There have been two recent threads about the now infamous "Spreadsheet Incident" (here and here). The original post received a fair amount of attention on /r/relationships and ton of attention on /r/TheRedPill. Given how many RP/BP talking points it touches on I'm not surprised.

On one hand it plays into the redpill narrative- manipulative, rationalizing wife withholding sex from her husband and seeking validation from strangers on the internet. And the BP narrative- immature, man who feels entitled to sex and won't communicate, passive-aggressively confronts her with weird spreadsheet detailing her 'failings' at an inappropriate time. To me it felt like an immature couple where the wife no longer feels attracted to her husband, but is in denial of that for some reason, and rationalizes it away.

Something I noticed in the threads here was how contentious the issue of communication in relationships is here, and I thought it would be interesting to hear what people had to say about the issue in general.

I suppose what's at stake is to the extent to which problems in relationships, especially sexual problems, are caused my miscommunication, as opposed to say: waning attraction in one or both parties, the respective emotional health of both partners, or basic incompatibility. And the extent to which communication can overcome more intrinsic issues in the relationship.

While there is a lot about relationships that TRP gets wrong, I find myself agreeing with the redpill core prescription over the bluepill one. TRP advises the man to become more attractive so his wife will have a renewed interest in sleeping with him, while /r/relationships tends to advise talking more and eventually couples counseling.

To me, it just seems like past a certain point, what is more communication going to accomplish? If the couple is not communicating well to begin with, what makes you think that more communication will help? And there never seems to be any advice about how to begin communicating better.

And in my experience couples counseling is complete waste of time for people that have not already done a lot of individual therapy, because the issue is not with the relationship. It's both partners individual issues leaking into the relationship, and those needs to be resolved separately.