The Fisherman’s Wife has just discovered a married people phenomenon. I’ve been living with it for so long now that I’d forgotten how upset it made me as a newlywed. Little things. She asks her new husband to do something small, like load the dishwasher. She goes to work. He stays home. She comes home from work, and he still has not loaded the dishwasher. So she does it. Yes, the Little Things Phenomenon. It makes me laugh now because I used to boil with anger.

My little thing was quite simple. Mr. Levine and I used to only have one pot and one pan. Every night, I came home from work and cooked us a meal. I cooked and he cleaned. That was the deal. In that precious month when we first lived together, though, I taught my husband a habit that would quickly become the bane of my existence. “Just let it soak.” Oh, if I had never uttered those words how happy my life might have been.

Every night when I got home from work, our one pot would always be “soaking.” I cleaned it, cooked in it, then cleaned it again the next day. It didn’t matter what I said, his excuse was always that it needed to soak. I did my job and half of his everyday of my life.

At the same time, though, we were living in London. Rain soaked through my boots, so when I came in the door I took my boots off and laid my socks on top to dry. Mr. Levine went mad. He hated seeing my dirty socks by the door everyday of his life. I changed that habit within a year. Mr. Levine started washing the pot only six months ago, when we got a dishwasher. By then I had learned to live with the unwashed pot—I bought more of them.

Now the little thing is egg pans. I hate eggs. I never eat them. He has them a couple of times a week and never rinses the pan. Within three days our kitchen reeks and ants are having a fiesta on blobby chunks of egg. I stand on the couch when I want to turn the fan on, and my husband waits for the day that my feet cause the fabric to rip. Little things, but they don’t mean as much any more.

As smarmy as this sounds, when they cease to bother you as much it’s because you’ve had to face much bigger problems. Harsh, little Secret Eight, Revealed.