Hellobee Boards

@erinbaderin: ughh hate when that happens. Also that's totally something my husband would do. Dishes need to be done but I'll do an oil change! 🤦‍♀️

I usually just say "I don't want to spend my night fighting - we are both right let's have a drink" and we will slowly start being friendly to each other. Haha.

@erinbaderin: well I can totally see me getting mad at DH over the same thing only not saying anything and being silently resentful that I had to do the cleaning up so that's not healthy either!

We take some time to ourselves, and sleep it off. It's usually forgot in the morning. I'm a big proponent of sleeping it off.

@erinbaderin: In that particular case I would just be like whatever and do my own thing for the night. I'm not going to do the dishes every single time he decides it's not important and never say anything in case he's offended (that I don't want to get stuck with the immediate chores all the time.) Uh-uh. (ETA I'm assuming from your post this is an ongoing thing!) I may not be healthy either but I just wouldn't be able to take his argument seriously!!

Preventatively I would have had the drinks and tv and then at some point just said "Hey would you finish the dishes before bed?"

In terms of making up after the fact, I think there's a problem with "I know he will never apologize" - why is that? It's not super helpful in a long term relationship. I would also look for constructive criticism - if he was mad about you being passive aggressive ask him how he would prefer you handle the situation in the future and say well I will try to communicate better if you will try to understand why it's frustrating for me to come out of bedtime seeing a mess everywhere when I was looking forward to a clean kitchen and snuggle time.

Also the license plate thing I could see being like a "let me do this while I'm thinking about it" move, so maybe I would give it a pass. But if my DH left the dishes to like look into refinancing the house I would totally be like bro what the heck.

I usually end up keeping to myself until DH breaks the ice.

We've had this same type of argument a ton. DH is always doing something productive, but it's not always in the same priority order that I would set. He also tends to jump from one thing to another in an order that only makes sense to him. So while I might expect him to clean up the kitchen, he'll start by taking out the trash. Then he'll walk the dog or break down boxes in the garage for recycling. Or whatever. An hour or two will go by and I'll be like wtf, what happened with the kitchen.

I've learned to mostly let it go. He's a grown up and he's constantly doing stuff around the house so I can't fault him for not pulling his weight. If the dishes are there in the morning, so be it. He'll probably spend half his morning cleaning up before he goes to work.

@erinbaderin: how'd it end up going?

My husband and I end up with arguments that spiral, too. We usually take a break from each other and then I calm down and think about what is really making me mad because it's never really about the dishes for me - it's always about something else (which, honestly usually ends up being a dozen different things but I try to narrow it down to just one! ) Then I'll ask him if he's ready to talk for a bit and use my best constructive discussion skills to tell him what was bothering me. Usually this works, although the discussion can end up going on for a long time. I used to just suck it up, say sorry, and move on but our fights ended up getting worse because I had so much simmering resentment for past issues that never got resolved.

In our house usually we just need to cool down. A lot of times my husband will apologize (he's really good at that part.. me not so much)... But he has a worse temper and he tends to be the one to escalate things. It's usually best for me to say my piece and then leave him to himself for a bit.

If it's something totally ridiculous then I sometimes employ humor to try to make him see how ridiculous it is.... for example this past weekend he was upset bc I didn't buy him his favorite kind of ice cream.. I bought him ice cream, just not his favorite. ( I looked for it but I swear it didnt' see it). Anyhow when he found out he said he was going to go out to an ice cream store and get something ( ie a blizzard or something) and he "wasn't going to get me anything".... like trying to get back at me. Whatever, I could care less but I called him out on it and did a weird dance and said ooo ooo I'm so happy that I am getting back at "my name", take that "my name", I am going to get some ice cream and I'm not getting any for you.. basically showing him how ridiculous he was. He of course laughed and apologized.

@erinbaderin: We're a "no one gets to relax until everything is finished" couple. So, if I came downstairs and saw him doing something productive, I would take some of the other stuff and asked him to help if he could. Would he not feel guilty watching TV while you cleaned up?

In general, when we argue, it's over something that someone has said. We need time to cool down, and we'll sleep it off. In the morning, we'll both see each others' sides and apologize to each other. I think it goes a lot way to both admit that there was something that went wrong...even if it was the way you reacted to something mean he said or vice versa. You both could have handled it better. We don't really do the whole, "I don't want to be the first one to admit I'm wrong." If being right trumps getting along with your spouse, I think that's a problem.