This Is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships

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It was about consideration. About the pervasive sense that she was married to someone who did not respect or appreciate her. And if I didn’t respect or appreciate her, then I didn’t love her in a manner that felt trustworthy. She couldn’t count on the adult who had promised to love her forever, because none of this dish-by-the-sink business felt anything like being loved. The concept that being a good person is not the same as being a good husband was really interesting. It’s easy to assume people judge us based on who we are as people, when all they really care is about how we perform in the context that matters to them. E.g., if you are a good / nice person but incompetent at your job, your coworkers won’t care that you are a good person. What are you doing for them ?

When you choose to love someone, it becomes your pleasure to do things that enhance their lives and bring you closer together" As you’ll no doubt remember, March 2020 is when COVID emerged as a whole damn thing in North America after beating up a number of other countries on its slow march toward the rest of us. A bunch of NBA players walked off the court and pro basketball was suspended indefinitely. Actor Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive for the virus while in Australia. He talked about how he used to not have any empathy, and it wasn’t until he completely broke inside from the divorce that he was finally able to tap into empathy, and grow in ways he otherwise never would have. I guess that’s what it takes for some people. That these little, seemingly banal everyday things that seem so inconsequential in the moment slowly kill trust and intimacy when they pile up over the years. Like leaving dishes by the sink?P96 One of the greatest lessons from divorce and adulthood has been the realization that unintentional pain and unintentional trust betrayals will end your relationship as surely as intentional ones will, only slower. As he shared raw, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous first-person stories about the lessons he’d learned from his failed marriage, a peculiar thing happened. Matthew started to gain a following. In January 2016 a post he wrote—“She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink”—went viral and was read over four million times. And it's precisely this rarity that makes this book and Fray's confessions so compelling. He started out like most recently divorced men, blaming the demise of his marriage on his wife making a "big deal" out of "trivial things." But in his aloneness, he did the soul-searching that led to his 180 or at least allowed him to talk a good talk. I believe in his sincerity in wanting to save other couples from his fate. The final chapter where he details the day his wife and son moved out is like a gut punch. It haunts me.

P205 I loved my wife. But I didn't RESPECT her individual experiences as being equally valid to mine. Things that were real and true--and often painful--for her didn't affect me...She tried every way she knew how to communicate to me that these issues she was bringing to my attention were important. Each and every time she tried, I made it clear to her how much I disagreed and how certain I was that I was correct...My wife HURT--deep down where the medicine can't fix it--because of things I said and did. And for more than a decade, when she came to me for help to make the hurt stop, I communicated to her that I thought she was mistaken--even wrong--to feel hurt. I believed her failure to take responsibility for her emotions was the primary problem in our marriage. I seriously said that to her. One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a call with a phone-in-therapist who told him to “journal his feelings,” Matthew Fray started a blog. He needed to figure out how his ex-wife went from the eighteen-year-old college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole and left him. As he pieced together the story of his marriage and its end, Matthew began to realize a hard truth: even though he was a decent guy, he was a bad husband.I wanted my wife to agree that when you put life in perspective, a drinking glass by the sink is simply not a big problem that should cause a fight. I thought she should recognize how petty and meaningless it was in the grand scheme of life. I repeated that train of thought for the better part of 12 years, waiting for her to finally agree with me.

Then something funny (not ha-ha funny, more ironic-funny) happened—people were quarantining together, romantic partners and families, and for the first time in everyone’s lives, most people weren’t getting the space, time away, or diverse social and professional interactions with other people that they were accustomed to. There are also some factual errors (ex: the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is not nearly 83% or whatever he claims, at least not in decades…) and there is definitely a note of “I’m not a bad guy! I’m a great guy! I WAS a jerk but you can’t judge me for that because look how much I understand now! Did I mention I’m really a good guy??” Being from the Midwest myself, though, I think that’s a common affliction for guys this age. They reeeeeally want to be admired and thought of as good and moral at all costs. At the risk of being vulnerable , I can tell you that much of this book was uncomfortable to read because it is so damn relatable; cross out a few names, insert your own and away you go. All of us are guilty of the daily paper cuts, the micro aggressions that slowly whittle away the trust that nurtures connection in our marriages. Invalidation, fighting to be "right", misaligned priorities, inconsideration; these are the everyday habits that too many of us have that are slowly suffocating our closest relationships.

I was surprised by how much I liked this book about a guy whose wife divorced him, and after getting over the anger and bitterness realized that he was almost entirely at fault and was able to look at inward and fix the problems. He’s now a life coach on relationships, and I think this entire book is very valuable for couples. Like usual, I saw my own behavior in his bad behavior. So that was eye-opening. The problem with this approach, as with many of Fray’s pieces of advice to his presumably male audience, is that teaching men to navigate around the feelings of women doesn’t take into account that women are rational beings capable of understanding logic as well as emotion. In this example, Grayson’s wife is so hypothetically blinded by the stinging betrayal of Grayson’s fish sandwich consumption that she cannot grasp any of his reasoning. By advising Grayson to cater to his wife’s feelings, Fray perpetuates the image of Grayson’s wife as irrational and driven by emotion rather than reason. How many of us have been told by their spouse that they aren't good at planning things but then we see them planning time to enjoy their own hobbies or events with their friends. One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a phone-in-therapist's advice to 'journal his feelings,' Matthew Fray started a blog. As he tried to piece together how his ex-wife went from adoring to angry he realised that even though he was a decent guy, he was kind of a bad husband. Matthew Fray’s marriage ended in 2016 but now helps others to save theirs (Picture: Angelo Merendino Photography)

I think sometimes these little things blow up into The Same Fight because maybe we don’t think it’s fair that our partner’s preferences should always win out over ours. It’s as if we want to fight for our right to leave that glass there. I will skip the good parts and go straight to the problem (and there is good advice like the importance of listening instead of dismissing, etc). The problem is that this book belongs to the general relationship genre of "happy wife, happy life." That is, THE goal of the marriage is to make the wife happy. A husband can ONLY be happy if his wife is happy. This is disastrous advice. No one can make anyone else happy, and when both partners accept the goal of the marriage is to make the wife happy, it distorts the marriage. The husband becomes just a means to the end of a happy wife; and he will be treated like a means (and his wants and needs will be dismissed as unimportant). If we said "happy husband, happy life," we see how disastrous this type of advice is. Suddenly, this moment is no longer about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty glass. Now this moment is about a meaningful act of love and sacrifice.The author also seems to be very honest in his reflections of where he failed and was a shitty partner, to the extent that I can't but agree with the chapter where he mused that it's a wonder his ex-wife married and had a child with him in the first place. However, it's impressive growth that he's undertaken since then, so you gotta give him credit for that.