I thought the marriage vows were "till death do us part".
A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
121–130 of 812 posts
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#122Im 99% sure the wife in this story used the glass as an excuse to get out. 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…
> 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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 highe…
I first want to say that I cringed reading the entire original article.
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#124Share this article with your partner. Ask them: "what are the dishes I'm leaving by the sink?"
But please don't share this with your partner if you fight about the dish by the sink. It will come off like you are rubbing their face in it.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#125Im 99% sure the wife in this story used the glass as an excuse to get out. 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…
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).
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Acting as if the tea was the core of the problem here is a sure way to get nowhere.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd take this even further. Sometimes it's 50/50. Sometimes 60/40, Sometimes 100/0. You just have to comfortable with that's how it is.
Personally I’d rather lose 100% of the disagreement some of time (i.e. 50%) than part (40%, 50%, 60%) of the argument every time.
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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'd take this even further. Sometimes it's 50/50. Sometimes 60/40, Sometimes 100/0. You just have to comfortable with that's how it is.
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"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…
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Acting as if the tea was the core of the problem here is a sure way to get nowhere.
What do you mean?