I think...I have such a high 'irritation threshold' that I struggle sometimes when I'm with someone who just...seems to get rubbed wrong by sooo much. I know I'm not supposed to discount how someone feels, but man I wish they could choose to not get bothered by so much. But you're right, that's just not the case.

(To be fair, I do get bothered by stuff, but it's more like the broad conceptual relationship interactions--like a person's failure to express emotions causing problems--rather than the nitpicky stuff like whether they didn't leave room in the driveway for me to park. But usually the broad stuff gets cleared out of the way in the first 6 months, so then I'm coasting along but dealing with the minutia that crops up for them.)

I tend to mock vague advice like, "You've just got to let it go." HOW do we 'let it go'? Perhaps this--what we're doing right here--is how. We don't just think about it. We actually talk (or write;) ) about it a bit. We get perspective. We limit the scope.

There is truth that consciously processing something that's bothering you can actually help you consciously decide to not let something get to you. Just as thoughts and behaviors follow emotions, emotions can follow thoughts. I don't mean just decide to let something go in the sense of sweeping it under the rug. We all know how that goes. I mean let it go after the thinking and the talking.

We can even talk to the person we're with. The key is not asking them to change. After all, some dietary restrictions can't be changed. Our partners may not change, but they may be open to just brainstorming a way to help deal with the frustration (not the actual thing they can't change). But here's the real benefit of talking: In the very act of expressing how we feel, the strength of our negative feelings can actually subside. (Notice:

Just thinking about it may not lead the emotions to subside. The more active form of conscious processing with talking is the best bang for your buck.)

And there, dear Brian, is what I learned was the secret with the Landmine Guy. If I had known to just let him express his negative emotions and express sympathy, his overall tendency to jump to negative emotions might have eventually subsided so he groused less. But nope, I did all the classic things logic-bound people do--trying to defend what I did and 'helping' him see how he was blowing little things out of proportion. (Yeah, I neglected to mention that in this story, didn't I?;) Stupid learning curve. Only took me a decade to figure all that out:) )

There's probably some sort of absorption threshold, and maybe that's what you're getting at. You can only let so many things go before you're questioning whether you should just 'live with' yet one more thing that irritates you or if there's so many that seem indicative of basic incompatibility. (If the ONLY irritating thing about your person was the food thing, then perhaps you'd more easily be able to suck it up.) And it does seem unfair that sometimes only time can give us that answer. We just want the answer up front!

I'll say...I'm still developing my principles of relationships, and they seem to shift after every experience so nothing seems hard and fast. Today if you asked me I'd say that 2 things matter:

1) an overall sense of sureness that a person is the person. Sure those irritations introduce cracks in this sureness, but the initial sureness we felt in the first year is probably the best we're going to get. If that initial sureness is more than ever felt with someone else, then that's the person we decide to work through all the natural irritations with thereafter. (Those cracks may make you feel less sure, but even still...if you felt sure about someone for 2 years, then when the inevitable cracks comes, that's the person you invest 'doing the work' with for all the years to come despite the lower sureness.

2) an overall sense of peacefulness with the person, which allows for those irritations so long as the ratio of peace:irritation is pretty favorable.

But y'know, ask me tomorrow and I'll have poked holes in these broad principles and come up with something else:)

Can you tell it's summertime? I have more time to 'play' with ideas here on Medium when I'm not teaching. Perhaps you experience this difficulty, too--I'm ready to play in the summers but everyone else has to work or are constantly away on summer travels. Ergh:)

Good to hear from you, as always, Brian.

--Lee