This explains at least 90% of the conflicts (sometimes fairly strident/high-level) in my decades-long marital relationship-- which is now approaching the longest relationship of my life.
My spouse is truly my other half-- but there are times when he enrages me as nobody else I've ever known.
It is also why we've had little luck with traditional marital counseling-- although... it
does serve as some sort of bizarre team-building activity, as we leave and compare notes about how wacky or off-target it all was. LOL. We have ZERO trouble "communicating our needs." We have, particularly as a team, truly formidable problem-solving skills, and we value one another's expertise in that regard.
So yeah, our "problems" don't tend to look like those of most couples. Even though we seem to deal with one another in fairly acrimonious ways-- it's often because life itself for us is extremely high-stress and has been for a long time, and we are one another's "safe harbor." We act out toward one another-- because there is no other safety valve. It usually devolves into elevating whatever-it-is into satire and laughter. He makes me laugh like nobody else I've ever known, too.
