Ouch. The article resonated with me and seems to indicate the author has gotten some good personal growth out of this, but the final sentence kind of killed me:

Ouch. The article resonated with me and seems to indicate the author has gotten some good personal growth out of this, but the final sentence kind of killed me: "I could have carefully avoided leaving evidence that I would always choose my feelings and my preferences over hers." Perhaps it was not the intent, but that really sounds like he thinks the solution here would have been to cover up the evidence. Not to, say, figure out how to reconcile their feelings and preferences. I'm not sure if it makes me more or less an expert—I screw up stuff like this all the time, but I do recognize that I am screwing this up. My take: it's not about the dirty glass. It's not about faking that you care. It's not even about communicating, because if they were to read each other's minds in this situation, she'd discover that she was right all along. My best guess: there was a problem, and no will or desire to solve it. It's the visible manifestation of the same lack of will to solve other problems, the same lack of interest in figuring out what the other person wants/needs and doing what is necessary to make it happen. From her point of view, the dirty glass issue is proof that he's not going to work to make anything go better. From his point of view, it's proof that she's willing to throw out the whole marriage rather than address what's underneath that surface-level problem. Maybe she's afraid of looking petty, which ironically ended up making her look even more petty if you just look at the surface. If this couple were to open up enough to each other to attack the real underlying issues, would the dirty glass continue to be placed by the sink? Who knows. Who cares? I doubt either of them would, or ever did. Every marriage needs a functional conflict resolution process, and they never found or made one. (It's tricky, because in the first M years you can just have sex with each other and then it's all good. The next N years you can have a big blowout fight and then it's better. M and N overlap. So the need only becomes critical after some number of years.) I would suggest my process, except I haven't worked it out either. I can say that it depends on the specific two people involved. Stuff like love languages may be sufficient for some couples, but it barely starts to address what's needed for my relationship.