Thursday, March 22, 2012

Our Usual Fights {After 6 Months}

Maybe it's just a Robinson thing, but we seem to have the same fights over and over.  Marriage is a challenging and beautiful mess, and we're still learning our way.  We'll probably always be learning our way, but I thought it'd be interesting to write a post about what our current most common fights are.  Like I said, we seem to have the same fights set on repeat for some reason.  My mom says that her and my dad still have the same fights they've been having for 20+ years, and maybe all marriages are like that.

Some are petty and silly.  Some stay light while others can get pretty heated.  In any event, these are the fights we've been having up until the 6th month mark:

  • Housework & Chores:  My mom, in my opinion, is close to perfect.  She also has a pretty ideal lifestyle - she's a housewife with a wealthy husband.  She spends her days cleaning their home, cooking amazing foods, working out, taking care of all the bills, reading her Bible, etc.  I grew up in a spotless home.  Absolutely spotless.  My mom is a clean freak.  My husband and I are living in the house I grew up in.  Except it's not so spotless anymore, since we both work 40+ hours a week and still try to find time to read our Bibles, remember to send off our bills on time, take care of the dog, juggle church and our other responsibilities, and I try to exercise.  Our plates are full, and all I want is to go to sleep every night in a clean house.  Oh, and I want my husband to help my achieve that.  We fight about chores all the time.  I hate how much I nag him....  I cook dinner, all I want is for him to help wash the dishes.  When we first got married, I wanted to clean the house little by little every day so that we would have our weekend set aside to relax and have fun.  He preferred that we use Saturday's as our housework day.  Except now that we spend every Saturday cleaning the house, he's decided that it's not necessary to sweep/mop/wash-dishes/clean-toilets/etc. once a week.  I can not get him to do yard work.  He has cut the grass a few times, but there are weeds everywhere, the bushes and hedges and trees and everything are out of control.  When he gets home, he checks the mailbox and brings the mail inside.  But instead of putting the mail away or throwing out the junk mail, he leaves piles of paper all of the kitchen counter.  He doesn't throw anything away.  I'm getting off track.  The point is that having a clean home is important to me.  It is not important to him.  We argue all the time about this because he either doesn't help, refuses to help, argues with me about why such&such doesn't need to be done, or complains about having to help.  And just so that y'all don't think my husband is the bad guy (because he really is a wonderful man & I love him very much!)...I turn into a big, fat, nagging wife.  Hence, the fight.  Which brings me to our next fight...     
  • Why Do I Have To Ask You For Help?:  It drives me nuts that I have to ask my husband to help me do things.  I spend an hour cooking him dinner.  I get everything ready, fix his plate, hand him silverware, tell him what we've got to drink.  And he fixes his drink.  I just spent over an hour preparing a dinner for us.  Be courteous and fix us both a drink.  Does that make sense?  Or when the clean towels are in the dyer, we both have to shower to get ready for work, and he brings one towel into the bathroom.  This fight or always me fussing at him...it all boils down to I feel like I carry more weight than he does & shouldn't have to ask for help.  So I nag, fuss, complain and a verbal fight breaks out.  This one's probably our most common & most heated....probably because it always comes AFTER the first fight I mentioned, meaning that tempers and emotions are already running high.    
  • Mr. Robinson's Compromise:  Whenever we talk about compromising, it seems like it's me asking my husband to compromise with me.  As a result, he naturally feels like I never have to compromise with him - which makes him less likely to willingly or joyfully compromise with me.  He doesn't see the compromises I make because I don't mention them or draw attention to them while I'm making them.  For example...he loves my spicy chicken nuggets.  He could eat them for dinner several times a week, while I would be satisfied with eating them once a month.  However, I cook them once a week anyway.  I don't say to him "Honey, I'd like to point out the fact that I'm compromising with you by cooking chicken nuggets for dinner.  I'd rather have {fill in the blank} but I'm cooking what you want instead.  I'm compromising...keep this in mind!"  I firmly believe that this has everything to do with him being an only child and me being the oldest sibling.  To be honest, it's probably a combination of us both being right.  We both compromise...I compromise often without calling attention to it (but not as often as I should/could), while expecting him to compromise all the time (big sister syndrome).    
  • Visiting Other Churches:  My husband and I both adore our church, but occasionally he wants to go into the "big city" an hour away and visit larger churches that have a different type of worship service.  His favorite is a church that is quite similar to a rock concert...and I hate it.  I feel that it's irreverent and it makes me miss our home church.  Not to mention, I feel like as members of a church 5 minutes away from our home (and with it being a church we love and are very happy with) we have no business waking up an extra hour and a half early to go visit a church we aren't going to join, especially if I don't get as much out of that type of service.  
  • I'm Sick of Boy Movies & He's Sick of TV Shows:  This one explains itself and is 100% two-sided.  I am always sick of watching boy movies, he is always sick of watching TV shows.  My Side:  Let's just watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU or House, fast-forward through the commercials, and it takes less than hour.  Then we can watch another episode or something else, or find something else to do, or go to sleep! His Side:  There are so many movies that you need to see - all you've ever watched are chick flicks.  You're missing out on some really great movies - and we watch SVU all the time.  Let's do something different.  And back & forth, back & forth, back & forth.  I feel like we should watch a show that we both enjoy rather than watch a movie that only he will enjoy.  However, my argument is void because he's sick to death of SVU & House.  

I love my husband and he loves me.  We don't hate each other, we don't fight all the time, and we have plenty of good days.  Both of us are committed to surviving every fight.  I'm sure this post implies that we fight like cats and dogs...but our reality is that we are two imperfect people who had one perfect day on September 10, 2011.  We looked our best, dressed our best, and acted our best.  It was perfect..


  "My New Wife Life" is a blog about our life ... after I took off my wedding dress &  after he took off his tuxedo.  And sometimes it sucks, because it's anything but perfect haha.    


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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, you are right on with Fights #1 and 2, those are our main ones too... ALLLLL THEEEE TIMEEEE! Gosh, is it too much to ask to have a clean house and a little appreciation?! Haha, gotta love 'em though!

Lauren Talon said...

Great post lady! And no worries, it doesn't make it look like you fight all the time. Anyone who's married knows that fights occasionally happen. We definitely have a few fights that pop up ALLLL the time and one fairly large one that comes up once every three months or so. If we could stop fighting about that one I wouldn't mind ;)

Desiree said...

what a great post! I LOVE LOVE LOVE SVU! and so help me if my sig other didn't, ha haha! what I love about you is that you can look at BOTH sides of a fight, instead of making it all about him.. I have grown to love your blog so much, and really adore you as a person! your dress was absolutely gorgeous and what pretty flowers in your hair! i feel like i'm learning alot about marriage just by reading your blog.. it'll prepare me more for IF I ever meet my prince charming... :)

Virginia said...

I'm pretty sure that if my boyfriend and I get married, those will be our fights. haha If I go to his apartment and he has dirty dishes in the sink, I have to kindly remind him that he needs to clean them, among cleaning other things. He is the baby in the family with two sisters that are a lot older than him. He was a BIG surprise to his parents. I am the oldest in my family and I think that has a lot to do with it!! We have the tv fights now though haha. I love Law and Order: SVU and he despises all fiction cop shows. I have to watch it on my own time.

Val said...

We have the same fights all the time too. Nothing big, but one of them is usually on Saturday mornings. I can barely stand to sleep in much and laze around too long in the morning, weekends are SO short, there's ALWAYS cleaning to do, and I go nuts because there's always a million things to do. Meanwhile, he'll be content to watch like 3 episodes of something on Netflix, and then play video games before even getting in the shower. I just...I can't.

someone posted this on facebook yesterday, seems pretty true to me!
http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ab/ab_henslin_mysoclab_7/media/vis/soprb27.gif

Nobody said...

LOL! It sounds like me HUSBAND wrote this about ME. Hahaaa! Honestly, Shawn's mom was like your mom... and he expects me to be HIS mom. I'm not. I don't mind if a dish sits on the counter for a few hours and he can't stand it. Please give Mr. R a break.. he wasn't raised like you and has spent 20+ years in his ways... it will take a while to change that. BUT... I will give you some advise about the "not compromising" thing... you're going to have to be a little heartless and follow through, ya hear? One day Shawn was on my case about "never dpoing anything" and I was like, "Really? REALLY? Ya know what Shawn... I'm going to officialy 'not do anything' and you will see EXACTLY what I do..." I fixed MY dinner that night... he was left fending for himself. I didn't do a dang thing for him.. this lasted about 24 hours before he apologized relentlessly and we have NEVER had that argument again (over a year now). Sometimes we have to show them what they are missing... maybe you should quit cleaning up after him..

Pamela said...

Totally with you on #1! My mom always said, you do the inside & he does the outside, ha. Sometimes I would like a little help though too! I am sure he would outside though. Oh well, sorry. haha Just kidding! I think if we would show each other more appreciation, give more compliments, our home would be a better place :) I am with Bethany too, show him what he is missing!! I have done that too (with laundry), & he ended up folding them ha would love it if he would do it more ;)

Meg @ Mr.C and Me said...

twinsies! ;) lol for real though, i was nodding my head through this entire thing. but mr.c + are easy compromisers when it comes the little things. its the big things that take more time to tackle/ that we "fight" about, but i guess that's how it should be.

and i about peed when you made your SVU comment. we have it on netflicks and watch alllll the time. i'm always asking if we can watch just one more episode. but we compromise. watch an ep. then he plays a video game. then we can watch another ep. haha marriage....

Erin said...

I think these are all normal disagreements to have :) I used to really get annoyed with the drink or towel thing you mentioned... where he'd just get one for himself and not me. I think truthfully it just took him awhile to get used to doing small things like that for someone else. He was raised with 2 brothers, it was a free for all his whole life, ya know?! LOL, he def helps out around the house, but it's taken him awhile to realize small gestures like fixing me a drink mean SO MUCH.

Stephanie said...

Oh my...we are trying to find a new church right now, and we don't agree on ANYTHING when it comes to church. We met at church when we were 5, we were raised in the same church, we were married in the same church, so you think it wouldn't be so hard to find a new church that we both like. WRONG. It's impossible. Sigh. : )

Cori H. said...

I can definitely relate to some of these arguments! I think these are fairly common. This also shows that no marriage is perfect. It's a good reminder that you gotta take the good with the bad! :)

Ashley said...

It is amazing how many of us have the exact same fights! My hubby is really great about helping out around the house and sometimes I don't even need to ask but what really gets me is if I have ONE specific thing that has to be done that day because of a time issue... like, I will say "the garbages have to go out today because tomorrow the garbage truck comes" and then he doesn't do it but he does something else. He gets so mad when I try to explain that although I do appreciate you sweeping it isn't what I really needed done.... He doesn't seem to catch my drift. :)

♥ ♥ Just a Girl in Love w/ a Soldier ♥ ♥ said...

Oh girl, marriage isn't made to be perfect you are going to have your ups and downs. I am the same way about the house as you are and the hubbs could careless to a point, I've learned its better to just do things the way I want and not say anything at al. Same with dinner, I cook, fix his plate, bring it to him and do the dishes. I do enjoy all those things as well, but I know at times it would be nice to have some help. He does help more often now that he's home. As far as the movies & TV shows go, he hates hates going to see a chick flick and really thats all I watch I think he's gone to a couple with me but thats it. I believe you are always going to have your moments in life but as long as you are able to work through them you shouldn't have a problem.