Here’s another old joke of Bob’s: A guy goes to prison. On the first day, he’s sitting in the cafeteria with the rest of the inmates eating their lunch and occasionally, one guy shouts out a number: 34! 45! 72!  and everyone laughs when they hear the number.  

The new guy says, “Why is everyone laughing when someone shouts out a number?”  

The lifer says, “Oh we’ve been together for so long we know all the jokes, so we’ve just numbered them.”  

Then another guy shouts out, “23!” and no one laughs.  

“Why didn’t anyone laugh at that one?” says the new guy.  

“He told it wrong,” says the Lifer. 

When I see a couple who’ve been together for years, they are like that. One word is enough to communicate the whole argument, because they’ve hashed and rehashed it so many times. “His drinking,” is all she needs to say. “Her complaining,” is all he needs to say. The steam rises from both, but not the kind you want. It’s pent-up anger that has no place to go. The prior attempts to get across what they fear, what they need or the way they’ve been hurt have all failed. The only thing left is the impasse—being stuck and hopeless about things getting better.   

Here’s argument number 5: “You’re never satisfied. No matter what I say it’s not right. No matter what I do it isn’t enough, or I didn’t do it the way you wanted.” That is usually a husband talking. And the wife’s response is often, “I’ve told you 20 times what I want. It doesn’t seem to sink in. You keep giving me what you want, not what I want.”

Here’s argument number 9: “You’ve cheated on me. I don’t know how I can ever trust you again.” And the reply: “How long are you going to beat me up over it? I can’t undo what I’ve done. All I can do is tell you I love you; I choose you; I want to be with you. Please believe me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Argument number 15: “I do way more work around the house than you do.”

Argument number 17: “My route to getting to that theater is far better than yours.”

Argument number 21: “You shut me out. You don’t touch me. I can’t live like this. “

Argument number 25: “You leave me to pay all the bills, manage the money, do all the errands and yet you go out and buy something big without asking me.”

In my office, what is unsaid often seems louder to me than what IS said. All these arguments come from a deeper feeling of being unseen, uncared for, hurt, discounted, and shut out. It is those things that need to be said to get underneath the arguments.