Yeah I think the cup is just a symptom of neither of them being able to step into the other's shoes, but it's hard to diagnose without a larger picture. The hu

Yeah I think the cup is just a symptom of neither of them being able to step into the other's shoes, but it's hard to diagnose without a larger picture. The husband could have said "I understand that this is a small thing that really bothers you and even though I don't understand, it's clearly an asymmetrical thing in terms of my effort vs. your being bothered, so I will put the cup away." The wife could have just as easily said "I understand that this cup bothers me more than you think it should, if you're really that deadset on not putting it away can we find some other way to compromise?" But who knows, maybe she tried to explain that to him a bunch of different times and even when she was saying "it's not about the cup it's about not feeling listened to" he still just heard "it's about the cup"