4 Unglamorous But Heroic Ways To Love Your Partner
Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash
For 8 years, Mike Rowe created and starred in a show on the Discovery Channel called Dirty Jobs. In this show, Mike would go around the country and participate in some of the most difficult and disgusting jobs you can imagine.
What started as a longshot turned into a mega-success because Mike’s show seemed to tap into something that nearly everyone inherently knows but struggles to believe: life is messy and requires a lot of hard work.
Despite what we see on screens or read in books, life isn’t always the glamorous, idyllic, 2.5 kids and the 2,400 sq. ft. home in a nice neighborhood with nice schools. It’s easy to think that everyone around us gets to live a cookie-cutter, inside-the-lines type of life with their picturesque vacations and their 3-car garage. But more than not, that’s just a mirage.
That’s why a show like Dirty Jobs was so successful. It didn’t feed into the already growing narrative of corner offices, private golf courses, and fancy lunches. It highlighted real people in real jobs and it focused on the grim and the grit.
Mike Rowe showed that it’s the unglamorous parts of work that really lay the foundation for life as we know it. It’s the tasks that we often perceive as menial or even below us that are inherently some of the most important and essential.
It’s the same in relationships. When it comes to loving your partner well, it’s easy to want to be the hero. It’s great to aim high and shoot to knock them off their feet, to dream about grand-sweeping gestures and the rich, intimate, unbreakable moments of connection and love.
But if you’re going to be successful in the long-run, if you’re going to build a love that lasts, you’re going to have to learn to be content with the dirty jobs. You’ll need to learn to embrace the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes, seemingly trivial work if you want to truly learn to love your partner well.
Here are four unglamorous ways to love your partner that are actually quite heroic in their own right.
1. Do the dishes.
You may scoff at this suggestion, thinking “surely, this can’t be that big of a deal.” Think again.
Within the last month, Business Insider released a list of the most common fights couples have. Top of the list: doing dishes. The Atlantic reported, “dishwashing causes more relationship distress than any other household task.” Doing the dishes is such a big snafu in relationships that Oprah’s blog even wrote about it.
Doing the dishes is the definition of unglamorous. It’s tedious. It’s constant. My wife and I don’t have a garbage disposal, so one of us has to scrape off our food scraps into the trashcan before we can even do the dishes. It’s a hassle and no one likes when dirty dishes start to back up, pile over the sink and make their way on to the counter. There are few things more frustrating than going for a glass of water or a bowl of cereal and realizing you are out of cups, or that all of your bowls are dirty.
Fellas, here’s one you can just take on the chin. If you want an unglamorous but truly heroic way to love your partner, just clean the dang dishes. It’s not rocket science. If you need to, throw on a game on your phone or queue up your next podcast and just crank them out. You’ll honestly be shocked at how much your relationship satisfaction can increase with this one unglamorous task.
2. Give up the need to be right.
Everyone likes to be right. It’s hardwired into the very essence of who we are. Even if you don’t like to speak up, you still like to be right. So giving the need to be right isn’t just tough, it feels like ripping away a part of your soul.
It’s not glamorous. Your partner is probably never going to say “thank you” or even recognize your sacrifice to give up your need to be right. The more you give it up, the more your partner will feel like they are right about the random tiffs and arguments that go on between the two of you. But that’s not the point.
What really matters is that “giving up the need to be ‘right’ will make you happier and set you free.” It will also transform your relationship. This doesn’t mean you never have a spine or stand up for what you believe in. It mainly means that not everything is weighed equally and not everything is worth dying on a hill for. It’s about putting someone else before your own ego.
Tara Blair Ball says it this way,
“The times when I can say, “Maybe you’re right,” and move along are exceedingly better times than those when I have to prove I‘m right to fluff up my own ego”.
3. Don’t keep a record of wrongs.
I’m a collector and a record keeper, which is great for my family’s budget tracking but terrible for my relationship with my wife. Unfortunately, the same brain that keeps track of how often I get my haircut and how many miles I put on our vehicles each month also keeps track of when we last got in an argument and who got the last word in.
As human beings evolved, we learned to keep records because in order to know where you’re going, it’s important to know where you’ve been. We learned to track things and we took this practice and put it to use in nearly every sector of our lives, including our relationships.
But while it’s natural for us to keep a record of wrongs or frustrations, it’s not beneficial. It’s unglamorous to not be a record-keeper, but it’s heroic. That level of selflessness will sow harvests full of joy, generosity, and gratitude in your relationship.
4. Learn to be comfortable with patience.
The world seems to be getting faster and faster. If you’re in a serious relationship, it’s ‘ring before spring’ and you’re moving in. No one likes to wait around for something that may or may not happen. There are probably better options out there and our impatience drives us to either rush the process and risk the long-term benefit for the short-term gain.
But great relationships take time. They never develop overnight and it’s usually years until you really can understand and deeply love someone. According to PsychCentral, “a study found that couples who dated for at least three years before getting married are 39 percent less likely to get a divorce.”
We’ve all heard that patience is a virtue, but patience is also unglamorous. It’s never fully rewarded, in fact, it’s often criticized. And yet, patience is one of the most heroic and beneficial characteristics a person can bring into a relationship.
This doesn’t mean you have to move forward like a tortoise. This isn’t a license for not pursuing your partner or giving in to your fear of the unknown. Instead, it’s a recognition that good things most often take good amounts of time to develop, so if you can be patient, you’re more likely in for a great relationship.
Do the dirty jobs
Love is amazing, and being in a committed relationship is rewarding and enjoyable. The more you buy-in and do the dirty jobs, the more you realize that those moments are the elements that make love truly special.
The best relationships are the ones where two people are selflessly pursuing each other. Where pride has taken a back seat to respect, where there is no such thing as status or rank and where each person serves the other.
Don’t aim to be a hero with a shiny suit of armor. Get down in the mud and get your hands dirty and watch as your relationship blossoms.