u/EasyButtonMutton

something i keep noticing and wanted to ask people who've actually been married a while.

it seems like most couples don't really have a lot of separate problems, they have one pattern that keeps showing up in different clothes. money this month, in-laws the next, whatever else. but underneath, the fight goes the same: one person pushes to resolve it right now, the other goes quiet and "reasonable," and the quiet just makes the pusher push harder.

for the married-a-while crowd specifically: did this ease up on its own with time, or did you have to do something deliberate to break it? "we learned to live with it" and "we actually fixed it" feel like really different answers and i'm curious which one is more common?