Elizabeth Cole Stirling, a clinical psychologist in Santa Fe, N.M., has helped couples work through these issues for three decades. When she first started her practice in Washington, D.C., in 1972, most couples became acquainted with the daily habits of their partners only after a blissful honeymoon, and the discovery often came as a shock. Today most couples have spent months and even years in each others’ houses or apartments before deciding to live together. They know each other’s habits well, but, in someone else’s house, the irritating ones can be politely or blithely ignored. They’re not so easy to shake off when suddenly they’re in your house.
What passes for neat and messy has changed over the years as well. In the 1960s and 1970s, more women stayed home and were expected to keep a clean house. Today, most often, both partners work. Stirling notes that the standards for neatness are not as high, but, nonetheless, the conflict persists and the strategies for working out the issue as a couple remain the same.
The first step, and, Stirling observes, often the hardest, is having respect for the other person’s style and a willingness to compromise one’s own. The neat person needs to relax, and the messy one needs to take more care. Equally important, both partners have to accept the fact that the messy person may become neater, but is unlikely to ever be as neat as the more fastidious one might wish. Likewise the tidier one can loosen up some, but the orderliness of things will always be a priority.
Each partner also needs to understand what the other one regards as “neat” and “messy” in very specific terms, Stirling says. Do you draw the line at no wet towels on the bed? No clothes piled up in the bathroom? She advises couples to sit down, make a detailed list, and then try to reach a compromise that both can accept.
This can be harder than it seems, however, as partners can set up “roadblocks” without realizing it. Stirling cites an example: in one case, the wife was the messy one and the husband complained that she dropped clothes everywhere in their bedroom. The solution, it seemed, was a large clothes hamper. Still, the husband, who always hung up his clothes, didn’t like tossing her good clothing in a big bin. As they talked it out, it became apparent that what he really wanted was for her to carefully put her garments back on hangers, just like he did. But the point was not to reform his spouse; it was to eliminate a problem he found irksome with a solution he could live with. Eventually, the husband changed his ways.
The kitchen is another area where neat and messy need to be negotiated. The neat person often claims ownership, insisting that his or her standards are unassailable. But, Stirling points out, “you’re not at army boot camp, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.” Because health issues are involved, though, the kitchen is often easier to manage than the bedroom or a shared bathroom. If food is left out after a meal, it will spoil. If the dishes are not washed for three days, mold will flourish and so will an unpleasant smell. The compromise comes in deciding how often to wash the dishes-after every meal or once a day? As long as the kitchen is clean by the end of the day, can you live with it? If the counters are clean and the dishes washed and put away, can you live with crumbs on the floor?
Many couples divide the kitchen chores so that one cooks and the other cleans up. That works fine if each has a similar style in the kitchen. But if one takes after the Galloping Gourmet, covering every counter and using every pan, the clean-up will take an hour. If the other person is more like Martha Stewart, tidying up while preparing the meal, there won’t be much left to wash afterward. In this case, Stirling says, “you’re better off to have each partner do start-to-finish one night and then switch off.”
If one partner hates to cook or the couple reaches an impasse on what is neat or messy in the kitchen, Stirling suggests trying the “mileage plus time” trade-off that she uses with her own partner. “In exchange for the kitchen work, you put in equal time doing something that the other person hates, such as errands, grocery shopping, bill paying and taxes.”
While working out the details of communal spaces, Stirling stresses that each partner needs a space to call “his” or “hers” to keep as messy or neat as he or she wishes. Having an entire room to keep a pigsty or in “like-new” condition is optimal, but even his and hers closets will work. Stirling recalled that as a newlywed in a tiny house, she and her late husband divided a study with bookcases high enough to block the view of the other person’s space. Some of her patients have carried this one step further and painted each half of the room a different color.
Finally, while focusing on specifics, it’s also important to factor in your own foibles. For example, if you can’t go to bed at night without putting that last glass into the dishwasher, acknowledge that this is your issue, and don’t be angry at your partner for not doing it. Even more important, don’t make hanging up a coat a test of moral character. If your partner doesn’t hang up his or her jacket as soon as he or she comes in the house, it’s not a failure of will or a sign of disaffection. It’s just a habit-and one that might be slightly modified.
