7 ms·

Im 99% sure the wife in this story used the glass as an excuse to get out. If youre happy with the life youve built together and love your partner theres no wa

• treis 5y ago
  Projecting a lot, I feel like this guy is just a narcissist. Kind of making it all about him but in a way that doesn't portray him in a truly negative light. Also, guessing his ex-wife probably doesn't want a book about her divorce to be part of the national chatter.
  • agota 5y ago
    That's my question: Did this guy's ex-wife agree to be a subject of a blog, articles in major publications, and a book??
  • raydev 5y ago
    Looks like you didn't read the article in full?
    • treis 5y ago
      I did. Is there a particular point you're trying to make here?
      • raydev 5y ago
        He explicitly talks about his failures at the end. I don't think a narcissist would get that far. Although you did say you're projecting, so maybe this is not useful.
        • treis 5y ago
          He talks about his failures in a way that minimizes his failings. There's nothing wrong with him. If only he knew this one simple trick then he'd have a perfect marriage! Even if his overall thesis is correct, I bet you that his ex would not cite the glass as the top example. There's probably much worse stories that make him look like a giant asshole.
  • jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    [..] Also, guessing his ex-wife probably doesn't want a book about her divorce to be part of the national chatter.[..] This. I was thinking the same thing too. Shouldn’t there be a law against this? If I were his ex-wife, I would have sued his sorry ass for airing marriage laundry. But that’s just me.
    • op00to 5y ago
      No, there should not be a law about this. What possible reason would there be for being prevented by law to talk about your life? When is it OK to talk, and when is it not?
      • jelliclesfarm 5y ago
        Because it is defamation. Anyone can talk about their lives, but when you start talking about someone else without their permission to make money..I am actually pretty sure there is a already a law against it.
        • op00to 5y ago
          It’s only defamation if the statement is false and you can prove some sort of harm was done. Really? You can’t write about anyone else? How do newspapers exist? Biographies?
          • jelliclesfarm 5y ago
            This is a marriage. They are not celebrities. He is profiting from the dissolution of a marriage with a one sided narrative.
            • agota 5y ago
              Him monetizing his divorce like that is disturbing if the wife didn't agree to this.
• causi 5y ago
  Yes. I've seen far more "looking for an excuse" divorces than not.
• hn_user82179 5y ago
  He digs into his marriage a lot more in later blog posts: https://matthewfray.com/an-open-letter-to-shitty-husbands/ https://matthewfray.com/an-open-letter-to-shitty-husbands/. I don't think she used it as an excuse at all, but he's more using this one frequent occurrence as a metaphor for the marriage.
  • giantg2 5y ago
    To be honest, it feels like a lot of the descriptions of the volumes on that page are strawmen or cherry picked bad examples. Nobody gets divorced for leaving a dish by the sink. They might get divorced because they just don't do anything around the house (aka unequal distribution of work/chores).
    • hn_user82179 5y ago
      Oh, 100%. I think the author just picks out specific examples because it’s easier to visualize that than general unequal distribution of work.
    • brimble 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure people absolutely do get divorced because they disagree about how to handle several trivial things. Those can be insidious. To the one annoyed by the status quo, it can feel like the other person doesn't care about them. To the other, it can feel like their partner's trying to micro-manage a bunch of little things that barely even matter, and that they're "losing" because they find fewer of their partner's habits irritating enough to make a stink over.
    • aidenn0 5y ago
      In TFA he says it wasn't about the dish. He also strongly implies that it's not about not doing things around the house. It was that for all things that he considered unimportant, he treated as unimportant. Even if his wife said they were important to her. To him, a single glass by the sink was no big deal if there was no company. She didn't want the glass by the sink. Him refusing to even consider a compromise here was communicating "what you think is important doesn't matter." My wife is one of those people that thrives on a regular bedtime schedule (always go to bed at X PM, every day). I'm the sort of person who goes to bet at 9pm one day, 2am the next, but I always get up at the same time. So far, all good. However, she really wants me in bed next to her if we are both home. I think this is silly. It was a constant fight for a while until we had a couple of good talks about it; she sleeps just fine with a light on, so I can have a book or a laptop[1] in bed next to her and be awake as long as I want and she is perfectly happy; me being a voracious reader am also pretty darn happy with this. Also, had we not talked this out, this solution would never have occurred to me; I can't fall asleep with a light on in the room unless I am seriously sleep deprived. At first I was reading only e-books on my phone to not disturb her, but when I mentioned that to her she said "oh I don't mind a light on." Perhaps in the author's example, if he thought he might want another more water before running the dishwasher, there might be another place he could put his water glass that his wife would be fine with. Maybe she'd even be happy to check there and put it in the dishwasher before running it! Maybe he'd have just had to come to terms with "We got 12 glasses at at our wedding and there's only 3 people in the house, so I can just get another glass." We will never know because these conversations just didn't happen. 1: The laptop I reserve for emergencies only; I really don't want to do anything even slightly work related in bed, if at all possible.
• daveslash 5y ago
  And sometimes when you're in a bad situation, it's not because of any _one_ thing, or even a myriad of things ~ sometimes it's because it's the whole kit and caboodle. When I was younger, I found myself on the side of a breakup asking "What did I do? Tell me and I'll fix it", and I've also been asked that by someone I was breaking up with. Breaking up is hard, for both sides. Sometimes it can be something singular (e.g. an affair) that can make it easy to digest, but sometimes it's so vague, it's such an overwhelming collection of things that span such a great amount of time, that even trying to enumerate them is a slide backwards. It's like death by a thousand pinpricks, but there's no clear indication that things are dead until you're already waaayyy past the point - like a frog being slowly boiled.
  • notRobot 5y ago
    This is very well said, and true in my experience.
• rajin444 5y ago
  Definitely this. The writer (and many commenters here) are missing a very important distinction. Changing yourself is good and healthy but only when you want to. Changing for somebody else is toxic and will not work. Marriage is a partnership, not a series of trade offs (in practice it will look like this, but it cannot be seen as this). Both sides should be grateful for the changes they make for one another as well as respect one another when they can’t change. In the case of the latter, it takes two people who believe in committing to one another no matter what. If two people marry without committing to the idea of a life long partnership it’s not going to work. * Major Marriage Crimes excluded, sometimes people do change and there’s nothing you can do
  • glitchc 5y ago
    Bad behaviour always needs a rethink. Change from bad to good behaviour is always painful and unwanted. By your logic no one should change their bad behaviour because they don’t want to change. The id and the superego have to be in balance.
  • mkoubaa 5y ago
    I don't agree with the last point, it's somewhat culturally charged. In many cultures a marriage that isn't intended to be permanent is normal.
    • trelane 5y ago
      What cultures?
  • usefulcat 5y ago
    There's a big difference between changing who you are and how you behave. If a person considers being asked to put a dish in the dishwasher as an assault on their identity, they're certainly entitled to feel that way but they're probably also not well suited to marriage or any similar relationship.
• lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  > Im 99% sure the wife in this story used the glass as an excuse to get out. I'm 99% sure she would never even mention the glass if you asked her why she left. The author said his marriage "... bled out from 10,000 paper cuts." The glass was 1 minor thing amongst far too many things.
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  The glass is a metaphor, he was treating everything in their relationship like the glass.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kelseyfrog 5y ago
  The real nugget of truth is found a quarter of the way into the article. > I’m not trying to hurt her; therefore, she shouldn’t feel hurt. The author correctly identified the underlying dysfunctional belief[1], but fails to address it head on. Instead he finds ways to thematically "care more". > I could have communicated my love and respect for her by not leaving tiny reminders for her each day that she wasn’t considered. While, not untrue, without addressing the root-cause ie: the dysfunctional belief, there will continue to be an underlying friction between the internally held belief and the behaviors he wants to perform. This can work in the short-term, but only by confronting the dysfunctional belief can a long-term change be made[2]. Presumably there were many other manifestations of his dysfunctional belief in his marriage that were not listed but which played out in similar ways. 1. From this list of dysfunctional beliefs apply to more than only parent-child relationships http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/dysfunctional-beliefs.html http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/dysfunctiona... 2. Based on only the information available in the article. Inferences based on a limited amount of information are always subject to what the author reveals and no more.
• mbrameld 5y ago
  I think what happens when things like a dirty glass by the sink get used as the reason for a relationship failing is a little more subtle and drawn out. Seeing the glass by the sink probably triggers some repetitive negative thought about the partner (wtf, why can't they just put the stupid glass in the dishwasher??), which leads to a gradual shift of one's attitude towards that person in general. That slowly snowballs as the slightly more negative attitude comes through in more interactions and you start getting frustrated by more and more little things your partner does, which triggers more repetitive negative thoughts, until you find that you can't stand the person you used to love. The final reason for the relationship failing wasn't the dirty glass, but it may have been the primary catalyst.
• mynameishere 5y ago
  Yes, when a woman is in breakup mode, it's every little thing, every little thing. She wants out because of A) New lover, of B) Bored and smells alimony, C) I can't think of anything else. But she's not going to ask for a divorce for A) or B) so it's any semi-real problems she can come up with. She probably wanted to nag the guy into divorcing her. Ka-ching. Anyway, women will even journal this shit for the lawyer's benefit. There are guidebooks sold on the matter.
• usefulcat 5y ago
  > But when youre in a bad situation and the other person isn't giving you a good reason to leave sometimes you have to get creative. Why is it necessary for the other person to give you a "good" reason to leave? Why not just be honest and say "this is not for me, I'm leaving"?
  • jayski 5y ago
    that is 100% what you should do. but usually the other person will ask "what did I do wrong?". and you can be really honest and possibly hurtful; " i dont find you attractive anymore.", "i think i can do better", etc... or you could ramble on about the glass by the sink. either one is going to make the other person feel bad