It’s not about the dishes

You know the fight. One of you left a dish in the sink — again — and now you're both standing in the kitchen at 9pm having the fourth version of an argument you've had a hundred times before.


But it’s never actually about the dishes, is it?

Underneath almost every recurring fight, there's a much older question getting asked: Do you see me? Do I matter to you? Can I count on you? Am I enough for you? 

The dishes are simply where these questions were squeezed out.

Over and over again, we see a pattern with the couples we work with: One partner pushes. They raise their voice, bring up the dishes, bring up last week's dishes too, get louder because louder feels like the only way to be heard. 


The other partner pulls back. They go quiet, get defensive, or walk away. It’s not because they don’t care, it’s because withdrawing feels safer than getting it wrong again. 


And here's the cruel trick: the more one partner pushes, the more the other pulls away. And when one pulls away, the pusher’s greatest fears are actualized, thus igniting more fear, which leads to stronger pursuit.

You're not fighting each other anymore, you're both trapped in a cycle that's now bigger than either of you.


So what do you actually do with this?

You stop arguing about the dishes, and you start naming the cycle.

That sounds something like: "I don't think this is really about the sink. I think I get loud because I'm scared I don’t matter to you, or you are tired of me. And I wonder if you get quiet because you're scared nothing you do will be right."


That's a different conversation than the one about dishes. It's slower. It's more honest. And it's the conversation that actually changes something, because you're finally talking to each other instead of at each other.


A few things worth remembering:

• The fight you keep having is rarely the real fight. Look at the questions that may be underneath it.

• Pursuing and withdrawing aren't necessarily signs of apathy or dislike. They're likely protective moves, learned a long time ago, usually long before this relationship.

• Naming the cycle out loud, together, takes the fight out of "me vs. you" and puts it into "us vs. the pattern."

• This is hard to do on your own in the middle of the moment — most couples need a third person in the room to help slow it down enough to see it.

If you and your spouse keep having the same fight in different outfits, there's likely an old cycle running the show. The good news? Cycles can be named, understood, and changed.

That's the work we love to do.