type personality. The communication about these various minor things does also tend to increase when she's more stressed/anxious.
I feel like it's generally under control and we mostly have a good balance/compromise established, but I could be totally wrong, just like the article author!
> I sometimes feel like the things my wife cares about are essentially endless.
> Like how can a dirty dish even perturb somebody so much in the first place? Is it related to some trauma or childhood conditioning? Can it be addressed somehow?
Well, yes, sometimes "irrational" things are indicative of a deeper issue, e.g. Dad told me Mom left because I was messy, and if I keep things tidy I can keep people from leaving me and I will be OK.
Perhaps she's going through a rough patch, and this "I need a tidy environment" is how she's able to express it. Maybe she feels ignored/neglected/etc, and this is how she's able to express it. And it could be that you've dictated that things must go your way in other areas of the house/relationship, and here is where she feels comfortable asking that she not need to walk on eggshells, for things to be her way for once.
One thing to remember is that each of us has "irrational" requests when seen from the outside, regardless of how logical and reasonable they seem to us. Having a heart-to-heart where you both sit down with the mindset of "us vs the problem" could determine the root, which is the first step towards finding a true solution.
>Like if I bend to "her way" and put effort into consistently placing the dirty cup in the dishwasher, next week something new comes up. Then it's the clothes on the floor of my side of the bed or not hanging my jacket or not putting my shoes away perfectly in the closet. At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
I don't understand the complaint here. It sounds like your wife is trying to get you, incrementally, to act like a responsible adult. This is what a good partner does.
The more interesting question is why you want to remain living like a slob in a messy environment?
>I don't understand the complaint here. It sounds like your wife is trying to get you, incrementally, to act like a responsible adult
The fundamental conflict is that the person and their wife's goals are not aligned.
If the husband does not want to develop into a "responsible adult" in this respect, their goals are not aligned. A good partner can help the other achieve their goals, but but if there is no alignment on the who one partner wants to be and work towards, this will always be a source of conflict.
>The fundamental conflict is that the person and their wife's goals are not aligned.
It would be that, if all goals were equally good and individual taste was the ultimate criterium (which in some cultures are, not always the best ones).
Otherwise not wanting to "devel into a responsible adult" doesn't sound like an issue of "conflict of goals" (any more than one parent being an absentee parent would merely be a "conflict of goals" as opposed to a problem), but a development issue.
Some people just don't want to develop into an adult or be responsible parents. You can call this a development issue, but at some point it is also a problem of partner selection. If your partner has no interest in resolving their issues to your satisfaction, you are in for a rocky relationship continually dragging them Kicking and Screaming into something they do not want.
At some point, your partners development issue becomes your own partner selection and compatibility problem.
If it's not impacting you, I don't really see the point in passing judgement or criticism. If it does impact you, I think you have to ask why you want to be with who doest share your goals. Forcing change on an unwilling partner is a loosing battle for all involved
>If it's not impacting you, I don't really see the point in passing judgement or criticism.
It affects the behavior of the person, and thus others that had to deal with them - including me, if I'm unlucky enough. Societal criticism of bad personality traits is one of the forces keeping societies functional and habitable.
Fair enough, although I think the term "slob" is a bit extreme here. I would say that I'm just not very into what I would call "organization for the sake of organization". For example:
1. As the author already mentions, why put a cup into the dishwasher if you plan on using it again?
2. Why fold and put away my pants if I wear the same pants everyday for a week?
3. Why hang my jacket if I know I'm leaving again in an hour
4. Why make the bed at all ever? (making the bed is its own topic of insanity IMO)
Etc etc etc
I think I just value and emphasize what I consider efficiency (perhaps laziness?).
(In all seriousness, maybe have a chat with people you trust about general smell/hygeine. Dental shit especially is something so many grown adults get completely wrong. Not everyone notices it, but there's a damn good reason I go out of my way to sit next to black people on the train! :P).
> I think I just value and emphasize what I consider efficiency (perhaps laziness?).
Serisously, though, I think that's what great about having a partner. In the eyes of some random dickhead on the internet, at least, you make a fair point on (1) and (3), but (2) and (4) are maybe things your partner's value system handles better.
You should check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6gu_ABMvzA. You don't need to wash your pants that often. Specially if stay somewhere there is not dust and areas are not dirty.
Yep. Good partners push us to be better, healthier people. It’s absurd how many people in this thread are writing off taking responsibility as mental illness.
I agree with the first point which is definitely a blessing even if we can't see it directly.
To the second point I would argue (and I unfortunately do argue) that "responsibility" can be a vague and subjective term. Like is it a hard-coded responsibility to make your bed every morning? Some would argue yes and use funny arguments like "ask anyone normal" or "all highly intelligent/successful people do it". I would say it's generally a waste of time unless you're bed is so off that you can't comfortably get back into it.
>I would say it's generally a waste of time unless you're bed is so off that you can't comfortably get back into it.
I think the point about making the bed is that it takes all of 30 seconds and makes the entire room look significantly more orderly. One of the highest-ROI cleaning tasks, in terms of time spent vs. tidiness gained.
The actual reason to make ones bed is to let air circulate in the parts of the bed, that potentialy have been sweaty all night, which increases hygiene. At least in my book that is the main reason. Secondary reason might be, that it is nicer to let oneself fall into a nicely made bed at night. Third might be, that it looks more orderly.
> The actual reason to make ones bed is to let air circulate in the parts of the bed
I don't follow - doesn't making a bed involve covering the bottom sheet and mattress cover, which is likely what absorbed the most sweat, with the top sheet and blankets, which would block the airflow to it?
When I need to air out my bed, I push the blanket and top sheet over to the side opposite the side I slept, which makes it look messier, not nicely made.
I assumed the "endless" list was more hyperbole than an actual endless. The concrete examples he gave were all habits he should have grown out of by his late teens.
I’ve read all your comments on this, dre85, and just want to say we are similarly aligned. And I’m recently divorced. Our misalignment of cleanliness was a big part of it, but not all. Hypocrisy was there; for example she trained me to make my bed every day. But she rarely made hers (we did not share the same bed in the last 2-3 years before it ended). That’s just one instance, there were others.
I relate to what you said about an endless list of these things. It’s nearly impossible. And once you think you’ve got them all down, there’s another one to remember.
I would ask you to examine how forgiving she is when you forget to complete one of her tasks. Does she explode? Get out of that relationship. Is she accepting that you’re not perfect? Ok, she’s someone you can work with.
Take a moment and look up Borderline Personality Disorder. "Walking on Eggshells" is a gigantic red flag. I suspect it might change your whole perspective.
Translated into a slightly different venue: if partner A's sense of order is jarred by laundry near, and not in, hamper, but partner B just doesn't care, then the steady state is A always cleaning up after B.
A's happiness depends on a certain degree of order in the shared space, and B is oblivious to that degree of order. Or more likely, it requires a conscious exercise of effort to perceive the degree of order.
If B is unwilling to make that effort, they are discovering that they care less about A's happiness than the relative effort required. Eventually, A figures out how low their value is, and takes their relationship elsewhere.
My partner tends to "ruminate" on making phone calls - setting up appointments, customer service stuff, etc. I am on the phone all day for work, so it's no big deal for me to deal with the calls.
Sometimes, I ask my partner to make a call. Most times, she doesn't do it within the agreed upon time period. I either do it myself, she gets to it E V E N T U A L L Y, or it doesn't get done. I used to fight about this because it really isn't "fair" for her to not get this stuff done when she said she'd do it. However, I realized it just wasn't a big deal for me to make the phone calls and deal with this stuff. I'm the one getting pissed over my partner's inaction, not my partner.
Since I just stopped sweating it, making the calls when I felt it was important, and leaving my partner be when the calls are not important, I'm a lot less pissed off about calls. I'm sure my partner appreciates not being bugged over this.
I guess another solution to this could be getting divorced, but that really says to me that the husband wasn't really the problem here and the regret he feels shouldn't be lodged against his own actions.
I think you've got it backwards. Whether the glass ended up in the dishwasher or not didn't matter much to him. It mattered a lot to her and instead of putting in the bit of effort, he tried to justify to himself why he shouldn't have to.
My husband has a thing about making phone calls. I've got other crap I put off for similar reasons, but phone calls are not an issue for me. So when a call needs made and I have the information needed, I'll do it and save him the stress. Not a big deal for me at all, but it takes something off his plate that he doesn't like to do.
(Married 20 years) there definitely needs to be awareness that A might just prioritize something before B gets to it. It's not that B would never do it or doesn't care. Everything is priorities. (I'm talking within the same day or two, not leaving for weeks on end of course.)
Those degrees of happiness can't be measured, especially on the long run.
And your demonstration can be flipped easily : if A's happiness degree is so strongly correlated to the way laundry is processed to the point that changing B's natural way of doing things seems a crucial matter, then perhaps B should figure out how low his value is.
> Why is the wife's desire more important than his? In other words, why must the husband live the way the wife wants and compromise is not acceptable (especially if they share cleaning responsibilities) -- compromise could look like "sometimes I do it her way, sometimes I do it my way." Why can't a partner let go of the little things and accept that living with another person (spouse or roommate) means you don't get to set all the rules on how both of you live?
I don't think the author's relationship failed due to lack of compromise or at least that's not communicated by the article. I take the key line in the article to be this one: "My wife communicated pain and frustration over the frequent reminders she encountered that told her over and over and over again just how little she was considered when I made decisions."
We don't know anything else about their marriage. We don't know who cleaned, shopped, did the finances, budgeted, had a job. All we know is that the author treated his wife in such a way that she didn't feel respected or heard.
I also infer that his wife didn't effectively communicate to him what was really bothering her based on this: "If I had known that this drinking-glass situation and similar arguments would actually end my marriage—that the existence of love, trust, respect, and safety in our marriage was dependent on these moments I was writing off as petty disagreements, I would have made different choices."
Without more detail about the disagreements, we just don't know whether she told him why these things were bothering her and he ignored her, or if she just didn't surface the reasons for her upset.
We also don't know whether they saw a marriage counselor. That would be an interesting detail.
One other point I'd add, with apologies to Tolstoy: “All happy marriages are alike; each unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way.”
Marriages fail for all sorts of reasons. This article is just one example. The author just wants to warn us: this thing that seems trivial to you but annoys your partner may be a metaphor for a larger issue.
Thank you for the reply! I am humbled with your marriage success.
My original comment was more in response to other comments on HR that the article itself, I guess. It seems that many are quick to condemn the author rather than question why someone would place such great importance on the location of a single glass. If she Is so concerned about that one glass, it seems perhaps a signal that there are other ways in which she’s difficult to live with (meaning not easy and relaxed but fastidious and precise).
Second, its can often be about preference weights. If A cares heavily about something, and B doesnt have a strong preference, then perhaps B should take A's preference into account.
Now, should A have a strong preference for a trivial thing? Maybe not. But that doesnt change anyone's preferences and only breeds resentment.
When you're hurting someone it's on you to stop before they decide they've had enough. After that you can work with them to get what you want in a way that makes sense for you both. Compromise always comes after harm reduction.
When someone is getting hurt by their life partner, they need to speak clearly and explicitly about what is going on and what they want. Expecting your partner to read your mind will end in resentment. Can't reduce harm if you don't speak up.
The author makes it clear that these things were communicated to him. No one needed to read anyone's mind. He just felt like it wasn't a big deal, so he chose not to change his habits.
I can pretty much guarantee that the wife did not say "When you leave a dirty dish by the sink, I feel like you won't do a simple thing that you know will make me happier, and that hurts me and causes me to doubt that you would do anyhing for me that required more effort." Instead, she just griped about the dish. Men are not that perceptive unless they've already been educated about this. Women need to be explicit about how they are feeling if they want to be sure that the men are getting the message.
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.
I will not venture a guess as to whether the author's wife articulated her feelings and needs clearly because I do not know either of them.
However, I can say that in my own life, I have been quite explicit about how I was feeling multiple times. In my own words: "When you {seemingly insignificant thing} that I've mentioned bothers me, it makes me feel like you don't care about my concerns, and only care about yourself. That hurts me, and because I've already mentioned this, it makes me doubt that you have any concern for my feelings." (Somewhere around the dozenth time, append "or my wellbeing.")
Even so, it usually took repeating half a dozen times or more before my significant other exhibited any reaction beyond dismissal (i.e. moving past "It's just a cup. It shouldn't bother you."). This happened in three separate LTRs.
Obviously my anecdote doesn't prove anything... except that "women need to be explicit about how they are feeling" is insufficient (though necessary) in at least a non-zero % of communication.
>Even so, it usually took repeating half a dozen times or more before my significant other exhibited any reaction beyond dismissal (i.e. moving past "It's just a cup. It shouldn't bother you.").
At least you actually repeated yourself half a dozen times. Many people would throw a fit about "you're not listening" before then.
You seem to be implying that it's irrational to be upset about having to repeat yourself if you haven't yet repeated yourself at least six times?
If you need to repeat yourself half a dozen times to get any reaction beyond dismissal, it's reasonable to conclude that the other person is indeed not listening.
In fact, it's reasonable to conclude that they just don't care, and that it's time to move on.
Each person must be responsible for understanding, taming, and ultimately mastering communicating their needs and feelings to be a part of a constructive marriage. It's not a male/female thing - that's a distraction. It's a personal responsibility thing. Be responsible for your own happiness by advocating for yourself in a clear way.
Or you'll end up divorced over glasses by the sink.
He dismissed her feelings, she did communicate that it annoyed her but he thought "it shouldn't annoy her, it's really not a big deal". He tried to reason about her feelings from his own and came to the conclusion that he was right and she shouldn't feel the way she did. And that kind of thinking surely doesn't stop with dishes. He must have done that on all aspects of their relationship
communication and compromise and all that stuff is a two way street. I mean this in romantic relationship, society, work relationships, just...everything.
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.
> 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.
I choose to take the author in good faith: his relationship fell apart, he learned something from it, and he's sharing it as a way to help others avoid the same mistake. He's owning his part of the failure. Maybe his wife made mistakes she regrets too. That's a different article for her to write.
I mean, sure, capitalism, everyone wants to make a buck. But I just don't seen any value in interpreting and commenting on this article cynically like that. The article only contains value if read in good faith. $0.02.
Yeah, this is just about communication, full stop. I do the same thing with my partner but I also have ADHD so I genuinely get distracted by something else and forget a lot of the time. When I do remember, I do the right thing and put them away (most of the time). I didn't used to but I make a better effort nowadays
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.
> PSA before I say anything else, anyone who knows anyone with ADHD should read up on Object Permanence[1] and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria[2]! Only very recently has RSD been tied to ADHD and holy crap, the previous 35 years make SOOOO much more sense now. If I had know about them younger I could have possibly avoided so many painful "learning experiences" where I hurt those I cared about...
When your spouse says "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me." and you desperately want to not do X anymore buy your brain keeps sabotaging you, it makes your whole life terrible.
I finally learned that "close" is often actually worse than not doing anything, because it removes any possibility of me completing the task.
It also tends to come across as me doing the least amount of effort possible so I can feel good that I "helped".
To continue using the dishes example, if I have a dish at my desk and think "oh I have a meeting in a minute, I'll drop off in the kitchen on the way to grab X ", 80%-99% of the time I would leave it sitting somewhere besides the dishwasher (or whatever the final destination should be.)
It turns out that once the dish is out of my sight, it's not consciously "my problem" anymore and I can/will ignore it. (stupid Object Permanence[1])
No matter my intentions, and no matter how "sure" I was that I would be right back to finish the task, statistically it was not going to happen.
(Also, I recommend actually counting this stuff occasionally, it is mind-blowing how unreliable we are as narrators of our own lives.
Just DO NOT follow up by trying to make business-ish decisions or justifications about it, this is about feelings and perceptions not numbers. )
Looking back, the walk to the kitchen is literally the easiest/least annoying part of the task so I would have not actually contributed anything meaningful, however if asked I would have easily sprouted off that I "took care of my own dishes" - a statement that actually implies that the remaining work was trivial and meaningless. I can already hear people saying "But it is trivial!" and that is actually worse, because that means that performing a trivial task was more effort that I was willing to invest in our relationship. (Regardless of how I felt or my intent, communication and perception are key here.)
It turns out having an empty dish on my desk bugs me and having it not in the dishwasher bugs my spouse (in addition to meaning they now have another task to add to their own list), only one of these locations will jar my brain enough that I will consistently take action!
I now make myself turn around an put the dish back on my desk unless I expect to actually complete the task (dish => dishwasher) in one go.
Many times my spouse will come grab dishes from my desk while I work, and that does not bother them because unlike the glass by the sink I will eventually take care of them.
I imagine the difference between constantly having new dishes dropped off as if you are a scullery maid, and "Let me grab these dishes while you are working, I know they are bothering you" as a voluntary "tiny acts of service that people in love do for each other"[3] is massive, and carries vastly different connotations.
> 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.
That's likely not uncommon among the readers here, and something I do as well. But I think just realizing that I do it has helped me to stop doing it so much.
It's more "don't try to force change on them". If you think you're going to 'make' your SO stop smoking, watch movies with you, or wash the dishes, you're approaching it the wrong way.
Communicate. Express what is happening and how it is affecting you, in a way that doesn't place the blame on them. (Also, they have to be mature enough not to hear it as blame. Both can be difficult, and just about impossible when your emotions are worked up.)
Then you talk about how to solve the problem. Not in a "your behavior is a problem, how do we change it" fashion, but in a "it's us against this problem" fashion.
In the article, he says "the existence of love, trust, respect, and safety in our marriage was dependent on these moments I was writing off as petty disagreements". Instead of recognizing and respecting her complaints as legitimate -- no matter how minor -- he dismissed them, and thus told her "Your needs aren't important to me".
As he also learned, petty disagreements become major problems when not dealt with. You either take care of them early, when they're still easily tractable, or you wait until they've festered and become a Major Problem. And then they're really difficult to fix.
If being asked to put a glass in the dishwasher is an assault on one's identity, then so be it. But such a person is probably also ill-suited to marriage or any similar relationship.
You’re missing the point. That’s one instance. Marriages are made up of thousands of these instances. Are you going to change your behaviors for all of those? Because I have, and it is tiring. Resentment builds on both sides.
Exactly. You continue to change until finally you reach a breaking point and the relationship is destroyed. Alternatively, you change on some things, push back on others, and try to reach compromises when you can. If your partner refuses to accept anything other than "victory" in every conflict, hopefully at least you learn this before you've sunk 20 years into the marriage.
Some people won't understand you. For them you're the only one to blame.
You've said it all : some things are clearly bad (over-drinking, being violent, etc) some are good (virtues etc) and the vast majority of things like laundry are not even worthy of debate.
If you change your self little by little for someone else, especially if it's a one-way thing, you'll end up miserable.
If seeing a glass not put in the dishwasher is an assault on one's identity, then so be it. But such a person is probably also ill-suited to marriage or any similar relationship.
I think the reason the author wasn’t _hearing it_ was that what she said didn’t make _sense_ to him. He couldn’t see the rationality of her argument (ratio = proportion), evidenced by his estimation that her reaction was wildly disproportionate. Perhaps because it was never about rationality/proportionality to her. She had a fundamentally irrationally based argument, and sometimes that’s ok and should carry value. The dirty dishes just _gave her a bad feeling_, and his response was akin to saying: but it shouldn’t!
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 finally have a word for that (headstrong), thank you. I have observed this about myself in many situations. People need to convince me of something, by "subjectively rational argument" rather than "because I feel so arguments". While I might be willing to do things that do not take much effort, even when they do not make that much sense, depending on the standing the other person has in my book, I am not willing to do things, that I am not convinced are making sense, when they go against my principles. And I do have some of those. Headstrong it is then.
Thanks for sharing this. I feel like what you're describing could be my family 20+ years from now. I applaud you for changing for your spouse and hope I can be so wise to listen in these moments.
My relationship just ended for mostly similar reasons (it wasn't just glasses in the sink, it was a few other things I did that she considered disrespectful that seemed minor to me)
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.
It’s never really about the dishes. The dishes are just a thing in physical space. That isn’t to say that you can’t be Disrespectful with dishes or that one or both people’s behavior and expectations regarding the minutia of the kitchen isn’t unreasonable. But fighting about dishes is really good indication that there are more fundamental underlying schisms in the relationship that should be addressed.
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.
> It’s never really about the dishes. The dishes are just a thing in physical space.
I'd clarify that sometimes it is actually about the dishes. As someone with ADHD being in a living space with clutter slows me down and perpetuates more clutter. My solution to that is to never generate that sort of clutter - it leads to a destructive cycle I've identified in myself.
If the person I'm sharing space with starts that cycle, I suffer from it and can't escape it without external intervention - hence, yea, sometimes the dishes literally are the focus (I mean - this pattern can be repeated with other household tasks, a laundry basket full of clean un-put-away laundry will grow over time until it's falling over the sides and periodic tasks like taking out the garbage require extreme vigilance to stay on top of, corners can not be cut).
But the physical space does effect our mental space, and looking around your sanctum sanctorum and seeing nothing but todo lists will erode mental health.
If dirty dishes trigger you, then you need to make sure the dishes get done. You are the principal person responsible for your own well being. You shouldn't force someone to do your bidding simply because you're triggered. I say this as someone who suffers from severe anxiety, and has to work very hard to not bully my family around to accommodate my anxiety.
> If dirty dishes trigger you, then you need to make sure the dishes get done.
Eliminating a net source of dirty dishes is an efficient way of doing that.
If you want to be in a relationship with someone, and they are triggered by dirty dishes, you might need to consider their needs in order to realize yours.
> If you want to be in a relationship with someone, and they are triggered by dirty dishes, you might need to consider their needs in order to realize yours.
Your argument is circular, don't you realize?
The triggered person should realize their un-triggered partner's need in order to realize theirs...
A healthy relationship involves giving and taking - it isn't bullying to have certain occasional needs. Nobody on earth is perfect, we all come with some quirks - because we only have one pass through life it can be difficult to tell what's reasonable and what's unfairly demanding, those making demands a third party would call unreasonable are often blind to it themselves... that said most relationships will compromise on arrangements either partner needs to operate healthily. My SO happens to suffer from absolutely atrocious migraines that can take them out for weeks at a time - I am flexible for accommodations on this point and they're flexible on my own needs, even if the exchange is uneven it may still be desirable to stay in a relationship that adds a lot to your life in other ways. Each individual needs to make the decision that's right for them.
On the topic of your anxiety, if you discuss it with your partner there is a good chance that through communication you'll become better at functioning as a unit then you could on your own.
When you agree to live with another person, you agree (whether you realize it not) to also live with each other's habits, cleanliness norms, organizational norms, waking/sleeping schedule, and many other details. Being a dictator, trying to change the other person, is not going to end well. Accept the person you are living with rather than trying to change them.
This goes both ways. If you move in with someone who needs the apartment to be tidy, then living with their norms means to ensure you aren’t leaving things around. It’s just as dictator-ish for you to demand they accommodate a messy living space as it is for them to demand you accommodate a tidy one.
A little late to the game here. You say “it is about the dishes“ but in the next sentence you yourself claim that it’s actually about your ADHD in your inability to handle other peoples levels of conscientious organization. And I guess that’s what I meant with my post: the dishes are involved but as soon as you describe the problem you realize that the locus of the problem isn’t the dishes the dishes are just an external symptom.
an unresolved argument (if it's a serious one) makes it difficult for me to focus on work. (as a programmer and sysadmin, being distracted can be dangerous)
if it happens in the evening i also can't sleep. so either way the day is ruined.
the solution then is obviously to learn to resolve arguments in a short time. actually, resolving the argument itself is not even the issue, but knowing that we still love each other is what matters.
so what needs to happen right now is to find a way for both of us to calm down, maybe hug and kiss and then get back to work until you have time to discuss the issue later.
> actually, resolving the argument itself is not even the issue, but knowing that we still love each other is what matters.
So much this. Having been taking classes and reading up on intentional/effective communication strategies for relationships one of the key aspects is having a way to say "i love you and acknowledge your grievance however i do not have the time, energy or emotional strength to discuss this now" this can be distilled down to a phrase, maybe just "pause" or a gesture followed by some kind of display of affection.
It's also critical that the other partner respects it. There's very little that's more damaging and less productive than continuing to argue with someone who has mentally checked out.
My ex would yell at me (red flag) until i just couldn't anymore, not listen to any requests for breaks (another red flag) then physically prevent anyone from leaving the room until she was satisfied (huge red flag) - even if you had to go to work.
Non-violent communication[1] is fantastic when both parties utilize it during disagreements as it helps prevent escalations. How you resolve differences is more important than the differences themselves and is foundational to any relationship.
I don't know your friend nor you, so I can only speculate.
I can tell you that during my own journey trying to Be A Better Me it took time to internalize this kind of communication framework, to stop feeling like I was putting on a front and instead make it flow naturally as if this is just a part of my personality... because it did become just a part of me.
I have acquaintances from "the before times" that feel slightly put off by this aspect of present me, because they expect me to react more impulsively (or more "real") like I used to do. Nobody's wrong here, just mismatched expectations. Now that they see this is "really" me and not a mask I'm putting on, it leads to some gentle ribbing and that's it.
So putting myself in both your shoes: maybe your friend needs time to translate the core concepts of this into his own grammar and vocabulary, and it takes to acclimate to that from the outside too.
Other people are able to compartmentalize and put it off until later while going about their day. Having one of each in a disagreement is like adding fuel to the fire as both people get angrier that of the other is not accommodating their approach,and it becomes a much bigger thing. "Let's fix this now so I can do work" vs "Let's fix it later, so I can do my work".
I'm the opposite of the OP, I really hate to not resolve problems straight away. My partner is the opposite she needs to avoid the immediate conflict. I think there is a balance to be had, the issue with just walking away from the discussion is that it feels to the partner like they are being stonewalled. The other thing I noticed is that I needed to get over the attitude that I pay for things so I can have higher expectations.
We went to couples therapy and the communication strategies we learned really and while we still have arguments they tend to be much more productive, but it requires work.
This is usually the result of the argument never happening otherwise.
I’ve been on the other end, trying to bring a subject for 10, 20 times. But it’s a big enough issue that when it’s brought up the other party feels they “need more head space”, “not ready now”, “need to get rid of some other stuff first”.
This probably means I’m not reading the room well enough, but thing is, the other party doesn’t come back to the discussion table when they’re ready to talk it out.
So at some point you come to the conclusion that timing doesn’t really matter, and except if their parents are literally on their dying bed, you’ll have to plow through their circumstances if you ever want that discussion to happen. So we ended up with a 3h hour cry and sob discussion in a parking lot after buying toilet paper in the middle of the night.
I'm of the kind that wants to talk things out, preferably immediately.
I had a similar experience: when my partner said she wasn't ready to talk now, I asked her to let me know whenever she's ready to talk it over, yet couple days later it's me bringing up the subject again, to similar effect. I guess some people just like to sweep things under the rug forever...
I worked from home for many years (before it was popular) and I had a family too. This kind of things happened to me and my wife a lot, hours of arguing while I should have been working.
You can work through it, you just have to care enough. We no longer have arguments longer than maybe 20 minutes now. It can just be personality types and where you are in life.
But a valuable person in your life? You work through that stuff to keep them, even if it's hard.
>You can work through it, you just have to care enough. We no longer have arguments longer than maybe 20 minutes now.
We went through the same. A few years of me getting my head on straight and not escalating fights so I could effectively communicate "I don't want to fight about this" and either "this isn't a criticism, this is something that's important to me" or "you're right, I'll start doing that" has made our fighting dry up almost entirely.
There are also folks that are suffering from real severe mental health crisises, and will continue to escalate and dysregulate over and over again - to their own and others detriment.
Having been on the receiving end of this - don’t keep trying to make it work if it gets to this point. Work on being a grey rock to them (non reactive) until you can get yourself and others to safety.
Also don’t tell them you’re leaving until you have a viable plan B that they can’t find. Kids make it much much harder, and unfortunately around 2 yrs old
is often when it gets the toughest and this can happen.
You can't always work through emotional dysregulation issues (inability to return to baseline after six hours of argument being one indicator of such issues) by just talking it out. Sometimes you can, sometimes it's associated with something more fundamental like a personality disorder where professional help needs to be involved.
I just want to point out that it's not just personality disorders that can cause this. There are very real physiological problems that can surface this way, too. For example, some people have adrenaline issues where seemingly minor, or even pleasant things (like running into an old friend at the grocery store), cause a much larger than normal spike of adrenaline. If the person it happens to isn't aware of what's going on, they can react the way their body is telling them to (fight, flight, or freeze). Sometimes if they're aware of it, they can have enough sense to take a pause, but it is often very difficult because the biological response your body has is so overwhelming. It's as unpleasant for them as it is for the person who has to deal with their overreaction to the situation.
Wouldn't personality disorders be inseparable from physiological problems ? Is there any particular literature/reference you are basing this on, curious.
If you don't have experience with people prone to emotional dysregulation, it's hard to appreciate how it works, but you don't need to resort to such an artificial scenario like your gun scenario. People with some personality disorders can be triggered by seemingly little things into anger/rage states for 4-6 hours that cannot be resolved by talking them out, but if someone outside the household (i.e., someone who is not their partner or not their kids) shows up unexpectedly, they can often immediately control themselves. But the underlying dynamic doesn't get resolved, and generally won't be without professional tools that go beyond conventional talk therapy, like DBT.
This is something I have been a witness to in my personal life, and you're right-- I don't have the tools to wrap my brain around this. I'm familiar with disabilities. I get that. You're unable to do this thing that other people find easy. But this.... this is a choice. If you can't regulate your emotions, you can't regulate your emotions no matter the context. If you can function just fine at work, but not at home, that's a choice you're making.
Or at least, that's how it looks from the outside.
I get that people who struggle to control their emotions would push back on that analogy, but I'm pretty accustomed to people creating whatever narrative they need to justify their behavior. Somebody acting badly and then making up a justification is something I deal with nearly every day.
It's hard for me to get a better justification than "maybe your 'personality disorder' is just being an asshole" past Occam's razor.
Is there something I could be reading about this to get a better picture? I know I'm coming at it from a general place of mental health, so, you know, that's not the best lens, but I also know I'm not crazy for thinking like this. Just maybe missing a puzzle piece.
I came to a conclusion that people who genuinely can't control themselves due to extremely low impulse control tend to end up in prison.
Those who claim that they "can't control themselves" yet somehow manage to be functional adults are lying - they can control themselves, they just can't be bothered.
To quantify "rare" it seems there are about 1% of the population are psychopaths [0]. A quick search came across a number of refs to that number, but IDK if it is multiple studies, or just one a long time ago that is amplified through time.
Or maybe you and your wife don't funge with every other pair of individuals in the whole world? Some people truly aren't compatible and make each other miserable.
I think more people give up and quit on compatible people than we care to admit. Getting along is hard for everyone under stressful situations. (combined with our own personal flaws)
In my experience? It’s never about that, and if there was nothing to criticize, THAT would be criticized. It’s usually about some fundamental disconnect or unmet need by one of the parties, and without concerted honest effort by both to face it, it’s going to explode sooner or later.
The problem being, if they were already prone to spending concerted, honest effort in facing and talking about their problems, they would be a lot less likely to be in that place.
In my experience it's always about what I'm talking about. My wife often refuses to clean up after herself, I tell her "Please pick up the iced tea bottles you left on the floor" and she goes into a rant about one time 5 years ago when I didn't pick up a something and engages in lots of deflection. Then she says stuff like you said "Your just upset that you have a meeting at work", when really it's I'd like to not pick up after her.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If your behavior is outside of the social norms (eg. you leave dishes out for others to clean) then admit fault and move on. If they bring something else up maybe you are correct in your thesis but why are you defending yourself when you are being a slob?
Uh, pretty clear her behavior is exactly what I’m referring to, and yours may be too?
If you think the behavior you described is just about a couple iced tea bottles, that is… not likely to go well long term in my experience. I hope I’m wrong for you though!
And the statement you’re making there seems to have a tone of resentment towards her which, unfortunately, is going to likely be a problem too.
When you are the only one paying for apartment, hobbies and school, since those "minor" things are out of her mind she has all the time and energy to ngaf about it and bloat her ego, manipulate and gaslight you into thinking you are not good enough boyfriend... husband... father...
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.
Y’all… While I agree that narcissists are extraordinarily harmful, it’s possible OP and his ex partner’s communication dynamic is not indicative of her being a full blown narcissist. It could be that she felt her partner was simply non-responsive and a brick wall about her problems, which extended the argument to six hours, in what was hopefully an one-time occurrence. Open to being wrong, however.
I used to memorize her arguments so that I could use them against her later, only to find that she somehow had another ace up her sleeve. Indefinitely. Leaving me feeling, yet again, like everything was my fault.
My fault for not being understanding enough. My fault for not knowing what she was thinking or going through. My fault for bringing up the issue at the wrong time. My fault for being hurt by her comments or actions.
We separated 4 years ago and she's still telling everyone about how "abusive" I was.
> When you are the only one paying for apartment, hobbies and school
There are two sides to every story. I could say that this is what my wife and I do (because it is what we do), but it is out of convenience and the fact that I'm privileged enough to be able support both of us. It would be technically correct for me to say "I pay for your housing", but doing so would be weaponizing it unnecessarily. In our case we could split everything 50:50 too, we just explicitly choose not to because it's burdensome. I can't now use that against her whenever I want to.
I'm not saying this is OP's situation, but that it is an alternative possible read of the situation given the tiny fraction of detail we've been given.
>When you are the only one paying for apartment, hobbies and school, since those "minor" things are out of her mind she has all the time and energy to ngaf about it and bloat her ego, manipulate and gaslight you into thinking you are not good enough boyfriend... husband... father...
And even "normal" people can slip into this if left with little responsibility in the household.
- 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.
> issues focused on “disrespect”, which is a perception thing that she had 100% control over
To note, solving that perception thing unilaterally more often than not means leaving the couple
The article touches on this, and many comments too, but even IRL talking to divorced parents, “X just didn’t give a shit about us” is a pretty common thing to hear as the core reason they chose to make it end, even considering all the consequences including the kids.
She's getting professional help. I have issues also, which I've been working on. But the things I would think were minor were maybe not "leaving a water glass next to the sink" minor, but maybe "forgetting to wash the dishes sometimes" minor (when the sink wasn't full... also the dishes were my chore)
It's not about whether those things are only an issue for her though, the fact that they are an issue for her still causes conflict, and was important to me, I just couldn't keep up with the things she needed in addition to the inability to resolve conflict quickly, and my work.
In case it helps you in the future, or for other readers here, let me just add: the symptoms you describe are well past the point where you probably need to see a therapist to make the relationship work.
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:
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.
Argument forced on you for hours of time during work hours because your partner wanted it now sounds horrible. She is an entitled narcissist who has no respect for you, your time, and your work. Congrats on dodging a bullet by moving out.
If your point of view is how it was then that was an unhealthy and unequal relationship. Of course it hurts, but you did the right thing and you will be happier in the long run.
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.
I've only got what you've said here, so maybe there's another side where she's studying her butt off and keeping the house clean and you were throwing clothes and dishes everywhere like confetti, but a 6-hour argument? I can't think of anything I could care enough about to have a 6-hour argument about it. Hell, I'm not sure I've ever made it more than an hour. At some point, it's just not going anywhere, so I go to another room or something to be pissed off somewhere else.
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.
> some minor thing that exploded into a 6 hour argument, while I was trying to disengage the whole time, but couldn't.
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.
> 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.
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.
I'm sorry you went through that, ending of relationships can be very difficult. I hope you can find some peace. From how you describe it, your ex sounds like she doesn't respect implicit boundaries like "don't argue when someone's working".
You're very right that what you see is a sign of incompatibilities.
sounds more like you dodged a bullet. If this person was able to shelve something and move past for a brief period of time to allow other aspects of life to continue, they are in for a world of disappointment.
And sometimes when you're in a bad situation, it's not because of any _one_ thing, or even a myriad of things ~ sometimes it's because it's the whole kit and caboodle. When I was younger, I found myself on the side of a breakup asking "What did I do? Tell me and I'll fix it", and I've also been asked that by someone I was breaking up with.
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.
He digs into his marriage a lot more in later blog posts: https://matthewfray.com/an-open-letter-to-shitty-husbands/. I don't think she used it as an excuse at all, but he's more using this one frequent occurrence as a metaphor for the marriage.
Reading that is wild…does he think he’ll be able to bear the burdens his wife couldn’t? He’s trying to change himself for his partner when he needs to find a different partner. He comes off as having lost all respect and confidence in himself.
I read the article and felt sad. There's a lot of emotionally charged language (repeatedly: "I was a shitty husband"), but stripping away that language, his main point is consistent with his Atlantic article. Namely, that while he tried to be a good husband for the 'big issues' (e.g. never cheating), he was neglectful for the little things, and didn't give her enough attention or care.
My interpretation is that the divorce was somewhat unexpected as there were no major issues besides the 'little things,' but he largely feels that the divorce was out of his locus of control. He's then compensating to assert that it really was in his control, and also severely criticizing himself with emotionally charged language for letting the divorce happen.
Given the information at the time, I don't think the divorce was avoidable. If anything, the ex-spouse at least has an iota responsibility to identify the feelings of neglect, rather than pointing out the neglectful habits without reflecting on why she was so bothered them.
It would be healthiest for him to let it go, and find happiness elsewhere in life (e.g. with another partner and pursuit) and move on as much as possible (though it's hard as he has a kid). It's hard to see him really make the divorce part of his identity, the point where he publishes a book about it, writes in The Atlantic, and even offers divorce counseling services at the end.
>the ex-spouse at least has an iota responsibility to identify the feelings of neglect, rather than pointing out the neglectful habits without reflecting on why she was so bothered them.
While this isn't really wrong I think it just derails what the main point of the article is.
>'big issues' (e.g. never cheating)
This baseline of "at least I don't cheat" or "at least I can provide" (implicitly saying things like "at least I'm not a drunk/drug-addict/bum") is so laughably low. His wife left because she wasn't happy and didn't feel agency. It's _possible_ she could ahve communicated things in a way that finally got through to him, but the vast vast majority of the emotional introspection and reflection is absolutely on his side.
Another comment said it: compromise and such are table stakes. They're nothing. The real goal is to be in a happy and healthy marriage. To support, listen to, and empathize with your partner, and to get the same back. From that perspective I don't see how you can come away with any other conclusion than he was, genuinely a shitty husband in many ways.
No body is perfect, and the real hard work in a relationship is communication. But if you're approaching it from a perspective of game theory and compromise and winning battles about chores, you're being a shitty spouse.
I agree that the baseline isn't enough. My intention was to summarize his initial perspective (that it was enough), then question whether his self-criticism (he's a "shitty husband" because he didn't see it soon enough) draws the right conclusions.
My view is that I don't think it's healthy for him to take all the blame. He had a responsibility to care more, but his spouse also had the opportunity to communicate about her feelings of neglect. His harsh self-criticism is unhealthy, and not something to emulate (though I agree with his point about caring about low-level requests from a partner).
If a person takes all the blame for any negative situation in life, it can be empowering to an extent, but it can also stop a person from moving on from the past (for reference, his divorce was in 2013, but he's still analyzing it as of 2022).
>but his spouse also had the opportunity to communicate about her feelings of neglect
According to the article:
"Hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong. That something hurt. But that doesn’t make sense, I thought. I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt"
At what point it's okay to stop "trying to communicate" and just leave?
To be honest, it feels like a lot of the descriptions of the volumes on that page are strawmen or cherry picked bad examples.
Nobody gets divorced for leaving a dish by the sink. They might get divorced because they just don't do anything around the house (aka unequal distribution of work/chores).
In TFA he says it wasn't about the dish. He also strongly implies that it's not about not doing things around the house. It was that for all things that he considered unimportant, he treated as unimportant. Even if his wife said they were important to her.
To him, a single glass by the sink was no big deal if there was no company. She didn't want the glass by the sink. Him refusing to even consider a compromise here was communicating "what you think is important doesn't matter."
My wife is one of those people that thrives on a regular bedtime schedule (always go to bed at X PM, every day). I'm the sort of person who goes to bet at 9pm one day, 2am the next, but I always get up at the same time.
So far, all good.
However, she really wants me in bed next to her if we are both home. I think this is silly. It was a constant fight for a while until we had a couple of good talks about it; she sleeps just fine with a light on, so I can have a book or a laptop[1] in bed next to her and be awake as long as I want and she is perfectly happy; me being a voracious reader am also pretty darn happy with this. Also, had we not talked this out, this solution would never have occurred to me; I can't fall asleep with a light on in the room unless I am seriously sleep deprived. At first I was reading only e-books on my phone to not disturb her, but when I mentioned that to her she said "oh I don't mind a light on."
Perhaps in the author's example, if he thought he might want another more water before running the dishwasher, there might be another place he could put his water glass that his wife would be fine with. Maybe she'd even be happy to check there and put it in the dishwasher before running it! Maybe he'd have just had to come to terms with "We got 12 glasses at at our wedding and there's only 3 people in the house, so I can just get another glass." We will never know because these conversations just didn't happen.
1: The laptop I reserve for emergencies only; I really don't want to do anything even slightly work related in bed, if at all possible.
I'm pretty sure people absolutely do get divorced because they disagree about how to handle several trivial things.
Those can be insidious. To the one annoyed by the status quo, it can feel like the other person doesn't care about them. To the other, it can feel like their partner's trying to micro-manage a bunch of little things that barely even matter, and that they're "losing" because they find fewer of their partner's habits irritating enough to make a stink over.
Yeah. I selected a few of the volume descriptions to abstract the principles he was trying to communicate.
Overall, it sounds like the divorce was unexpected and out of his control, so he's trying to reassert control by nitpicking his faults and using emotionally charged, self-critical language ("I was a shitty husband").
Some make sense (and all likely contributed). However, Vol. 9 and 11 were strong indications that that there were broader issues than neglect. In specific for Vol. 9, his spouse wasn't willing to respect his want for alone time, implying a compatibility issue.
-Vol. 3, don't be neglectful to your spouse at a party: "I was at a party and I had a tiny crush on the married birthday girl, and I watched her husband ignore her all night (and already knew him to be a less-than-ideal partner). The whole scene made me sad because it reminded me of how I used to treat my ex-wife."
-Vol. 6, remove some of the burden of decision-making: "You can destroy your marriage by trying to be “nice.” By letting your spouse make all the decisions. You think it’s a nice gesture, letting the other person have their way"
-Vol. 8, don't roast/mock your partner so much: "What starts at an early age on playgrounds, turns into a relationship killer in adulthood. Men using jokes, sarcasm and mockery to belittle their wives and girlfriends both privately and publicly."
-Vol. 9, wanting alone time is neglectful (I disagree and don't think it's a "guy" thing; it's very possible to be in a relationship with an introvert who gets the need for alone time): "Guys like “Me”-time. Maybe everyone does. But a lot of time when husbands and fathers do it, it looks and feels to his wife and children like he isn’t interested in them or that he’d rather spend time alone than with his family. "
-Vol. 11, fixing a marriage is about working on yourself (it's plausible, but it sounds one-sided): "I think married couples who are sad and angry about their lives and relationships make the mistake of trying to “fix the marriage.” They spend all their time trying to figure out how “we” can do things different, and how the other person can make changes to make life better. But I think people need to work on themselves to fix the marriage. To look inside themselves and figure out how they can be their best self."
General neglect was a major driver, but there were other bigger issues. The lack of respect by his spouse for his alone time is a major one, like in the full Vol. 1 article [0], where he says a major failure was choosing to see a televised once-a-year major golf tournament instead of going for a picnic in a park because she loves the outdoors.
If he actually skipped the tournament to go out, it's also likely he would have become resentful (even if he had the best intentions); bottled up, this can cause issues down the road. On the other hand, his spouse ended up as a person who was resentful, which did lead to issues down the road. He suggests the solution was to suppress his own wants, but a better solution would be to find some way to compromise, because both wants are important.
It's also concerning that he's then offering paid divorce/marriage counselling, when I don't think he's qualified (to his own admission of lack of formal credentials).
Wait! There is a book. This article is a sales pitch. Read it as fiction. If it’s interesting enough. He is monetizing his divorce. Well..that’s one way..
He's also selling services in "relationship coaching and divorce support coaching."
For what it's worth, I do think he's being genuine, and sounds motivated by the want to spare others from his suffering. However, I just don't think he's qualified, because his solution seems to repeatedly be to care more for your partner without compromising (in excess, this can lead to a well-documented trait by clinical psychologists of "codependency," where one can never do enough for their partner).
There has to be a balance between your interest and your partner's; it's unhealthy and not noble to completely sacrifice your own self-interest for your family's. A person ultimately miserable can't support others, and there is also inherent value in enjoying the opportunity to live for yourself.
> Im 99% sure the wife in this story used the glass as an excuse to get out.
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.
Definitely this. The writer (and many commenters here) are missing a very important distinction. Changing yourself is good and healthy but only when you want to. Changing for somebody else is toxic and will not work.
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
There's a big difference between changing who you are and how you behave.
If a person considers being asked to put a dish in the dishwasher as an assault on their identity, they're certainly entitled to feel that way but they're probably also not well suited to marriage or any similar relationship.
Bad behaviour always needs a rethink. Change from bad to good behaviour is always painful and unwanted. By your logic no one should change their bad behaviour because they don’t want to change.
Projecting a lot, I feel like this guy is just a narcissist. Kind of making it all about him but in a way that doesn't portray him in a truly negative light. Also, guessing his ex-wife probably doesn't want a book about her divorce to be part of the national chatter.
He explicitly talks about his failures at the end. I don't think a narcissist would get that far. Although you did say you're projecting, so maybe this is not useful.
He talks about his failures in a way that minimizes his failings. There's nothing wrong with him. If only he knew this one simple trick then he'd have a perfect marriage!
Even if his overall thesis is correct, I bet you that his ex would not cite the glass as the top example. There's probably much worse stories that make him look like a giant asshole.
No, there should not be a law about this. What possible reason would there be for being prevented by law to talk about your life? When is it OK to talk, and when is it not?
Because it is defamation. Anyone can talk about their lives, but when you start talking about someone else without their permission to make money..I am actually pretty sure there is a already a law against it.
The real nugget of truth is found a quarter of the way into the article.
> 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.
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.
I think what happens when things like a dirty glass by the sink get used as the reason for a relationship failing is a little more subtle and drawn out. Seeing the glass by the sink probably triggers some repetitive negative thought about the partner (wtf, why can't they just put the stupid glass in the dishwasher??), which leads to a gradual shift of one's attitude towards that person in general. That slowly snowballs as the slightly more negative attitude comes through in more interactions and you start getting frustrated by more and more little things your partner does, which triggers more repetitive negative thoughts, until you find that you can't stand the person you used to love. The final reason for the relationship failing wasn't the dirty glass, but it may have been the primary catalyst.
Yes, when a woman is in breakup mode, it's every little thing, every little thing. She wants out because of A) New lover, of B) Bored and smells alimony, C) I can't think of anything else. But she's not going to ask for a divorce for A) or B) so it's any semi-real problems she can come up with. She probably wanted to nag the guy into divorcing her. Ka-ching.
Anyway, women will even journal this shit for the lawyer's benefit. There are guidebooks sold on the matter.
This is how I read this. The wife may have long ago brought up some argument that was "banned". In other words - bread winner conversations.
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.
This is an interesting point of view. I don't know enough about their relationship to know whether that's what was going on. But, I do want to point out something else in your comment:
> 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.
> It's coming from an expectation of femininity that she's internalized.
This is a sexist assumption which denies the woman individual agency. One person in a relationship having a higher standard for cleanliness than the other isn’t necessarily the result of some society-wide conditioning. There are plenty of very tidy men and more relaxed women out there in the wide world. And plenty of relationships where both partners are very neat or very messy.
When people have different standards, they need to communicate and work together to solve problems in a mutually acceptable way. Both “I don’t care if we live in a pigsty so it’s all your fault for caring about it” and “everything needs to be perfectly spotless and you need to contribute equal time to maintaining the space to my exacting specification” are one-sided cop outs.
> When people have different standards, they need to communicate and work together to solve problems in a mutually acceptable way.
I agree! I don't mean to imply that the "relaxed" standard is better than the "tidy" standard. But my point is that the husband was not being hypocritical. He was not expecting his wife to keep the house to the "tidy" standard while himself only meeting the "relaxed" standard (which is what rhacker implicitly accused).
> This is a sexist assumption which denies the woman individual agency.
Yes, I made a generalization. I've never met the man or the woman involved, so I don't know their specific circumstances. It would have been more accurate for me to say something like "it's probably coming from an expectation of femininity that she's internalized", or "many women in the US today internalize an expectation of femininity that prioritizes tidiness". Obviously not every woman is tidy and not every man is relaxed, but there's a definite trend towards women being tidier than men, and that trend comes from internalized gender norms.
This kind of generalization is very common in discussions about gender on the Internet. For example, rhacker's parent comment made a similar generalization, as did your comment about "rich middle-aged white men" a few days ago. [1] I don't think my generalization was any worse than those; I just flipped the genders by making a generalization about women instead of a generalization about men.
I think there's a deeper discussion here about "if personal preferences arise from internalized gender norms, does that mean the preferences are invalid?" You seemed to interpret my comment as saying that her preference for tidiness was somehow invalid because it came from internalized femininity. I didn't intend that; I think that personal preferences arising from internalized femininity (_and internalized masculinity_) are perfectly valid.
I've never heard of men complaining about their female partners being untidy with household things except in the case where they simply do nothing (and that's rare), is that common where you are.
My father did all the washing up in our house growing up, and mum did most of the cooking, but he never once annotated me for leaving dirty dishes whilst my mother regularly would complain.
Almost every married woman I know fits the stereotype of being more houseproud than their husbands (I'm in the UK).
You call it sexist, but it seems to reflect a genuine sex-based divide.
Anecdotal evidence as it is, I'd like to vouch for the fact that I am usually the "mother" in this scenario. Dirty dishes being left out drives me nuts, especially if it's overnight. When I wake up and come out of the bedroom to a clean house, I'm relaxed. Waking up to a house with dishes still around from the night before can set a baseline stressed (need to do this still) mood for a hefty chunk of my day.
On the other end, my girlfriend doesn't seem to mind at all. She does when it gets very messy, but the minor ones don't bother her like it does me. The author's mindset regarding dishes in the above article does remind a bit of her as well.
I'm the one who is fine with a few dishes left overnight while my wife dislikes it but not enough to clean them herself (normally dish washing is my responsibility). We found a decent compromise by putting in a bigger, deeper sink when we remodeled our kitchen. Now a couple of glasses and bowls left overnight aren't really even visible until you are standing directly over the sink.
My anxiety manifests in similar ways. I "do the dishes" (or whatever annoying task it is that tweaks my anxiety in the morning) before I wind down for the night. I take control of my own happiness.
I finished work around two hours before my ex. I'd get home, clean the house to my standards, declutter and only then be able to relax after work when the space was in order.
They'd get home from work later, and to relax immediately discard laptop, jacket, shoes, mail around the house, get changed and leave work clothes on the floor, start making a snack and leave plates in the kitchen before I was about to make dinner.
We contributed equally towards costs of living, so there was no 'breadwinner' power imbalance, just a fundamentally different expectation of how our living space should be used. I never found a way to reconcile this.
I am have found that since I started working from home due to covid, a neat house is much more important to me. It makes me anxious being in a house all day that is a mess. And I have become the one who bugs my wife to please pick up after herself more.
I wonder if women traditionally spending more time at home is the cause of this gender difference.
My guess is there is a "feng shui" side to cleanliness, tripping over clothes or having a sink full of dishes is more likely to affect you if you are in contact with it more often.
But also i think there is a biological reason. Mothers notice dangers to young children more, as on an evolutionary time scale they were responsible for protecting a child from birth, when the child is most vulnerable.
Keeping things clean stops any nasty avoidable accidents.
I have the same theory on women having been selected for caring about their environment.
I see that as an argument for choosing traditional gender roles because it seems to me that one of the main causes of conflict in 50/50 relationships are these arguments about chores, tidiness, etc.
Splitting chores 50/50 seems like asking for trouble given that men and women have evolved differently in this regard - he ends up feeling that she's endlessly nagging him, she ends up feeling that she has to manage him like a child.
Seems like the traditional breadwinner/homemaker setup would be a solution to this problem.
Explaining certain kinds of behavior as the result of society-wide (patriarchaic) conditioning may be sexist itself, because it denies the womans individual agancy.
It is generally rude in Western cultures to assume that someone is being controlled by something outside of their own volition, ie, to imply that they have less than full agency. This is most likely borne out of the Enlightenment era and its emphasis on the ideal of individuals carving out their own destinies as the highest moral pursuit.
I personally think we will have to contend with the present and future of neuroscience research that investigates the distinction between which wills are truly free and which are conditioned on past experiences.
All that to say, however, that 'sexist is as sexist does'. If such language as in GP is used to denigrate the position of the woman in this disagreement by casting her as a nuisance to be managed externally, then that is sexist, because she is no longer afforded a voice in the discussion but is instead reduced to an object to be manipulated, the primary reason for this being her gender.
But I wouldn't recommend trying to close an argument by saying "Hey honey, I think you've been brainwashed by patriarchy. Don't you think we should try to challenge established hygiene and gender norms with this dirty glass standing as act of protest?"
In general by explaining behavior by societal trends you're removing agency. To say women are making their choices because of the way they're influenced is to say women cannot make independent choices without being swayed by outside influences. It's kind of a paradoxical thing
> 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.
This is a specific example of a general disagreement on values. Disagreeing on values is really difficult to resolve, since people rarely change them, so agreement is often impossible.
It's not entirely satisfactory, but if both partners can recognize the difference in values, respect the other's position, and act in a way that accommodates but doesn't acquiesce to one side or the other, then they can live with the disagreement.
So for the glass, the husband's position that a glass on the counter doesn't matter is valid, as is the idea that a clean counter has aesthetic value. So a compromise might be that the wife learns to accept that the counter will be dirty during the day, and they take turns cleaning it at night before bed.
I agree with your general point, but I have to add that that example "compromise" sounds highly unsatisfactory for the wife. Not only does she have to accept the dirty dishes, but the simple task of putting them in the dishwasher immediately has been replaced by the fraught emotional labour of managing and enforcing a cleanup rota. I think the OP is right that he should have just taken the L on this issue, and perhaps on some other standard of cleanliness she should be the one to compromise.
> 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.
This doesn't get said enough. It also not just wife vs husband - we all have different standards and it's a lesson that needs to be learned that usually someone isn't being malicious it's just not easy to force yourself to notice something if it's fine by your standards but not by your partner's.
I have certain expectations how our home should function, but I don't expect my partner to do the work of meeting those expectations. I put them on myself. My partner has certain expectations of how the home should function. They should put those expectations on themselves. Work toward shared expectations should be shared.
I would assert that when one partner works disproportionately toward meeting the unshared expectations of the other partner (than vice versa), they are being exploited by that partner. Society frequently privileges some expectations over others. Consequently, one partner often feels disproportionately entitled to work from the other partner to fulfill their expectations.
Yah, this might be the most succinct summary of I've seen so far of the entire argument too. And I might add, there isn't really a solution to that entitled attitude as long as it exists. The desired outcome, of the other partner trying to meet the expectations long term is likely just going to create resentment, or vise versa when the they don't try. So your right, if you can't match expectations its going to be a lose-lose scenario if people aren't willing to do the work themselves.
> My partner has certain expectations of how the home should function. They should put those expectations on themselves. Work toward shared expectations should be shared.
I don't entirely agree with the framing of this comment, but I'd like to share an expierience which is related.
A couple of years into our relationship my significant other finally realized, that if she wants me to do specific tasks in our household, then thats her desire and not mine. I.e. that I for example leave "a mess behind in the kitchen" since I am totally fine with that, and its only her desire to have a cleaner kitchen, and not some general rule I had broken.
This lead to a huge change in our relationship. Since then she mostly starts negotiating rules that we both can agree upon instead of starting a fight. I am very thankful for that.
> she mostly starts negotiating rules that we both can agree upon instead of starting a fight
If only more people did this in all walks of life. Rather than get angry at teammates when they do something that annoys us, we can negotiate a mutually beneficial working agreement. We need to have the courage and self-control to approach these conversations when we see friction, and ask for compromise rather than demand change. And we need to have good faith.
>it's that he doesn't actually believe the chores need to be done.
This is an age old pattern.
Pick any ten presidential biographies and I bet you eight of them have some passage about "my wife cared a lot about <household standard of cleanliness/orderliness/presentation thing> but I thought it was excessive"
I'm sure someone familiar with ancient literature can find a few ancient Romans saying the same things.
No she doesn't. She can just leave it there. She can leave her own glasses there, too.
I'm having a hard time following the logic here.
You agree that at some point someone has to do the dishes, correct?
We can assume based on the article that the wife is the one doing the dishes. So, that means every time the husband leaves dishes out he is making more work for his wife than if he just put his dishes in the dishwasher.
> We can assume based on the article that the wife is the one doing the dishes. So, that means every time the husband leaves dishes out he is making more work for his wife than if he just put his dishes in the dishwasher.
Not necessarily the reasoning that it may be re-used is valid, also it may be that he would eventually put it in the dishwasher when the dishwasher is ready to be run. They could probably have come to an agreement that there was a specific spot that one singular glass can chill out (maybe not even in the kitchen).
This might be difficult if he actually doesn’t understand when the dishwasher is ready to be run.
As you say there are solutions accommodating both viewpoints, but it requires either good communication, so one side’s “expertise” is conveyed and internalized by the other. Or both sides being competent enough at all the parts involved in the discussion, but for that they’d need to take turns doing the task so they both have the same understanding of the situation (it also gives more credibility to each other’s claims).
The article author choosing to put 100% of the efforts on the communication part was pretty convincing.
A) Need to be done now
B) Need to be done by the husband
C) A & B
If it's just a water glass, I'd not be surprised if the husband intends to (or would) reuse it from its position on the counter, hence the entire dishwasher->cupboard cycle is superfluous from the husband's point of view.
> I'd not be surprised if the husband intends to (or would) reuse it from its position on the counter, hence the entire dishwasher->cupboard cycle is superfluous from the husband's point of view.
Indeed. From the article:
> I might want to use it again.
I can tell you for a fact my dishwasher would run a whole lot less than 1/2 the time it does now, if I lived alone. Like, 1/4 as much. And that's just considering the wife, not the kids, like my usage solo vs. us before we had kids, and that's despite some things (dirty pots and pans) taking up more than 1/2 as much space as they do with two people. And it's not because I'd be doing more thorough hand-washing—I'd be doing a lot more re-using with a quick wipe, or maybe a brief run under the water, or even nothing at all (for, say, water cups). And yes, of course they'd stay on the counter (in the sink they'd get too gross to re-use, and they'd be in the way).
I read this and feel like I'm the bad guy and I don't understand how.
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 time to ask your partner how they feel about the relationship, what they value in your contributions, and what they feel they are contributing, and vice-versa.
This is a way for you to learn if you are undervaluing your partner's contributions, or if they think/know that they are free-riding.
I hear you and I'm afraid of the answer. I am extremely conflict averse.
I sit at the dinner table hoping to talk every night. She's busy scrolling facebook. Yes sometimes I end up on my phone as well, but I actively make the effort to be there to talk.
>you are undervaluing your partner's contributions
I am a big believer in legitimate praise and even giving compliments to strangers. Though obviously stearing clear of flattery and fakeness.
Once in a while she does find the energy to do something. I always notice and say something positive.
In my opinion, you should reevaluate whether or not your current relationship is worth continuing. Everything you've written so far sounds like your wife is simply a parasite. Just being blunt because it sounds like you're being too hard on yourself; going through married life caring for the equivalent of an adult child the entire time is not something anyone should be expected to do.
Feel free to just think of me as some internet a*hole, but I'm just feeling terrible imagining myself in your position.
You have to learn to speak your truth courageously and divorce yourself from the outcome.
Going through is the only way out.
E.g. If you want more talk time at dinner, then voice that, and state that you will work on being present as well. To show that that you're in it together.
The 4 options would make me secure. I genuinely find other people interesting, I can pull the craziest stories out of people. People always have an interesting story, crimes are often involved lol. As for my self-esteem... my ego is probably a bit too big.
Look up Corey Wayne on YouTube. He explains this in his relationship videos. At the end of the day, it’s the man’s responsibility to take care of these things, and no amount of busyness is a justifiable excuse. One of my favorite quotes that my friend said to me last year is: “as a man, you have no excuses.”
It may seem unfair, but that’s the masculine responsibility. To run a tight ship and keep things orderly, regardless of what may be happening outside of the house.
Yup, a lot of these dissolutions are over money and control of the finances. Breadwinners need to treat their stay-at-homes with nice dinners, shopping experiences and pocket money that feels reasonable. A lot of them get it wrong.
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.
Yes, in a way I think it's almost easier to have two incomes and pay for help/services with the excess.
Even if there is a 2:1 income ratio, each side can feel they are contributing monetarily and collectively decide what tasks are worth doing vs paying for.
I can understand the psychology of both sides - the breadwinner thinks they are doing their job outside the house so why is the spouse not doing all the stuff inside the house.
Any subset of tasks breadwinner spouse pick up (like dishes or laundry) they expects a gold star sticker for doing extra. Meanwhile the homemaker spouse feels put upon for the 1000 other things they do around the house and dealing with the kids.
Likewise this is akin to the homemaker spouse tutored the neighbors kid for $100/week and then telling the 6-figure breadwinner that they are also contributing to the families income. Each side feels correct and like they are going above and beyond their scope..
Is it normal in the US that only one in a relationship is working? I don’t think I know anyone where only one in the relationship is working. To me it feels like the power dynamics in such a relationship quickly gets really toxic.
Many (mostly) women enjoy caretaking more than working for the machine. Definitely higher quality of life satisfaction is possible if the division of labor is agreed upon.
Complementary relationships can be far less stressful if each are sacrificing for the well being of the other.
Outside high cost of living / coastal / urban areas yeah.
Even a lot of these people may be two income couples but came from one income households, so they grew up with a father doing nothing/much less around the house and find it normal.
Why is it not normal? Modern appliances make housekeeping basically a breeze. Unless you expect perfectly ironed shirts of something ridiculous like vacuuming every day.
Now if children are in play, then it's a whole different ballgame. It easily triples or quadruples the work that needs to get done around the house.
It does go both ways, however. Just as the "breadwinner" doesn't get to use their money to diminish the (very substantial) labor of the other at home, the other doesn't get to use their labour to assert complete dominance over how the shared house is used.
It's teamwork. Having two warring departments in a company is bad news, so is two adversarial government agencies: there's a common goal at stake. It's no different at home.
If you were on a sports team, you'd think carefully about how a teammate wants the ball, and they'll think about how they can make it easy to set up for you to execute that pass. Making a hospital pass doesn't make either of you look better, and doesn't win the game.
> Breadwinners need to treat their stay-at-homes with nice dinners, shopping experiences and pocket money that feels reasonable.
This is a fascinating sentence which has stuck with me (after glancing at it a week ago I find myself thinking about it now). This isn't the culture I was raised in but it's a very interesting perspective.
That seems very neutral to me? I'm struggling to think of a term that's not worse ("allowance") or less accurate.
[EDIT] It just means money that's expected to be spent, but not budgeted specifically for anything, and is largely put to personal discretion without any kind of accounting expectation—no? Some phrase using "discretionary" might also work, but that one seems too technical or formal.
Seems this is US-only usage, maybe it's not universal there, for me in the UK pocket money has all the connotations of childhood, I'd only use it to be deliberately patronising, it's like a full reversal where allowance makes me think of a meal allowance from work etc.
I think you're confusing that with "pocket change" as in a small/insignificant amount of money. Pocket money can just mean that you always have money around that can be spent according to whatever whim or whatever you want to do.
"Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong. That something hurt. But that doesn’t make sense, I thought. I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt.
...
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."
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."
The communication strategy that saved our relationship is not to talk about what the other does or doesn't do, but instead talk about how some things make you feel. For example: "when there is a glass on the sink I feel like I'm feeling undervalued..." the other than needs to first acknowledge how the other feels "I hear that you feel undervalued..." before giving their argument.
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.
This is good advice. I would only add that it can sometimes be difficult for a person to know how they are feeling or why. You have to know how you're feeling before you can meaningfully express yourself as "when you do X I feel Y".
Yes, that's where people must take personal responsibility for their own happiness and put the work in to understand and master their emotions. It's silly to assume that everyone is just born able to effectively manage emotions.
Exactly. If you intend to throw a ball to your dog but accidentally break a vase as a result, does your original intention absolve you from the consequences of your actions?
I agree that the thoughts and feelings of other people in general are difficult to predict. But a person you marry is often someone you spend a lot of time around and hence whose thoughts and feelings can be predicted to some extent - because you see them in different situations, then see their reactions and talk to them about their thoughts and feelings.
In this specific case, the author denies that the consequences existed:
> But that doesn’t make sense, I thought. I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt.
If someone complains a lot and often and typically about same set of thing, it is pretty easy to guess they are annoyed about that set of things. They feelings are no mystery, they feel bad about thing they complain about.
The unpredictable thing here were consequences - that she will act at her feelings eventually instead of just experiencing them. And it basically what he writes about in the article, that she eventually figured out her feelings don't matter to him and interpreted situation as such. And then it was too late to fix anything.
I'm the messy one ( and the wife ) in our situation and this article has made me think about my relationship.
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.
This, I think, is the heart of advice heard so often: "don't keep score." If balancing our emotional checkbook is more important than harmony with our partner, we care about something more than our marriage. I'm no expert, but I think caring about anything more than our marriage is how marriages end.
"Is this hill worth dieing on?" is a question I occasionally ask myself.
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.
Your comment reminds me of the following. My wife and I have been married over 30 years now. Our total household is 7 persons.
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.
Yet the solution to many relationship problems isn't finding a solution!
I'm a sysadmin. When I see a problem, I try to fix it, and prevent it from happening again. But relationships aren't servers. Sometimes we see (or are told about) a problem, and immediately go to fix it. Yet often the problem isn't what we see. Usually (maybe 99% of the time) problems in relationships are about communication. Listening. Commiserating.
My partner hates it when she tells me about her day at work and I try to offer solutions to the problems she faces. It's dumb on my part, she's a grown woman, a professional, and I have a solution? This behavior on my part is very unhealthy to a relationship, and I have to fight my natural inclinations to fix things.
Instead, I have to listen. Let her talk, let her explain how it makes her feel, let her talk through how she might solve it, or let her not think about a solution. Just be there for her.
Not easy at all for someone on the spectrum who has a hard time reading social/emotional cues. Nor for someone who has a career as a fixer...
This is the varying communications styles between men and women. There was a reddit post from years ago that really went into great detail about this, it was some of the most brilliant writing about this topic that I'd ever seen.
Women want to talk about feelings, and dont necessarily want help with their problems.
Men tend to communicate more 'functionally' we tend to talk about problems we want a solution for - unless we specifically talk about feelings we're generally looking for inputs on solving those issues.
I had exactly the same discussion with my wife and I am gonna strongly disagree here.
It's a two way street, yes I need to be open to the possibility of this being a 'venting' conversation where she is looking only for support. However, she also needs to be aware that it is my natural inclination to look for 'solutions' and that social cues are not my forte.
So it is also part of the meet me half-way that she clearly _says_ (not hints) at the start that she is not looking for solutions but is just sharing/venting.
I think one of biggest breakthroughs in our relationship was watching the play "Defending the Caveman" together. It suddenly put into words everything I was somehow unable to express in how differently we perceive/process reality.
Oh, I totally agree with you. And, there are times when it is not useful to try to come up with a solution because the other person just needs to be heard. It is not really about problem X. The real issue is not feeling heard, respected, loved.
This is really smart. You're right we often fixate on "the principle of the matter" instead of just stepping back and looking for an easy solution and then moving on with our lives.
I find myself in situations like this myself, but on the observer's side. Often I swallow the impulse to ask "Well the problem was solved in 10 seconds, and you've now spent minutes venting about it, how is this at all constructive?" to my girlfriend. I've come to understand it is her makeup to need to vent about things like that rather than solve the problem and move on.
Scissors and cordless phones (prior to cell phones) got left all over the place. The solution was to buy like 20 pairs of scissors and have a cordless phone in damn near every room. Boom.
> "Would taking 10 seconds to do this now make my wife 1% less stressed?"
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.
This is the cause of the same fight over and over. One side is annoyed by something that is small and takes little time to do. The other side says why are you annoyed by something that is so insignificant? The other side says if its insignificant to you why cant you do it?
I've had some version of this argument 1000's of times and its ended a lot of relationships I had pre marriage.
Would you believe I have about 50 things that would take about 5 minutes? That also works out to 4 hours. I definitely have more than 100 "little things" I would like to do; it's possible 1000 is an exaggeration.
so it sounds like you have a lot of build up. I would recommend approaching it piecemeal spread out throughout your day, but on a schedule so that you force yourself to do it - something like 5 minutes every hour.
in a week or two you'll run out of things to do and you can work on the 5 minute rule I originally mentioned.
> 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 might re-use it" is in the article. It's a matter of preference, and who's more willing to make A Thing out of it, not objective right and wrong. I, for one, think dishes-in-sink (if they can't fit in the dishwasher but it's also not full enough to run yet, or if it's running, or if it's clean and you're in too big a rush to empty it right that second) is worse for a whole list of reasons, unless you have very limited counter space, but we do it anyway, because I don't care enough to insist on doing it my way, and my wife does. Whatevs.
I do wonder how many quietly-very-slightly-suffering spouses there are out there, over this exact issue.
if the dishwasher is full I don't really understand the point of waiting for night to run the dishwasher...there's no more room for dishes in it and someone is going to have to empty it either way, and wouldn't it be better to have the dishes inside clean? Do you not empty the dishwasher at all when you start it during the day, and that's the actual issue?
Your logic is impeccable. The point is not the discussion. The point is accepting a pointless gripe from your sweetie because they would do the same for you.
That works for you. I prefer to plan and psych myself up for this stuff. Don't expect everyone to want to handle household tasks exactly on your schedule.
There is a whole other potential article out there that could be written from the ex-wife's side - "My marriage died because I couldn't make this one simple sacrifice".
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.
Years ago I learned this lesson about marriage while on a trip in South Western China. I joined a tour group to see a mountain for a few days. My party was six and the van sat eight, so the driver got another couple to join us. They were fascinating. We learned over meals together that they were an arraigned marriage. At the time I had extremely negative views around the practice, thanks to growing up in the USA where we celebrate our freedom to choose the perfect partner. From them I learned a new facet of love and saw something beautiful in their relationship. They entered marriage knowing they would have differences to solve together. They solved those differences and developed a great relationship.
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.
This is a very important lesson - the chance of finding a "perfect" partner is vanishingly small if considered in the normal view - but the chance of finding someone who is willing to work together is higher.
And most marriages are "arranged" in some way or another, we just like to pretend that random chance plays little part and somehow we've got it down to a science.
I can't recommend this book enough on the topic. TLDR Women are more picky then Men in the courtship marketplace, and finding a partner with matching values is most important to growing and staying together. People expect a fairy tale, when they're signing up for a job (relationships require work and effort).
A quote from the author 10 years post publishing: “I think the book is really, ironically, about having higher standards about the things that matter, like the character qualities, generosity, kindness, reliability, and not getting so hung up on things like, you know, whether you’re going to go on a second date with a guy because of how he dressed.”
EDIT: @300bps (HN throttling, can't reply directly) Indeed. The book covers exactly this (census data for the dating marketplace and the dynamic between genders as age brackets tick upwards). The market is great for women 21-30, and it rapidly declines after 35. You can borrow the book from the Internet Archive with the library link I tossed in this comment for more context.
It’s important to note that part of the job is to make it a fun job at the least, and daresay a fairy tale at the most.
This includes positive surprises (though care needs to be taken), thoughtful gifts (especially on Valentine’s and birthdays), and some element of spontaneity. Flirting is also important.
Spontaneity can be considered as part of the job, but it’s important to keep it fun to avoid boredom in a relationship. I’ve read anecdotes that a faithful but boring relationship can cause another partner to unexpectedly break up at the least, or have an affair at the most.
I recommend a person to work on making the relationship exciting instead of breaking it off, but as evidence that this is important to factor in, a few anecdotes of people with this problem are listed below:
It's not. It's BS but it's apparently popular view among certain audience (maybe Americans?).
Why are you people so cold and calculating when talking about feelings? Love and care do wonders and you are able to work everything out almost effortlessly. I have seen it in couples several times in the past and I am experiencing it for over 8 years now as well. With the right person it works automatically and there's zero sense of "sacrifice" there. In 8 years I haven't felt that I've made a compromise that hurt me or her. None of us ever felt like they had to cut a part of themselves to continue being in the relationship. We develop and grow together.
I'll never agree to this work-ethic-like expression of relationships. To me you look miserable for even using that framework of a language.
> People expect a fairy tale, when they're signing up for a job.
Nope. BS. And I am saying this as a guy with one failed marriage and now with a super happy one going stronger than before even, 8 years down the line.
Stop perpetuating work ethic when it comes to feelings and partnership, please. Relationships can be beautiful in literally every way. Maybe just keep looking and don't generalize because that makes you look bitter. Is that your intent?
The key is to find someone who is actually attracted to you. Not in a "oh I guess I can tolerate kissing you" type of way, but in a "I often fantasize about touching your body" type of way.
Mutual sexual attraction makes it possible to develop that type of relationship, but a lot of the time men in particular settle for less.
I strongly encourage anyone who doesn't have that type of relationship and wants one to break things off. Even if there's only a 25% chance you think you could find someone like that, it's worth it: it makes everything nearly effortless, and the relationship becomes filled with joy and not drudgery.
Absolutely! I didn't even look that good when my wife found me; I had a belly and my teeth definitely needed attention (and after 32 months of bracers they look better than those of most people I meet nowadays ^_^). She still thought I was the sexiest man she has ever met, and her actions when we were alone confirmed it many times.
Without genuine attraction a relationship turns into a transaction. And it starts poisoning the sides involved.
I too recommend people getting a bit more courageous and stop settling for less than what would make them happy.
It's not so much work ethic as it is mental discipline. If you have not mastered yourself when it comes to the dishes, you cannot master yourself in tough periods of life, and so on. You have to be present in each moment, regardless of whether it's doing dishes or having the best day of your life.
IMO part of a relationship is to grow and develop together. If somebody stubbornly decides they are already as perfect as they can ever be, then the results -- them being lonely -- are predictable.
And yep, being present and aware is absolutely critical, I agree with you.
Just a tip, the throttling only applies to the comment thread, and I believe it is only a five-minute timeout.
You can always reply to a comment directly without waiting for the timeout, by clicking on the timestamp next to the username. That takes you to the individual comment page which will have a reply box.
> A 21 year old woman on a dating site has to be picky. She's getting constant messages from men anywhere from 18 years old to 100 years old.
Putting the rest aside for a moment, I never till recently knew how true this was. I'm gay(ish) and I had never been on straight Tinder, so I always brushed off my friends' complaints as histrionic. A month or two ago I decided, in a moment of experimentation, to set my Tinder to 'bi'. I do pretty well on gay Tinder - overwhelmingly the guys I'm interested in are interested back - so I expected great things. I got nothing. Not a word, not from a single girl.
Out of sheer curiosity I matched one time with one of the enormous acneous beasts who were the only girls to swipe right on me, and even she didn't send me a message. It's wild. If I were straight, I'd be an incel by now. I know from (very very little) real-life experience that I'm not that unattractive to (what I'd consider) good-looking girls, but the online dating apps are seemingly just a meat market. I struggle to make sense of it all.
What's unfortunate is that I can literally emphasize the words on average and use words like generally and still get the accusation that boils down to, "but not everyone is like that."
If you think my opinion is useless, the most likely reason is because you have little to no experience with the topic. Are you in your 40s? How many 47 year old women have you dated?
Well, I'm within a year or so of being forty. I've have been on about 75 dates over the last two years with women aged 29 to 50s.
IME, often the desirable ladies in their forties have been those who stayed in a dead end relationship for (way) too long. If someone has never been in an LTR by the time they're 35, they were always quite odd and I learned it's a good idea to double click and ask questions to learn what might be going on there.
Well, I'm within a year or so of being forty. I've have been on about 75 dates over the last two years with women aged 29 to 50s.
Huh, the first version of this comment before you edited it said:
Yes I'm in my forties, have been on dates over the last two years with about 50 women aged 29 to 50
Another comment from you in this same story says:
Soon I should probably ask if she'll marry me, advice on this would be welcome :) we are 9 months in
Congratulations on dating about 50, I mean about 75 women in about 15 months. Also congratulations on regressing in age!
Since you explicitly solicited advice in your other comment - I think a man in his 40s (or almost 40) would be insane to propose marriage to a woman he's dated for 9 months.
I'm 39, upon re-reading my post I didn't want to be dishonest. And tbh, it was probably more than 75. An epic quest full of interesting people and good learning experiences to discover what is actually out there! But alas, this isn't my primary account - so I try (and happily fail often) to keep it vague. Not that big of a deal either way in the end.
> Since you explicitly solicited advice in your other comment - I think a man in his 40s (or almost 40) would be insane to propose marriage to a woman he's dated for 9 months.
Haha, thank you! Because of previous trauma, I am also hesitant to rush anything. Then I also have my sister (who just had a baby last year) whispering and telling me to just have a kid with my gf, even if we aren't married. I think she's just baby crazy at present, or perhaps she really does hate me and is playing the long game :)
p.s. Not that you asked or that it's really any of my business, but I'll try anyway: One pattern I've noticed in our exchange is you seem to get a bit hung up on the small details. My interpretation is that you are probably a really great engineer, of the sort I enjoy working with the most (seriously). Just don't forget to zoom out and view the forest from time to time!
> As it is, men between 22 and 30 — nearly two-thirds of the male dating pool — focus almost exclusively on women younger than themselves. I’ll be investigating this phenomenon today, with gusto and charts. Ultimately, I’ll argue that they would be well-served to expand their search upwards, to women in their thirties and forties.
> The bar chart here shows how the woman to man ratio changes over time. As you can see, it’s basically flat. In a better world, this would imply that older people don’t necessarily have a harder time finding decent mates than younger ones, as the composition of the dating pool holds relatively steady from age to age. Put another way: a 45 year-old woman shouldn’t in theory have a harder time finding a date than a 20 year-old, because the female-to-male ratios at those ages are equal (roughly 11:9).
> Of course, we all know that 45 year-olds do have a much harder time, because the male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool.
> As you can see, men tend to focus on the youngest women in their already skewed preference pool, and, what’s more, they spend a significant amount of energy pursuing women even younger than their stated minimum. No matter what he’s telling himself on his setting page, a 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.
I don't want to pollute the thread with more quotes. Check out the graphs, it's illuminating; the data backs the assertion of the comment you replied to.
There is no such thing as the "perfect" partner if the definition of "perfect" means "perfect compatibility."
Even if there were perfect compatibility (which would really just be extending solipsism to one's relationship), the only constant in life is change. Thus one might be "perfectly compatible" with another person in a small snapshot of time in which they enter into a marriage. Then every single day and every single change threatens that compatibility. It's a fragile house of cards to build a longterm relationship around.
> At the time I had extremely negative views around the practice, thanks to growing up in the USA where we celebrate our freedom to choose the perfect partner.
For most of american history, "arranged" marriages were the norm and was based in communal, religous and practical realities. The disneyified idea of marriage is a modern PR invention primarily to get more business activity. Just like the idea of proposing with a diamond ring. It's amazing how easily and quickly media can change minds individually and collectively and alter history/culture.
Now that it is 2022 though we're closer to 1900 than 1900 is to the enactment of the constitution, so even then I'm not sure it would be most of american history unless maybe going colonial or pre-colonial (or are talking north+south america).
> For most of american history, "arranged" marriages were the norm
Were they? First-wave feminists made serious headway in challenging marriage norms as early as the 1850s/60s. The language of "soulmate" comes from this period, and was Spiritualist way of rationalizing divorce from your partner for someone you truly loved.
That was the bulk of the article... The glass wasn't the problem, it was indicative of greater problems. The author even says ``A dish by the sink in no way feels painful or disrespectful to a spouse who wakes up every day and experiences a marriage partner who communicates in both word and action how important and cherished their spouse and relationship are.''
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.
Divorced and looking back, the root cause of this (in my experience) is a lack of empathy. Love is easy to come by while empathy requires walking in someone else's shoes. I understand this Same Fight because I lived through that. It is never about that thing, it is about not being seen. As the author is processing his divorce, it is good he sees that there is value in doing something selflessly. However, I can't help but wonder if he isn't missing the forest for the trees. Maybe this man truly doesn't care about order/structure/cleanliness in any area of life, but I have to imagine there is at least one area that they are meticulous about. Whether that is his tools in the garage, his golf clubs, his home theater setup, etc. Would he have reacted in the same "... in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?" nonchalance if his wife started leaving screwdriver in the bathroom and hammers in the living room or if his golf clubs were thrown on the floor under bags of trash? It feels like he stopped after he learned the first lesson examining his divorce and didn't finish.
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.
"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."
If my wife were doing this, our grocery bill would double and it would all be frozen dinners and takeout. I'm not sure I trust her to do safety critical mechanic work either. So maybe switching isn't great for some tasks.
Edit: It seems people disagree. Why? All I'm saying is that not everyone is suited to doing all tasks and that switching for some of them might not work or could even be dangerous.
Funnily enough, randoms on the internet seem to think they know your wife better than you do.
I agree with your position, not everyone is suited for every task. In my house, there are certain chores that only I do because I'm the only one capable. On the other hand, there are certain chores my wife won't let me near because I'll make an absolute mess of things.
I think a good number of people on this site have swallowed a tad too much equality propaganda. Individuals are not all the same and they don't all have the same capabilities, instead individuals complement each other with their diverse skills, views, personalities, and natural talents.
She would probably also outsource that mechanical work to a mechanic, just like you'd outsource the cooking work to the microwave/freezing company. Although, by outsourcing this work, you'd both have a little bit more free time. It might be a worthwhile experiment just to try for a month, if you can swing it.
You don't understand, I already do the shopping/cooking and the mechanic work. Outsourcing costs a lot of money. Plus, if the point of switching is to appreciate the labor of the other person, then outsourcing defeats the purpose.
My point is, some tasks may not be equally suited for both people in the relationship.
"Yes, that's an important time efficiency. Expending more effort on the same results is not a virtue."
It's not the same result though. One costs a lot of money, the other costs only a little. Your statement only makes sense if someone has a bunch of spare money laying around.
"Yes, but possibly less significant than the other benefits you could bring the partnership by not spending time on that."
That's a moot point since my wife works during most of my off-hours. But I'm curious, what are these other benefits?
Ah, ok. I thought you were providing one example where she normally does a task that you'd do poorly, and one where you normally do a task that she'd do did poorly, to set up a sort of symmetrical example.
Isn't that kind of the point, to show to the partner that you have expectations for how certain things are done in a certain way for a certain reason that they might not have had an appreciation for.
It can in fact be an avenue to dig into the deeper communication issues, e.g. if there's a pattern of downplaying expressed concerns or assumptions without actual communications, it's gonna surface real quick if the partner ruins a power tool (or the non-stick pan, or the monthly budget, or whatever) if they don't follow certain rules.
Sure, for small stuff that makes sense for a one or two time experience. They recommended 60 days. Eating preprocessed frozen diners for two months could be unenjoyable to one party and not the other. They might not care about the added cost too. So it could work if they try to stick to the rules. If they just don't care, then that might suck.
Then for the car issue... even one large mistake could cost thousands or lead to death. If they are supervised, then maybe that could work. But that would at least require enough extra time to allocate 2 resources to the same task.
Yeah, the way my wife and and I go about rotating tasks usually has one person explaining/hand-holding to whatever degree is appropriate precisely because damaging goods isn't a desirable outcome. As an exercise, it can still surface issues even without full on cold turkey switches, e.g. does one tend to forget/downplay/skimp things that were already covered previously, is the communication actionable/respectful/unambiguous/etc, do complaints surface verbally, does the taught person actually take away any lessons they didn't know/consider/appreciate before, etc.
For example, the junk food example doesn't need to literally put you in the red, it can just lead to you complaining the food is crap and hopefully imparting that food not being crap is important to you.
You should learn to cook new dishes together. To each their own, especially in their own home, but cooking have inherent value itself for multiple reasons, and teach a lot of soft skills. And cooking together is great, if your wife agree to let you be slow and let you mess up. If you have kids especially: some of my best memories are my parents learning to cook weird asian dishes and fail or succeed together.
It's funny, my wife has literally zero interest in learning computer programming in any way. I found that a bit odd, as I'd like to at least learn enough about anything she spends more than, say, 20 hours a week doing so that I can nod in the right places when she complains. Talking with my friend group, nobody found it even the slightest bit odd.
You say your wife has no interest in cooking and everybody loses their mind. Doubly ironic because I would wager on HN, people are probably better programmers than cooks, on average.
Most people find programming brain-meltingly dull. Socially, we're much closer to accountants than the real professional class—lawyers, doctors, and the professional-adjacent groups like professors—and also closer to accountants (and not the fun kind, like forensic accountants) as far as people's interest in what we do than, say, mechanical engineers or aerospace engineers or biologists or pharmaceutical chemists or whatever. May not be true in certain very tech-oriented cities like SF where everyone seems to be connected to software (I dunno) but it is everywhere else.
Shit, lots of programmers find it dull, too. It just pays a lot and is pretty fuckin' easy, so they get over it.
(incidentally, I'm pretty sure the social-class thing is why programmers struggle to get basic professional respect and perks like a goddamn office and not being micromanaged, even when our pay is sky-high—those are social perks, and we don't rate them, mostly)
"people are probably better programmers than cooks, on average."
Maybe. I think cooking is just a different type of programming, with neat hacks, syntax to follow, etc. Garbage in, garbage out is especially applicable too.
Also, who is losing their mind over my wife not cooking?
I believe everyone who eats should know how to cook at least a few basic things. Just like anyone who wears clothes should know how to wash them. Etc
If my wife were doing this, our grocery bill would double and it would all be frozen dinners and takeout.
that's pretty dismissive. do you know this from experience? have you tried it? that's the point. not the outcome. does your wife understand the effort you go through? does she respect that? does she want it?
the point is not to train each other to be equally suited to every task, but to better understand each other.
if you are both happy with the arrangement as it is then you don't need to do anything, but but if one of you is unhappy about the efforts of the other then it may help to bring these things to light.
This isn't about the dishes. The dishes are just a symptom of the unequal divide of emotional labour in most relationships. Even in relationships where both parents work full time more often than not the majority of the mental and physical burden of running the house tends to fall onto the woman. Of course this isn't an absolute, but it does tend to hold true.
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.
Yeah, gonna have to agree with you here. The guy appears to be downplaying his role by trying to make it a narrative about glasses by the dishwasher, but if you were to hear the wife's perspective being boiled down to "I am not your maid", that would put things in a very different light. Then, it's not about glasses or socks or messy storage spaces or how inconsequential any of those seem to any particular person, it's about who has to pick up the slack and why.
If anyone here is a guy finding themselves siding with the guy in this story, one way to "see things from the other side" is to imagine a scenario that is traditionally reversed in terms of gender roles. For example a scenario where your partner leaves hair clogging the bathtub and you have to clean up after them every time. And go buy drano and get dirty plunging the drain for 5 minutes every once in a blue moon. After repeatedly complaining about the issue for over a decade. "What do you mean I never clean up, I do my best to try to remember to do it. It's not a big deal. The pipes being old aren't my fault" they say every time. Be honest and tell me your immediate armchair solution isn't to bail out of that relationship.
No, it's always the person who isn't communicating their wishes and building up resentment over time that is at fault. If they were communicating their wishes and the other person was saying no, I'm not doing that, well then that's something different.
If you say, 'this is important to me' and I don't naturally see it as important, it's my job to take your perspective into account. If I actually care about you, this is a non-issue (I don't want you to suffer!). If a million things are 'important to you' and you need everything done now, well then there's reasonableness issues there. These issues can get sliced a million different ways and its the emotional intelligence matchup (or corresponding sacrifice) of the two parties that's going to decide which way it goes.
It’s not an unequal divide in emotional labor. He is doing what he sees fit, but she requires much more.
If I’m content to live at level 10, so do level 5 work, I’m not being lazy. If she requires living at level 20, she will then need to do level 15 work.
She will view him as slacking off, but in reality, he isn’t. They just have different standards. It is no more correct for her to force him to level 20 as for him to force her to level 10. It’s simply an incompatibility that they didn’t consider when marrying.
I don't think you're using the term "Emotional Labor" in the usual sense [0]
"Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job."
I do see people broaden the meaning of this term to mean almost anything that women do above and beyond a fair split of work, but I think your argument would be clearer if you just to it as the unequal divide of "housework" or some other term.
In other words if I actually do put the dishes away and take the trash out, _but only when asked to_; then my partner would be within their rights to tell me to grow up and do the necessary when it obviously needs doing, to stop being passive and share some of the "Cognitive labour" of worrying about the to-do-list.
And if I don't even do it when asked ... well then I'm just adding to their cognitive labour.
The problem with the marriage was that he ignored all these things that were various levels of important to his wife rather than take the opportunity to show her that she was important to him.
Unequal division of labor could explain why the dishes were important to her; but that's not in the article and it's not what the article about.
I think an unequal division of labor is largely orthogonal. In my failed marriage, I carried the greater burden by far. Yet it was my ex who had the thought "you don't do X, so you don't love me."
If resources are there then yes I definitely agree. It makes a major difference in quality of life, particularly for myself and my partner who both struggle with ADHD.
I think there are two seperate issues. One is the dishes, and the divide of labour. Of course both of those should be equal in the way that both people deem fair.
The second is about respect and attitude and empathy towards your partner. It's about remembering that something is a bigger deal to your partner than it is to you. I like to look after my electronics so they'll last a long time, my wife is less careful with them and sometimes that bugs me, but I know that it's just not on her radar the same way its on mine. If it gets bad we discuss it and try and reach a compromise. The same goes for loads of other things too: if you go into it assuming the best of your partner not the worst you'll have a completely different relationship, and different discussions about how to solve the problem.
"Even in relationships where both parents work full time more often than not the majority of the mental and physical burden of running the house tends to fall onto the woman."
This is of course anecdotal, but I find many people (of all genders) like to complain when people don’t do it the way they want, and when they can’t micro manage, they get upset. If you just want it done then delegate. If you want it done YOUR way then YOU have to do it.
For example my wife always makes it sound like finding shoes for the kids is the same as planning a trip to the moon. If I say I’m going to get them shoes she says I can’t be trusted. I don’t care, the kids don’t care, but boy does it stress her out every time their feet grow.
Any source for US or other developed countries? And of course the dual income is important too.
Of course in developing nations or other scenarios with stay at home women will see them doing more unpaid work. I'd imagine it's similar for a brief time in developed countries when women leave the workforce to have children too.
At least in my experience it seems division of overall labor is generally equal for the relationships I have seen.
Anecdotally, I have a fairly progressive friend circle and I still think, between talking to different halves of a given hetero couple, it seems like the man tends to exaggerate how much he does around the house, how much childcare he does, how self-motivated he is to do so, etc. When asked, these men will enthusiastically agree that the split should be even when both partners are working, but walking the walk is understandably tougher. These patterns don't disappear within a generation, unfortunately. If I only spoke to the men, I'd have the same impression you do.
So, for link number one... I guess we have to define if we are measuring work by hours or by tasks completed. It's possible that some of those men are cooking as many meals but that they spend less time doing it. Secondly, and more importantly, that article is about only a single area. I want to see overall breakdown of all the work/chores. The article hints at women working fewer paid hours. That's an area that should be more thoroughly investigated, as whoever is working fewer hours at a job is more likely to be doing more chores to contribute equally.
For the second article, it seems to be self-reported perceptions and not actual measurements. Again, it only deals with limited categories. Of course if we are looking at chores that are traditionally "women's work", some of that bias may carry over. Likewise, handyman work, appliance repair, mechanic work, paperwork, yard work, etc that are traditionally "men's work" are likely to still have more men than women saying they spend more time on that.
The third article is more what I was looking for. It's still perception based but it takes into account a wider array of tasks. It also shows how working status and income play a role. It also backs up my theory that the bias extends the other way on the traditional "men's work" portions.
So we aren't going to see that grey line hit 100% in every category, and for good reason. Specialization of labor leads to efficiency. So task assignment or self-assignemnt will go to the person who is more interested in or better at that task. I would have liked to see an overall category to see how close the overall chore and work breakdown would be to 50/50. That's really the meat of the issue - equally contributing, even if the underlying tasks are divied up. Otherwise, we can cherry pick tasks like mechanic work or dishes to fit whatever narrative we want.
Ideally a partnership is a 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts' situation. It should be a win-win for both partners. If both partners have to 'make sacrifices' then you have a 'the whole is less than the sum of the parts' and in that case, the only reasonable thing to do is to chuck it all out the window and start over.
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.
I'd say that the whole "can't put dishes into sink for years" is but a tip of an iceberg, and the main part of it is "can't be bothered to pay attention for years". I suspect that such a breakdown in communication must be felt pervasively, but can't be described as easily, and likely most instances are too intimate to disclose publicly.
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.
Yep. I regularly thank my partner for the work they do to keep the house running and they do the same back for me. It genuinely helps me feel more connected to them when we recognize and show appreciation for the things that could absolutely be considered automatic.
That's not what I took out of the article. I took out that the glass by the sink is just the token symptom for one of the 10000 ways that the author ignored stuff that made his partner fumed, representing an underlying lack of respect, and ultimately left. He mentions it as the real reason:
> It was about consideration. About the pervasive sense that she was married to someone who did not respect nor appreciate her.
> 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.
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.
The Gottman Institute did a lot of research on the effect of accepting bids (putting the glass in the sink), ignoring bids (leaving the glass out), and rejecting bids (throwing the glass against the wall and arguing), and they determined that accepting a bid added one feeling dollar (my term) to the bank account of your marriage (my metaphor), while rejecting a bid took five out, and ignoring a bid took like ten or fifteen out.
TLDR: Ignoring someone, or causing them to feel ignored, is more painful than intentionally being mean to them, because even that is a form of acknowledgement or attention. Also, you need to keep putting feeling dollars in the bank because you never know when you're going to have a huge fight, have your partner check the balance, and decide there's no reason to keep going.
Broadly, this is a GREAT point. I wonder if the author ever let loose with a loud "Why the f** do you think this glass is so important? It's objectively stupid and you're being ridiculous! Get over it, it's just a f**ing glass!"
Not for the truth of the point or being correct, which is impossible to determine, but for the generation of what comes next.
I mean, you have to go to the classic point of rhetoric here. Do you want to win all the arguments, or do you want to have your way? Strategically losing arguments, or even just "lots of admitting when you're wrong (and also subconsciously reminding and modeling the fact that it's okay to be wrong)" is worth so much.
I was more saying that losing 50% of what you want means neither side is happy, you both gave up 50% of what you felt would make you happy. being willing to give in, entirely means even if you’re not happy right now, when your spouse/partner gives in to you you are
> a really good relationship is a 60/40 compromise, where both sides are struggling to be the 60
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!).
I'd suppose the thing I'd warn here: Remember that, by definition, this article was written by a failure -- meaning that the likelihood that they fully understand the situation even now is still pretty low; especially since they're still likely in a sense seeking validation by writing the article.
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.)
Sure, good point -- but I'd guess that there's something like; the earlier the marriage fails, the more likely it's a "correctable behavior or habit" thing, as opposed to something like fundamental like "someone was getting their own identity wrong," or "deeply dramatic external change in circumstances?"
I'll bite. We're coming up on our 24th anniversary. I will likely regret this, but this is what I have learned.
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."
This is terrific, and resonates strongly. Pretty much only thing I'd perhaps slightly modify is that 5 to 1 deal; why this may not resonate with others is that you can come into it with a high or low threshold for this sort of thing based on lots of factors -- how you grew up yourself and certain social pressures may make you more sensitive to (or resilient to?) certain types of negativity. Point is, YMMV on that ratio.
(but yeah, I do live where there's roaches, and it's definitely "do literally just enough so that there's no roaches" here ) :)
My wife and I have found what is (I think) a good way to resolve many things like this. When we have a disagreement about something, we stop and ask each other whether this issue is important to each of us. If we both think it's not important, then we just agree not to talk about it anymore. That's the "agree to disagree" case.
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.
On the opposite side, if you don't like something that your partner does, and they don't seem to think it's a big deal, maybe take a step back and re-evaluate if it's really something that you need to be bothered by.
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.
My biggest takeaway is you can never really “insist on getting it fixed” without the damage to the relationship. You can state how it is important to you, explain why, and hope that the partner initiates the change to themselves. There is a subtle difference between the two; “push” vs “pull”, if you will.
what needs to be fixed is the disagreement itself. it doesn't matter how the issue in question gets fixed, but you need to come to an amicable solution.
this is only possible if both partners respect and care for each other and are willing to listen and support each others needs.
in the article when the author says that he'd want to agree to disagree he was not respecting his wife. he was basically saying: you are wrong, but i don't want to fight over this. that doesn't help. you need to work it out until there is an actual solution that both can agree with.
once you have solved one problem like this, it opens the door to approach more problems. i think it helps to start with smaller problems where the actual outcome doesn't matter. like it doesn't matter who gets their way with putting away the dishes. what matters is that each partner gets to share their feelings about the issue and that those feelings are being respected.
This is easy to get wrong. She says "X bugs me". But to me, X should not have been a big deal, so it doesn't register with me. Maybe she says it again, and I still think it's no big deal. Finally we reach the point where she's crying, and she tells me "X really bothers me". And I realize: "Oh, yeah, she's told me that before..."
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.
If a person says something bugs them and you don’t react it is a reflection of you not caring about what they are feeling. Repeated non-reaction: mightily so.
Saying “i love you” is easy. Making these little sacrifices on your ego that show the other person you care about them can be much harder, but shows your feelings much more.
However: there must always remain a perception of fairness in the relationship. I am very intentionally not saying “the equal amount of sacrifice” because the dynamics are different for everyone.
Where’s the limit here? How trivial of an action is one allowed to build resent over? At what point should one just grow up and try to love the imperfections of the partner they married?
Sounded like the wife was the one with the issue. And it doesn’t sound like the problem really was over a glass on the counter at the root of it.
What if you are being triggered by the incessent whining over something trivial? That's emotional abuse. I wouldn't put up with that, this kind of stuff needs perspective.
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.
Something that is trivial to one may be very large to another. There is a whole slew of reasons why but just because one partner deems something trivial the other may not agree. Some things may objectively be trivial but we are a complex species. The flip side of this argument is that if its so trivial for one, why don't they change the behavior for the other who deems it non trivial?
Because this kind of behaviour is endemic in emotional abusers. There will always be something else that annoys them. Emotional abusers look for weaknesses and exploit them mercilessly. They don't really care about the issue and will move on to something else, ad infinitum.
This is the very reason why you never give a bully or a narcissist a single inch. What they are trying to do is keep you off balance, make you walk on eggshells and create a bubble of control.
If it's genuinely something that is causing a problem that is completely different from the typical needling/whining/unnecessary argument escalation over trivial bullshit that an emotional abuser will mete out.
I agree with you. I think this article is meaningless click bait TBH. The whole time I was thinking “or the marriage was ruined by the wife not being able to let a trivial non-issue go”. Seems like she was the one building resent over something that didn’t matter.
If you are triggered by anything it is something you need to ask yourself why. And why you are with that person then, if they are triggering you.
With some (minor) exceptions, what people are getting in their relationships is at least 50% result of their own choices, and not owning that only prolongs the effects.
Some people are into shibari. And some aren’t. And both are okay.
Edit-add: also, I think “being with a person who never triggers a negative response in you” is just plain impossible. On some days I trigger a negative response with myself :-)
But based on my limited experience of two 10+ years relationships, I can say life is so much easier and fun when you have less things to disagree about.
But I also acknowledge that this is how I am wired - for some, fights are stimulating. Hence my initial reply with shibari. There exist rather interesting pathways to happiness.
Sure. Minimal. But if you rule people out for any amount of conflict then you will never be in a relationship long term. My wife and I do not argue often but it does happen.
> If something is minor for you ... change yourself.
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.
Absolutely agree with your caveats! I forgot to mention the “perception of fairness” that is another useful component to a long term balance. And - communication, communication, communication. Unfortunately the latter is often suppressed by the everyday pressures until it’s too late.
“I like leaving my glass by the sink, but I know you really hate it. Tell you what, I’ll stop doing it (which is not a concession that it’s wrong) as an act of love for you.”
Then they express gratitude, and before you know it, you’ll get a favor like that back on something you really care about.
This. It's like small withdrawals/deposits into a savings account. Take out $1 at a time a whole bunch of times without topping it up and the account winds up empty, even if there weren't any massive withdrawals.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be flexibility, it's give and take, but there clearly should be some limits. So blanket advice of change what your doing to satisfy all minor complaints isn't great advice in my opinion.
My wife gave me a huge ration of shit the first year of our marriage for leaving a coffee mug in the sink and not putting it in the dishwasher then spent the next 10 years leaving dishes all over the house. It still pisses me off every single f-ing time I see one.
>My wife gave me a huge ration of shit the first year of our marriage for leaving a coffee mug in the sink and not putting it in the dishwasher then spent the next 10 years leaving dishes all over the house. It still pisses me off every single f-ing time I see one.
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.
> I now understand that when I left that glass there, it hurt my wife—literally causing pain—because it felt to her as if I had just said, “Hey. I don’t respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are.”
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.
Yeah I think the cup is just a symptom of neither of them being able to step into the other's shoes, but it's hard to diagnose without a larger picture.
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"
It isn't just about respect. It is about you leaving work for your partner to do even though you could have done it yourself. This is about emotional labour and the uneven divide of household jobs.
There's a whole spectrum, from misalignment on the proper state of the house, to the feelings of respect, to the increase in household jobs for the other partner.
If the husband puts his cup by the sink at night, then picks it back up again in the morning, and finally after a few days it ends up in the dishwasher, then you'll never convince him that it's mismatched emotional labor, because in his eyes the cup didn't need to be put away.
If you try to tell him that it's not fair for her to put his cup in the dishwasher every night and his response is "I was going to use the cup again tomorrow" then the conversation will never make any progress.
No one is right or wrong in a conversation about whether it's ok to put your cup by the sink at night and then pick it up again the next day. It's just one of those things in marriage that you need to agree on how it will be, based on effort vs. how much one partner is bothered. And then stick to the agreement while giving your partner some occasional leeway.
But I don't think in this case he said there was uneven divide of work.
Also he wasn't leaving work for her to do, he did the work just not on her schedule, it was the wife who had the issue of the glass being there until end of day.
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.
you can talk about this with your partner before getting married. it could even be worth it for both of you to talk to a marriage counselor before getting married. if you are open about your experience and your worries for your relationship you will be able to find an understanding partner.
If you haven't read "The Five Love Languages" yet and are in a relationship, then I highly suggest you do. It might save it before it's too late.
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.
I'd recommend people don't. Mostly because people read stuff like that and extrospect rather than introspect. "How can I get my partner to speak my love language?" rather than "What is my partner's love language?"
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.
if someone is using love as a tool for emotional manipulation they will be doing that already before they read the book. at best the book helps them to come up with that phrase. but not reading it won't prevent them from doing it.
on the contrary, if you both read the book together then you will both become aware that this is happening and you can do something about it.
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.
that sounds just about like the worst idea i have read in this whole thread today. it is exactly the not talking about these concepts that will enable the manipulation that you fear. to avoid manipulation you need to have this knowledge out in the open.
I want the knowledge out there, I just don't want it to be used against people. You can learn love languages, you can talk about them to people, but you can't use bring it up with people you're in a relationship with. Especially in a discussion about your relationship.
The point is for people to focus on learning rather than weaponization.
And it's not just love languages. It's pretty much every psychological and sociological concept. Bringing them up in a discussion is almost always an attempt to cut off the other person's attempt at communication.
It's like the list of fallacies. No one wonders if they're making fallacious arguments, they just use it as a cudgel against other people.
not talking about your feelings in your relationship is exactly what opens you up for abuse. you both need to communicate openly with each other about everything you feel. if you can't do that then the relationship has a serious problem, and i would seek counselling
Talking about your feelings is fine. The line comes when you start making demands of the other person.
People also see these things as magic phrases that will solve the problem. They're not. Interpersonal conflicts are complex even at their simplest. So while it is good to know about all of these things, as a tool of active communication, they're often lacking.
Because the goal of a relationship should be to find a person you mesh well together with, not to find someone you can mold into a perfect partner. That's also a serious problem.
I agree with both the op AND this criticism. It's a pretty good tool in a relationship toolbox -- and also this definitely happens. Just don't treat it as gospel.
Also recommend this book. It's a simple system to understand your relationship easier, and it acts as a starting point.
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.
I don't think it would make her feel loved though, as in her view it was the norm, by putting it away you could say she didn't feel disrespected by him, however, it could also be viewed as it was her having disrespect of him for his behaviour ... we of course can only speculate.
This book is great if you are in a relationship but also if you are single. It allows you to learn how you receive love. Often you express love in the ways you receive it which is critical to understanding if you are struggling to maintain relationships.
Laterally relevant, I once left a company for this exact reason. Tons of little things making life impossible - no way to push for your ideas, admin BS for no good reason, CEO wanting to be Steve J a bit too much, meetings at 8:30AM (with multiple kids, it's a challenge), a few bad apples, pixel-perfectness, etc. All stuff that, one by one wouldn't matter, but overall made my grind my teeth sufficiently for me to leave. It was very hard for me to explain well why I didn't enjoy work, as all these seemed trivial and unimportant and made me feel like a dick for leaving. Overall I think the underlying reason was that things were a certain way and there was no way of influencing them whatsoever.
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.
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.
I think this is very useful advice.
It partly reminds of laughing therapy. Where people laugh continuously for 2 minutes (fake laugh). But what can happen is that you start to genuinely feel happy and laugh.
The glass near the sink instead of in the dishwasher thing I kind of get - it's like going halfway to solving the problem. If you want to use a dish again, don't put it into the gray zone near the sink. Leave it on your desk or the kitchen table or whatever you were using it or might use it again. If you are done, wash it or put it in the dishwasher to be washed. Leaving dirty stuff near the sink is ambiguous - easy to get mixed in with the clean dishes while you are emptying dishwasher to put them away.
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.
An accurate title might be, "A dirty dish by the sink can reveal a big marriage problem". That is, a succeeding marriage includes strategies to deal with such things, and provides compensations for minor issues that can't be resolved, but a marriage that can't resolve them and does not offer sufficient compensating value will fail.
This seems like a one-sided stopgap to a problem that is undoubtedly two-sided and it sets a precedent for [the author's definition of] respect that cannot be maintained indefinitely. For example, what if you were just about to put the glass in the dishwasher but the doorbell rings?
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.
> This seems like a one-sided stopgap to a problem that is undoubtedly two-sided and it sets a precedent for [the author's definition of] respect that cannot be maintained indefinitely.
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.
You're right, frequency matters. I also think it matters that he reacted defensively (at least that's how I read the essay), rather that just saying, "Okay, sure" and putting the glass in the dishwasher. It's a token response that doesn't really mean much, but it's a token that shows some consideration.
I think that's why a workaround solution like putting the glass on a counter out-of-sight would also be helpful. It's not that the workaround necessarily improves anything from his wife's perspective (the glass still needs to be cleaned) but it shows some effort.
This is why a husband and wife should share a core value system otherwise one person would sacrifice their values for the other and that also ends up with resentment.
It's never about the dish, or the coffee mug, or whatever. It's all about what raw spots that dish rubs up against, probably from long before your marriage began. If you or someone you love is finding themselves disproportionally hurt or irritated by small behaviors and habits—yes, of course, find ways to shift that behavior, but please also consider counseling or therapy. There may be far greater depths of healing available than merely changing a single behavior.
I see the relationship coaches of this stripe all over all sorts of social media, and I just rarely if ever see insights that couldn't have been imparted by your average friendly stranger at a bar. What I mostly see are slightly-to-moderately damaged people who are articulate and engaging enough to find an audience of similarly damaged people who their experiences resonate with. This guy seems fairly innocuous (although this kind of rumination can also be unproductive!) but you see a lot of people fomenting bitterness. I would advise anyone I cared about to seek a credentialed therapist before turning to one of these self-appointed coaches.
Been married for 20 years almost…we never fight. We both do things that aren’t optimal, but we give each other the benefit of the doubt, we talk about everything, we don’t step on each other’s areas of responsibility, we don’t speak harshly to each other and we are best friends. I can’t ever imagine being in a the situation described above. I mean all the individual things happen to us leaving dishes, muddy whatever (we have 5 kids…so the noise alone), but so what? It’s all in how you both handle everything. We’ve never found it hard to exist together.
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.
I love seeing elderly couples. If you get into the house of old folks couples that have been married for 30 or 40 years the "peacefulness" you perceive in their relationship is great. They have learned that nothing really matters. A broken glass? some mud in the house? a stack of books/magazines in the floor? Who freaking cares? They have each other and they have had each other for 30+ years and they have each other until they die.
Same. 23 years and I don't mention it often because it feels like bragging, and we certainly didn't do anything to "earn" our relationship. I think it was just dumb luck that we fell into it and happen to be so compatible along so many lines.
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.
7 years here ( we lived together for a few more ). We do fight, but it appears to be on a semi-annual basis since we do talk about what bugs us about the other person fairly openly ( there is a fine line being truthful and hurtful ).
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.
This is the attitude I think the author should be writing about. It should be that you love your partner, even with their trivial flaws.
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.
I get the point of the article and I agree with the overall conclusion, but I don't agree that it applies in the example he provided.
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.
My wife and I wrote our own marriage vows. The first two were pretty conventional (stay together, share joys and sorrows). The third was the most important IMO and also hardest to keep.
"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.
"Treat each other's needs and priorities as equal to our own"
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.
Can't sign on with that. Subordinating one's own desires to the other or to the relationship like that isn't healthy, even if it's mutual, and I'm pretty sure my own marriage wouldn't have lasted this long if either of us had tried it. "Two servants" doesn't work. I think O. Henry even wrote a story about where it leads, and can lead even with the best of communication. Consciously or no, sooner or later one person will demand more and - lacking any directive that would pull things back into balance - you'll have an unequal relationship. IMO treating each other's needs as exactly equal, no less but also no more, does provide the necessary pull toward the center and thus is more sustainable long term.
fair point. maybe i am seeing things a bit to idealistic. it depends on the persons character. someone who is not assertive needs more attention from their partner to their needs than others.
it also makes more sense to look at it from the other side:
if i know that my partner is subordinating her desires for my sake, then i have an extra responsibility to make sure that i take care of her needs.
If this couple went to a marriage counselor, the counselor is not going to say "You're going to lose your marriage because you continue to leave dishes by the sink". Instead, (s)he will say "You're going to lose your marriage because of poor communication - she can't communicate what is bothering her, and he doesn't have the communication skills to make it easy for her to communicate it."
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.
I understood the article as saying that she was communicating her issues, but he considered them minor, nagging and unimportant difference of opinion. Therefore, he never treated them seriously, whether by actually changing or by actually arguing back. Basically, he dismissed it instead of taking it as issue.
Here is quote from the article: "Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong."
> I understood the article as saying that she was communicating her issues
She wasn't. She was at best hinting - again, something pretty much every communications book says not to do.
> "Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong."
He doesn't go into details, but it's usually one of two things:
1. Nagging over what seems to be minor issues, and he is supposed to realize that there are deeper issues underlying.
2. Saying explicitly that something was wrong, but not saying what.
In both cases, she is lacking the communication skills to say what is wrong, and he is lacking the communication skills to make the path easier for her to say it.
He says this:
> The reason my marriage fell apart seems absurd when I describe it: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.
The question is, how does she describe it to her friends? I doubt she says "I left my husband because he sometimes leaves dishes by the sink." And did she articulate that to him before it was too late?
It sounds like you make up the thing about hinting. This article does not talk about her hinting and him not getting hint. And in author other blog post he elaborates that further about her pretty clear complains - childcare, chores split and similar.
> Nagging over what seems to be minor issues, and he is supposed to realize that there are deeper issues underlying.
The deeper issue is that he dismisses her complains as unimportant nagging. That is not her failure to communicate, it is his failure to listen.
> The question is, how does she describe it to her friends? I doubt she says "I left my husband because he sometimes leaves dishes by the sink." And did she articulate that to him before it was too late?
Yes she did, but he called it nagging and ignored it. I have no idea what she says to her friends. We have only his self reflection to go on. Possibly she says something like "it did not worked out".
I think at this stage we're stuck with information that's not clearly provided, and only he can address them. However:
> Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong. That something hurt. But that doesn’t make sense, I thought. I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt.
"Feeling hurt" is vague. Feeling hurt is different from being upset that he dismisses her complaints as unimportant nagging. Saying that she does not think he respects her as a result of his dismissals and that it is causing angst is much better. It's not clear from his essay if she ever said something like this. She likely didn't, because:
> What I know for sure is that I had never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife’s respect.
Had she said it, there would be no connection for him to make.
> Yes she did, but he called it nagging and ignored it.
This is not at all clear from the article. He's quite vague about the specifics of what she said.
I struggle with this myself. At the risk of sounding misogynistic: How come it’s always women who can’t deal with these “minor irritations”?
I’ve never heard from any of my male friends complaining in this tack.
As a counter question: why do men not recognize that these simple tasks make women feel loved and respected?
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.
You've been in plenty of relationships, enough even, that you can make the claim that "often male" partners are not able to tolerate minor irritations?
What is this, slut shaming? I'm a man and not the person you replied to. I've had close to a dozen long-term partners and many more short-term ones. This is not uncommon in the western world for men and women.
Everybody gets annoyed by something. Men and women. Couples fight. Most of them a lot. Shit, in my apartment building I hear them fight all the time.
Boss, you also have your glass issue. We all have a small minor irritations that we just can't shake off. You're lucky your partner, for some reason, isn't poking your particular minor irritation. Or, maybe, your partner did poke it and you told them to stop and they stopped. If they continued you too would've left like the author's wife.
I think it’s just different things for minor irritations. For me it’s the never being ready on time.
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.
You're really just wrong. If this is your lived experience, you need to understand that the majority of the world has minor conflicts like this all the time. Get out, make friends, go to college and see the circus that is random roommates. When I lived with roommates, there were constant complaints about this or that. X never does the dishes, Y never changes the toilet paper roll. All the time. All men. I've had a lot of friends and seen them have similar issues with roommates or partners.
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.
1. It is not ‘always women’. Men are also rankled by such things.
2. Women have to deal with the pressure of feminism. For example: I like to cook. I love feeding people and don’t think of it as chore that oppressed women, but I have friends who will not cook(and I know they don’t hate cooking) because they have to make a feminist point.
3. I grew up in India and there is a very vibrant food culture. To be able to cook well is a feather in the cap. It is not so in the states and after I moved here, I was amazed that even those who absolutely loved cooking back home were acting like kitchen work was slavery.
4. Again from an Indian immigrant perspective: There is a weird resistance to obtaining hired help in America. Even middle class homes have hired help in India. These days, even in the states, Indian households will pay someone to help with laundry or cutting vegetables for cooking or just household help.
After apps like Nextdoor etc have come up, it’s easier to find help. Interestingly, the house help is often other women in the same neighborhood who want to make a few extra bucks. But I don’t think it’s about the money as everyone is usually in the same social strata in any neighbour hood. It’s about company.
5. Women need female company. We are just slightly different looking female apes. Women need to be social with those they don’t compete with..and girlfriends are always competing. It’s hideous living 24/7 with men. In nuclear families, there are no other female figures. I grew up with a large extended joint family. We had 3-4 generations of women under one roof. There is an age based hierarchy.
6. Contrast that to modern nuclear families with only one adult head female. For working women, it’s worse because they have to go to work and compete with both men and women. There was clear division of labour and enough people to carry out the tasks in my large joint family.
7. Speaking for myself and specifically about kitchens: The kitchen is my domain in my house. It is a matter of control because it is a matter of pride. Because I am the one who is cooking, if I don’t have a kitchen that is organized, I can’t do my job properly. I expect the knives, glasses and cutlery, spice jars and plates to be where I expect them to be…when I cook I am not thinking, I am ‘reaching’ for that familiar nook where I expect to find the salt or the spoon. Cooking is fast and involves heat. I don’t have time to scuttle about looking for things or dinner would be burnt.
It is the same with a chef in any professional kitchen. My 2c.
the problem with hired help is that is severely reduces the privacy of your home because you always have someone around who is not family. depending on your culture this can be a serious dampener on things like intimacy in your relationship.
my understanding is that in india you don't even show intimacy in front of your children, so this part is very much limited to your bedroom. which means the hired help is rarely going to be a problem. in western culture intimacy is more open, and any stranger around becomes a disruption.
it is also a cost issue. i don't know about the US but hired help in europe is a lot more expensive. in germany for example you'd even have to pay for their insurance so the average middle income family simply can't afford it.
I have never heard display of intimacy being connected to the decision to employ hired house help before. I am revisiting this just to register my marvel at the perception dreamed up about india in the rest of the world. East and west, they will never meet. I am going with the assumption that you were sincere, but this gross generalization can be construed as a little odd. I never imagine how the westerners are intimate or conflate that to regular way of life even though I have lived in both sides of the cultural world. Thanks once again for opening up my mind to acknowledge the differences between the east and the west.
I mean, I live alone and just pay someone to come in once every two weeks. You don't need someone living there full time. Just outsource some of the major chores. Folding laundry, scrubbing toilets and tubs, cleaning the floors. Cleaners bust through that stuff in a couple of hours and then you've got all your privacy back.
with kids the primary help needed for busy parents is actually making dinner. and laundry gets done every other day. the result is that the helper is around every evening which is the main time the family is at home.
intimacy is very different culturally. but generally it is any physical interaction with your partner.
to give you an example, i have heard from an indian friend that they would not touch their husband in front of their kids. no holding hands, hugging or kissing of any kind. i don't know if that is common in indian culture. i am not trying to generalize.
the point that matters is that i feel very restrained in how i act when our housekeeper is present.
It seems like a generalization. India has 1.4 billion people.
House help isn’t around 24 hours/day. Just like you wouldn’t be intimate with your partner in front of your boss, I guess it’s the same with someone you employ?
You're wrong because you've bucketed half the global population either because of your blissful ignorance or because your personal anecdotal, likely very limited data and sample size, supports your belief.
I’m sorry but I’m not blissful about it.
Women bad ha ha… not.
What else do I have to go by than my own personal experience? Self help book? You have no idea what weight my sample has given the constant emotional and physical abuse I have to deal with.
I think at some point in their lives, people are entitled, just maybe, to draw from their own personal experiences in the course of conversation. Just about every one of the 600 comments on this post are people sharing their personal experience (their dreadfully non-scientific anecdotes!).
Here, the commenter is saying it's their experience that women are more easily annoyed by "little things." Perhaps you've had the opposite experience, where your male friends complain non-stop about their female partner's annoying little habits?
My husband and I had one of our first major fights over fruits and newspapers. I'm a bit of a packrat, and he is someone who embodies minimalism.
I let fruit rot a bit in the kitchen, and kept a lot of newspapers, magazines, and other "junk mail".
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.
Heh, I told my wife today that our first big fight was because she couldn't for two years throw away lemons instead of leaving them on the counter to collect fruit flies. As with the glass, it wasn't about the lemons, but something deeper. What that is, is really dependant on the person and even the relationship. In my / our case it was about me being very laid back and if somebody asked me to do something, and it was no big deal, I'd just do it. And the ratio of things she asked me vs vice versa was about 10:1. So when she couldn't do that one thing I asked her, and I really hate those flies, it eventually blew up.
The most important marriage lesson is: don’t get married. The person you marry is not the person you divorce. You can lose a huge amount of money battling it out even if YOU bend over backwards to be reasonable. If you want to flip a coin to see if you lose ten years of earnings, then marriage is for you.
It's factually correct though you need to replace "can" with "will", especially in states like CA. Make no mistake, the discrimination is systemic. So it's not just you who is unlucky and you won't find a loophole just because you're clever.
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.
It's worth it though. Consider the single male life. You will have no friends, because your male friends will all get wives and girlfriends, who will dissuade them from hanging out with you, the weird bachelor. You will be seen as weird at work because all of your coworkers will be married, and people don't like an outlier.
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?
You can be unmarried and be in a relationship. Marriage is bondage. It's primarily a feminine desire of women to seek stability for their offsprings. Men are better off having multiple partners and having shorter relationships. Also as the weird bachelor you don't have to hang out with your coworkers, there is usually far more exciting company available.
I'm but a layman when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but it's my understanding that society puts pressure on people to get married. So while yes, in theory, you can be in a relationship and not married, in practice the social pressure will eventually push you, or, much more likely, the other person in the relationship, to want marriage. So your only recourse is to jump from relationship to relationship and break them off each time an ultimatum is reached. Breaking off relationships takes an emotional toll on people, so it's not a viable strategy for many people.
I’d be glad if everybody would help change the legal implications of the marriage contract, so that it would be safe and financially reasonable to get married. But that just isn’t the case currently.
50/50 is a reasonable default when there isn't a prenup. Marriage is a union of souls into one. When they split, 50/50 only makes sense. If you can't get that, then you have bigger blockers besides legal ramifications to getting married.
50/50 asset split is far from the problem. Ongoing alimony after the split, excessive child support far beyond the cost of raising children , and huge legal costs to reach a slightly less terrible outcome are the problems. Not to mention the separation of fathers from children, but that often happens with or without an official marriage.
Me and my wife set aside about half an hour each week to "check in". I hate to compare it to a stand up, but it's kinda what it is. The goal is to focus 100% on each other and talk about the week and do some sort of a "marriage exercise". It's been immensely helpful to take the "temperature" of my spouse and our relationship.
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.
Your wife left because her feelings changed. That's all there is to it. End of story.
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.
"My wife left me because she's either ridiculous and unwilling to compromise on trivial shit, or incomprehensibly dense" is a much shorter and more succinct than an entire book, but I guess they don't pay people for that. His articles all read as pathetic blame-porn aimed at satisfying the egos of women, while pretending to be advice aimed at men, and even though his only skills are apparently being someone who got divorced and wrote a book about what he believes to be his failings, somehow that qualifies him for paid counseling sessions?
"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.
Maybe this is too personal, but is your relationship with your partner strong? Frankly, my guess, just by your attitude towards this innocuous article, is no.
It's not an innocuous article. He's literally tried to build a career out of being divorced.
Know why my relationship with my SO is better than yours? Because we talk like actual human beings, compromise, don't fight over trivial bullshit, respect each other and their spaces, and don't always have to be right because it's a partnership not a dictatorship.
Maybe try that out, see how basic common sense works for you.
the problem wasn't the dishes or any other issue. the problem was that he preferred to agree to disagree instead of coming to a compromise. that's pretty dismissive.
that doesn't mean it's all his fault, but we don't know what her attempts to resolve the issue were.
This might come as a shock, but compromise isn't simply "doing what she wants you to do, when she wants you to do it." That's not a relationship.
This wasn't a pile of dirty dishes. It was a drinking glass that was going to be reused. Maybe she comes from an upper-middle to upper class household where everything got put away at all times, but where I come from, you don't waste dishwater on something you're going to reuse anyway.
It's one thing if they pile up. It's quite another if there's a cup or two on the counter that you are using.
you are still missing the real problem. it does not matter that it's just one cup. what matters is that you are refusing to accept that this is bothering her. you need to find out why it bothers her and work out a compromise that you both can live with.
* compromise isn't simply "doing what she wants you to do, when she wants you to do it.*
right, but neither is ignoring the problem.
with small things like these sometimes the only way is that for some issue you defer to your partner, and for other issues your partner defers to you.
if one partner is always getting their way then there is a problem with the relationship. and you'll need to work that out. stop arguing about the cup and start listening to each other.
No, I'm not missing anything. It's a ridiculous and childish thing to get upset over. Of all the other possible things that they could have disagreements about, THIS is something that SHE should have let be, because it does no harm to her and he has a rational explanation for it.
It is literally picking shit to be upset over for the sake of having something to hold over your partner's head, and an indication that one or both of them was too emotionally immature to be married in the first place.
that may be so, and yes, it may be a sign of emotional immaturity
but telling my wife that she is ridiculous and childish is not going to help. on the contrary, responding like that would be immature on my part, it would only make things worse.
i need to listen to her and try to understand why this bothers her so much and then we need to work out a solution that we can both accept.
who is right or wrong is not relevant, only consensus and unity matter, but you can't achieve unity by insisting to be right. on the contrary, instead of continuing to disagree it is better if we choose the wrong solution as long as we both agree with it, because only when we are united and neither of us insist to stick to our egos, we will be able to eventually accept that the solution was wrong and find a better one.
If you're married to someone ridiculous and childish, that's on you. The immature part is getting involved in a dedicated relationship to that person in the first place. Everything else after that is lagniappe. Unity doesn't matter when it comes from a place of tyranny.
if there is tyranny there can't be unity. unity requires that both partners treat each other with love and respect.
the partner may not be aware what they are doing because they grew up with that kind of treatment from their parents. it may be normal to them without being intentional.
in that case nothing short of therapy with a relationship counselor will help.
if they are doing it intentionally then probably even therapy won't help.
(if you want to talk about more details we can take this private, my email is in my profile)
"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.
I once saw the marriage advice that everybody, no matter how great their relationship is, should meet with a marriage/relationship counsellor on a regular basis, because, that way, any issues the two of you may have gets dealt with while its still a small thing and is never given a chance to turn into a big deal. Doing it with a counsellor means you have a safe space with someone who knows how to deal with issue during which you can work out problems, before they turn into real problems.
I'm not married, so I dunno if it works, but it sure sounds like sensible advice at least.
If you're resourced enough to have access, this is great advice. It's like doing regular maintenance: you might be able to do it yourself, but bringing in a professional is a good idea.
Ah, yes, of course. If you can't afford to do it then you can't afford to do it, although I wonder, given the high rate of divorce, if a session every so often wouldn't still be cheaper in the long run even for people who maybe can't afford to do it every other month.
> It's like doing regular maintenance: you might be able to do it yourself, but bringing in a professional is a good idea.
Resentment can compound over small things, but I've also found from my friends failed marriages that physical attraction is big deal. One or both of the partners let themselves go physically.
Now we can't stop aging, but we shouldn't lie to ourselves that physical attractiveness doesn't matter.
The thing is, it becomes progressively harder to look good as you age. And once you start getting out of shape that adds to the disadvantage. People hit 40 and this combination of factors causes them to just give up.
> One or both of the partners let themselves go physically.
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.
Today its glasses of water by the sink, tomorrow it's "you have to sanitize the car steering wheel after you drive," and eventually it's "don't get close to me if you walked by the bus stop." I feel sorry for anyone who has to endure this.
I made a decision to not get married because I don't want these kind of problems and drama in my life. Also, depending on your country of residence, marriage is probably the worst deal in your life.
That story felt... obnoxious. It seemed like the woman in the story destroyed her life and her kids for a sense of novelty, instead of working with her husband to fix the problems she felt in her own emotional space.
Kinda Tao of the ietf: try to meet expectations and be accepting of failure. But dude, if she says dirty dishes by the sink won't fly you should listen. 30 years of that can break anyone. One of the colditz pows said the way a guy asked you to pass the salt for 5 years straight could be semi fatal
“ My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.” can easily spiral out to “you don’t give a sht about my feelings, I’m not heard even for little things requested constantly” and then it amplifies other little dismissed requests which all come together and builds up from a mole hill to a mountian
At the same time, the argument could easily be flipped:
if one person truly loves another, the let things like putting a glass besides the sink _slide_. It is accepting the other person, with their flaws. If you want to change another person, it's selfish. Furthest away from love as can be.
My pet peeve is people who leave dirty dishes in the sink rather than next to the sink. This seems to considered the correct/polite place to leave them by some people. But it means that other people can't use the sink without first moving your dishes!
This sounds to me more like a symptom, and the underlying pathology is that this person gave insufficient consideration to all the little concessions his partner was making on the things that matter to him, and was certainly not expressing gratitude for them.
> When we’re having The Same Fight, positive intent, or chalking up any harm caused as accidental, can be just as much of a trust killer as more overtly harmful actions. It doesn’t matter whether we are intentionally refusing to cooperate with our spouse or legitimately unable to understand what’s wrong—the math results are the same. The net result of The Same Fight is more pain. Less trust. Regardless of anyone’s intentions.
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.
The problem in the case mentioned in the article was not with the writer that left the glass by the sink, it's with the other person that was bothered with something so minor...usually these minor things are excuses that cover deeper problems.
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...
Exactly. I am on the other side of this in my marriage — my wife leaves her water glass out (sometimes for days) because she “might want to use it again”. It bothered me, so I put it in the dishwasher. She didn’t like that, so I stopped doing it. And I got over the fact that there are sometimes six or seven half-full glasses around the house at any time, because I am not a petty psychotic who would take something so trivial to be representative of how my wife does or doesn’t respect me. Good lord.
My wife put some water in the microwave for tea and left the room. When it was done, I put the tea ball in it and set the timer for her. Thinking that she would be back in the room in a few minutes and the timer would let her know it was ready.
Instead of thank you for starting her tea, I was told I was "too controlling". Ok... I guess I won't do nice random things like start your tea from now on.
I'm not going to give you specific advice, as that would be controlling (tongue in cheek / bad joke, sorry), and you also haven't specifically requested any. However I do feel compelled to share some of my own experience.
In my last LT relationship, I was accused being controlling and the relationship was totally, impossibly screwed. This is a very serious accusation, and they were interpreting attempts to be genuinely nice as "controlling". I am actually pretty flexible and easy going, but no matter what I did or changed, there was always some other new way in which I was "being emotionally abusive".
I'm now in a new relationship, and a few times I've pre-emptively apologized to my partner about similar actions, because I was concerned about them being interpreted as controlling. I was floored when she responded with indifference, saying she always appreciates my efforts and that I don't need to worry.
Having a partner who "gets you" and appreciates what you try to do for them has been earth shatteringly beautiful in my life. Empathy unlocks the best parts of life and the human experience. I know I'm extremely fortunate to have eventually gotten to where I am, and couldn't be happier with her. Soon I should probably ask if she'll marry me, advice on this would be welcome :) we are 9 months in, see each other every day and never fight, it's always collaborative.
Anyhow, the conclusion is:
It's always a good idea to ask many questions if you're being told you are wrong a lot, in any relationship (private life as well as work life). Sometimes the real issue may turn out to have nothing to do with you, after all.
It sounds to me like your wife's reaction was not actually about the tea.
If she described that as "too controlling", that likely indicates she perceives you as too controlling overall.
Regardless of the truth of her perceptions, they're all she has to go on in life, so it's her perceptions that matter, not the "objective truth" of whether you're controlling.
I don't know you or your wife at all - my analysis could be way off in a lot of ways.
Whatever the issue here is, though, it's not the tea itself. There is some negative perception or idea she has that you triggered when you helped make her tea. I strongly recommend you try to figure out what's beneath the surface there. It could be rooted in your behaviors, or it might go back to how other people in her life have treated her, or some combination. It could be that she's a flaming control freak who can't stand anyone doing anything that seems to her like a threat to her agency. I don't have enough context to have much of a clue.
Writing it off with "Okay, not gonna do that again" internally was a dangerous pattern for me - it led me to ignore issues for years instead of trying to deal with them head-on.
Warning: For me, dealing with these issues head-on was a painful, difficult road littered with ugly realizations about both myself and my spouse. Dealing with the pain and issues now beats waiting until they're worse down the road, though.
I have the book open on my desk right now. I really wish I could have read it sooner in my marriage, like before my marriage. Would have made for a lot less bumpy road. But we are in a better place now, almost 20 years later! :)
Its not just the tea. She's got needs that aren't being met. Best advice is to reflect back what she has said to try to understand what needs of hers aren't being met." Perhaps to your wife you could say the following 'Are you feeling angry because you have the need for more say in our relationship?
Don't take this the wrong way but after reading several of your comments in this thread, it does seem that you should be leaving her.
That, or start communicating about what makes her get angry over stuff like this; what makes her feel ignored or under-appreciated that she bursts when you make a nice and very cute gesture for her.
My wife kisses me when she forgets about her tea and I do it for her. EVERY TIME, no exceptions, she kisses me and thanks me.
IMO either start chatting with her to pinpoint the issue and work on it, or move on. You don't deserve such an atmosphere, man. You deserve happiness.
That is lovely…very healthy. The most important words in a relationship are: ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’…and they should be heartfelt and mentioned appropriately.
Agreed with every word. Being genuinely appreciative and expressing it -- "thank you" -- and recognizing if you're being petty or stubborn and expressing it -- "sorry" -- really did wonders for my relationship. Somewhere at the ~7 year mark it started getting even better than it was before that.
Just brainstorming here, but perhaps it was tea that she wanted to prepare herself, and the problem may have been that you "muscled your way into" a course of action that she wanted to be hers.
Your analysis of the situation is problematic when you write: "I guess I won't do nice random things like start your tea from now on." It was your wife who started the tea-making process, not you. To somebody who already feels sore about this kind of thing, it may feel as if you're taking credit for her action.
Of course, normal people in a normal situation don't react in the way that your wife did. As others pointed out, there are almost certainly more issues in your relationship and your wife likely reacted this way because your behavior fit into a larger pattern that she is unhappy with.
Also please note, you absolutely cannot draw the conclusion that she doesn't want you to do nice things for her in general.
I asked her for more info, but she couldn't elaborate. I don't think it was about her wanting to put the tea ball in (the tea was already in the ball from my cup, and she could put in how much honey or sugar she wanted when it was ready).
The conclusion was mistated. I meant I just won't make her tea unless she asks. If it make her made and she can't tell me why, then I'm just going to avoid that situation.
Thanks for clarifying, and of course ultimately I can't know any of this since I'm just a random stranger on the internet.
I notice that you argue that it couldn't have been about her wanting to put the tea ball in because whether you or she did it would have had no impact on the objective outcome of the tea. That makes rational sense and is how a normal person under normal circumstances would see it.
Then again, stuff like the IKEA effect is real: people feel differently about a piece of furniture if they assembled it themselves, perhaps there's a bit of pride and feeling of self-worth in having done that work. That feeling is independent of the usefulness of the furniture.
In a similar vein, perhaps your wife feels the need to do certain things herself to feel in control of part of her life. Everybody wants the feeling of agency to some extent, some more, some less. Again, it's almost certainly not about the tea, but if she feels that her life is "taken over" by the relationship (and so, explicitly or implicitly in her mind, by you) and that she doesn't have enough time and space that's her own, then something small like the tea could trigger a reflex in her along the lines of "why does it always have to be like this?"
The tea is an almost ridiculously tiny symbol for asserting herself, but it's possible that she feels she has already lost the bigger ways of asserting herself and reaffirming herself in the relationship, and so she reacts badly to that small thing being taken away.
If that really is the situation, it is already a very bad state for the relationship to be in. Of course, I may be way off base.
did you talk about it afterwards? being "too controlling" is a very serious accusation and points to something deeper. don't just dismiss her complaint but try to understand it. also try to explain to her in what spirit you made the tee for her.
you think you were doing a random nice thing, she felt you are controlling, so clearly she didn't feel you did something nice to her.
the idea is that we each have different ways in which we express and perceive love. so for you random acts of kindness are one way, but your wife may not be aware of that. i'd talk to her about that. maybe read the book together or at least talk about the different ways to show love and what you each prefer.
I still want an explanation as to how the aliens in that movie managed to miss that 70% of the planet is covered by a deadly poison, and that it literally falls from the sky in most places.
The main character is a former priest. I don't remember any explicit blessings, but maybe being in a (ex-)priests house is enough. Or they were blessed when the protagonist found his faith again.
Or it was the daughter, who was constantly referred to as "angel".
My in-laws had their house blessed by their priest shortly after moving in. They do the same with their cars. Perhaps a house, properly blessed, provides the necessary protection?
Because it was _holy_ water that damaged them because they are demons not aliens in the movie. There is actually no scene in that movie of a spaceship or anything that indicates it's aliens
Isn't that what the author is saying? The deeper problem was that the wife felt that the authors' inability to do something so simple for her sake was indicative of disrespect. Not acknowledging that your partner is worth a couple seconds of consideration is a pretty deep problem. The author probably demonstrated this disrespect in multiple ways, but the glass by the sink is a succinct way of summarizing the whole problem.
It seems as though people are focusing on the hook and not the core argument. The author clearly states his marriage failed from "death by a thousand papercuts" and this glass-by-the-sink is an example of not understanding their spouse.
I’m shocked by how many people in this thread have been completely derailed thinking the literal glass is the issue rather than being symbolic of the issue. I always hated how much teachers would drill symbolism and literary device analysis into you in school but then I come across threads like this I wonder whether we aren’t focusing on it enough.
Agreed but the point is made more than once and in plain terms that the glass was not the problem it was an indication of a behavioral issue that went unrecognized until it was too late for self reflection to make a difference.
It's not a great article in the surface but the message has merit.
> I always hated how much teachers would drill symbolism and literary device analysis into you in school but then I come across threads like this I wonder whether we aren’t focusing on it enough.
I feel, the inability to treat the glass solely as a symbol, is more related to the form of writing.
This sort of confessional writing, it does not tolerate symbolism well because the author is also the protagonist. The symbolism of the glass, in this article, it's more of a protective screen. The author explicitly writes the glass wasn't really the issue, but then we never actually learn about all these other things that were the real issue. Like, dedicate some paragraphs to it dude, don't leave us hanging! In the writing, he's a kindly, oblivious man. We get hints that he wasn't. Disrespect, what's that exactly, that can be downright cruel, where on the spectrum are we here? Beyond the glass, honestly, there's nothing. Like, was he rolling his eyes when she was talking to her. "communication issues", what's that, did they share meals in silence, or where they fighting like cats and dogs, but then making tender love to make up, what's going on?!?! Tell me. The glass really is the thing here. (Maybe his book has more, I don't know). For all intents and purposes, yeah, it was the glass. The reader can only understand their divorce in vague generalities, and since we get nothing more than the glass, it feels more like a distraction. Also, like come on, we need to hear from his ex-wife!
Symbolism in fiction, functions more like an anchor, around which the mind can wander, which invites us to contemplate. And we can, because, honestly, right or wrong, it doesn't matter. There's less of this need to get it right, make sense of it. The motives of the author are just less important, a reader has less of this curiosity or nosyness, in the sense, that we're tickled to take a peek behind the curtain.
I think, if the article were written as fiction, say a short-story, that glass would be great symbolism, and there would be less this need to come up with solutions, or try to pinpoint who was right and wrong, ... But in that article, I don't know, it feels more like a dodge.
It's because the hook is a real bad example. He's not entirely in the wrong on that one. While I will trust his judgment that there were other problems and that he was in the wrong in those, the glass was one where she should have given in.
Friend, the point of it being a “small” issue is that no one will ever be entirely wrong or right. Any issue that someone brings up will be viewed as trivial by many ppl, the point is to respect your partner enough to find a way to compromise.
Sometimes compromising requires thinking far outside the box. For example, buy this guy a in-home water bottle that he alone is responsible for cleaning. Give it a permanent place in a cupboard. Boom boom everyone compromised and showed the other one “I care about your needs”
It's mostly an aesthetic choice. The only benefit of the glass being in the dishwasher instead of by the sink is that "it looks nicer to her". There's no real harm being done and it does not affect her in the slightest. And there's a real deep, dark, ugly rabbit hole to go down if one wants to suggest that it affects and harms her by "being unsightly".
The more I think about it, the more I think the author is trying to be deep by being shallow. Taking something we consider mundane and transforming it into a grand life lesson. Creating a parable. The problem is that he chose something that doesn't work. I, for one, will not be buying his book.
There are examples though, were this death by a thousand pin-pricks is a attempt at "takeover" aka expecting to be in control of everything your partner does and using emotional blackmail should he not retreat at once.
At the end of this, you become a stranger in your own life, programmed into the small details by somebody else, who then leaves you because you are "boring and predictable".
To be completely honest, I got the point, but I don't think this is good writing. Did anyone learn anything from the article? Probably not. Did anyone do any deeper thinking because of the article? Probably not.
I did some reflection. I agree it's not a great article but I read it and did a self assessment. I don't ever want my marriage to end and people sharing their failures gives me another thing to consider, in hopes that I can avoid a similar outcome.
I am not so sure. In my case, my wife is the "messy" one: Opens a can and leaves the lid in the kitchen table, leaves used clothes all around the bedroom and bathroom, etc. We've been married for 14 years, and the first years it was a constant struggle for me to try to change her behaviour. We even have gotten to the point of raising the divorce card in discussions related to this.
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.
Sorry to be solutioning here, and I'd imagine you've already tried this after 14 years, but sometimes changing habits can be solved with things like buying an extra laundry basket. It's seems like a small thing, but these adjustments can provide the accessibility that make it simpler to meet in the middle. In the kitchen, we keep a mini-waste bin on our countertop for used coffee grinds. It works for us.
1000% this, it's my default solution for most things. I always make sure "change the environment" can't work before I go to "change behavior" (mine or others')
Trash accumulating somewhere? That spot needs a trash can.
Clothes? That spot needs a hamper/basket.
Spot in the yard keeps getting messed up due to walking or cars going off the driveway there? Put down some stone.
Behavior modification (for some sorts of things, anyway) should be a last resort because it probably won't work, and requires ongoing effort. Fix the environment, and it's done.
Exactly. Although GP's solution of learning to live with this particular habit is great and necessary, changing the environment is almost always necessary to change behavior. Always look so see what simple change will encourage the behavior you want.
> 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.
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.
Ouch. The article resonated with me and seems to indicate the author has gotten some good personal growth out of this, but the final sentence kind of killed me: "I could have carefully avoided leaving evidence that I would always choose my feelings and my preferences over hers."
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.
I've had to take advice that saved my relationship. It doesn't feel natural but that's what changing behaviour is about. Never stop worshipping your wife. Remember she's your Queen. You put her on a pedestal and would do ANYTHING for her. Climb a tree for honey, slay a dragon. Suddenly making a cuppa or cleaning a cup is easy right? I did ask a friend once what he did when his wife started tidying and nagging and he said he just joined in tidying. If I'm too busy to help I often transfer a large sum of money to her account without telling her. Or maybe later I go out to the garden or garage and sort that out. I remember there's a bit in the classic book 'Men are from Mars" about just the thing the author is talking about and he really could have done with reading that book. I read it about 20 years ago but it had the bit on 'relationship points'. Now he thought his salary was worth 50 sex pts. But really it was only 1. and the dirty dish was worth -1. So he was left on 0 pts.
I’m tired of the whole bread winner argument. I understand that there are situations where this fits (i.e immigrants who don’t speak the language or are tied to a draconian visa) but if you marry into someone to have them cleaning your flat you should probably get settled for something better.
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.
If you took care the dishes she would find sth else to complain about. It is usually a deeper issue that is expressed in whatever minor plausible thing it finds around. You don't need clean dishes to expresses your love in a relationship that is built on mutual undertanding, respect and eventually love.
In a relationship, you often get to chose between being right _or_ being happy.
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.
I think a lot of fights (at least based on my experience) are really issues in how the spouses are dealing with other things that bleed into a minor dispute, and also how the other spouse deals with that potential escalation.
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
I stopped doing dishes and generally cleaning around the house years ago. To start, I started in the restaurant business as a kid and my idea of cleaning a kitchen is wildly different than hers. While I was in restaurants she was in the USAF having other people do things like clean.
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.
I don't think it's possible to pinpoint why relationships dissolve. Sure, there is always "something," be it dirty dishes, a certain habit, etc. But usually, these are context-specific complaints, meaning the person complaining about e.g. dirty dishes could be happy in a totally different relationship where their partner also didn't do the dishes. Ultimately relationships break down because one or both people stop trying. Caring about the dishes is a symptom of, or response to, relationship apathy, not the cause.
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.
One big issue I rarely see mentioned is how much worse modern society is for long-term couples, in many ways. While this doesn't give us any direct actionable advice, accepting it reframes the struggle of the couple against the world instead of just the classic "work on yourself", and that can lead to better cooperation.
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".
A good therapist is worth it. Over 20 years of marriage, a variety of issues to cope with between us (kids etc), and difficulty discussing difficult topics. Currently doing an hour a month (or so) with a (good for us) therapist, and stuff is discussed in those sessions that doesn't otherwise get addressed. Work in progress.
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 would walk away too. It is not about the glass. It is about ‘not being heard’. It is highly disrespectful. It is about his upbringing and a peek into his entire attitude towards others. It is also about his parents marriage or other marriages he has witnessed..and how he is trying to mimic it..because that’s what children do..internalize and imprint what they witness. I am reminded of Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”.
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.
Woah, so, its his fault his wife was finding things he does, and trying to change his mostly thoughtless behaviors all the time?
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.
When I flatted back in the day, it became apparent that different people have different 'cleanliness thresholds' and that too high or too low compared to everyone else was going to be bad news. Luckily my wife and I have similar levels, and neither of us would see a glass by the dishwasher as some morbid sign of a lack of love. But lots of people would and do apparently, and I'm not surprised.
I'm a software engineer, i make decent money. Every two weeks I pay $125 to have a cleaning lady come by and clean the house. She is self employed and very nice.
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
So strange to read this as marriage hasn't really registered as thing for me in several years. I'm not sure what the case for it today is. Reading about guys saying if only they had been less of themselves, they might have avoided getting left just leaves me with a bad taste. I'm of the mind that we should take responsibility for our own happiness, and explicitly give others the opportunity to do the same for themselves.
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.
I'll just put this here, there is a book which describes exactly what the author realized too late. It's better to learn these things things via reading than in retrospect. I realized I have "Difficult Conversations" many times a day. I wish I had read it years ago, it's a relationship changer.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
There’s always going to be a glass issue. Communicating the issue, being open to listening, knowing what to let go and what matters is what makes or breaks things. There’s no algorithm to this, relationships are founded on love, which is an emotion that has little to do with intellect or logic. So for these things ultimately love is the answer.
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?
It's often the little things that determine the course of a relationship. For example, I took my bike into a shop I hadn't used before. They fixed the back tire, but failed to place the cap on the tube. I may seem like a little thing, but stems leak a bit, so it's important. I'm never going back to them.
Or here’s a different theory. Maybe this couple weren’t actually in love anymore and just didn’t want to come to terms with it, because there was a confounding variable, namely, a child.
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.
There is a lot to learn from the article. It is easier to be right, and harder to show compassion.
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.
I cannot fathom why the kitchen sink is so important, to so many women. This topic and its potential bad outcome; divorce comes up in a lot of places, not just this post. It is like this is a megatrend or at least a pattern.
Dishwashers have not really caught on in India. I wash my plate or glass in the sink immediately when I'm done. I've done this for my entire life and I find it strange that people postpone it for later. Why would you?
1. It's far easier to populate a dishwasher after feeding e.g. a family of four than it is to immediately wash all of the utensils, dishes, bowls, pots, and pans. This task is usually delegated to one member of a household in the US.
2. "Contrary to popular belief, the dishwasher is designed to be more efficient than the way most of us handwash dishes. According to Energy Star, certified dishwashers use less than four gallons per cycle. The sink uses four gallons of water every two minutes. But just how many dishes do you need to make the dishwasher a more water efficient choice? In a recent study, Cascade found that the average person spends 15 seconds handwashing a dish. In that time, the sink uses half a gallon of water. That’s why running your dishwasher with as few as eight dishes is all it takes to save water."
Think of all the wear and tear on the dishwasher because you open and close it every time you use a dish or glass. I'll bet dishwasher manufacturers are pleased by this sort of thing.
I just referenced back to this article when I got a text from my frustrated wife. I was able to give her a well articulated reply based on this. This was super valuable for me.
As an engineer, the much worse scenario is dirty dishes sitting in the sink while the dishwasher is considered "full" but is actually at some fraction of its capacity.
Marriage is like kids. What does it expect? Blood.
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.
Please omit hostile swipes from your HN comments, even when another comment doesn't make sense or feels off somehow. The swipe aspect only makes everything worse. You can express your question in a more open-minded way.
It's hard to judge without any additional background, but it seems a case of general neglect. The wine glass being a mere symbol of it.
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.
After reading the comments, I have come to the conclusion that either HN commenters are bad readers, or the author is a bad writer. Perhaps we can also fault the Atlantic headline writer (though I should point out that the <title> tag is different from the headline in the article itself, and using that instead of the <title> tag for the HN post might have reduced confusion).
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?
Ooh, we could write a ML app to categorize plates and precious china and recommend a way to pack your dishwasher and like even provide house-dependent subsets of recommended packing (collect bonus points!) and this is so fucking magical!
It seems from the article that the real reason is that the guy is extremely dull. I don’t think I could live with a person who makes bullet-point list of reasons why he has left a glass near a sink.
This reads really pathetic to me. If that's really why she left and not simply that she found a higher value male or something that's just plain crazy and she's doing him a favor.
There's really a lot in this essay, and I'll forget or get before before I provide all the commentary I might want to.
> 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.
I've been through a shitty marriage that ended badly. I divorced her, vowing to never get married again.
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.
It always bothers me when people try to frame a relationship as almost a work arrangement, and discuss it as a transaction that needs to be optimized. That sounds so cold.
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.
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.