Imagine this scenario:
Wife walks in the house after a hard day’s work. She’s had enough of her job, nothing she does there seems to be good enough. Her colleagues are lazy and gossipy, and occasionally drop their work loads on her because she’s nice. She’s a good person, and she can’t say ‘no’ to anyone. She can’t say ‘no’ because she thinks that will automatically make her a bad person and people won’t like her anymore. And the work environment is hard enough as it is, she doesn’t want to go there knowing people don’t like her. On top of everything, her boss is the laziest one of them all. He gets to work two hours late, he takes two hour lunches, and he leaves early. In the meantime, he plays on Facebook and talks to his mistress on the phone. He’s the boss, he can do that. It’s wrong, and she hates it, but there’s nothing she can do or say because she might lose her job. So she keeps going to work every day, because that’s what she does. She’s a good, hard-working person. And she consoles herself with the thought that her home life is good.
So she comes home to her husband. Who got laid off a while back. He’s a good, decent man, hard-working just like her, but he got laid off. Shit happens. And you can’t control it. He’s been at home, on unemployment, applying to three jobs a week because you have to do that when you’re unemployed (at least, that’s what I hear). And then, after a while of interview after interview and rejection after rejection, he gets depressed. He probably won’t admit, because he’s a man, and men don’t express their feelings like that. But he’s depressed, whether he admits it or not. He feels useless, he feels like he’s not a man anymore because he can’t provide for his wife and family. Maybe he grabs a drink. He technically can’t afford it, but hey, he deserves a little something, especially because he’s so depressed, even though he won’t admit it. He forgets to do the dishes (insert here any chore you like). He forgets, it happens. He doesn’t do it on purpose. He sits down on the couch with a beer, puts a game on, that’s his reward for having worked so hard all his life, even though he’s currently unemployed. So he forgets about the dishes.
Wife comes in through the garage door, into the kitchen. She already knows what she’s gonna cook for dinner, because she put meat out in the morning before going to work. She’s gonna prepare his favorite dish. Maybe that’ll put a smile on his face. She walks in the kitchen, sets her purse and keys down on the dining table, and then she sees it. She sees the sink, with all the dishes piled up. He’s still on the couch, he waived “Hi” when she came in, then focused on his beer and game again. And she’s staring at the dishes. She cannot believe that he forgot to do the dishes. How hard is it to do some dishes? It’s not like you even have to wash them, all you have to do is rinse stuff off and put them in the dishwasher. How HARD is that to do? How do you forget something like that? So she says:
“Honey, I thought I asked you to do the dishes for me, so I can start dinner right away.” She’s still calm, she’s just making a statement.
“Oh, yeah, oh, sweety, I’m so sorry, I just forgot.” He replies, thinking it’s nothing. It’s just dishes.
“How did you forget? I even left you a note.” Her voice is just a little bit tight, so tight that she’s the only one hearing it that way.
“I forgot, what’s the big deal?” He still doesn’t get it. He still believes it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t even turn around, he doesn’t even take his eyes off the game, it’s just dishes.
“How about I forget to make you dinner?” She doesn’t really mean it, she wouldn’t ever not make dinner, but she just feels this insidious desire to poke at him for once. He’s been sitting at home, doing nothing, and he can’t even remember to do the dishes?? In her mind, he’s already the bad guy.
“I’m sorry?” He asks. He kinda sorta gets this feeling that it’s a joke, but just the way he asks the question is a little bit wrong, and rubs her the wrong way.
And then it comes.
“I cannot believe you sat home all day doing nothing, and forgot to do the dishes!! How goddamn hard it is to do some dishes? You take them from the sink, one by one, rinse them out, then put them in the dishwasher. Then you add some Cascade, and turn the thing on. HOW HARD IS THAT? Why won’t do you do this one little thing for me? I go to work all day, slave like a bitch for a bunch of idiots I hate soo much, and then I come home and my husband is not even capable of doing some dishes?”
Before you know, it all escalates into a “You don’t love me, you don’t care about me” kind of situation. Even though you’ve been together so long, and you know, you KNOW you love each other like crazy and have been through everything together, a thing like forgetting to do the dishes has the power to destroy all that in a few minutes. Have you been in this kind of situation before? When you took something so small and insignificant, like doing dishes, and turned into “You don’t care about me anymore?” type of argument? How did that end for you? With slammed doors and sleeping in separate rooms that night? With crying and thinking he/she never actually loved you at all? Is it really necessary to do that? Do you really prefer to waste one night of your precious life over dishes? It’s just dishes. You can eat off plastic plates for one night.
What if you die tomorrow? What if something happens tomorrow and you never get to tell them you love them again? How will you spend the rest of your life thinking that the last thing you did was slam the door in the face of the person you love most in this world? How will you do that and continue living? Please, stop and think before an argument like this happens to you. Stop, just for a second, and consider the other person. Consider how their day might have been, what they might be feeling and thinking, that they may feel as bad as you do about the way things are going. Stop! And think! And don’t waste the little bit of time you have. You may think you have your whole life ahead, but you don’t. You don’t know when things will be over in a flash. And you don’t want to spend the rest of your days thinking that you never kissed them again. When you go to bed tonight, kiss your partner good night and tell them you love them. No matter what happened during the day, don’t let it end in an argument you might regret for the rest of your life. They may be all you have. And they do deserve a good night kiss. At least.
Peace.