Why Couples Fight About Small Things: Selfishness, Gender Roles, and Emotional Labor

We finished our usual pleasantries on Zoom, and then she said, “I have something to talk about. It might sound silly. Maybe it is. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

We had been talking about the dynamic with her partner for months. I had heard many stories about the struggle to be acknowledged and feel prioritized. But today she brought up another layer.

She started talking about the old days. They had been on a weekend getaway. The first time they had spent consecutive days together. She was aware of the firsts and the excitement, even in re-telling this story from when they were just beginning to date. They had stopped to eat a roasted chicken from a roadside stall. The smell of garlic, the paper greasy in her hands. She was pulling apart her first thigh when he had already grabbed his second leg. He did not pause. He did not ask. By the time she looked up, he was finished with it and reaching for more. She remembered being startled, realizing she had to rush to claim her fill.

This weekend they were hiking when he stopped to pick a few berries. She did not even want one, but she waited, watching to see if he would offer. He did not. And there it was again. The same feeling she had years ago. Him choosing himself, her left watching and waiting.

She looked at me. “Am I being ridiculous? He loves me. Am I making this into something bigger? Maybe this is just what men are like.”

I told her it was not ridiculous.

Because it was not about chicken or berries. It was about fairness. It was about whether her needs registered, or whether she had to be the one to point them out again and again. It was about the exhaustion of being the person who notices, who asks, who risks being dismissed or being told she is making too much of it.

We call this selfishness, but that word is too blunt. What I see over and over is not selfishness, but the refusal to sit in discomfort. The refusal to pause, to offer, to let another person’s needs interrupt your own impulses. Sometimes it looks like reaching first and not looking up. Other times it looks quieter: the silence, the withdrawal, the refusal to stay in the dialogue. Each one avoids discomfort, and the partner is left holding it alone.

That avoidance is the imbalance of emotional labor.

Women are usually the ones who absorb the discomfort. They track the relationship, they carry the tension, they bring up what feels unfair. Men are more often the ones who protect their ease.

These roles are not random. They are cultural. Boys are taught to claim space and reach for what they want. Girls are taught to compromise, to smooth things over, and to take others into account. By the time they meet in adulthood, the pattern is set: men protecting their comfort, women absorbing the cost.

Modern women are caught in the middle. We want equality without having to beg for it. We want generosity without having to demand it. Yet when men default to their own comfort, women are left with no choice but to push, to repeat, to insist. That is how the status quo pulls us into carrying the weight of the relationship.

The fights rarely look like “big” issues. They surface in the smallest things. A chicken leg, a handful of berries, dishes in the sink. On the surface they seem laughable. But couples know they are not. These tiny moments become symbols: care, respect, being worth the pause.

So it was not about berries. It was about whether she mattered enough for him to stop. Whether he could let a moment of discomfort in, or whether she would be left to hold it by herself.

This is why couples circle the same fights for years. It is never really about who eats faster or who cleans the dishes. It is about what those moments stand for. One person avoids the discomfort of accountability. The other bears the work of naming it. Over time, that calcifies into resentment.

A few weeks later she came back and told me something had shifted. Every few days she would find a few strawberries from their garden, the sweetest ones, set quietly on the table by her side of the bed. He never said a word. They were just there, waiting for her. A countersymbol. A living rebuttal. Proof that old patterns can bend, that selfishness is not fixed, and that sometimes it is not the long discussion but the small intentional gesture that changes the story.

It is rarely the big betrayals that wear people down. It is the everyday moments, when one person stops expecting more and the other never notices they have stopped. And this is how culture takes root, not in slogans or laws, but in the small habits we carry into our kitchens and our walks. Who reaches first. Who learns to stop asking. And sometimes, who dares to offer a strawberry quietly, as a living rebuttal.

Are you looking for help with your relationship? Do you feel that a relationship coach could help you working on your couples skills? Is communication an issue? Have you ever considered couples therapy or counseling? As a psychotherapist and relationship coach, I am uniquely positioned to help you through these moments of disconnect and conflict.

__

Learn more about my approach to life consulting and relationship coaching here or get in touch for your free 30-minute consultation here! Don’t forget to follow along @LilyManne on social for more regular updates!