When asked what their fights were about, Tara’s answer cuts through every surface-level topic: “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Are we safe? Am I safe? Am I attached? Are you attached? Who’s in charge?” Pick any topic — dishes, parenting, work travel — but at the core it’s always attachment, safety, and being seen.
Joe adds that shame and feeling unseen drive the fights. The topics rotate but the underlying questions don’t. This means that solving the surface problem (who does the dishes) never actually resolves the fight, because the fight was never about dishes. It was about overwhelm, exhaustion, and not feeling like you’re in it together.
Tara illustrates this with their dish fights: when stuck in “you’re not doing enough dishes,” the only solution is one person does more dishes. But when they stepped out of their corners, they found ten other solutions — paper plates, family help, hiring someone, getting a better dishwasher — because the real problem was the whole family system needing more support.