There are couples fighting every day in homes across America about seemingly small things that get each other down. I hear about it when couples come to my office for counseling. He starts about what she does or doesn’t do, then she fires back about the dirty socks he leaves on the floor, then before you know it, it’s escalating into a shouting match and nobody wins.

It sometimes takes us several sessions before we break things down and get to the heart of the matter. When he can see it’s not about her nagging him, and she can see it’s not about him being a slob or leaving dirty socks on the floor they can begin to repair what’s really going wrong. That’s a lack of emotional connection. People don’t break up over dirty socks on the floor or about being told to pick them up. What they break up over is the feeling that their partner doesn’t care enough about them. They don’t feel loved or respected by their spouse. They’ve stopped connecting and that lack of emotional connection is what is at the heart of the problems they’re having.

When we get to this point in counseling, there are a lot of those “Aha” moments you hear so much about. He realizes that she nags him because she feels like he’s not seeing her, or not caring about how she feels. It feels like disrespect to him. He works and tries so hard to make a good life for the two of them, why doesn’t she see that these trivial matters don’t really count in the big picture scheme of things?

She realizes that to him, the dirty sock issue is a non-issue, but it makes her feel like he doesn’t care about her or respect her feelings and therefore she fires back at him. She can’t let it go because she just wants him to man up and do for himself and not treat her the way he treated his mom when he was a kid. He’s expecting that she would just follow behind and clean up after him and build him up instead of tearing him down. She wants a partner, not a grown up kid who can’t put away his dirty clothes. But in reality these are all just triggers with a deeper meaning of feeling alone in the relationship and not seemingly having a partner

If they have their own children this can be even more problematic. She wants to see her partner as an equal, and it’s hard to do that if she’s got to take care of him the same way she does their children.

He wants her to respect him and stop nagging, to see his role as her man as important, and can’t understand why she picks on these trivial things and makes such a big deal out of them.

What she’s fighting for and what he’s fighting for are really both the same thing.

They’re fighting for emotional connection. When that connection is lost there are all kinds of negative interpretations and assumptions that happen about what each other thinks and feels. When you come right down to it, both parties want the same.

They want their partner to see them as important, and they want to feel loved and respected by their spouse. She feels like he doesn’t care when he doesn’t hold up his end of the partnership and he feels disrespected when she scolds and nags him.

She wants to know that her partner cares and respects her enough to make something a priority simply because she thinks it’s important. She wants him to apply all the intelligence and cleverness that she admires in him to the running of their lives and household. More that that, she wants to know that she can rely on him to have her back and be her solid mate when things get tough. How can she see him that way if he won’t even do something as simple as pick up his dirty socks? This disillusions her and crushes her expectations. She then assumes he does NOT have her back and she feels all alone and anxious about the future.

He wants to know that she will take care of him, that she’ll be his mate and his helper and that he can rely on her to pick up the slack if he gets tired or overwhelmed. Sadly, men tend to have a more difficult time expressing these feelings and concerns, and that leaves her wondering why he makes it such a big fight when she brings up these issues like the dirty socks. The eroding of their emotional connection makes these seemingly trivial issues a tsunami of disagreements that often escalate into conflict they can’t manage.

So we don’t talk about the dirty socks, or the nagging. What we talk about is the emotional connection. How do we repair that? It requires a great deal of desire and effort on the part of both partners to get into the meat of the matter and begin to do the work.

When they get through the other side I can almost guarantee that he is now picking up his dirty socks just because he knows he should because it matters to her, and if he forgets once in a while ? She doesn’t nag him.  They work on their emotional connection constantly and feel like they are each other’s superhero in the relationship. There’s no need for petty bickering or nagging. They both know what’s really important is that the two of them have an emotional connection that’s so strong that they know they are important and oh so loved by their partner. They never need to doubt it.