I've been home for the past month while my GF works as I finish my thesis for grad school. I often go to a coffee shop to work/apply for jobs as they come up, but because I'm at home often I take time to clean the kitchen (why do I want a messy house?). I'm not Cinderella scrubbing floors, but I make sure that the kitchen at least is clean.

Anyways, we we're about to leave the house today and she starts going off about "taking 5 minutes to clean up this shitpile, it's so hard to live in this mess, blah blah blah". Instead of laughing because she was acting like a child, and recognizing that she was just pissy because of something else in her life not going right (which I knew about) my thoughts immediately went to "I clean this god damn kitchen every day, I make SURE it is spotless....blah blah blah", I got butt hurt, we exchanged jabs, got in the car. She asks why I'm so mad, and on autopilot I started saying "This isn't about you..." and realized, god damnit. I have a covert contract with my GF that she will appreciate all the work I do around the house while I'm home, and I caught myself starting to explain that the reason I was mad had nothing to do with her, it was about my own bad habits. I was angry, because I was hurt, because I took her comments as being directed at me instead of just letting her have her tantrum.

Thank you MRP for showing me how ridiculous such covert contracts are, and how taking anything your GF says personally means you've failed (and are in her frame). When you wrestle with a pig in mud...

Keep on trudging.