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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
> 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'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.
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 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.
> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
"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
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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
> 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!).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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"
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.
"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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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’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 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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 531 ms ] threadThe speaker talks about the "Price of Admission" when it comes to relationships.
We consider these "minor irritations" as the Price of Admission :)
The willingness to listen and change yourself is what signals your love. Because everything else is much easier.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t think of a better goal than to be with somebody so compatible that you have minimal friction and minimal issues.
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.
If you are married to the person surely the goal should be to find some middle ground.
Then they express gratitude, and before you know it, you’ll get a favor like that back on something you really care about.
That is not at all guaranteed. Personally, I'd by surprised if it were commonly correct.
As others have said in other comments here, "you can't keep score". I'm still working on making sense of this too.
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.
Do you keep changing yourself to meet their every whim, maybe they should just let it go, it's just a glass?
The only settings that come to mind where this level of "adherence" is maintained are prisons or abusive households where everyone is in fear of punishment, and where punishments can even be handed out by the warden for no reason at all.
I don't know that it's one-sided. The author may have asked their spouse to similarly adjust behavior in various ways; if they were amenable to that, but didn't get a corresponding response on their own pet peeves, that'd be an imbalance that'd stew over time.
> For example, what if you were just about to put the glass in the dishwasher but the doorbell rings?
Doing it very occasionally and doing it all the time are likely to have substantially different impacts on the spouse.
I 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.
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...
People in this thread are latching on to it for the same reason the author used it; it is not clear how else to talk about the larger issue.
Different interepratations of the prototypical example leads to different interperatations of the larger issue.
If you must use examples to communicate your point, the normal solution to this is to use many different examples.
It's not a great article in the surface but the message has merit.
Thank you! I knew there had to be a better word to describe it but all I could think of was "exemplary" and that didn't feel quite right.
> 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.
In that case there’s two options:
1. The author is not mentioning more consequential problems that happened in their marriage, or doesn’t know the real reason their marriage ended.
2. There were no more consequential problems and the author is blaming themselves for what seems like an unreasonable spouse.
Why is that the case?
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.
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”
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".
Except when the aliens are ransacking Earth for its water. See the documentaries V [0] and Battle: Los Angeles [1] for more on this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(1983_miniseries)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle:_Los_Angeles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivion_(2013_film)
At what point is a priest blessing them all?
Or it was the daughter, who was constantly referred to as "angel".
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.
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 found Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication extremely helpful in learning to dig into what's under the surface of incidents like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
A thousand times this, yes.
I may start giving it to people as an engagement present, now that you say that...
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.
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.
this makes me think about the book "the five love languages". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages
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 tried. She simply said it was controlling and couldn't explain it further.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd love to see the data on this.
For example I found this from around 2014, it isn't strictly about dual income households, but there is data out there for that:
> Around the world, women spend two to ten times more time on unpaid care work than men.
Source: https://www.oecd.org/Dev/Development-Gender/Unpaid_Care_Work...
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.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/25/for-america...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-househ...
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.
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.
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.
(Mostly joking. But only mostly.)
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor
https://behavioralscientist.org/how-couples-share-cognitive-...
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/what-is-the-mental-lo...
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
https://smile.amazon.com/Marry-Him-Case-Settling-Enough/dp/0... (Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough)
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23687614M/Marry_him
The Atlantic piece that was the genesis for the book: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-h...
https://jezebel.com/lori-gottliebs-marry-him-was-always-a-ca...
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.
This is worth reiterating.
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:
-Thread with humane advice for the original poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1qcomq/anyon...
-Thread with not-so-humane advice that I personally disagree with: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/oq7so/after_...
-Final perspective to establish a pattern, with the rule of threes: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/67df9t/i_29f...
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.
But I want to address something you said as well, "TLDR Women are more picky than Men".
This is highly age-dependent... On average:
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.
A 40 year old woman is still a bit picky on a dating site but is starting to realize that things are vastly different than they used to be.
A 47 year old woman is generally willing to date just about anyone that messages her. Or she’s given up on dating.
The hot take you've presented is useless at best, and possibly even harmful to view people from such a single dimensional lens based on their age.
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?
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.
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.
> 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!
Sincerely,
Metadat
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I see some things saying it was common among certain immigrant groups before 1900 (it doesn't say whether it was a majority):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranged_marriage
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
My point is, some tasks may not be equally suited for both people in the relationship.
Locating, finding, and managing interaction with appropriate help is labor, too.
And it's often a better way of getting the job done, even if the immediately obvious monetary cost is higher.
But not the same kind. And really it's minimal once you find a good shop.
"And it's often a better way of getting the job done, even if the immediately obvious monetary cost is higher."
How so? If I can save $500-2k on maintenance costs every year, that's significant.
Yes, that's an important time efficiency. Expending more effort on the same results is not a virtue.
> If I can save $500-2k on maintenance costs every year, that's significant.
Yes, but possibly less significant than the other benefits you could bring the partnership by not spending time on that.
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?
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.
I don't know if my cooking or programming skills are more insulted. ;)
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
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)
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.
Yes. She doesn't/can't cook. When she shops she buys only the most expensive name brands. She buys only frozen/instant/pre-made meal items.
"does your wife understand the effort you go through? does she respect that? does she want it?"
She sort of understands, but impossible to completely under the circumstances. She sort of respects. She does not want to cook.
"if you are both happy with the arrangement"
For the most part, yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not for the truth of the point or being correct, which is impossible to determine, but for the generation of what comes next.
Many people fall into the trap of ignoring the desired behavior and chastising the undesired behavior.
Because the desired behavior is so normal and benign to one party. But its clearly not to the other party.
If the glass was in the dish washer or washed and put away, I could imagine many couples experiencing no conditioning towards repeating that behavior.
> It was about consideration. About the pervasive sense that she was married to someone who did not respect nor appreciate her.
And he says as much in the article. It's frustrating to read all these comments that are clearly written without reading the entire thing!
Perhaps I'm misreading your comment, but in my experience feeling that you are doing most of the compromising can easily lead to resentment. Looking at things as a zero-sum game in which you are either compromising or getting things your way at a certain ratio is intrinsically competitive.
In my opinion, both in marriage and in other social settings, relationships grow stronger when both feel that they are working together towards a common goal that satisfies all parties. This takes more work than a simple "your way or my way" approach, but it leads to all parties feeling seen and heard (because they are!).
If youre happy with the life youve built together and love your partner theres no way you leave it over something like this.
I dont buy the "it shows disrespect" argument.
Shes going to be with somebody else in a years time.
But when youre in a bad situation and the other person isn't giving you a good reason to leave sometimes you have to get creative.
Ive done it, and its been done to me.
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).
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.
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.
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).
[0] https://matthewfray.com/2013/07/03/an-open-letter-to-shitty-...
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
https://matthewfray.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i...
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.
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
The id and the superego have to be in balance.
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.
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.
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.
This. I was thinking the same thing too. Shouldn’t there be a law against this?
If I were his ex-wife, I would have sued his sorry ass for airing marriage laundry. But that’s just me.
Really? You can’t write about anyone else? How do newspapers exist? Biographies?
Did this guy's ex-wife agree to be a subject of a blog, articles in major publications, and a book??
> I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt.
The author correctly identified the underlying dysfunctional belief[1], but fails to address it head on. Instead he finds ways to thematically "care more".
> I could have communicated my love and respect for her by not leaving tiny reminders for her each day that she wasn’t considered.
While, not untrue, without addressing the root-cause ie: the dysfunctional belief, there will continue to be an underlying friction between the internally held belief and the behaviors he wants to perform. This can work in the short-term, but only by confronting the dysfunctional belief can a long-term change be made[2]. Presumably there were many other manifestations of his dysfunctional belief in his marriage that were not listed but which played out in similar ways.
1. From this list of dysfunctional beliefs apply to more than only parent-child relationships http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/dysfunctiona...
2. Based on only the information available in the article. Inferences based on a limited amount of information are always subject to what the author reveals and no more.
Anyway, women will even journal this shit for the lawyer's benefit. There are guidebooks sold on the matter.
Why is it necessary for the other person to give you a "good" reason to leave? Why not just be honest and say "this is not for me, I'm leaving"?
but usually the other person will ask "what did I do wrong?".
and you can be really honest and possibly hurtful; " i dont find you attractive anymore.", "i think i can do better", etc...
or you could ramble on about the glass by the sink.
either one is going to make the other person feel bad
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
She leave him by anything but that.
That was the tip of the iceberg in a big comfort zone.
Details do matter, in that point the author is right but the article is a huge expression of rationalization to cover up deeper issues.
If she would be happy to have him, do you think she would f* care about dishes? She would be proactive and happy to help by cleaning that herself. And offering to cook and more.
Sorry but the text is not defensible in any possible angle. That publication is nothing but a glorification of superficiality disguised as an allegedly clever insight.
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.
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.
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"
This week, I've been reading "How we love" [0]. I'm only on the first chapter, but it has resonated with me:
> Every marriage has nagging problems calling for our attention. Many people end up thinking their relationship is difficult because they married the wrong person. But the fact that many people are on to their second and third marriages proves that no marriage is tension free. Sometimes our marriages seem to run fairly smoothly—until we hit a crisis or face difficult circumstances. Stress always makes underlying problems more apparent.
The authors talk about "core behaviours" (such as leaving the glasses by the sink in the article) that trigger conflict in a relationship:
> A core pattern is the predicable way you and your spouse react to each other that leaves each of you frustrated and dissatisfied. Some are married a few years before it is apparent, but sooner or later couples can readily identify the same old place where they get stuck. Maybe it’s the same complaints that come up again and again without ever getting resolved or a familiar pattern of fighting, no matter what the topic.
They then tie in your behaviours to how you were treated in childhood and I believe (I haven't gotten there yet) help you understand? alleviate? the sources of conflict.
> Marriage is the most challenging relationship you will ever have, and to think otherwise is to live in denial. When you are with someone day in and day out, you can’t hide. Your weaknesses become quite visible, and old feelings from the distant past are stirred. The physical nearness of your mate triggers old feelings as you look to him or her to meet many of the needs your parents were originally supposed to meet.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Love-Expanded-Discover/dp/0735...
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.
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.
I've had some version of this argument 1000's of times and its ended a lot of relationships I had pre marriage.
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.
"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.
Sometimes you cannot win. But it's still a game worth playing: being married is the best thing that ever happened to me.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
If you've read pretty much any book on communications (not limited to relationships), they'll have an example similar to this. And they never suggest "compromise" as a solution (at least not until you break through the communication problem).
This is literally a "textbook" communication problem.
Here is quote from the article: "Hundreds, maybe thousands of times, my wife tried to communicate that something was wrong."
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?
> 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".
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
But it always baffles us whenever we spend time with another couple (including our own parents) and they are so short with each other. As you say, harsh.
We come away from those gatherings wondering, is this really how people live? Seems to be.
The 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 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.
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.
that doesn't mean it's all his fault, but we don't know what her attempts to resolve the issue were.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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)
"Treat each other's needs and priorities as equal to our own"
If you don't think it's hard, try it. I don't mean just respecting each other's time and attention in a general sense, which BTW I've come to believe is a good rule for all interactions. I mean treating their habits and preferences and pet peeves, no matter how silly they seem to you, as seriously as your own. Also, no double standards anywhere in your life together. No matter how exhausted or aggravated you are yourself at that moment. Consistently doing that takes a lot more self discipline than most people have. I can't say we've always succeeded, but after 26 years I'd say it has been worth the effort.
N.B. I'm not saying you shouldn't have your own preferences and habits and pet peeves. I'm totally not into that "become one person" thing; my wife and I are in fact pretty notoriously independent and happy to do our own separate things e.g. at social gatherings. There will be conflicts between your priorities and theirs. I'm just saying that those conflicts should be resolved starting from a position of equality.
i'd go a step further and say that we each are responsible for each others needs and priorities. at least the important ones. my job is to enable and support your needs and priorities, and your job is to enable and support mine.
your needs are actually more important than my own.
this of course only works if we both understand, agree and respect on what each others needs and priorities are. which requires open communication.
because if you take advantage of me fulfilling your needs while you ignore my needs then the relationship will fail.
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.