A Clean Home

In Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Gottman. In chapter 11 Gottman talks about how gridlock problems are unfulfilled dreams, hopes or aspirations. A gridlock or perpetual problem is when you keep having the same fight; sometimes lasting years. My husbands and my gridlock argument is over cleaning as I would like a tidy home (not be embarrassed if someone stops by) and my husband just does not care! I am trying to decide what my unfulfilled dream is over this argument. Maybe my dream is to have a self cleaning home so that nobody has to do it and it is just clean or maybe a robot that cleans for me. I think of a show that my son enjoys called Bunk’d and in an episode they have a robot that cleans amongst other things. This robot ended up taking over the cabin and tried killing some of the campers -yeesh-. I personally do not want that to happen to my family

So where does it leave me not knowing my dreams over this gridlocked argument? I think this is where letting your spouse influence you needs to happen. My husband is one of those who just does not want/like to clean; he will walk right by a mess like it is not even there. He would rather do fun stuff like play on his phone (who does not?), but this is where priorities and being a responsible adult needs to come into play. If nobody cleans the house imagine what it would look like! Keep in mind that we have three children, four dogs and one cat so that that would be really nasty. I shared a few weeks ago how my husband ate some cookies that fell on an un-mopped floor. We have tried a chore list which did not help and I am out of ideas on how to solve this problem. My husband has not come up with any ideas either which would be helpful if he would because he is the one who does not want to clean. Maybe I should just kick everyone out after cleaning the home. I am only kidding about that….Maybe