After nearly 15 years of working with married couples, I’ve become convinced of something:
Some of the most damaging things in a marriage are the conversations that never happened.
Not necessarily the big fights.
Not the arguments where somebody raises their voice.
I’m talking about the little disappointments. The comments that didn’t sit right. The birthday that didn’t go the way you hoped. The request you made that your spouse seemed to ignore.
You were hurt.
But you didn’t say anything.
Maybe you didn’t want to ruin the evening. Maybe you’d just gotten married, had your first baby, bought a house, or moved across the country.
You had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why now wasn’t a good time to bring it up.
So you let it go.
Except you didn’t really let it go.
You just stopped talking about it.
And there’s a difference.
Micro-hurts are those seemingly small moments in a relationship that leave one spouse feeling disappointed, dismissed, unimportant, or misunderstood.
One incident might not seem like much.
But when these experiences happen repeatedly—and nobody addresses them—they can begin to change the way you see your spouse.
For example, you ask your wife to make your favorite meal for your birthday.
She doesn’t.
You might think, Well, that was disappointing.
But then you start attaching meaning to it.
She doesn’t care about the things that matter to me.
A few months later, something similar happens.
See? There it is again.
And before long, you’ve developed an entire belief about your spouse:
She only cares about what she wants. What I want doesn’t matter.
Here’s my question.
Have you ever actually told her that’s what you’ve been thinking?
Because she might have absolutely no idea.
She might remember the birthday completely differently. She might have misunderstood your request. There might have been circumstances you didn’t know about.
Or she might have made a genuinely inconsiderate decision that she needs to own.
But until you have the conversation, you don’t know.
And neither does she.
Meanwhile, you’ve been collecting evidence against her for years.
That’s a dangerous way to build a marriage.
I hear this all the time in my office.
“I didn’t want to bring it up because we’d just had our first baby.”
“We’d only been married six months.”
“We were having such a nice weekend, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“We’d just moved, and everything was already stressful.”
I understand.
I really do.
There are times when it’s wise to wait for a better moment.
But postponing a conversation isn’t the same thing as deciding never to have it.
And that’s where couples get themselves into trouble.
They keep postponing.
Then six months become six years.
And one day, something happens at dinner, and suddenly you’re furious about something your spouse did in 2016.
Your spouse looks at you like you’ve lost your mind.
“Where is THIS coming from?”
And you think, Where is this coming from? I’ve been putting up with this for ten years!
Except your spouse doesn’t know that.
Because you never told them.
You cannot expect your spouse to repair a hurt they don’t even know you’re carrying.
Now, before you start bringing your spouse a daily list of everything they do that annoys you, we need to make an important distinction.
Not everything that irritates you is an emotional injury.
Let me give you a ridiculous example from my own marriage.
We have three different kinds of towels in our kitchen.
Don’t ask me why. We just do.
One is for wiping our dark countertops because otherwise they show streaks.
One is for drying hands.
And one is for drying dishes.
Three towels. Three jobs.
Not terribly complicated, right?
And yet somehow, they still get mixed up.
Does that annoy me?
Absolutely.
Do I walk around thinking my husband doesn’t love me because he used the wrong towel?
No.
That’s a pet peeve.
Now, imagine a different situation.
Your husband repeatedly makes jokes about you when you’re out with friends.
Everybody laughs.
He thinks he’s being funny.
But you feel embarrassed, belittled, and hurt.
You start thinking, Does he actually respect me? Is this how he sees me?
That’s different.
It’s no longer simply something that irritates you.
It’s affecting how you experience your relationship.
One of the questions I encourage couples to ask themselves is: What am I making this mean?
Am I simply annoyed?
Or am I beginning to carry resentment?
Am I telling myself a story about what this behavior says about my spouse, about me, or about our marriage?
If you are, that’s something worth discussing.
And you don’t have to wait until the resentment becomes enormous.
Here’s a practical rule of thumb I learned from Terry Real.
The first time something happens, you might notice it and decide to let it go.
Fine.
The second time, you notice it again.
Hmm. That’s interesting.
But if it happens a third time, and it’s bothering you in the same way?
Have the conversation.
You don’t need to make a federal case out of every irritating thing your spouse does.
But you also don’t need to wait until you’ve collected 47 examples and are ready to present your evidence in court.
By the third occurrence, you may be looking at a pattern.
And patterns deserve attention.
You might say:
“When this happened the first time, I decided not to bring it up. Then something similar happened again, and I still wasn’t sure it was worth discussing. But now it’s happened a third time, and I’m realizing that it actually bothers me. Can we talk about it?”
Notice what you’re doing.
You’re not attacking your spouse.
You’re not announcing that they’re selfish, insensitive, or inconsiderate.
You’re giving them information.
Information they may not have had before.
And you’re giving them an opportunity to respond.
Of course, this rule doesn’t mean you should tolerate something seriously hurtful or unsafe three times before speaking up. It’s a guideline for ordinary relationship disappointments, not a requirement to endure mistreatment.
One of the biggest obstacles I see is that people think they need to know exactly how to start a difficult conversation.
They don’t.
Sometimes the best opening is simply admitting that you don’t know how.
You can say:
“I don’t really know how to bring this up. And I’m not even sure I should have waited this long. But something happened yesterday that reminded me of something from a few months ago, and I realized I’ve never actually talked to you about it.”
That’s a perfectly reasonable place to start.
You can even acknowledge your part in the delay.
“I’m sorry I sat on this for so long. I should have brought it up earlier. At the time, I didn’t realize how much it bothered me.”
Then explain what happened.
What you felt.
What you made it mean.
And what you’d like your spouse to understand or do differently.
This is one of the reasons I teach couples the Feedback Wheel.
It’s a structured way to bring your experience to your spouse without turning the conversation into an accusation.
For example:
“When you joked about my cooking in front of our friends on Saturday, I felt embarrassed. The story I told myself was that you think I’m incompetent and that you’re comfortable making fun of me in front of other people. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but that’s how it landed for me. Going forward, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t make jokes about me like that.”
Now your spouse has something specific to respond to.
They can clarify what they meant.
They can acknowledge the impact.
They can apologize.
And they can change what they do next time.
That’s how you begin clearing the air.
One conversation at a time.
I wish I could tell you this was unusual.
It isn’t.
I’ve worked with couples who have carried an unresolved hurt for ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
And sometimes the spouse hearing about it has absolutely no recollection of the incident.
That’s one of the risks of waiting.
Let me tell you something about my husband.
Jon can forget what we argued about two weeks ago.
Sometimes even a week ago.
He’ll remember that he was upset, but he won’t remember why.
And then, because he can’t remember why he was upset, he stops being upset!
Frankly, I wish some of that ability would rub off on me.
I have the opposite problem.
I remember things.
Details.
Conversations.
Probably the color of the piece of paper somebody wrote something on.
So imagine what happens when one spouse has been carrying around a detailed memory for a decade and the other spouse doesn’t even remember the event.
That’s not necessarily evidence that one person cares more.
If you’re bringing up an old hurt, understand that your spouse may be surprised.
They may be frustrated.
They may say, “Why didn’t you tell me this when it happened?”
And that’s a fair question.
You can acknowledge it.
“I wish I had. I didn’t know how to bring it up then, and I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me. But something happened recently that brought it back, and I’d rather talk about it now than keep carrying it.”
Then walk them through how you got there.
Explain what brought the memory back.
And remember that your spouse may not be able to explain what they were thinking ten years ago.
They may genuinely not remember.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a meaningful conversation today.
It just means the conversation may need to focus less on reconstructing every detail of the past and more on understanding the hurt you’re still experiencing.
And what you can do about it together.
Let’s say you’ve finally brought up the hurt.
Your spouse listens.
They apologize.
Wonderful.
But then the same thing happens again.
And again.
Now what?
Here’s something I teach couples:
We don’t just want an apology. We want repair.
Terry Real talks about the importance of moving beyond the apology itself.
I sometimes think of an apology without follow-through as a naked apology.
It needs to get dressed.
And what dresses an apology?
Ownership.
Understanding.
And changed behavior.
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of our friends.”
Good start.
But here’s something better:
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of our friends. I understand now that those jokes make you feel like I don’t respect you. That’s not how I want you to feel when we’re together. I’m going to stop making those jokes.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Because the point isn’t simply to hear the words I’m sorry.
The point is to stop repeating the behavior that caused the hurt.
And here’s something important.
Your spouse doesn’t have to personally find something offensive in order to understand why it matters to you.
Maybe those jokes wouldn’t bother them.
Fine.
But they bother you.
And now they know.
That’s enough reason to take the concern seriously.
I want to tell you a personal story.
For my 40th birthday, there was something I really wanted.
A special trip.
Just the two of us.
But that year, my dad received a serious diagnosis, and life became complicated.
There was travel back and forth, unexpected expenses, and a lot happening in our family.
The trip didn’t happen.
Years went by.
And then, nine years later, Jon made it happen.
We went to Chile.
Ten days.
Just the two of us.
And here’s what made it especially meaningful to me.
Normally, I’m the one who handles the travel arrangements in our marriage.
Flights.
Hotels.
Reservations.
All the little details.
For whatever reason, that stuff stresses Jon out.
But this time?
He planned it.
He booked everything.
He made sure the dates worked.
He even managed to cover the flights and hotels using miles and points.
And he did all of this during the year my dad passed away, wanting to give me something wonderful to look forward to.
We had the loveliest time.
I barely touched my laptop.
We explored.
We ate wonderful food.
We spent time together.
And we made memories that I will treasure for years.
Now, was it my 40th birthday trip?
No.
It was nine years later.
Could I have responded with, “Well, it’s about time”?
Of course.
But why would I want to do that?
If my choices are to experience something wonderful later than I originally hoped—or never experience it at all—I’ll take later.
Thank you very much.
And that’s something I want couples to understand.
Sometimes your spouse finally understands something that they’ve been missing for years.
Sometimes they finally recognize the significance of something you wanted.
And sometimes they make a genuine effort to make it right.
Please don’t be so attached to the disappointment of the past that you cannot receive something beautiful in the present.
That doesn’t mean every hurt can be repaired with a trip or a gift.
It doesn’t mean a thoughtful gesture erases years of repeated mistreatment.
But when your spouse makes a sincere effort to understand you and do something differently, allow that effort to matter.
This is where we need to distinguish between two very different situations.
One is when your spouse has never understood how something affects you.
The other is when you’ve explained it repeatedly, they’ve acknowledged it, and the behavior continues.
Those are not the same.
I generally encourage couples not to assume that their spouse is intentionally trying to hurt them.
People have habits.
They have blind spots.
Sometimes they genuinely don’t understand what we’re asking.
But that doesn’t mean you have to keep putting yourself in the same painful situation indefinitely.
Let’s go back to the example of a spouse making jokes about you in front of friends.
You’ve explained that it hurts.
You’ve asked them to stop.
But it continues.
You may eventually decide:
“I don’t want to keep going out with our friends if I’m going to be made fun of. I’ve explained why this hurts me, and it keeps happening. So I’m going to sit out those gatherings for now.”
Notice what you’re doing.
You’re not trying to control your spouse.
You’re making a decision about what you will participate in.
That’s a boundary.
You cannot force another adult to change.
But you can decide what situations you’re willing to keep putting yourself in.
And if repeated hurts continue despite honest conversations, it may be time to get professional help rather than having the same unproductive discussion over and over.
Here’s what concerns me most about unresolved micro-hurts.
Over time, they can begin to shape the way you interpret everything your spouse does.
A forgotten request becomes evidence that they don’t care.
A disappointing birthday becomes proof that you’re not important.
A poorly chosen joke becomes confirmation that they don’t respect you.
And eventually, you stop responding to the situation in front of you.
You’re responding to every similar situation you’ve ever experienced.
Some of those experiences may involve genuine hurt.
Others may involve misunderstandings that were never clarified.
But when they’re all piled together, it becomes difficult to tell the difference.
That’s why I encourage couples to clean these things up while they’re still relatively small.
Don’t wait ten years if you can address something this week.
Don’t collect evidence against your spouse when you could be collecting understanding.
And don’t assume you know what your spouse meant without giving them an opportunity to explain.
A good marriage isn’t one where nobody ever hurts anybody’s feelings.
That would be lovely.
It would also be impossible.
A good marriage is one where two people learn to recognize when something has gone wrong, talk about it, take responsibility, and make repairs.
Over and over again.
Because that’s what marriage requires.
Yes, if it’s still affecting you or the way you see your spouse.
Acknowledge that you wish you’d brought it up sooner. Explain what recently reminded you of the incident and why you’d like to discuss it now.
Understand that your spouse may not remember what happened or may remember it differently. The goal isn’t necessarily to agree on every detail. It’s to understand the hurt and determine whether something needs to be repaired.
Ask yourself whether it’s a pet peeve or something that’s changing the way you feel about your spouse.
An annoying habit isn’t necessarily a relationship injury.
But if you’re beginning to feel resentful, disrespected, dismissed, or unimportant, pay attention.
For smaller recurring issues, I like the rule of three: if something has bothered you three times, consider bringing it up before it becomes a bigger problem.
Resentment often begins to ease when the hurt is acknowledged and meaningful repair takes place.
That means more than an apology.
It means understanding what happened, taking responsibility where appropriate, and making a genuine effort to change the behavior.
If the hurt continues to affect you even after those changes, that may need its own conversation. Some injuries take more time and support to heal.
Not necessarily.
Something can still be meaningful even when it happens years later than you originally hoped.
But there’s a difference between an old hurt that was never properly discussed and a pattern of hurtful behavior that has continued despite repeated conversations.
The first may be an opportunity for understanding that never happened.
The second requires accountability and change.
Either way, meaningful repair is possible when both people are willing to participate.
First, make sure your request is specific enough that your spouse understands what you’re asking them to change.
If you’ve clearly communicated the issue and the behavior continues, you may need to establish boundaries around what you’re willing to participate in.
And if the pattern persists, consider getting help.
You cannot change your spouse for them. But you can decide how you respond and what you’re willing to accept in your relationship.
If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this article, it’s this:
Bring it up.
Even if you’re nervous.
Even if you don’t have the perfect words.
Even if you wish you’d brought it up six months ago.
Or six years ago.
You can start with:
“I don’t know exactly how to say this, but there’s something I’ve been carrying around, and I’d really like us to talk about it.”
That conversation might be uncomfortable.
Your spouse might be surprised.
You might discover that the story you’ve been telling yourself isn’t what they meant at all.
Or you might discover that something genuinely needs to change.
Either way, you have a better chance of moving forward when the two of you know what you’re dealing with.
And that’s far better than spending another decade silently collecting disappointments.
If you and your spouse keep having the same arguments, carrying around old disappointments, or struggling to talk about the things that really matter, you don’t have to keep doing this on your own.
I’m Danka Bogott, a married couples coach in Edina, Minnesota, and for nearly 15 years I’ve helped couples understand what’s happening between them, getting to the bottom of it all and learn how to do things differently.
We don’t just talk about the problems.
We work on changing the patterns that keep creating them.
