Some things are not worth complaining about; but many of the things that are, are never addressed. For every person who carps about every little thing there’s another person who stuffs his indignation. Sometimes it’s the same person who carps and stuffs; complaining about a hundred little things that don’t matter while he’s silent about the things that do.
To help you decide what to complain about, here’s a formula:
All the crap — All your crap — Your feelings + (Your values/2 x his promises) = Things to complain about.
All the crap
Let’s say your husband sits in front of the TV, watching sports, drinking beer seven nights out of the week. He’s gained weight in the process and where he once had a svelte, athletic figure, he now has a belly so big you don’t even want to look at it or be seen standing next to it. He yells at the umpires and is crabby when his team loses. He snaps your head off when you walk in front of the set. When the game goes to extra innings, he falls asleep there, sometimes spilling beer in the process. You never do anything together anymore. You can’t even talk about anything with him because all he knows is baseball. You feel lonely even though he’s always around. You would miss sex if you weren’t so disgusted by him. He snores. Then, in the morning, when he wakes up hung over, he’s good for nothing.
All the crap, in this case is: watching baseball too much, yelling and being crabby, snapping at you, being embarrassing, not sleeping with you, snoring when he does sleep with you, spilling beer, being ignorant about everything but baseball, ignoring you, not having sex, being disgusting, getting hung over, and failing to do what he was supposed to do when he was hung over.
That’s a lot of crap.
All your crap
If you’ve read my series on the Steps of Reparation, you’ve already taken a look at your own part in this problem, so you have no problem with deducting your crap from his. You agree that you have more control over your own actions than you do over the actions of another. You decided that all your complaining just made the problem worse, instead of better; it caused him to withdraw even more from you and watch his sports and drink his beer out of shear spite. You admitted you walked in front of the TV just for spite, too. So, you made amends by stopping the complaining, cooking him healthy food, getting him other things to try drinking, and developed more of an interest than you ever thought you would have in the St Louis Cards. He no longer snaps at you because you no longer passive-aggressively walk in front of the TV. When he yells at umpires and gets crabby, at least you know it’s not about you. As for the loneliness, you took up a hobby, regularly have dinner with friends, and got a second TV so you could watch your own shows in another room. You got a new wardrobe, changed your hair, and started to look not bad for your age. With all the changes you made, you’re a better person. You like yourself more and have learned that filling yourself with loathing for him doesn’t do you any good. But he’s still sitting there every night, drinking beer, as if nothing had ever changed.
Even though he’s done nothing to change, you are not nearly as much a victim as you used to be. You can be happy while he’s miserable. You can be attractive while he’s out of shape. You can have a full, vibrant life while he drinks himself numb, looking at shadows on a screen. But still, some offense remains. What is it? Why does his behavior matter?
Your feelings
You miss him, you’re worried about him, you’re ashamed of him, and you’re disgusted.
If you read my series on the Wreckage on the Road to Reconciliation, you’ve learned that no one can make you feel anything. Your feelings are your feelings. You have control over them. Therefore, you can’t complain about how you feel. You have to take your feelings out of the equation, except for one thing.
You’ve also learned that feelings show you your values.
Your values
What values are being expressed by your feelings?
You miss him because you value companionship. You’re worried about him because you value health and a long life. You don’t want to lose him. You value freedom, so you don’t want to have to take care of an invalid. You’re ashamed and disgusted because you value certain body shapes over others and certain smells and sounds over others.
Divided by two
If you knew you were marrying someone who doesn’t value companionship, health, a long life, freedom, and certain body shapes, sounds, and smells precisely as much as you do; then you don’t have much to complain about. Here’s the thing, no one will value anything precisely as much as you do. If you take any two people and put them together, one will be more companionable, more healthy, live longer, and like certain aesthetics more than the other. That’s the case for everything. There will also always be one partner who is hornier, cheaper, more permissive, messier, more social, harder working, and religious than the other. If you didn’t know that when you got married, you should have. At any rate, it’s something you’ll have to get used to.
You will never find anyone who perfectly matches your values. Your values are what make you special. If you ever find anyone who perfectly matches you, run the other way. First of all, it wouldn’t be true; and, secondly, if it were true, why would you need two of you?
If you’re asking him to be just like you, you’re asking too much; but, if you’re expecting him to be as open minded about your values as you are to his, then you know what marriage is for.
His promises
If he promised to go with you to the yarn store, but then changed his mind in favor of watching baseball, then you have something to complain about. If you painstakingly extracted a vow to cut down his drinking, but he seems to have forgotten about it, then that’s a broken promise. If he talks a good game about health and exercise but never takes steps in that direction, then you have a good reason to call him out on his failure.
What you have to complain about
You now know what is reasonable to complain about. Start with all the crap and deduct all your crap. Then write off your feelings, but not the values they indicate. Divide your values by two because partnership is all about compromise. Multiply the sum by any promises he’s made. That’s what you have to complain about. Have at it. You’re in a good position to demand an apology because you’ve been fair and have given yourself the same treatment you’re giving him.
If he never promised anything and if your crap exceeds his crap and if you’re expecting him to learn from your values more than you learn from his, then maybe you owe him an apology. That would be a heck of a thing for a vibrant, attractive woman to be in debt to a drunken lout who never gets off the couch, but stranger things have happened.
If that’s the case then, for your own sake, make your apology and think about setting both of you free. You, of having to change a man who doesn’t want to change. And him, so he could go on watching his baseball and drinking his beer in peace.
Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice and the author of The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad, from which this article is adapted.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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