In the first eighteen months of our marriage my husband and I consistently fought over the same thing over and over again: the dishes, whose turn it was to do them and who was actually going to do them. In most other areas of our life we were united, but in this area, the lines were clearly marked and our most heated debates were sparked over a full sink of dirty dishes.
You see, there were underlying reasons as to why this simple debate over washing the dishes morphed into a minefield and it all has to do with our past.
Each of us, as we go into marriage, has a default idea of what marriage should look, think and act like. We each have our own ideas and expectations as to what marriage should be like. Although we might agree, in theory, that men look after the outside chores and women the inside chores including the role of homemaker and primary at home carer, when we undertake our marriage preparation, the reality is often fraught with assumptions and misconceptions.
My ideas of marriage comes from my parent’s relationship. If you have read my recent post on mummy judgement you will, no doubt, recognise the term procedural memories, because here too they play a huge role in our approach to marriage. We will go into marriage with ideas based on or directly opposed to the main marriage relationship we experienced in our youth. For most of us this will be our own parents but for those in less traditional family situations this could be amongst the extended family or family friends.
In essence, I have ideas about how marriage should and shouldn’t be which are based on my parent’s relationship and my reaction to it, just as my husband has ideas based on his own parent’s relationship and the way they interacted and divided the household labour.
So the crux of the problem was this: my father washed the dishes and my father in law did not. Therefore I expected that my own husband would want to help contribute to household chores in this way, meanwhile my husband couldn’t see why he should have to because his own father was never expected to do that.
While we could agree that we had come from different households I wanted to think that I had come to help him see that helping out around the house was a great act of service, even if that particular love language was not one of our primary ones. Yes, he did help with the dishes, dutifully washing up each night until he could fit no more on the dish drainer but I knew he didn’t like it.
After a couple of months of this regular contribution, my husband purchased a dishwasher and along with my brother in law he installed it on the day it was paid for.
But as I type this post I have to laugh, in an ironic sort of way that, this effort of installing the dishwasher was my hubby’s last real contribution to the whole dirty dishes saga because it is me, not him, who generally loads and unloads it. But that is not the point here, the bigger issue here is the way that small, seemingly insignificant issues, can snowball because there are other underlying causes at the root of the problem.
What things do you find yourself arguing with your husband about the most? Are they seemingly small or over the same thing all the time? And if so what is the real issue here? Are your arguments the result of a perception of an unfair division of labour, or a difference between your perception of marriage and the reality as it has played out?
If you could relate to this post, I’d suggest that there might be a few unresolved issues from your ideas of marriage that might need addressing and believe me, we all have them. Let’s face it, having a look at the quality of our relationship and interactions is the equivalent of having a spring clean. Let the light in, sweep the cobwebs away, and enjoy your marriage as it should be.
And who knows, maybe your husband will end up installing a dishwasher!
Originally posted 2014-09-10 22:19:38.