Doing pushups while my parents fighting
M:Why? why is it so difficult? Just cuz you don't like it. well I am sure Frank and Casey and all the other guys had a reason or something you didn't like, do they? or didn't they?
W:I don't like people screwing with me when I'm driving all right?
M:But you like people screwing with you because for whatever f*cking reason, right? But your husband can't get a little action during the day. But you just sit here and act like nothing.
W:definitely.
M: Yes it does. It has everyrthing to do with it. It has everything you for you to sit here and press. Look at me when I talk to you! It has everything for you to do with you You sitting there and telling me It have everything for you to do is sit there and tell me I'm not good enough for you.
This conversation made me think of something interesting.
My purpose is not to justify the life or actions of the young man doing pushups.
I will leave the role of supporting a fine young man who perseveres through pain, and that of a quote-making machine, to others.
And since my own father has almost never raised his voice at my mother throughout his life, I do not particularly relate to this either.
My interest lies in reconstructing the direct and indirect causes of conflict between a man and a woman.
If I were to summarize it briefly, it would be the failure of language.
The man did something, probably a sexual attempt.
However, he was rejected.
Then the man recalls that in similar situations, when Frank or Casey did something similar, they were not rejected.
At the very least, he thought that saying this would be useful in filling his own sense of pride.
The woman did not give the answer that would fit the man’s hypothesis, namely, “That is because you are not enough.”
What troubles the man is not the rejection itself, but the fact that his own claim fails to fully persuade even himself.
Let us set the man’s hypothesis as follows: “I was rejected because I am unattractive.”
If that were the case, then in order to verify whether his suspicion was correct, he would have to keep all other conditions the same and observe how the woman’s response changes.
For example, if in a parallel world he could slightly alter his appearance and test the woman’s reactions, the man would have obtained the answer he wanted.
And then the conclusion would have followed that “the woman managed to obtain what she wanted while occupying the role of a good person by telling situationally appropriate lies.”
However, we do not, of course, possess the ability to explore parallel worlds.
In other words, this is unrealistic.
Interestingly, unrealism does not guarantee a lack of plausibility or verisimilitude.
In the film About Time, there is such a scene.
Tim makes two confessions to Charlotte through time travel.
In the first, he confesses on the last day he spends with Charlotte, and Charlotte asks why he did not say anything until then.
Tim then turns back time and makes a second confession early in the period when they first begin staying together.
This time, Charlotte postpones her answer, saying they should see what happens on the last day.
It is widely known that no one in this world possesses the ability to time travel, yet the scene in the film carries considerable plausibility.
This is because every human being in this world has already experienced the failure of language.
Therefore, when watching that scene in About Time, people suspend their doubts about it.
It does not seem likely that the reasons language must fail can be organized into a single necessary cause.
However, plausible explanations are possible.
For example, humans are social animals, so if one were to speak exactly what one thinks, one would quickly become isolated, or the function of reason driven by emotion as a justification-producing machine, as explained by the elephant-and-rider theory, and so on.
There are too many plausible explanations in this world.
It is unlikely that an adult’s level of language ability dramatically improves or deteriorates over the course of just a few years.
The man and the woman were probably already interacting through failed language even before marriage.
In truth, this is nothing special.
Human language has never been perfect, not even once.
After watching the video, I realized that many thoughts crossed my mind - almost everything except the linguistic aspect of the argument between the man and the woman in the background.
That’s why your post caught my attention: your ability to notice and stay with details that are far from obvious, and to treat everyday speech itself as something worth examining.
Your analysis of the exchange between the man and the woman reminded me of the movie “The Invention of Lying” (2009), where, in a world that only knows truth, one person suddenly discovers the possibility of lying.
In both cases, what feels central is not the content of what is being said, but the fragile role language plays in holding human relationships together.
When you write, “Human language has never been perfect, not even once,” it feels like you’re touching the core of communication itself - and yet, paradoxically, arriving at the realization that language is the only tool we have.
Imperfect, insufficient, and still unavoidable.