Almost every day, I think about the dishwasher scene from the series Forever.
Amazon’s surreal dark comedy is the love story of June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen) living together in the afterlife – which looks an awful lot like a bland suburban neighborhood.
In the dishwasher scene, June remarks that Oscar always flips the silverware right-side up in the dishwasher. For as long as they’ve been together - in life and after death — he flips the flatware. She wonders why he didn’t just ask her to load the silverware this way. He pauses and, with some resignation, explains. He did ask her and she didn’t do it. So he didn’t mention it again since he knew he’d end up doing it himself anyway only then he’d be resentful or angry, so he just...does it.
What matters? You could say that Oscar is being fussy about the silly silver and should chill. You could say that June is being oblivious and should pay closer attention to what’s important to him.
Either way, this scene is not about the silverware.
Since reading the article, My Wife Divorced Me for Leaving Dirty Glasses by the Sink – and She Was Right! by Matthew Fray a couple of weeks ago, my partner, Frank, and I have been talking about it.
We’ve been talking to each other, with other couples and frankly with anyone who’ll weigh in on it with us. When does it matter and when do you let it go? When is asking for something unreasonable and when is it a bid for respect and understanding?
What if the heart of a healthy relationship is these apparently little things? Whether it’s a life partner, a parent and child, a friend or a colleague, what if these little things that seem not to matter, actually do?
The main argument against the import of little things is “this is who they are.” These behaviors, the argument goes, are character traits, part of the whole person. So if you love them, suck it up, and let it go.
For example, my husband’s soccer teammate (co-ed rec league soccer, that is) would yell at the refs. The refs were young and paid nothing to make the games possible and this guy was yelling at them. My husband told him to cut it out, and he said, “I can’t, man. It’s in my DNA.” Frank called bullshit. Adults can choose how to behave no matter what your DNA is.
You could argue that yelling at someone is abusive in the way that leaving a used glass by the sink isn’t. And yet, when done over and over and over, even when you’ve been asked not to is abuse by a thousand cuts. The death of a relationship with nail clippers.
Because these little things aren’t really little. They are part of a larger picture. They stand for big things. They stand for knowing each other, for caring about the other’s happiness, for respect and love.
In no way do I mean to oversimplify this. People think, speak and behave the way they do as a result of their whole lived experience (and often the experiences of their families and ancestors). Ordeals of trauma, physical and mental illness, addiction and abuse, exposure to bullying, racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, anti-fatness, cruelty, exclusion, or abandonment of any kind in the past impacts behavior in the present. Those experiences can be acknowledged and addressed, except perhaps in extreme circumstances. Consideration for and appreciation of each person’s skills, gifts, capacity, needs and desires is part of a healthy relationship.
If someone in a relationship finds themselves repeatedly saying “it doesn’t matter,” what they are really saying is “I don’t matter.” In a healthy relationship, you matter. Everybody matters.
In a recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, host Glennon Doyle and her wife, Abby Wambach talk to Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird about the sticky bits of relationship. (The whole episode is good, especially if you are a fan of women’s sport. The section to which I refer is from 34:00 – 39:00.) They touch on character traits, sorry-not-sorry apologies, and acceptance.
Finally, Glennon acknowledges that while Abby has asked her to put things away, Glennon says she is “never, ever going to to it differently.”
To which I ask, why not?