Recently I came across an article titled something along the lines of "Conversations I Wish I Had Had with My Spouse Before We Got Married."

The author described dilemmas she and her spouse ran into related to the division of household chores, questions of what religion their children would follow, and approaches to discipline and education.As I read the article, I got the feeling that the author and her spouse may have been very young when they got married.The Wonderful Husband and I were 31 when we got married. Knowing that we were already "old," we decided to have our kids as quickly as we could. In addition to really having figured ourselves out and knowing what we wanted out of a relationship, we are usually just too tired to care whether we make it to the Catholic church or the Lutheran one and more likely to attend the one that lets us get an extra hour of sleep.Our approach to household chores is one of either survival, as in we need to eat so someone has to scrounge up some groceries and some dinner, or call in for takeout, or one where we push as much off onto the kids as we can, and then the lucky one sneaks off to the basement or the grocery store to avoid the ensuing whining that goes with taking out the garbage, vacuuming and putting laundry away. I can't say it's been a perfect approach, but it has kept us together and reasonably happy with each other for almost 12 years.There is a storm brewing on the horizon, though, and it's challenging our marriage like nothing ever has. I know there are a few crazy people out there who actually enjoy cleaning. I am not that person, but I do like the end result, so I don't mind scrubbing toilets, washing piles of dirty laundry, including the muddy, wet baseball pants that someone threw in the bottom of the hamper last week, cleaning out the litter box, magic erasing baseboards, etc.However, we all have that one chore that we would do anything to avoid. I have a friend who pays a cleaning lady to come in two times a week just to scrub the bathroom. That is her no-no chore.For me, it is washing the dishes. There is just something about that gooey, gray, slimy water that coagulates in the other dishes while you're washing that grosses me out to no end. Having to reach into that water to retrieve an errant fork makes me want to vomit.It doesn't help that my kids absolutely stink at cleaning off their plates and someone invariably throws a dish into the sink with a chunk of chicken stuck to it. By the time I might get around to washing that dish, that chunk of chicken will be a bloated, gelatinous blob of goop. So gross, I can't even write about it without gagging.The one kitchen appliance I cannot live without is the dishwasher. The WH, however, doesn't "believe in" dishwashers. Despite the "sanitize" function, he has just never been able to get on board with using it, but for the last 12 years, the dishes have been mostly out of sight and out of mind for him.He has squirreled away a drying rack for those situations where I'm away or incapacitated for a few days. For me, the drying rack became a nice way to contain stray bags and bottles of cleaner that I kept under the sink.About six months ago, tragedy struck. A glass shattered in the dishwasher. There was glass everywhere, and it jammed every single inlet and outlet in the washer. Even though we had a repairman come and take everything apart and clean it out, the dishwasher never fully recovered. Since then, I will admit, there always seems to be a little bit of a film on the glasses, or little particles of food that never quite get washed away.I kept telling myself that if I just run it one more time, that will be the time that it gets cleaned out for good. The WH, however, will no longer eat off dishes that come out of the dishwasher.So, being considerate of my hate of washing dishes, and his refusal to use the dishwasher, he has started doing the dishes the old-fashioned way.The dish rack has now become a permanent fixture, taking up one-third of the available counter space in the kitchen, and seemingly never empty. The dish rack also doesn't quite hold all of the dishes that a family of five uses in a 24-hour period, so I'm not sure that the sink has actually been empty at all in the past few weeks.The dishwasher allowed me to "hide" all of the breakfast dishes. Now they sit in the sink all day. It's driving me crazy. Not quite as crazy as touching the gelatinous mystery globs will, but still, pretty crazy.I'm not sure what the answer is here. I would say that I will break down and buy a new dishwasher, but the WH thinks that his dishrack and hand-washing are the only way to go.Most couples say that having two sinks in the bathroom saves their marriage. I'm thinking we might need two in the kitchen.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.