Love in the Time of Thermostat Wars: A Couples Therapist Explains Why Bickering Is Sometimes a Love Language
Tuesday, February 11, 2025.
There you are, scrolling mindlessly through your phone, ignoring your partner’s voice in the background.
Not maliciously. Not intentionally.
Just the kind of ignoring that happens when a human being has been married or partnered for longer than six weeks.
And then, suddenly, it appears—the meme. The one with the exhausted-looking couple in a Target parking lot. The caption reads: "Married for 20 years. Argued the entire car ride. Still holding hands on the way in."
You snort. You show it to your partner. They snort. Neither of you apologizes for whatever nonsense you were arguing about earlier.
This is love.
The Meaning of Marriage: Fighting Over the Temperature
If the invention of language had an ultimate purpose, it was likely to give couples something to fight about.
Before language, cave-couples probably just gestured at each other aggressively over whose turn it was to watch the fire.
Now, thousands of years later, you have the technology to wage war over thermostat settings, meal choices, and the moral implications of leaving socks near the laundry basket rather than in it.
Why do people fight about these things? Because love, true love, is not about romance or passion or grand sweeping gestures.
Love is about finding a person whose exact combination of annoying traits perfectly counterbalances your own.
Love is the full-time commitment to tolerating someone else’s nonsense in exchange for them tolerating yours.
Why Bickering Is a Love Language Sometimes
Some couples mistake these daily squabbles for dysfunction. They worry they’re fighting too much.
But let me tell you something as a couples therapist: it’s the couples who never bicker that should be concerned. If you’re not bickering, one of two things is happening:
You are two extremely well-adjusted, enlightened human beings who have attained a state of relationship nirvana. (In which case, congrats, and also, why are you even reading this?)
One or both of you has given up. And not in the peaceful, ‘We’ve transcended conflict’ way. In the dark, ‘We have entered the realm of silent resentment and emotional starvation’ way.
Here’s the big idea. When a couple bickers, they are directly engaging.
They are saying: You matter to me enough for me to correct you about the right way to load the dishwasher. They are saying: I am invested enough in our shared life to have a strong opinion about the right kind of peanut butter.
The Social Media Zeitgeist: Relationship Memes as Therapy
The internet has given us many things—some good (puppy videos), some terrible (puppy videos that turn out to be tragic).
But one of its great contributions to modern love is the proliferation of relationship memes that remind us all: you are not alone in this ridiculous dance.
Scroll through any meme account focused on relationships and you’ll see yourself reflected back in absurdity.
"My wife and I play this fun game called 'Guess what I’m mad about.' Nobody wins."
"Marriage is just two people taking turns pushing each other out of their comfort zone."
"Relationship status: Still debating the proper way to hang a toilet paper roll."
What these memes do, aside from making us laugh, is normalize the low-stakes absurdity of long-term relationships.
They remind us that marriage is not a glossy Hallmark movie, nor is it a perpetual state of crisis. It is, in fact, a middle ground filled with minor inconveniences, lovingly inflicted upon one another.
The Secret to a Happy Marriage: Laughing About It
If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a therapist, it’s that couples who laugh together, last together.
There are few greater acts of love than finding your person endlessly, stupidly funny.
Bickering is mostly a problem when it stops being funny—when contempt seeps in, when eye-rolls replace chuckles, when the teasing is no longer affectionate but a coded form of hostility.
So the next time you find yourself engaged in an existential war over how to properly pronounce the word "almond," take a step back.
Laugh.
Show your partner a meme.
Remind yourselves that this ridiculous thing you do—this daily clash of preferences, temperaments, and ridiculous habits—is, in its own way, an expression of love.
And then, of course, return to your argument. Because, let’s be honest, they’re obviously wrong.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.