There is only one step from tension in relationships to a quarrel, and sometimes it is very easy to take it …
Imagine a banal family scene. He returns home after a hard day. She is cooking dinner in a very bad mood. “Why are you here so late?” – “And what do you think? What am I having fun? Who do you think I work for? How tired of living with a woman who, every time I come home, sits with a displeased mine. “What do you think I don’t work?”
Irritation grows on both sides, and each reacts mirror-like to the attacks of the other: irony is met with irony, hostility with hostility, rage with rage. Striving for equality is a wonderful principle in marital relations, but it breeds competition, competition, struggle. The danger is rooted in rivalry, not so much in the division of responsibilities, but in posing the most painful questions: who invests more in the life of a couple, who is the best parent, who gives more importance to sex – in general, who loves more and better …
The viability of a couple depends on how easily they move from one type of relationship to another.
Since ancient times, marital relations have been built on the principle of mutual complementation. Everyone occupied certain places in the hierarchy prescribed by society and developed different, but adapted to each other, styles of behavior. Each agreed on what place the other occupied, the rules and roles were fixed, the spouses equally assessed their relationship.
Today, couples are looking for a way to complement each other that matches their inner aspirations and is different from the lifestyle of their parents and grandparents. They constantly oscillate between this need to be different and the desire for symmetry. Symmetrical relationships are based on equality, and if the partners quarrel over the place of the future vacation or scattered shoes, they are actually figuring out the role and place of each in a pair. Such relationships are unstable, but able to develop; these couples develop their own rules.
Other relationships are also possible when partners correspond (or pretend to correspond) to traditional functions: a male protector and a female child, a motherly caring spouse and a windy husband. Such relations are stable, but little suited for development. The viability of a couple depends on how easily it moves from one option to another.
And on whether she can abandon the confrontation in order to start negotiations. Rigid attachment to one of the types of behavior destroys relationships, creating a constantly conflicting – or, conversely, lifeless and monotonous environment.