One wonders why he didn't just get a dishwasher machine... Very cheap solution compared to divorce!
I think you're being glib but the article mentions a dishwasher.
A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
141–150 of 812 posts
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#142The 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-…
Mostly agree, although:
> 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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#143Earlier 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.
Take the signal from this thread, there are deeper issues at play.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#144There 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…
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 wome…
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#145My 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…
"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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feel free to downvote but please tell me why I am wrong. I legitimately struggle with this as is obviously clear from my tone.
You're wrong because you've bucketed half the global population either because of your blissful ignorance or because your personal anecdotal, likely very limited data and sample size, supports your belief.
I’m sorry but I’m not blissful about it.
Women bad ha ha… not.
What else do I have to go by than my own personal experience? Self help book? You have no idea what weight my sample has given the constant emotional and physical abuse I have to deal with.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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." I'd love to see the data on this.
If you look around for things about "emotional labor" or "unpaid labor". 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...
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#148It always bothers me when people try to frame a relationship as almost a work arrangement, and discuss it as a transaction that needs to be optimized. That sounds so cold.
Marriage / long relationships absolutely do need some compromise, that is an universal fact. There are some things you just have to outgrow and admit that your strong stance on them is not at all important. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn't feel that to be a sacrifice. It did, and still does, feel like I grew as a person.
Another fact: never go to bed grumpy with your partner. And I really do mean NEVER as in "no but-s". Doesn't matter if you haven't slept in 50 hours and did 4 shifts back-to-back and now want to die. No. Go get coffee and water and start talking until you work it out. Never let negative emotions towards the relationship grow inside each of you. Never skip important talks. That is what is I think most important in relationships.
Is that what most people mean when they say "marriage is work from both sides"? I hope so because if not then their definition sounds awfully depressing. But to me it's not work at all; I love my woman and would throw myself in front of a speeding truck to protect her.
Having to communicate extra when we disagree on something does not feel like a sacrifice at all. It feels like investing in the relationship to continue thriving. It doesn't feel like removing harmful weeds from your garden (chore); to me it feels like putting even better soil nutrients and richer water on the plants (nurture). It's chore vs. nurture; to me it feels like the latter. Sometimes it's both at the same time.
As some other commenters alluded to, don't look for a "perfect" partner in the sense of your own bias about what is "perfect". Life and people have millions of ways to surprise you positively. Let some more chaos and randomness in your life and you will be left flabbergasted why didn't you do it sooner.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#149The 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-…
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 pr…
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".
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#150If 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 a…
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."