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

Sounds like a dream…

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.

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.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Love-Expanded-Discover/dp/0735...

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 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.