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Comment by axilmar | Hacker News Reader

The problem in the case mentioned in the article was not with the writer that left the glass by the sink, it's with the other person that was bothered with something so minor...usually these minor things are excuses that cover deeper problems.

Above all, marriage is a series of compromises: you give up something for something else. You can't have it all.

Personally, I put up with my wife's problematic-for-me but not-for-her small habits, because we have a family and the well being of us and our children is priority. Loving the other person includes giving them room to breath, and chasing them after their small habits is suffocating...

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Exactly. I am on the other side of this in my marriage — my wife leaves her water glass out (sometimes for days) because she “might want to use it again”. It bothered me, so I put it in the dishwasher. She didn’t like that, so I stopped doing it. And I got over the fact that there are sometimes six or seven half-full glasses around the house at any time, because I am not a petty psychotic who would take something so trivial to be representative of how my wife does or doesn’t respect me. Good lord.

Plus, they protect you in the eventuality of an alien attack. Make sure you keep a bat around too.

> Plus, they protect you in the eventuality of an alien attack.

Except when the aliens are ransacking Earth for its water. See the documentaries V [0] and Battle: Los Angeles [1] for more on this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(1983_miniseries)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle:_Los_Angeles

And Oblivion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivion_(2013_film)

I still want an explanation as to how the aliens in that movie managed to miss that 70% of the planet is covered by a deadly poison, and that it literally falls from the sky in most places.

There's the theory that the aliens are really demons and it's not water they're vulnerable to, but holy water.

A kid is filling cups with tap water to drink.

At what point is a priest blessing them all?

The main character is a former priest. I don't remember any explicit blessings, but maybe being in a (ex-)priests house is enough. Or they were blessed when the protagonist found his faith again.

Or it was the daughter, who was constantly referred to as "angel".

My in-laws had their house blessed by their priest shortly after moving in. They do the same with their cars. Perhaps a house, properly blessed, provides the necessary protection?

Because it was _holy_ water that damaged them because they are demons not aliens in the movie. There is actually no scene in that movie of a spaceship or anything that indicates it's aliens

There's no scene of a priest blessing cups of a kid's drinking water, either.

I'm pretty sure there was lights above in the sky at some point. And there is also the bird that hit an (allegedly) invisible alien ship.

I missed the joke. Which movie is this?

Signs (2002).

Sounds like a dream…

My wife put some water in the microwave for tea and left the room. When it was done, I put the tea ball in it and set the timer for her. Thinking that she would be back in the room in a few minutes and the timer would let her know it was ready.

Instead of thank you for starting her tea, I was told I was "too controlling". Ok... I guess I won't do nice random things like start your tea from now on.

Acting as if the tea was the core of the problem here is a sure way to get nowhere.

What do you mean?

A nice person making tea for you is never a problem for anyone.

That was my impression too

Marshall Rosenberg said ' Anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.'

It sounds to me like your wife's reaction was not actually about the tea.

If she described that as "too controlling", that likely indicates she perceives you as too controlling overall.

Regardless of the truth of her perceptions, they're all she has to go on in life, so it's her perceptions that matter, not the "objective truth" of whether you're controlling.

I don't know you or your wife at all - my analysis could be way off in a lot of ways.

Whatever the issue here is, though, it's not the tea itself. There is some negative perception or idea she has that you triggered when you helped make her tea. I strongly recommend you try to figure out what's beneath the surface there. It could be rooted in your behaviors, or it might go back to how other people in her life have treated her, or some combination. It could be that she's a flaming control freak who can't stand anyone doing anything that seems to her like a threat to her agency. I don't have enough context to have much of a clue.

Writing it off with "Okay, not gonna do that again" internally was a dangerous pattern for me - it led me to ignore issues for years instead of trying to deal with them head-on.

Warning: For me, dealing with these issues head-on was a painful, difficult road littered with ugly realizations about both myself and my spouse. Dealing with the pain and issues now beats waiting until they're worse down the road, though.

I found Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication extremely helpful in learning to dig into what's under the surface of incidents like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

I have the book open on my desk right now. I really wish I could have read it sooner in my marriage, like before my marriage. Would have made for a lot less bumpy road. But we are in a better place now, almost 20 years later! :)

> I really wish I could have read it sooner in my marriage, like before my marriage.

A thousand times this, yes.

I may start giving it to people as an engagement present, now that you say that...

Its not just the tea. She's got needs that aren't being met. Best advice is to reflect back what she has said to try to understand what needs of hers aren't being met." Perhaps to your wife you could say the following 'Are you feeling angry because you have the need for more say in our relationship?

Take the signal from this thread, there are deeper issues at play.

Don't take this the wrong way but after reading several of your comments in this thread, it does seem that you should be leaving her.

That, or start communicating about what makes her get angry over stuff like this; what makes her feel ignored or under-appreciated that she bursts when you make a nice and very cute gesture for her.

My wife kisses me when she forgets about her tea and I do it for her. EVERY TIME, no exceptions, she kisses me and thanks me.

IMO either start chatting with her to pinpoint the issue and work on it, or move on. You don't deserve such an atmosphere, man. You deserve happiness.

That is lovely…very healthy. The most important words in a relationship are: ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’…and they should be heartfelt and mentioned appropriately.

Agreed with every word. Being genuinely appreciative and expressing it -- "thank you" -- and recognizing if you're being petty or stubborn and expressing it -- "sorry" -- really did wonders for my relationship. Somewhere at the ~7 year mark it started getting even better than it was before that.

did you talk about it afterwards? being "too controlling" is a very serious accusation and points to something deeper. don't just dismiss her complaint but try to understand it. also try to explain to her in what spirit you made the tee for her.

you think you were doing a random nice thing, she felt you are controlling, so clearly she didn't feel you did something nice to her.

this makes me think about the book "the five love languages". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

the idea is that we each have different ways in which we express and perceive love. so for you random acts of kindness are one way, but your wife may not be aware of that. i'd talk to her about that. maybe read the book together or at least talk about the different ways to show love and what you each prefer.

"did you talk about it afterwards?"

I tried. She simply said it was controlling and couldn't explain it further.

I'm not going to give you specific advice, as that would be controlling (tongue in cheek / bad joke, sorry), and you also haven't specifically requested any. However I do feel compelled to share some of my own experience.

In my last LT relationship, I was accused being controlling and the relationship was totally, impossibly screwed. This is a very serious accusation, and they were interpreting attempts to be genuinely nice as "controlling". I am actually pretty flexible and easy going, but no matter what I did or changed, there was always some other new way in which I was "being emotionally abusive".

I'm now in a new relationship, and a few times I've pre-emptively apologized to my partner about similar actions, because I was concerned about them being interpreted as controlling. I was floored when she responded with indifference, saying she always appreciates my efforts and that I don't need to worry.

Having a partner who "gets you" and appreciates what you try to do for them has been earth shatteringly beautiful in my life. Empathy unlocks the best parts of life and the human experience. I know I'm extremely fortunate to have eventually gotten to where I am, and couldn't be happier with her. Soon I should probably ask if she'll marry me, advice on this would be welcome :) we are 9 months in, see each other every day and never fight, it's always collaborative.

Anyhow, the conclusion is:

It's always a good idea to ask many questions if you're being told you are wrong a lot, in any relationship (private life as well as work life). Sometimes the real issue may turn out to have nothing to do with you, after all.

Just brainstorming here, but perhaps it was tea that she wanted to prepare herself, and the problem may have been that you "muscled your way into" a course of action that she wanted to be hers.

Your analysis of the situation is problematic when you write: "I guess I won't do nice random things like start your tea from now on." It was your wife who started the tea-making process, not you. To somebody who already feels sore about this kind of thing, it may feel as if you're taking credit for her action.

Of course, normal people in a normal situation don't react in the way that your wife did. As others pointed out, there are almost certainly more issues in your relationship and your wife likely reacted this way because your behavior fit into a larger pattern that she is unhappy with.

Also please note, you absolutely cannot draw the conclusion that she doesn't want you to do nice things for her in general.

I asked her for more info, but she couldn't elaborate. I don't think it was about her wanting to put the tea ball in (the tea was already in the ball from my cup, and she could put in how much honey or sugar she wanted when it was ready).

The conclusion was mistated. I meant I just won't make her tea unless she asks. If it make her made and she can't tell me why, then I'm just going to avoid that situation.

Thanks for clarifying, and of course ultimately I can't know any of this since I'm just a random stranger on the internet.

I notice that you argue that it couldn't have been about her wanting to put the tea ball in because whether you or she did it would have had no impact on the objective outcome of the tea. That makes rational sense and is how a normal person under normal circumstances would see it.

Then again, stuff like the IKEA effect is real: people feel differently about a piece of furniture if they assembled it themselves, perhaps there's a bit of pride and feeling of self-worth in having done that work. That feeling is independent of the usefulness of the furniture.

In a similar vein, perhaps your wife feels the need to do certain things herself to feel in control of part of her life. Everybody wants the feeling of agency to some extent, some more, some less. Again, it's almost certainly not about the tea, but if she feels that her life is "taken over" by the relationship (and so, explicitly or implicitly in her mind, by you) and that she doesn't have enough time and space that's her own, then something small like the tea could trigger a reflex in her along the lines of "why does it always have to be like this?"

The tea is an almost ridiculously tiny symbol for asserting herself, but it's possible that she feels she has already lost the bigger ways of asserting herself and reaffirming herself in the relationship, and so she reacts badly to that small thing being taken away.

If that really is the situation, it is already a very bad state for the relationship to be in. Of course, I may be way off base.

Isn't that what the author is saying? The deeper problem was that the wife felt that the authors' inability to do something so simple for her sake was indicative of disrespect. Not acknowledging that your partner is worth a couple seconds of consideration is a pretty deep problem. The author probably demonstrated this disrespect in multiple ways, but the glass by the sink is a succinct way of summarizing the whole problem.

for some relationships, this is a signal of animal dominance basically.. "do it my way, because I say so" happens every day

It seems as though people are focusing on the hook and not the core argument. The author clearly states his marriage failed from "death by a thousand papercuts" and this glass-by-the-sink is an example of not understanding their spouse.

I’m shocked by how many people in this thread have been completely derailed thinking the literal glass is the issue rather than being symbolic of the issue. I always hated how much teachers would drill symbolism and literary device analysis into you in school but then I come across threads like this I wonder whether we aren’t focusing on it enough.

The water cup example isn't symbolic, it is prototypical. That is to say, it is meant to be a representative example of the a metaphorical paper cut.

People in this thread are latching on to it for the same reason the author used it; it is not clear how else to talk about the larger issue.

Different interepratations of the prototypical example leads to different interperatations of the larger issue.

If you must use examples to communicate your point, the normal solution to this is to use many different examples.

We were replying at the same time and crossposted. You said it better. As a reader, I would have loved to have more examples.

Agreed but the point is made more than once and in plain terms that the glass was not the problem it was an indication of a behavioral issue that went unrecognized until it was too late for self reflection to make a difference.

It's not a great article in the surface but the message has merit.

> The water cup example isn't symbolic, it is prototypical.

Thank you! I knew there had to be a better word to describe it but all I could think of was "exemplary" and that didn't feel quite right.

Great comment.

> I always hated how much teachers would drill symbolism and literary device analysis into you in school but then I come across threads like this I wonder whether we aren’t focusing on it enough.

I feel, the inability to treat the glass solely as a symbol, is more related to the form of writing.

This sort of confessional writing, it does not tolerate symbolism well because the author is also the protagonist. The symbolism of the glass, in this article, it's more of a protective screen. The author explicitly writes the glass wasn't really the issue, but then we never actually learn about all these other things that were the real issue. Like, dedicate some paragraphs to it dude, don't leave us hanging! In the writing, he's a kindly, oblivious man. We get hints that he wasn't. Disrespect, what's that exactly, that can be downright cruel, where on the spectrum are we here? Beyond the glass, honestly, there's nothing. Like, was he rolling his eyes when she was talking to her. "communication issues", what's that, did they share meals in silence, or where they fighting like cats and dogs, but then making tender love to make up, what's going on?!?! Tell me. The glass really is the thing here. (Maybe his book has more, I don't know). For all intents and purposes, yeah, it was the glass. The reader can only understand their divorce in vague generalities, and since we get nothing more than the glass, it feels more like a distraction. Also, like come on, we need to hear from his ex-wife!

Symbolism in fiction, functions more like an anchor, around which the mind can wander, which invites us to contemplate. And we can, because, honestly, right or wrong, it doesn't matter. There's less of this need to get it right, make sense of it. The motives of the author are just less important, a reader has less of this curiosity or nosyness, in the sense, that we're tickled to take a peek behind the curtain.

I think, if the article were written as fiction, say a short-story, that glass would be great symbolism, and there would be less this need to come up with solutions, or try to pinpoint who was right and wrong, ... But in that article, I don't know, it feels more like a dodge.

That depends whether you think leaving a glass by the sink is a cut at all.

In that case there’s two options:

1. The author is not mentioning more consequential problems that happened in their marriage, or doesn’t know the real reason their marriage ended.

2. There were no more consequential problems and the author is blaming themselves for what seems like an unreasonable spouse.

It's because the hook is a real bad example. He's not entirely in the wrong on that one. While I will trust his judgment that there were other problems and that he was in the wrong in those, the glass was one where she should have given in.

> the glass was one where she should have given in

Why is that the case?

It's mostly an aesthetic choice. The only benefit of the glass being in the dishwasher instead of by the sink is that "it looks nicer to her". There's no real harm being done and it does not affect her in the slightest. And there's a real deep, dark, ugly rabbit hole to go down if one wants to suggest that it affects and harms her by "being unsightly".

The more I think about it, the more I think the author is trying to be deep by being shallow. Taking something we consider mundane and transforming it into a grand life lesson. Creating a parable. The problem is that he chose something that doesn't work. I, for one, will not be buying his book.

Friend, the point of it being a “small” issue is that no one will ever be entirely wrong or right. Any issue that someone brings up will be viewed as trivial by many ppl, the point is to respect your partner enough to find a way to compromise.

Sometimes compromising requires thinking far outside the box. For example, buy this guy a in-home water bottle that he alone is responsible for cleaning. Give it a permanent place in a cupboard. Boom boom everyone compromised and showed the other one “I care about your needs”

There are examples though, were this death by a thousand pin-pricks is a attempt at "takeover" aka expecting to be in control of everything your partner does and using emotional blackmail should he not retreat at once.

At the end of this, you become a stranger in your own life, programmed into the small details by somebody else, who then leaves you because you are "boring and predictable".

To be completely honest, I got the point, but I don't think this is good writing. Did anyone learn anything from the article? Probably not. Did anyone do any deeper thinking because of the article? Probably not.

I did some reflection. I agree it's not a great article but I read it and did a self assessment. I don't ever want my marriage to end and people sharing their failures gives me another thing to consider, in hopes that I can avoid a similar outcome.

I am not so sure. In my case, my wife is the "messy" one: Opens a can and leaves the lid in the kitchen table, leaves used clothes all around the bedroom and bathroom, etc. We've been married for 14 years, and the first years it was a constant struggle for me to try to change her behaviour. We even have gotten to the point of raising the divorce card in discussions related to this.

But, fast forward to today, I learned not to care. I learned that the decision is easy: Either I accept that she is like that, or I get out of the door. I am free to go whenever I want (as we don't have kids), and after meditating over that choice I've realized that those "bad" things don't really matter. After accepting that, I became happier and less "confrontative" with her.

Sorry to be solutioning here, and I'd imagine you've already tried this after 14 years, but sometimes changing habits can be solved with things like buying an extra laundry basket. It's seems like a small thing, but these adjustments can provide the accessibility that make it simpler to meet in the middle. In the kitchen, we keep a mini-waste bin on our countertop for used coffee grinds. It works for us.

Exactly. Although GP's solution of learning to live with this particular habit is great and necessary, changing the environment is almost always necessary to change behavior. Always look so see what simple change will encourage the behavior you want.

1000% this, it's my default solution for most things. I always make sure "change the environment" can't work before I go to "change behavior" (mine or others')

Trash accumulating somewhere? That spot needs a trash can.

Clothes? That spot needs a hamper/basket.

Spot in the yard keeps getting messed up due to walking or cars going off the driveway there? Put down some stone.

Behavior modification (for some sorts of things, anyway) should be a last resort because it probably won't work, and requires ongoing effort. Fix the environment, and it's done.

That's because you love her. The author's wife did not love him.

Yeah, if he had put his glass away, she would have found something else to be "upset" about.

Mostly agree, although:

> it's with the other person that was bothered with something so minor...usually these minor things are excuses that cover deeper problems.

seems to point the blame at the other person. Really the marriage was probably screwed for nebulous confusing reasons, they both could feel it without really being able to express it coherently, so they fought proxy battles over dishes and other chores.

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