Dance Puppet, Dance

Isn't marriage funny. You take two people with different backgrounds and you make them live together. In this process of living together, ideally, we are supposed to foster a relationship of cooperation, love and communication, but somewhere along the way we learn what buttons to push to get a desired reaction. Take my marriage for instance. If I want to set Tim off I start talking about my birthday this year or my lack of wedding photos. If he wants to set me off when he goes to bed he will take the nicely folded laundry that took all day to fold and just needs to be put away, and either shove it over to my side of the bed and turn off the light or he will put it on the floor and turn off the light before I get in there. It drives me nuts. In his defense this hasn't happened for a long time and it wasn't a recent incident in my marriage that brought this post on. I have noticed however, as I was preparing this post, that this extends to other relationships as well. What is this base desire to manipulate the other person into feeling fear, anger, lust and How do we rise above it?