Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have 1000 things I'd like done that take less than 30 seconds. I don't have 4 hours to do them all.
You probably don't.
When you start out, it might be a lot of items. The question is how often they renew.
A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
481–490 of 812 posts
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoy cooking new stuff. She's completely uninterested in learning.
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…
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)
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't always work through emotional dysregulation issues (inability to return to baseline after six hours of argument being one indicator of such issues) by just talking it out. Sometimes you can, sometimes it's associated with something more fundamental like a personality disorder where professional help needs to be involved.
I just want to point out that it's not just personality disorders that can cause this. There are very real physiological problems that can surface this way, too. For example, some people have adrenaline issues where seemingly minor, or even pleasant things (like running into an old friend at the grocery store), cause a much larger than normal spike of adrenaline. If the person it happens to isn't aware of what's goin…
Wouldn't personality disorders be inseparable from physiological problems ? Is there any particular literature/reference you are basing this on, curious.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#484The most important marriage lesson is: don’t get married. The person you marry is not the person you divorce. You can lose a huge amount of money battling it out even if YOU bend over backwards to be reasonable. If you want to flip a coin to see if you lose ten years of earnings, then marriage is for you.
It's worth it though. Consider the single male life. You will have no friends, because your male friends will all get wives and girlfriends, who will dissuade them from hanging out with you, the weird bachelor. You will be seen as weird at work because all of your coworkers will be married, and people don't like an outlier. So the cost is high, so what? You could get divorced, lose half of everything you own, and hav…
You can be unmarried and be in a relationship. Marriage is bondage. It's primarily a feminine desire of women to seek stability for their offsprings. Men are better off having multiple partners and having shorter relationships. Also as the weird bachelor you don't have to hang out with your coworkers, there is usually far more exciting company available.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#485A lot of folks are misinterpreting this article, or just using it as a jumping off point to get something off their chest. This article is not literally about the dirty dish. It's not even about compromise. Rather, the article is really about having healthy communication with your partner. The author's wife was trying to communicate to him: "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me." But he wasn't hearing it. No…
> The author's wife was trying to communicate to him: "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me."
Too often for me, I have tried to figure out a solution to a problem, when someone was just trying to let me know how they feel.
I think there’s some sort of an analogy around a leaky canoe.
Like: Is the person hoping for a friendly wave, some hints on stopping the leak or for you to get into the canoe and help bail the water out?
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counter question: why do men not recognize that these simple tasks make women feel loved and respected? My own father is the perfect example of a man who cannot deal with these minor irritations. My mother complies with his requests and their relationship is maintained. If you read the article, it's not that the irritation is minor. Of course it's a very small task. The issue is that the (often male) partner nev…
You've been in plenty of relationships, enough even, that you can make the claim that "often male" partners are not able to tolerate minor irritations?
What is this, slut shaming? I'm a man and not the person you replied to. I've had close to a dozen long-term partners and many more short-term ones. This is not uncommon in the western world for men and women.
Everybody gets annoyed by something. Men and women. Couples fight. Most of them a lot. Shit, in my apartment building I hear them fight all the time.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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…
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.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#488A lot of folks are misinterpreting this article, or just using it as a jumping off point to get something off their chest. This article is not literally about the dirty dish. It's not even about compromise. Rather, the article is really about having healthy communication with your partner. The author's wife was trying to communicate to him: "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me." But he wasn't hearing it. No…
communication and compromise and all that stuff is a two way street. I mean this in romantic relationship, society, work relationships, just...everything.
We've come to accept the one who professes "hurt" must always be bowed to. And at first this makes sense. We SHOULD be empathetic to other's pain, suffering, annoyances and irritations and we should try our best to smooth out relations and get along. But this dynamic creates a power imbalance. The one who complains, the one who is slighted is now given control over those they claim slight them. And this power is often abused.
This is the "two way street" part. It's trying not to offend when you speak..but being CHARITABLE when you listen; meaning you interpret the words/actions of someone in the best possible manner, give them the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he worked hard, had moments of stress and liked the dish by the sink? Shouldn't she just let the little stuff go? The point is... if it's always one sided, always one person not letting it go, or always one person not being empathetic to the condition of others.. it's bound to fail.
The whole "you're not wrong but you're an asshole" can go for the one slighted as much as the one not-intending-to-but-doing-so-anyway slighter.
My biggest problem about the author isn't even the content - but the whole thing is phrased the way it is for clickbait bc he's trying to sell a book.
My point is... relationships are about mutual-ism Mutual-ism that exists without having to keep score.
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#489A lot of folks are misinterpreting this article, or just using it as a jumping off point to get something off their chest. This article is not literally about the dirty dish. It's not even about compromise. Rather, the article is really about having healthy communication with your partner. The author's wife was trying to communicate to him: "when you do X, I feel like Y, and it hurts me." But he wasn't hearing it. No…
He dismissed her feelings, she did communicate that it annoyed her but he thought "it shouldn't annoy her, it's really not a big deal". He tried to reason about her feelings from his own and came to the conclusion that he was right and she shouldn't feel the way she did. And that kind of thinking surely doesn't stop with dishes. He must have done that on all aspects of their relationship
Re: A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's coming from an expectation of femininity that she's internalized. This is a sexist assumption which denies the woman individual agency. One person in a relationship having a higher standard for cleanliness than the other isn’t necessarily the result of some society-wide conditioning. There are plenty of very tidy men and more relaxed women out there in the wide world. And plenty of relationships where both par…
I've never heard of men complaining about their female partners being untidy with household things except in the case where they simply do nothing (and that's rare), is that common where you are. My father did all the washing up in our house growing up, and mum did most of the cooking, but he never once annotated me for leaving dirty dishes whilst my mother regularly would complain. Almost every married woman I know…
I am have found that since I started working from home due to covid, a neat house is much more important to me. It makes me anxious being in a house all day that is a mess. And I have become the one who bugs my wife to please pick up after herself more.
I wonder if women traditionally spending more time at home is the cause of this gender difference.