Sometimes, I realize this in the most unexpected moments. At a dinner, during a friendly chat, or on a long car ride when conversations get relaxed and relationships come up.
What often surprises me is how people talk about their spouses. It’s not that I don’t understand this. Anyone living with someone knows romantic ideas fade quickly when two people try to organize life under the same roof.
Everyday life is full of little frictions: who does the dishes, who takes out the trash, who left the mug on the table again. Among friends, it’s normal to vent a bit by complaining about your partner. That’s human.
But there’s a difference between loving teasing and when someone just starts tearing their partner down. And surprisingly often, I hear the latter.
Statements like the husband or wife is useless, never helps, completely incompetent come up.
Sometimes it even comes up that they’re no longer attractive or that they have no idea how they’ve lived together for so long. I hear this from both men and women. And it always makes me uncomfortable.
Partly because these words rarely sound like someone is truly seeking a solution to a problem. They’re more like a long complaint list about someone who isn’t there to respond. But there’s another reason it feels strange to listen to.
My Relationship with My Ex Is Better Than Many People’s with Their Spouse
I don’t live with my daughter’s dad. There are reasons why our lives turned out this way. The end of a relationship is never random, and our story had conflicts, challenges, and different paths.
But when I talk about him, I always keep two things in mind. One, I’m talking about someone I once loved. Two, he’s the father of my daughter. Those two facts alone are enough to stop me from speaking about him dismissively or mockingly.
Even if there were things we disagreed on or that eventually ended our relationship. Honestly, it’s often hard to reconcile this with what I hear from others.
Because when someone says their husband is completely incapable or their wife never cooperates, I always wonder: if they really think that way about each other, then what’s left of the relationship?
I know it’s easier from a distance. You don’t have to live together, endure snoring, or face the same little conflicts every day. We’d probably have more friction too if we still lived in the same place.
But there’s a line where complaining stops being simple stress relief and becomes disrespect. And I don’t see how anything good can come from that. Telling your friends how incompetent your partner is won’t solve the conflict.
It also doesn’t improve the relationship if someone regularly makes their partner a laughingstock in situations where they’re not even there. In fact, these words slowly shape how the speaker thinks about their own relationship.
If someone says often enough that their partner is incapable, annoying, or uninteresting, they’ll start to see them that way. And then another question always comes to mind.
How Can We Expect Respect from Others If We Don’t Give It Ourselves?
I’m not saying every relationship has to be perfect. Conflicts are natural, and sometimes you just need to vent your frustrations. But maybe it’s worth pausing before talking about your own spouse.
And ask yourself a simple question: if they heard this conversation, would they be proud of how I talk about them? Would I want them to talk about me like this to others? If the answer is no, then it’s also worth asking: how can a relationship work without respect for each other?
