Is there a happy marriage without quarrels? It’s probably hard to imagine. Unspoken problems are more dangerous for a relationship than showing feelings and talking openly. So what are we really fighting about, arguing about scattered socks or dirty dishes?
“My husband never cleans up his plates and cups. We have a dishwasher, all you need to do is load it in there. But he doesn’t do that either, as a result the sink is always full, and it infuriates me. She said a hundred times – as if she did not hear. Does he care that I’m uncomfortable? What’s the relationship? Inna complains.
Hidden motives
Do we always fight about what we think? Family therapists believe that the topic of conflict is often transferred to another area. So, disputes over money can actually arise against the background of problems in intimate life. And kitchen household quarrels mask old grievances and, for example, jealousy. In this case, focusing on one topic was a way to avoid discussing a larger issue.
Inna’s husband spent very little time with her, preferring work, friends or computer games. Inna was jealous and was afraid that they had stopped loving her. But she was not ready to discuss it with him, to reveal the problems, so the conflict was moved to the kitchen.
On the other hand, for the husband, reproaches became a trigger that awoke unpleasant childhood memories – he grew up with his older sister, who until a certain age “educated” her brother with the help of cuffs. Arguments over who would do the dishes were frequent, and a hint of coercion turned on the grown-up man’s sense of resistance. He went into a “deaf defense”.
“Perfect marriage”
When creating a family, we are often guided by idealized ideas from books and films about beautiful love, in which people live in perfect harmony and never quarrel. However, such relationships are dead. We are humans and cannot live without emotions.
And if negative feelings are not shown, they are suppressed. And by suppressing anger, resentment, irritation or fear, we do not leave ourselves a resource in order to fully and freely live joy, gratitude, passion, finally. Without allowing ourselves to be angry with a partner, we cannot allow him to be angry with us. And if he still shows anger, we will be indignant – but how dare he?!
The idealization of love and marriage is dangerous because it leads away from reality. In the pursuit of external well-being and beautiful photos on social networks, we can miss something really important. True intimacy means open, trusting relationships. And this means that we allow ourselves to live all the feelings that arise for each other. And talk about them, and about the problems that they reveal.
If we are angry with a loved one, this does not mean that love is dead. But it is important to find eco-friendly ways of expressing emotions for both. The risk to relationships lies precisely in withholding and suppression. Unexpressed anger can turn into a “bosom stone”, which we throw anyway – but sometimes in a completely different situation, to the partner’s surprise. As in that joke, I wanted to ask for salt to pass, but escaped: “You ruined my whole life!”
What to do?
The most obvious conclusion is to ask yourself the question of what this quarrel is really about in the event of “kitchen” conflicts. But the answer is not always easy to find.
“Ostrich politics”, when we hide from the awareness of problems and are not ready to be honest even with ourselves, is common to everyone at times. Therefore, first you need to calm down and ask yourself the question: what scares me, worries, worries me most of all in this quarrel?
Then you can try freewriting writing practice. Set aside 15 minutes, find a quiet place and sit down with a pen and paper (you need to write by hand, this is important). Further, without giving yourself time to stop the stream of consciousness, just mechanically write down everything that comes to mind for 5-7 minutes. This is also called the free writing technique. No need to correct errors and omissions, edit and improve.
When you’re done writing, notice what thoughts you’re left with, leaving others on paper. Then you can read what is written, perhaps there will be a clue what problem you really care about. Perhaps this has nothing to do with the partner at all, but is projected onto your contact with him.
And finally, it is very important to be able to talk with each other – to get to the bottom of the matter together. If things have gone too far and your socks and dirty dishes are hitting your marriage, it might be time to see a family therapist.