This is such a HOT topic for so many couples I see. It’s frequently one of the first points that is made at an initial session. One partner or the other will describe his or her distress in terms of how unfair the other partner is being or has been for years and years.
A key part of ascertaining what is underlying a couple’s unhappiness is to find out if one partner is asserting control over the other and whether this is being done in a reasonable or unreasonable manner. It boils down to the simplicity of if one partner loses out most of the time, then “unfairness” is often present and often unreasonably so.
Where one partner refuses to consider or accommodate the other partner’s wishes, views or ideas with virtually no sense of concern about how the other partner feels, then typically unfairness is overriding all areas of the relationship and unreasonableness is the root cause of so much unhappiness and isolation. There is a limit to how much unfairness a relationship can withstand before large cracks of self protection appear.