One of the more interesting aspects of being in a relationship is learning how your partner fights with you. Granted, this may seem like a bizarre statement but I believe it is one that is true.
A couple of days ago, while perusing an Oprah magazine, I happened upon an article about this very topic and it made me think.
In the article, a woman described how she and her partner were "conflict adverse," or, in normal language, they didn't fight. I read on to discover that she and her husband were perfectly happy because they never fought and found "outlets" for their mutual aggression towards each other in ever-so-holistic practices like yoga, hours-long sessions at the gym, pick-up sports, and "expressing" their inner frustrations through creative outlets like painting murals with one's ass or sculpting their anger in macrame ashtrays (oh, and this couple doesn't smoke, of course, it's the creative process of making an ashtray rather than having a long drag on a cigarette that works for them).
I honestly shouldn't read these articles because they set off some deep introspective process on my part that usually ends up with me fighting with my significant other and smoking too many cigarettes. But...whatever...there I went.
So I decided to explore my own past relationships, and my present one, to discover how I fight.
Or, rather, I decided to discover how "we" fight. "We" is being used in the collective sense here, since it is rather boring to fight with yourself.
About eighteen years into having what I would term 'serious relationships,' I decided to look into my own fighting style.
I began with Will.
Will was my first significant relationship. He was from Argentina via Philadelphia and we were together for about four years, starting my junior year in high school. Will was quiet, reserved, and brainy. He would stay up all night in our cheap Philly apartment and try to work out quantum physics formulas. I would awake every morning to sheets of notebook paper strewn across our living room with mathematical formulas that made my head spin. He thought they were gifts.
However, despite all outward appearances, Will was a fighter.
Unfortunately, I was too.
Our fights would always end up in one of us throwing something valuable on the floor or off the balcony or doing something so horrendous that it would stun us both into silence for days. We'd creep around each other in our own mutual worlds of humiliation and anger.
The "morning after" would go something like this:
Him: "Did you really throw all of my art supplies, my college books, the picture of my dead grandmother, AND the antique candle holders that my mother gave us from Argentina into the dumpster?"
Me: "Yeah, sorry about that. But why did you have take my favorite plant, my dishes, AND the gourmet meal I prepared for you and throw it at the wall?"
We'd eventually apologize, replace for each other everything that we had broken, and carry on.
After four years, however, the relationship just broke...and some parts just couldn't be replaced.
It wasn't anything specific, and it wasn't really a bad ending, but something just broke that I couldn't retrieve from the dumpster and he couldn't buy again at Home Depot or Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Sometimes, things just break.
Next up was Ed, another sensitive and artistic soul from Philadelphia.
Ed and I had the amazingly brilliant idea of knowing each other for a few months and then deciding to move to a former communist country (except no one told them it wasn't communist anymore) and live in a one room apartment for sixteen months teaching English and making about $150/month.
In northeastern Hungary, the sun disappeared around the end of September and didn't make another appearance until late April.
To characterize this as depressing would be a major understatement. But we found ways to cope...the same way that our friends and colleagues, Hungarian and otherwise, coped...we drank ourselves silly. We would come home from work at about 4PM, have a beer or two or three, watch bad German television, and then start in on a bottle of wine...or two, or three.
Around midnight, facing another day or month of darkness and a tight budget, we would look at each other and find everything wrong.
Me: "I hate it here. You made me come here. I miss my mother and my family and now all I have to do is to sit in this dreary Soviet apartment and talk to you. Oh, and you have bad breath..."
Him: "You are a spoiled brat. You are an uptight, insecure, pampered...brat. Oh, and can your ass get any fatter or would you like to have another stuffed cabbage roll?"
To his credit, Ed was a hell of a lot more patient than Will. He was also nearly eight years my senior and had put up with his fair due of shit way before I entered his life so he tolerated my own insecurities and drama like a trooper...most of the time.
Underneath it all, we loved each other to death. Like Will, Ed and I always made up because neither one of us had the capacity to stay angry for more than a few hours or, maximum, a few days.
But a few hours and a few days, over a lifetime of a relationship (Ed and I were together for nearly a decade), wears you down.
When we parted ways five years ago, we did so in anguish. We both looked like people who had survived a nuclear holocaust and were still reaching for the air masks despite the fact that our limbs were falling off. Deep down inside, we loved each other and wanted to make it work. But, on the outside AND the inside, too much hurt and pain had occurred that made the relationship one long walk of pain.
Luckily, we are still friends, but that one hurt like a bitch. Mostly because we never learned how to fight with each other. We never learned how to not hurt each other...well, that destroys things in the end.
Next was Scott.
Scott was the true definition of "conflict adverse."
Despite being a decorated Army officer, Scott hated to fight.
His relationship with his ex-wife was characterized by NOT fighting. About anything, anywhere, anytime. Fighting was simply not allowed.
For me, it was torture.
Now, I had come a long way from my early years of throwing things in dumpsters and calling people names but I still believe a good (clean) fight clears the air.
Scott didn't.
So we would fight--or, rather---I would fight, he would get wounded, and we would spend weeks repairing the damage.
We had one brutally honest conversation in Texas five months ago where he admitted that he never wanted to fight again. He loved me, everything about me, but he just couldn't fight with me any longer.
It was painful as hell but we both threw in the proverbial hat.
I didn't know how not to fight, and he didn't know how to fight with me. These conversations always suck.
These days, Scott is one of my biggest supporters. He was one of the first people, in the wake of my resigning/being fired tragedy, to come right to my side.
He promised me his support, his friendship and his professional recommendation whenever needed.
Sort of the same thing with Ed.
When things went south a month ago, Ed never let me go until he was sure I wasn't going to fall down. Five years after a complicated break-up and a tumultuous relationship, he was right there for me like I had never thrown that pot of braised pig knuckles at him.
I am a lucky woman in that I date decent and kind men. We just don't always know how to fight with each other.
And now, confronted with probably the last relationship I am going to have in my life (no, not because I have some premonition of my death, but because I finally have a premonition of my future), I have to learn how to fight again.
Chas, my boyfriend and the love of my life, is also a fighter.
Part of it comes from the fact that he grew up poor and scrappy on the streets of Philadelphia. Part of it is because, like Ed, he has an unshakable moral compass. Chas has some very strong convictions about what is "right" and "wrong" behavior and he sticks to his guns. Chas was raised in a broken home and had plenty of things that could have turned him bad, but he chose to be good. He chose to be honest, loving, and trusting.
I think, in addition to Will, Ed and Scott, I admire Chas more than anyone.
But Chas and I fight the same way and this is sometimes problematic.
We rarely fight. One of the things that is so good about this relationship is that we almost never have conflict with each other. We have very similar personalities and this is a good thing.
However, Chas is a Leo and I am a Sagittarius. For those of you who don't know or believe in astrology...Chas and I are cut from the same cloth. Both of us are fire signs and fire signs are fighters. And Leos are tough. They don't back down from what they believe in and they are willing to engage in a fight to get their point across. Chas is a typical Leo.
We have had a couple of minor bickering sessions but last night we almost had a full-fledged fight.
Amazingly, I walked away before it escalated.
It was based on stupid stuff...ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-whatever...those things that itch at you when you're completely sober but that suddenly gain so much significance after a few glasses of wine or a couple of beers.
So it unrolled and I walked away.
I have never done that before. I have never walked away from a fight.
But with Chas, I had to walk away.
I walked away because Chas and I don't know how to fight yet.
We both come from pasts where fighting dirty was normal and pulling out your claws was expected.
He didn't like it but he let me go.
Then, at 6:30AM he called and we talked it through.
He listened, I listened, and we actually got somewhere.
I don't think Chas and I will ever be in the same position as the woman who wrote to Oprah to say that yoga and aerobics made her never fight with her husband again.
Really, I think that woman is probably sticking her head in the sand because that shit comes out eventually.
But, hey, whatever works, right?
For now, I am learning to fight nice.
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