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A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#311
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define ‘intimacy’.

intimacy is very different culturally. but generally it is any physical interaction with your partner. to give you an example, i have heard from an indian friend that they would not touch their husband in front of their kids. no holding hands, hugging or kissing of any kind. i don't know if that is common in indian culture. i am not trying to generalize. the point that matters is that i feel very restrained in how i…

It seems like a generalization. India has 1.4 billion people.

House help isn’t around 24 hours/day. Just like you wouldn’t be intimate with your partner in front of your boss, I guess it’s the same with someone you employ?

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#312
post #69

Earlier 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.

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 si…

you have to continuously work on the relationship to keep each other compatible.

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#313
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked from home for many years (before it was popular) and I had a family too. This kind of things happened to me and my wife a lot, hours of arguing while I should have been working. You can work through it, you just have to care enough. We no longer have arguments longer than maybe 20 minutes now. It can just be personality types and where you are in life. But a valuable person in your life? You work through tha…

You can't always work through emotional dysregulation issues (inability to return to baseline after six hours of argument being one indicator of such issues) by just talking it out. Sometimes you can, sometimes it's associated with something more fundamental like a personality disorder where professional help needs to be involved.

[deleted]

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#314

This is how I read this. The wife may have long ago brought up some argument that was "banned". In other words - bread winner conversations. Bread winners often have this trait: I make all the money, and I can only do that by working my butt off. So you need to take care of all the other things. No questions. This is why the dishes is such a huge deal now: Since the ACTUAL conversation is banned (by the man) the only…

This is an interesting point of view. I don't know enough about their relationship to know whether that's what was going on. But, I do want to point out something else in your comment: > She now has to wash and put away the glass. No she doesn't. She can just leave it there. She can leave her own glasses there, too. The pressure to keep the counter clean isn't coming from the husband. He doesn't give a damn how many…

> it's not that the husband expects his wife to do all the chores, it's that he doesn't actually believe the chores need to be done.

This doesn't get said enough. It also not just wife vs husband - we all have different standards and it's a lesson that needs to be learned that usually someone isn't being malicious it's just not easy to force yourself to notice something if it's fine by your standards but not by your partner's.

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#316

This is how I read this. The wife may have long ago brought up some argument that was "banned". In other words - bread winner conversations. Bread winners often have this trait: I make all the money, and I can only do that by working my butt off. So you need to take care of all the other things. No questions. This is why the dishes is such a huge deal now: Since the ACTUAL conversation is banned (by the man) the only…

Would this situation have been solved if both partners were working ?

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#317

About 10 years ago, I had a internship at Newell Rubbermaid. As part of the experience, the entire group of interns across all the brands got to have lunch with the CEO and basically ask him anything we wanted. At some point, someone asked about his biggest regret. We all expected some business blunder, but he said that he was offered an executive position by Kraft to lead their Asian segment, and that his wife reall…

Reminded me of The Office. "It's not real until your wife is on board."

No post body was provided.

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#318

This is how I read this. The wife may have long ago brought up some argument that was "banned". In other words - bread winner conversations. Bread winners often have this trait: I make all the money, and I can only do that by working my butt off. So you need to take care of all the other things. No questions. This is why the dishes is such a huge deal now: Since the ACTUAL conversation is banned (by the man) the only…

I read this and feel like I'm the bad guy and I don't understand how. I'm the breadwinner. I pay 100% of the bills, excluding the 'I went to buy potato chips and ice cream' I WFH so I also tend to do the majority of chores. Which when I get burnt out or get sick I don't get as many chores done and the house goes to shit. Only ending up punishing myself really. I also have to 100% of the time decide what's for dinner…

This sounds like the overfunctioning & underfunctioning relationship pattern. It's not fun to be on either side.

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#319
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relat…

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/24/among-u-s-c...

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.

Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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).

[0] https://matthewfray.com/2013/07/03/an-open-letter-to-shitty-...

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