What to Do When You Feel Like Nothing You Do is Good Enough for Your Spouse

A reader asked: "So I can't tell you what I actually need? I just have to pretend that you got there?"

Jan 08, 2025

Fair Play author Eve Rodsky’s endorsement of my book This is How Your Marriage Ends:

"The home can be deceiving because it presents so small (like dishes being left by the sink) and Fray beautifully unpacks this. This funny and poignant memoir and how to evolves into a beautiful exposition on partnerships, love, and unpaid labor. Fray highlights the larger systemic issues at hand and offers a program for fairness out of the toxic man box and forges a path to a healthy way forward." — Eve Rodsky, bestselling author of “Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)”

This is How Your Marriage Ends is 40% off on Amazon, available in local bookstores, or you can order an author-signed copy here from my friends at Islandport Media.

I hear a lot of men complain about their wife’s complaints.

If she’d just quit finding stuff to complain about all the time, we’d never fight at all, they think.

It’s pretty much how I thought about my former marriage too.

The premise of this complaint from men is as follows:

1. My wife knew me before we were married, told me she loved me, was interested in touching me and being touched by me. She knew my personality quirks. She laughed at my jokes. She was proud of me and impressed by me.

2. Despite literally being the EXACT SAME PERSON that she married—no changes whatsoever—she now has this never-ending laundry list of complaints about me.

3. Now it feels like it’s a chore for her to say “I love you.” We rarely, if ever, have sex. She seems annoyed and angry with me constantly. And despite continuing to advance my career, she doesn’t seem proud or impressed or supportive anymore. It’s like she doesn’t like me, even though, again, I’m absolutely the same person she married. She’s the one who changed. It feels like rejection and betrayal.

4. When I make an effort to change something about myself and do something different to accommodate one of these complaints she has, there is no acknowledgement, appreciation, or praise. Just more criticism because 5 percent of the job wasn’t done to her specifications.

5. Why fucking bother?

A reader sent me this note:

If my husband is doing all the things you talk about, but we’re actively working on it. And he says “look, I rinsed the milk bottle!” And I say, “that’s great, but remember the lids can’t be recycled”. Then he says, “see? Every time I make an effort you just shit on me about something else I haven’t done”. And I say “so.. I can’t tell you what I actually need? I just have to pretend that you got there?” What is a good next step for us? Don’t worry, we will also talk to our couples counsellor about it :)

What’s a Good Next Step?

Concepts like “pain” and “hurt” show up differently from person to person. But my general idea around relationships is simple: Our partners should be trusted to know the difference between what hurts us and what does not, and then be trusted to speak and act in a manner that honors our experiences, even if they’re different from theirs. (Example: If I’m allergic to a certain food, I should be able to trust my partner to make food prep, dining, and grocery decisions that account for my allergy, even if they are not allergic to that same food. If I can’t trust them to do that, it means either they’re trying to get me sick on purpose, OR they demonstrate such little care around my allergy that I can’t trust them to not sicken me by accident.)

I can’t know this for sure about the couple in the above example, but like virtually everyone I meet in my work, I suspect the wife feels a lot like a person in the food allergy example.

There are several life scenarios that she experiences different (negatively, sometimes painfully) than he does. And despite many attempts to communicate this over the years, I suspect she feels like she can’t trust him to honor the different way these things feel to her.

Maybe he leaves the toilet seat up. Maybe he buys motorcycles without considering her input. Maybe he doesn’t honor school night bedtime routines for the kids with the level of care and discipline that matters to his wife. There are an unlimited number of possibilities. She experiences it one way. He experiences it another.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, other than she simply can’t trust him to honor HER experiences. He exercises care around things that matter to him. She sees it. She knows what it looks like when he’s careful and respectful of what he considers important. And he does not act that way around several things she’s expressed concern for over the years. His behavior indicates he cares about his stuff, but doesn’t so much care about hers.

So, what’s a good next step?

I would encourage this man to recognize this pattern in their relationship and make efforts to demonstrate care around the things that matter to her, even if he doesn’t think of them as important or serious.

And then, after a consistent, concerted effort to do so has taken place over several weeks and months, I would encourage him to say to her: “Hey. I really care about doing things that show respect and care toward you. I want you to be happy. And it’s really discouraging when I’m trying to be the best husband and partner I can be to you, and then you hone in on something that seems to me like a minor infraction—or me using a methodology you wouldn’t use—and criticize my efforts. I want you to like me again. I want you to be proud of me again. And when this kind of thing happens, I feel none of that. And I don’t know how we can have a great marriage when we’re both not feeling loved and respected by one another.”

He can try to have that conversation now, but I don’t see how we can justify asking for consideration of our feelings and experiences when we seem unwilling to consider our partner’s.

So. Go first, good sir. Demonstrate respectful consideration of your wife’s feelings and experiences, and once that’s the normal, default condition in your marriage, take a step back and see whether the quality of your relationship isn’t improved dramatically.

When there is trust and security in relationships, people will speak and act as if they like each other, as if they’re proud of each other, and as if they desire each other.

The answer to these questions is almost always: The relationship partners who are in pain must experience acknowledgment, repair, and consistent considerate behavior from their partners moving forward in order for past wounds to heal.

And it usually comes down to: Are we going to continue to serve ourselves and look out exclusively for how we feel and what matters most to us every day? Or. Will we speak and act in ways that serve the other person? That serve something bigger and greater than ourselves?

Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.

P.S. - I know these things can seem really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop new skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF