Intro

Couples usually come into couples counseling with four content issues. These issues are:

• Mess 
• Sex 
• Money 
• Family (kids, in-laws)

If you have one of these issues, you can rest assured that you are not alone. However, I know that doesn’t help alleviate the actual pain and frustration of the issue(s).

In this blog, I wanted to address the first issue: mess.

We all want a clean house and don’t want to live in filth. However, partners often have different standards of cleanliness and desire to address the household mess.

Cleanliness Libido?

The late couples and sex therapist David Schnarch looked at issues in terms of libido. Just as one partner may have a higher sexual libido than the other, one partner may have a higher libido for cleanliness than the other.

In terms of mess, one way this difference can cause issues is when the person with the higher desire for clean assigns meaning to why the other person doesn’t have the same desire.

For example, “You don’t pick up after yourself because you don’t respect me.”

With this lens, any dish left in the sink or coat being unhung can create frustration and resentment.

You Make Yourself Mad

I recently told a client in couples counseling (she was female, and her partner male), “His not putting his shoes away doesn’t make you mad; you make yourself mad.”

This advice I gave her reminded her that she isn’t emotionally powerless to her partner’s mess.

Empathy

The first thing she can do is have empathy and understanding of her partner.

I continued with her, “He doesn’t wake up on a mission to leave things out to make you mad. He has some ADHD traits and a lot on his mind, so it’s a lower priority by default.”

Then I turned to him, “You also need empathy for her. A clean house is calming and leads to less anxiety for her. When you don’t pick up after yourself, she thinks you don’t care.”

Then I said to them, “With empathy for each other, you two must tackle this issue collaboratively. That looks like rolling up your sleeves and creating explicit agreements about the mess.”

Fair Play Card Deck

One of my favorite tools is a card deck called Fair Play. I recommend it to every couple with the mess issue.

This tool requires each partner to agree to be solely responsible for certain household chores and tasks (each card has a chore).

You two also need to decide on a standard of cleanliness for each chore. For example, what does it mean for that chore to be done? Partners need to address that as a team.

Then, if a chore hasn’t been done, the question is, “Hey, I thought this was our agreement?”

That sounds better than saying, “I can’t believe you didn’t finish the dishes. It’s obvious that you don’t respect me.”

We show empathy and handle the issues collaboratively with the guiding question, “What can I do to help you come through for me?”

In this way, we are not powerless.

Accept and Grieve

Finally, if your partner doesn’t have the same cleanliness libido as you, you must accept it and may need to grieve it while you appreciate what you are getting.

If you do that, you will make yourself less mad about the mess.

Conclusion

Mess is one of the common content issues couples come into counseling with. 

Our job as couples therapists is to help you two have empathy, understanding, collaboration, and agency (not feel powerless) in addressing this issue.

Each partner has different "libidos" for cleanliness, and not assigning negative meaning to those differences makes it easier to work through them.

Tools like the Fair Play deck can help facilitate explicit agreements about household chores and can be used collaboratively rather than confrontationally.

Ultimately, it’s not about the mess but how you two handle it.

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