married folk give my friend your advice

wat do u mean u offered to vouch for him? don't step to the wife, dude.

i don't know, i mean u sound like u did good. this doesn't sound irreperable. (spl)

oh no noooooo, I wouldn't step to the wife, I like his wife.

It's hard to explain without going into too much detail. although what he did, he admits was his fault and seemed embarassed (so I know he had to have done something unusually boneheaded but not irreparable).

i do think tho that very dramatic fights can be indicative of true love, however corny that is ::shrugs::

she probably wants him to show that he really wants her to come back, although it's hard to say without knowing mroe

this is the kind of thing the internet doesn't really know shit about, but counter-perspective: my mom left my dad having packed nothing and went to stay with a friend down the street. it was final.

basically I think it's impossible for you to know the answer to this.

Oh lord, in a situation like this, I (perhaps wrongly) just assume those in such a situation asking for advice just want some reassurance that they aren't totally fucked up and worthless.

Like the best advice I could give would be: "Let me go buy you a fucking beer."

yeah, that's the only thing to do.

Some hot wings may also help in so indelicate a situation.

Each fight you have with yr sig-o/spouse/whatever permanently lodges a tiny spike of hate in yr hearts. Even if you forgive, you never can forget, and all the non-forgettings accumulate. A better advice would not be merely to patch things up, but also to realize that there's a decidedly finite number of times this can happen.

Good heavens, I've been married for 12 years and I've forgotten a lot of fights. I do remember a few of them, but minor fights are an inevitable part of a long-term relationship. Major fights probably are, too, but they do happen less often.

There is probably a finite number of times you can leave the other person before the relationship is destroyed; I won't argue against that.

It sounds like there was some kind of precipitating event that caused this guy's wife to leave. If that is the root of the problem, he should work that out. But it's not really your place to do anything but listen to the guy if he wants to talk. And definitely the suggestion about taking him out for a drink is good.

I guess what I'm trying to emphasize isn't that fighting leads to immediate relationship destruction, but just that fighting doesn't strengthen a bond, against what young Ramzi seems to believe. It only weakens it.

all i saw was this:

So, like, did I just kill my friend's marriage?

http://www.sorozatok-foruma.hu/kepek2/kepek25/stepup2.jpg

the story was way less scandalous than i expected

He should be like "Yahhh trick yahhh!!!!!"

lol i don't know, lib, i don't think it's either way, completely.

i watched an episode of Maude that brought me to tears, because it drove home the point that love isn't necessarily going to be easy. that if you're really devoted, the fights are more or less just an excuse for passion.

but yea, gray area. i mean, this is a BIG fight, it seems. and big fights more than anything just make me sad. cuz if you can't be at peace with that one person, where can you find peace.

xpost I get what you are saying, libcrypt, but at the same time I think fights are an inevitable part of living with another person, or even being romantically involved with them for more than a brief period of time. Some people who are happily married fight a lot; some people who break up might not have fought all that often. It just sounded like you were saying that once you hit a certain number of fights, your relationship is DOOMED, and it is much more individual than that.

I don't know that fights could actually strengthen a relationship, but sometimes not having them and therefore not addressing some problem, but letting it fester, can lead to relationship destruction.

It just sounded like you were saying that once you hit a certain number of fights, your relationship is DOOMED

Well, yes, I was saying that. And I do believe it, but it's harder to argue that than the notion that fighting doesn't strengthen a relationship. My wife and I never fight, and it's not because we don't disagree. We simply don't escalate disagreements into fights, quite intentionally. I mean, I've personally seen so many relationships where the couples just bicker and snipe all the time and it's obviously a case of not having given a shit about how low things could sink between two people. I'd rather not end up in that space.

I don't think I could really prove that what I believe applies to anyone else, but y'gotta have some kinda guiding precepts in life, and mine include the belief that fighting permanently injures a relationship.

invite him to figure it out and talk out the source of the animosity. if they are married, then it's likely worth saving. that may sound glib, but, truly, i would try to communicate and work shit out if i were in your friend's shoes. i dunno what you can do as his friend, other than remind him of the good stuff in the relationship and try to afford him some sort of reasonable perspective.

I think the occasional fight is perfectly healthy. The "nuclear option" threat of leaving is totally unhealthy and should really only be an absolute last resort. That said, in this case it sounds like the wife is not really threatening to leave. But it's really hard to tell without knowing the situation better.

libcrypt is dropping truth bombs on yall

hey guess what no matter how many times you make up after shitty explosive fights they dont actually make your relationship stronger

Haha hey guess what some people would benefit from learning to draw the line/walk out the door, so pretty much horseshoe OTM!

The fights themselves don't, but they're good for each side to reveal to the other what really matters to them. If...IF...everybody's paying attention, they can be helpful. Whatever this guy did that was wrong, is it a huge sudden surprise to him that he is wrong? If so, he better figure his shit out quick. Ditto for the wife, in any areas of this where she might be in the wrong.

xpost

Just be there for your friend. Buy him a beer, offer to go out with him to a movie or a show...but don't try to be his counselor and don't develop into Dr. Phil.

He and his wife had a fight. In times past when this has happened to me, I haven't really had too many people around for me to rely on. You'll do good by simply being there for him.

Each fight you have with yr sig-o/spouse/whatever permanently lodges a tiny spike of hate in yr hearts. Even if you forgive, you never can forget, and all the non-forgettings accumulate.

I was going to just give this a "boy howdy," but it depends on a few things about how you fight and especially how you resolve fights, doesn't it? I mean, it's true if you make up and smooth things over for ... utilitarian reasons -- if fighting exposes some gulf where you never really understand each other, and fundamentally think the other person is being psycho and unfair and scary, and bringing things back to peace involves just ... ignoring that and hoping it won't happen again. But it is also possible to have and resolve fights where you've both entered into them equally and maintain some basic understanding of the person -- where you're not just papering over some moment where your differences were fundamentally "we live in different universes" irreconcilable.

Moral of which would be, I guess: it's more important to resolve the basics of the thing (or realize you can't resolve them) than to just make up and be nice.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely not defending fight-to-win mudslinging between couples. I just think once in a while you have to lay everything out on the table at the risk of "escalating."

Because every frustration and slight you keep inside rather than bringing up also leaves a tiny spike of hate in your heart

^^^ This, exactly.

Next time I'm in a rerationship I'm going to work on the "out in the open" part, because I am a CLASSIC case of "MINIMIZE CONFLICT MINIMIZE ANGER ABORT ABORT" and then I roll over and play dead. I know! It's shocking! And also unhelpful.

I mean, there can be fights where your image of the other person and why you like them stays stable, and you just happen to really vehemently disagree about something, with equal ardor on both ends. The "spike of hate" comes when someone cannot help feeling like the other person was just flat-out wrong and a horrible person about it, and will never truly admit to that or apologize for it. (And so one person's narrative of the thing continues as "that time you were awful and wrong," and one person's narrative continues as "that time you fundamentally didn't understand me," and that is eventually untenable without brain-wiping technology.)

My husband's entire family does that, Laurel; they get mad and nothing ever gets addressed, so there's always this simmering tension below visits and holidays. I'm so not like that - I just like to solve a problem before it gets to be huge (because when the problems have become huge, that is when the big fights have happened, with the lingering negative after effects).

I think a big part of how you fight is how you were raised, though; I know my husband used to be a lot more like his parents - and now that "I'm pissed, but we're not going to address it" thing strikes him as passive-agressive.

Anyway, I do think a big part of whether fights leave a "spike of hate" forever is how you fight.

nabisco is getting at something else with that time you were awful and wrong. If you are name-calling or treating the other person with contempt, then yeah, that is going to destroy your relationship.

The key (for me...I won't presume to speak for anyone else even though I am totally OTM) is to keep the "let's get this out in the open" moments free of snark and histrionics.

Especially snark.

Anyway, I do think a big part of whether fights leave a "spike of hate" forever is how you fight.

Yeah this is true. The most important thing for my wife was to realize that *tactical* fighting (with winning rather than resolution as the goal) did more harm than good, whereas for me it was realizing that sometimes honesty was more important than calm.

yeah i realize that the reason why i think the spike of hate stuff is true is because ive never really been with someone i didnt think was fundamentally wrong in most fights

and vice versa

married ppl - do you just learn to ignore that or are there actually non-crazy relationships?

Yeah, I worry about that too, Ethan. In my case, part of not being left feeling fundamentally misunderstood so often would be insisting on someone else's efforts to understand being compulsory to the relationship. Ie if I don't make them make the effort, they're not gonna, and if they are not gonna, then I am going to be busy next time they call.

its just always so hard to figure out of the problem is me or the girl

sometimes i wish there was a relationship judge who could tell you who's being crazy and who's being reasonable, but that probably says somethign about how unhealthy my attitude toward arguments in a relationship are

married ppl - do you just learn to ignore that or are there actually non-crazy relationships?

There certainly are non-crazy relationships. Any potential for crazy is minimized by regular, consistent efforts to be good to each other.

like i could take all my fights to an umpire, and he could say, "well, she was being crazy, but it was also out of line for you to bring up that other thing, so you both owe each other an apology"

xps to myself

Sheesh. Arguments would be a step in the right direction for me. In progress.

Ha, Max, the appeal to a relationship judge is not weird or unhealthy, I don't think: it's precisely why people in fights look imploringly upward at God, or glance around an empty room like "are you people SEEING this?"

Sara, I don't think having "that time you were awful and wrong" as part of an internal unspoken narrative of what happened is the same thing as name-calling or contempt! At least not in a world where it is possible for people to behave in ways that are awful and wrong. I mean, on a spectrum from healthy disagreement to spousal abuse, there is inevitably going to be a point where someone thinks it's just flat-out near-morally wrong for the other person to be mad about something, or to not get why you're mad about something.

married ppl - do you just learn to ignore that or are there actually non-crazy relationships?

Which answer would make you feel better?

Thing is, nobody's a mind-reader, so the only motivations we can really examine are our own, and anybody who's not willing to do that possibly doesn't belong in a relationship. I'm not talking about constant emo navelgazing, but there's got to be a degree of introspection and self-awareness for a non-crazy relationship to happen.

I think I'm not helping this thread. I should go to work.

xpost: Dr. Phil/Maury/Springer/Etc

Sorry if I mistook your point, nabisco; there certainly are times when people ARE being awful and wrong (when you get to abuse the lines are drawn clearly, but hopefully that is not the situation with anyone here). I guess I meant that you wouldn't tell the person that they were being "awful" because it's not productive and could lead to name-calling/contempt.

But believe me, I have totally broken my own rules on that, and within the last month, so what do I know about anything?

Also, if possible, I think it's important to not bring up past grievance while having an argument. But that gets back to the idea that you can have small fights that don't leave spikes of hate - and which you do entirely forget about.

"oh so it's ALWAYS my fault!"

i want to say "well, most of the time, yes"

Oh, yes, sorry -- I meant believing it more than yelling "you are awful and wrong," etc. That's surely the source of the spikes of hate -- when someone behaves in a way that seems as flat-out wrong to you as a punch in the face (and vice versa), and you can patch things up, but now you're both with someone who still doesn't think they did anything wrong, that time they punched you in the face.

i think it's important to remember that if you feel unfairly accused or misunderstood that nevertheless the feeling the other person has is just as real as if you were being assessed perfectly correctly; you can say "i'm sorry" for the fact of the misunderstanding, that you communicated yourself imperfectly, that by mistake you made them feel that way, if that's what happened

xpost I see exactly what you are saying. But what if they realize that they were wrong and they apologize for it and you think it sincere? (Am I more forgiving than I should be? Maybe my husband is the one who is!)

i think it's important to remember that if you feel unfairly accused or misunderstood that nevertheless the feeling the other person has is just as real as if you were being assessed perfectly correctly; you can say "i'm sorry" for the fact of the misunderstanding, that you communicated yourself imperfectly, that by mistake you made them feel that way, if that's what happened

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, January 24, 2008 12:44 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ive been doing this since i was like 19 - it only works like 10% of the time.

married ppl - do you just learn to ignore that or are there actually non-crazy relationships?

one key (of many) to a successful marriage is understanding that most fights aren't about being right or wrong and are about hurt feelings, anger, etc so one learns to prioritize (what's of greater value to me: harmony & love, or YOU ARE WRONG ADMIT IT - ?)

ymmv obviously but I would bet massive sums of money that at the end of my life I'm not gonna go "fuck, I said 'mea culpa' a few times when I didn't really feel I was in the wrong and all I got for my trouble was 50 years of a happy marriage"

xpost ethan not to call you out but when you say "i do this" i just have a personal suspicion that you're kind of a "you know i'm right" dude in arguments

I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time, just throwin' that out there

also in re: thread premise, under no circumstances should Bo Jackson Overdrive "vouch for" his friend - give the man support but stay the fuck out of the marriage resolution/dissolution

no, i know. i also do a bunch of nasty shit in addition to trying out the whole 'i understand' deal at first

you can only do that so many times and meet hostility before you start busting back

you can say "i'm sorry" for the fact of the misunderstanding, that you communicated yourself imperfectly, that by mistake you made them feel that way, if that's what happened

i do this all the time and it just makes her more mad

and itd be nice to be able to expect that kind of understanding back sometimes too

xpost with max otm

basically i have no idea what women want

lolz squad get ready with movie-poster.jpg

Yes well a few years back I was dated a self-professed Republican who believed what he heard on talk radio, so I was actually always right. Also at one point he accused me of being on the side of the terrorists and it was so meta-ILX in-joek but ACTUALLY HAPPENING that I just stopped having critical faculties at that point, I couldn't deal.

sometimes she might want you to get mad

I mean if you never get mad she may actually want to see that you bleed red and have feelings and will speak up for yourself and all that

we have a thread somewhere with bang-head-against-wall argument exchanges but i can't remember what it's called

My mistake was not realizing "THIS MEANS YOU MUST BREAK UP W HIM, RIGHT THIS SECOND" and thinking instead something like "Why doesn't he ever understand me? Oh noes I am so sad."

hurting otm, the only thing worse to her than getting really mad and fighting is when i just give up immediately

haha laurel

"oh so it's ALWAYS my fault!"

i want to say "well, most of the time, yes"

oof, i've heard this one before. also common: i get mad, he gets mad at me for being mad, i forgive him for the first thing but get mad at him for being mad at me for being mad in the first place when it was obviously him who hurt my feelings first.

but then it evaporates and we both apologize and life goes on. maybe that's what you mean by non-crazy relationship? or maybe that's what you mean by 'learning to ignore that'.

oh man laurel, you DATED someone like that? i had a co-worker at my old job accuse me of "letting the terrorists win" once. he was a piece of work.

you can only do that so many times and meet hostility before you start busting back

well, I wanna say "no, that's not true," but I should probably say "for me that isn't true." I mean, if you're talking about a specific person who's just hostile no matter how you try to communicate, then yeah, either you gotta be able to work through that together or peace the fuck out. but at any rate, busting back is invariably counterproductive: doesn't get you what you want, doesn't make you feel better except in the moment when you're riding that hostility high, doesn't solve the problem

not saying I'm perfect, I've said a few evilminded things in my life, but I think the key question in any disagreement is "how would mr. rogers deal with this shit"

also Laurel I'm sorry I was a dick to you when we were dating, I was going through some weird shit

also common: i get mad, he gets mad at me for being mad, i forgive him for the first thing but get mad at him for being mad at me for being mad in the first place when it was obviously him who hurt my feelings first.

^^^
this is realness

That's okay, I sold all your records while you were on tour. Made a bundle, too!

xp - what seems to help is that we realize what's happening and therefore it's not as explosive as it once was.

"look, i'd just like it if you didn't snap at me like that"

"oh you would say the exact same thing"

"no i wouldn't"

BZZZZZT TRY AGAIN

A really good thing to do is have a serious talk at a calmer time and say "You know the way we fight really hurts our relationship because of x, y ad z." You can lay out a sort of "rules of war" at times like that, and in the long run it may actually help make your fights less hurtful and more productive.

the "you would do the same thing" game is a dangerous game

yeah. Stick to the matter at hand, avoid tactics

Agreed! It also helped to realize that people have different boiling points and cooling-down periods.

That's okay, I sold all your records while you were on tour. Made a bundle, too!

it's just like you isn't it though to tell me this the very week I get a decent turntable for the first time in my life, twist the knife why don't you, you freedom-hater

Oh yeah, another cliche that happens to be true = if a person has strong feelings about something, recognize that the FEELINGS are real even if you think they're wrong rather than belittling or minimizing the feelings, and also that the feelings might come from something deeper than just the incident at hand

not saying I'm perfect, I've said a few evilminded things in my life, but I think the key question in any disagreement is "how would mr. rogers deal with this shit"

-- J0hn D., Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:01 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is why women will always say they love dating guys like mr rogers

A really good thing to do is have a serious talk at a calmer time and say "You know the way we fight really hurts our relationship because of x, y ad z." You can lay out a sort of "rules of war" at times like that, and in the long run it may actually help make your fights less hurtful and more productive.

-- Hurting 2, Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:04 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

^^ this doesnt work

probably an obvious thing but it is crucial to learn to structure what you are saying in an argument like this

"I feel/felt X when you did Y,"

versus

"Why do you always Y? You're such an asshole," etc.

i can always recognize that the feelings come from something deeper than the issue at hand because the feelings are coming from a place completely inscrutable to me

last time i suggested talking about our fights to my girl she was like, "what you think we fight so much we need to lay out ground rules?!"

A better advice would not be merely to patch things up, but also to realize that there's a decidedly finite number of times this can happen.

Naw. Or, rather, yeah, but this finite number is often very, very high.

i think the first part can, but the second part never does, no one remembers the rules

xxxxpost

last time i suggested talking about our fights to my girl she was like, "what you think we fight so much we need to lay out ground rules?!"

HAHAHAHA oh boy

max i feel you man

i dated this girl til october of last year

it is truly insane how accusations can multiply and proliferate in an argument - the "but you would do the exact same thing!" tactic shifts everything to a whole new level, i.e. "you do this bad thing you are accusing me of doing, PLUS you are a hypocrite" oh good now we're getting somehere *shoots self in head*

But you know what seriously Max you should say "Yeah, we fight too much and I hate the way we act in fights and it's fucking us up and we need to do something about it." If she can't understand that, the relationship is not likely to work out.

people who grew up in very patient households vs people who grew up in very impatient households

FITE

at 1st its really appealing to meet someone who has really strong opinions about everything instead the usual noncommittal 'ohhh.... i dunno... i dont really think about it' bullshit but then it turns into shit-starting & fucking-with like EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

My husband used to accuse me of breaking the rules of fighting while we were fighting, which just pissed me off more because THEY WERE HIS RULES

i mean im exaggerating it, shes better than that, theres just a very specific time/place/mood she and i both have to be in to have that real a conversation

Agreed. If you can't talk in a civilized fashion about how to resolve disputes, the disputes will become untenable.

Ok, obviously I don't think you should have a Geneva Convention of fighting and appeal to international tribunals in the middle of fights. Then it just becomes another tactic.

some things that make a person fun and attractive in the first place also make them hard to live with in the second place. spontanaity, volatility. Maybe my marriage is too fucking boring to have any real venom-spitters. I think the worst thing I ever said to her was before we were even dating.

xxxpost, mindmeld of sorts with Ethan

and tracer otm, her dad's a hard-ass prick and my folks are really laid-back ex-hippies who talk about feelings all the time--the enviro you grow up in has a lot to do with how you deal with this shit

i can always recognize that the feelings come from something deeper than the issue at hand because the feelings are coming from a place completely inscrutable to me

back when I was in the psych biz the best, smartest therapist I ever knew had a line he'd deploy sparingly but heavily: "feelings don't have brains"

people who resent the shit outta this undeniable fact will often say "ok, fine, so people can get mad for NO REASON" and it's like "you're missing the point: stop thinking that reasoning feelings out is of any value whatsoever"

I like the idea of being in one of those couples for whom the low-level irritations are actually the glue that binds. You know, when the predictable complaints are predictable and not actually important, and mean that everything is still okay. You have to be able to ignore/make light of each other's moods for this, though, which takes more emotional independence than I've cultivated til now.

(Unfortch in practice I can only be arsey to my boyfriends when I feel in control. If I respect/admire them and worry that they might leave me, I cave.)

Max, your relationship sounds a lot like mine! But I've only found that things have gotten better as I've been more willing to risk saying what bothers me/not back down in every fight etc.

time: late nite
place: in the butt
mood: relaxed

back when I was in the psych biz the best, smartest therapist I ever knew had a line he'd deploy sparingly but heavily: "feelings don't have brains"

people who resent the shit outta this undeniable fact will often say "ok, fine, so people can get mad for NO REASON" and it's like "you're missing the point: stop thinking that reasoning feelings out is of any value whatsoever"

This is why humans will never colonize Mars (and shouldn't).

i've never been in one of these dramatic fighty couples. in a way it sounds kind of exciting. but in reality i am just not that argumentative (except for about dumb stuff that doesn't matter, like movies and music) so i think i would find it pretty draining.

I disagree w/ that therapist, I gotta say. Refusing to apply anyreason to feelings is basically killing yr chances of self-awareness.

we go through months where we fight once a week and months where we dont fight at all. exterior stress from school and work has so much to do with it its sort of scary.

I don't really think that's what the therapist means Laurel

The point is that "feeling isn't REASONABLE" =/= "feeling isn't REAL"

You know, when the predictable complaints are predictable and not actually important, and mean that everything is still okay.
Amen. I think part of it is developing your own vocabulary for discussing the problem (however recurring it is), using words that don't trigger explosive reactions in either party.

A common example from my relationship:

-She gets unusually pissed that I didn't do the dishes
-This makes me angry since, 1) I'm generally defensive, and 2) She didn't do the dishes last time it was her turn (or maybe the last two times even)
-in fact, she is pissed because I have been detached in the last few days and showing less interest in her and thus the dishes are just a symbol

the more aware we both become of that kind of thing, the less likely we are to have a horrible fight

well sometimes it really is the dishes

do the dishes, people

YOU do the dishes

You know maybe I'm sabotaging myself by being overly self-aware? Because if I were yr wife, Hurting, I would feel the aggravation about the dishes but deny myself that outlet because "c'mon, that's not fooling anyone, you're really just upset that he's being distant" and then I mull over the deeper thing to see if it's recurring enough that I should risk conflict by bringing it up and by that time a) it's already an established pattern, and b) I feel terrible.

i think what i'm after in most arguments is hearing "you are totally right, MASTER"

i made dinner every night this week. the LEAST you could do is the goddamn dishes.

laurel: mountain/molehill

And if while I'm busy wondering whether to start a conflict the other person repeatedly asks me "Is everything okay? What's wrong?" I will say "Nothing. No, I'm fine" because I haven't decided yet.

I'm going to lunch now.

haha laurel one thing about living with a volatile french person is that i have VERY SLOWLY begun getting things off my chest closer to real-time rather than like 40 minutes later when it's so obvious that she's like "jesus christ, what is it??"

Forty minutes? Dude I am talking like months.

dude, that's like england-style discipline

the dishes do not take longer than like 10, 15 minutes people

at the end of my life I'm not gonna go "fuck, I said 'mea culpa' a few times when I didn't really feel I was in the wrong and all I got for my trouble was 50 years of a happy marriage"

One awesome thing about this thread is how there's such a clear and natural split between being married and dating people! I like this, it's reassuring. Being married means having already concluded that whatever you're fighting about, you have 100% faith that the other person is never that wrong, and is not suddenly revealing some kind of jerkdom or psychoness. Whereas with daters the question is more something like "I didn't really feel I was in the wrong and all I'll get for my trouble is ... having this happen over and over again until we split?"

I.e., the main way in which talk/advice about fighting is so totally not one-size-fits-all

I mostly have the Laurel approach, which can have this amusing flipside: by the time someone actually breaks past your thinking "well, am I justified here? am I right about this? maybe it's me?" and gets you to fully engage with an argument, you are WAY committed to your own opinion, because you don't fight until someone has REALLY bullied you into a stubbornly righteous place

yeah i mean all other people seem really crazy to me all the time so its good to know that people i know & respect actually can find someone to be with for a marriageable length of time and that it doesnt seem to involve settling for constant bullshit or being the punching bag for a psychotic or anything like that

like, i still dont really know if i shouldve just picked one of the crazy girls and tried to make it work instead of giving up or i should keep giving new girls a shot until i find the non-crazy one

Everyone is crazy, though. It's a question of whether their crazy is compatible with your crazy.

amen.

word

And if while I'm busy wondering whether to start a conflict the other person repeatedly asks me "Is everything okay? What's wrong?" I will say "Nothing. No, I'm fine" because I haven't decided yet.

Early on:
Me: Is everything okay? What's wrong?
Her: Nothing's wrong.
I repeat efforts, she clams up tighter. Two days later, we have it out, she says "I just needed a couple of days to think it all through."

Now:
Me: Is everything okay? What's wrong?
Her: ....
Her: I'm not ready to hash it out. Give me a couple of days.
Me: Okay.
Usually it's more like three hours later than a couple of days, but still, we're better at not prodding each other to force the argument to fit our timetable.

I don't mean this in a bad way, Ethan, but if the same "why is she always being psycho" thing redevelops in a pattern with every girl you date, don't the explanations start closing down to (a) bad dating pool, (b) bad dating choices, or (c) they're not weird, you are?

(Or I guess there could be (d) I have evolved to some better state of being and relationships that is incompatible with the compromised and regressive ones others in our culture have, but that's kind of a variant of (c).)

xp - this is what i meant before about "recovery time" -- everyone's different

Dan's response to that was much better, I retract statement and cosign Dan

often it happens that what the lovely emma b needs is simply to stop talking about it and be alone, even though nothing has been resolved, and every attempt i make to keep going and resolve it is like a hot icepick being driven further into her ear; it is VERY hard for me to just let things lie once they've been revved up but this is exactly what she needs much of the time

then again, she's fine with going to be mad, which i think is totally loco and will fight against like crazy even to my own detriment

going to bed mad

part of the problem is that im sort of weird and fucked-up and i tend to be attracted to sort of weird and fucked-up girls NOT because of their weirdness or fucked-upness but because those are the girls who tend to be the most interesting--i mean i know this is a cliche but the girls who i get along with best tend to be the kind of smart/funny girls who hated middle school and high school and are still dealing (to various extents) with the kind of emotional baggage that gets leveled on a lot of women who have strong opinions or do particularly well in school (maybe thats a bad example tho). and you know im hoping that that dating pool will get less fucked up as we all grow up (since im only 22) but it seems really hard to find a girl who is really smart and funny and interesting in cool shit and isnt also messed up with self-esteem issues or anxiety problems or what have you.

you need a cougar

also hot girls tend to be CRAY CRAY

im gonna give a BIG HOOS-style ^^^^^^this to max

if i was a little more crunchy id blame all my relationship problems on the PATRIARCHY

my coug experience (33 yr old) was the craziest of them all

I read somewhere that one's IQ drops by a significant amount when an argument starts, and it really is helpful to say, "yo, let's not talk about this right now" and take a break to "cool off" (I probably read it in a shitty ladies' magazine). The few times I've tried that, the situation resolved itself in a nice, tidy manner.

The unspoken corollary to my previous statement is that sometimes, in order to make someone else's crazy compatible with your own, you have to make changes to yourself as opposed to them changing or you waiting until you find The One. There are obviously things which are dealbreakers but most conflicts/disagreements are inconsequential if you like the person enough. (Note the important and intentional use of "like" rather than "love". Passion needs to be there but is by its very nature unsustainable; something needs to sustain the relationship between the peaks when you are tearing each others' clothes off and the valleys when you're all into the television/stereo/internet/etc.)

sorry for devolving the convo to a zing. i was only partially kidding though. a lot of people have anxiety/self-esteem issues at 22. being 32 feels a loooooot better in that regard than 22 did. not true for everyone, though, considering your unpleasant coug experience.

"Major fights probably are, too, but they do happen less often."

Depends really. I mean, it's not only about married/dating, but also personalities.

then again, she's fine with going to be mad, which i think is totally loco and will fight against like crazy even to my own detriment

No, she's not. Going to bed mad gives you the chance to cool the fuck down.

Max, not that this changes everything, but you'll probably find in your mid-20s that a lot of people who were kind of quietly and unshowily "different" or "interesting" are now being quietly and unshowily awesome with too much attached emotional baggage!

I'd venture that the big subtext universal to fights is that there be an equal division of taking all the advice offered on this thread!

Insert another sentence ending with an exclamation point!

Dan OTM again. I remember him making similar points in a thread a few years ago, about relationships being ongoing negotiations and power transfers, and jaymc being horrified like he just found out Santa was killed and eaten by his reindeer.

foucault to thread. rofffle. i mean, shit, it's always about power, innit?

anyway: walking out (and staying w a friend/somewhere): baaaaaaaaaaaaad!

it is always about power, but maintaining a balance of power is better than Cheney doctrine

lololololol RH I remember that thread!

I'd like to find that thread again, but no idea what to search for.

i would love a balance of power!! i never know how unbalanced i should let things get before i give up - 60/40? 70/30? if she gets in a bad mood & picks a 5 fights for every one time im in a bad mood and pick a fight, or if she's calm & understanding to me one time for every 20 times im calm & understanding to her, how do you get this to be closer to 50/50?

for starters, don't keep track of fights or how often she gets mad at you or you at her

^^ the subtext of this is only good advice of "being in a relationship" is more important to you than "being happy/sane"

of = if

What are you talking about? Continuing the relationship I'm in is ALWAYS more important to me than being happy/sane.

im not keeping score or anything but its hard to not remember that you're being cool about catching hell for the 50th time when i know that doing the same kind of pissy bad mood shit-starting just once or twice gets a murder-death-kill response

of course if you're dating someone who picks fights with you all the time and is in a bad mood all the time it is time to break up.

my coug experience (33 yr old) was the craziest of them all

OH DEAR

1 MANS COUGAR IS ANOTHRE MANS JALEBATE

Why else do you think I stayed with a very dense Republican for 18 mos? Who also thought that pop music was for girls, and that lesbians who like butch partners should be dating men.

What are you talking about? Continuing the relationship I'm in is ALWAYS more important to me than being happy/sane.

-- Laurel, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:19

If you have kids maybe. Otherwise, why bother?

I suppose I may have come across as sounding holier-than-thou and pooping roses last night, but finding where I am now in my relationship took a lot of time and effort. I used to argue about things like the dishes: Why don't you ever do the dishes? Well, I took out the trash the last 3 times! But I empty the cat pan! And so on, until things escalate into fireworks.

One of the things that has made my relationship work better for me is that 1. I've realized that I'm never gonna fairly balance the equation of the distribution of household work, and 2. my wife decided that rather than to bitch at me about doing X, she just asks me to do X when she wants it done, and I do it w/o question. In the end, she may do more work than I do (I work even when I'm not asked, too), but she doesn't dread asking me to do anything, since I never ever complain about it.

We still have disagreements about things, and once in awhile there's a bit of the but-I-but-you kinda talk, so things aren't perfect. They're a hell of a lot better than when my girlfriends were throwing punches at me, tho.

All the options:

1) learn new ways to disagree, or
2) break up, or
3) stay together only for the hot sex

33 yr old when youre 22 is str8 coug'n it

totes coug'n

One of the hardest things for me to remember in an argument is that it ain't Festivus--the airing of grievances need not be part of the deal. Not everything needs to be escalated into WWIII.

i think my last relationship ended because we didn't fight enough.

i feel u ethan. i mean i can be a relationship with someone whos more sensitive than me or more depressed than me or whatever, its just really hard to not have a clue whether or not its "healthy" or if youre selling yourself short or not sticking up for yourself or whatever. but thats sort of the big bummer about life, you never actually know if youre doing the right thing.

The couples I know who are friends as well as being in love are happy.

The couples I know who are not friends as well as being in love are not happy.

Yeah when not fighting derives from not communicating period you're probably fucked.

xpost to Grady

our first fight was a year into the relationship.

Yah I miss being friends with my last ex the most.

Well actually there's one exception to that, a couple who were total best friends who are now going to split because she moved to NYC for a job (he was to move after she was settled and he found a job) and started fucking a coworker, oops.

The couples I know who are friends as well as being in love are happy.

The couples I know who are not friends as well as being in love are not happy

^^key. I've yet to hit upon that magical combo though :(

ugh i hate stories like that dan

also i think we were the best of friends without being in love.

our fist fight was a year into the relationship.

lol best typo ever or most disturbing post on thread?

our first fight was a year into the relationship.

-- gr8080, Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:28 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

its been a long-ass time since i had a relationship that lasted a year, john

Fist fights are a good reason to break up, I think.

first serious fight tends to be between 3-5 weeks in

first serious fight tends to be between 3-5 weeks in

not trying to be a dick here ethan but just from my perspective if your pattern is "I tend to get into a serious fight before we've been together a full month" then the issue probably isn't the kinda women you're gettin' with, it's your patterns in handling anger/frustration/variance

^^^that's pretty crazy, yo. for me it's more like year. speaking of which,

I mean if you never get mad she may actually want to see that you bleed red and have feelings and will speak up for yourself and all that

-- Hurting 2, Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

man, this was totally the case with my first serious girlfriend. i am totally not a shouting match type of dude, and she really needed that cathartic yelling-then-making-up thing to feel like something had been accomplished.

xp to ethan

how serious is serious? with 3-5 weeks im just talking like, fight lasts longer than half an hour, maybe some yelling or UGHH I CANT DEAL WITH YOU type shit, not packing-up-bags or anything

if it clarifies i have plenty of fights with friends that have yelling and UGHHH I CANT DEAL WITH YOU type shit too, its just easier to get over

these days i'll stand up for myself, but i still want to talk it out rather than get into fireworks.

xp, that's pretty serious.

I don't have fights. When people yell at me, I cry. Then sometimes they get mad at me for crying.

In other words, Ethan, that sounds like some serious shit to me, yelling and stuff.

3-5 weeks is a pretty short time frame to be telling someone that you can't deal with them.

she really needed that cathartic yelling-then-making-up thing to feel like something had been accomplished.

Ugh, DUD. If people like that want to blow up so bad, they should move to Iraq.

kellykapoor.jpg

yalls relationships sound boring

15 years and counting, though.

xp Hey well kiu with the crazy girls! Bon voyage!

maybe i should clarify that im not the one yelling or saying UGHH I CANT DEAL WITH YOU

That is an important clarification!

well ive probably done the latter but i dont really yell

I think maybe you should try dating someone less "interesting", maybe? It's hard to say without knowing the context of the blowups and I'm pretty sure it's not my business to know the context etc etc etc.

(hahaha this coming from the guy who married a woman with a personality the size of Asia)

i was going to say, i think it's very possible that you're just dating some crazy-ass girls.

xp

xp That's not a personality, it's a force of nature.

well that shit doesnt just come out of nowhere, it comes from me doing stuff that makes girls yell at me

this is like newyorkercartoon.gif couch therapy

xpost - ha, yeah - I kinda wish we could have a separate all-supportive awesome-talk thread where we try to suss out if there is any particular thing E is doing that is repeatedly provoking the "CAN'T DEAL WITH YOU" thing

Although if there is, E, and you ever meet someone who is like "I totally understand and/or love it when you act that way," you will never have to think about anything in dating again beyond "what do I have to do to keep this person near, and where do I need to go to do it, and do they take credit cards"

this is gonna sound condescending but when you say it sounds boring to not have plenty fights I just gotta think "yeah, at some point you wake up and you say 'you know what, drama in relationships is massively overrated, if it's boring to get along nicely with somebody & not have big scenes every time we disagree then sign my ass up'"

then when it's been like three years since your last big drama scene you go "wow, I don't miss that shit AT ALL & it's kinda not boring or dull to not have that garbage clouding my mind all the damn time"

i mean i know this is a cliche but the girls who i get along with best tend to be the kind of smart/funny girls who hated middle school and high school

yeah max, this is so true for me. i'm debating whether i should start hanging with this one girl...she's cute and always comes to my shows, but she just seems super earnest, like she's never had those types of outsider experiences. i don't know if i can see myself with someone like that.

JORDAN DATE THIS GIRL IMMEDIATELY

Nice and boring until the lights go out, that's the way to work it.

nah i feel you... after i broke up with my last girl i was hanging out with another ex and we got drunk & ended up at that current-girlfriend-only 'why are you being so mean!' entitlement bullshit and i realized a. how completely used to it i had gotten in my last relationship b. how much i didnt miss it one bit and c. how i had totally forgotten what it was even like

just in case everybody decides im a dick for getting the 'why are you being so mean' response it was after a perfectly normal night & was only because i rejected a seriously over-the-line intrusion

so yeah, that shit is the worst

why, dan? you mean because she's probably light on baggage?

YES

Don't worry, dude, half of us can't seem to figure out whether we're being dicks in these things, never mind speculating about who's right/wrong in other people's relationships

feelings aren't rational =/= feelings aren't understandable

I'm always more interested in where the crazy opinions come from than I am in being agreed with. This person is the what I'm most interested in so when they say something unexpected I want to understand how it fits in. If its more about understanding than agreeing I think its less tactical and more open. It gives you both more room to manouever and agree on smaller points, and the more you understand the more you respect. Then even when yr clear on where you differ it feels like you've done great teamwork and both deserve some love. Only applies to "how could you think that?" arguments, not the dishes or whatever. Probably a lot of people aren't up for this though?

people are pretty good at not knowing the motivation behind their own crazy feelings - i know i am

xp It requires a lot of hashing the crap out of every conversation about your relationship, which, sometimes I want to stop talking about living and just, y'know, have a life. But yeah good point about understanding vs agreeing.

well, the last girl i dated was totes awesome but ended it because she had just gotten out of a long relationship and has a lot of issues still to deal with (she was super self aware about it, at least, which was another plus). so maybe i'll try boring.

see Catholics have the advantage in this shit because we were born knowing it's our fault, no matter what the question is

P.S. Dan, having "no baggage" as a relationship priority is kinda like planning for failure and/or settling, tho! Not that these kinds of considerations should be that huge in first deciding whether to try dating someone, or anything. I think the danger with what Jordan's describing is a potential situation where both people's identities to the other mostly consist of being from an unfamiliar social milieu, and then you're both just representative of what your world is like, rather than what you specifically are like. (But that's also something that's way past "do I think about going on a date with this person")

jordan - she probably hides it well
people who wear it all on their sleeves don't save anything for later!

I am obsessed with motivation for feelings. How can I make my feelings someone else's responsibility if *I* don't know what's up? What if they turn out not to involve that person at all?? Then they can (quite rightly) call bullshit and then you lose AND you feel stupid.

people are pretty good at not knowing the motivation behind their own crazy feelings - i know i am

-- and what, Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:09 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

even when i think i know the motivation i wonder if i'm being wrongly hyper-aware

Laurel your feelings are never gonna be someone else's responsibility, they're always 100% yours

You lost me there. Are you saying that making your feelings someone else's responsibility is a good thing? (ha, xpost)

yeah i am confused too

Well duh but when you get shirty about something w your SO, whether the pretext is the dishes or anything else, and then it turns out you're worried about your job, you have just made your feelings someone else's problem for emotionally dishonest reasons and you suck.

people are pretty good at not knowing the motivation behind their own crazy feelings

but better to try and work it out than just let it sit there and fuck things up.

and yeah it requires a bit of perseverance at first especially but i think it really pays back over time because you know each other so well most things seem like less of a big deal.

you suck for like 1 second
then it's over and everyone's forgiven

that's normal!

i don't think fights are healthy per se but hopefully unavoidable. not fighting until 1 year in is probably a bad omen no? i mean if the person can't arise I CANT DEAL WITH YOU feelings in you or you in her/him you probably can't arise strong feelings to the opposite right?

^^^ this is how i see it too

anyone i dont get angry at for a whole year is someone i dont care about at all

Yeah, Amanda, you can say "Shoot, I'm sorry, I'm just really stressed about work" but you've already brought someone else down and plus they now have the right to be all "Well FINE but Jesus Christ, don't put it in MY omelette."

yeah, but it's just not that big of a deal in the long run. this happens on an almost daily basis. you make fun of the other person for being a big grouch and that's that. i mean, it's not shitty if you can laugh at yourself about it, or at least that's our coping method.

tried laughing about it, that doesnt work either

Dan, having "no baggage" as a relationship priority is kinda like planning for failure and/or settling, tho!

"No baggage" means "the attendant baggage is inconsequential to my ability to sustain a relationship with this person".

I think the danger with what Jordan's describing is a potential situation where both people's identities to the other mostly consist of being from an unfamiliar social milieu, and then you're both just representative of what your world is like, rather than what you specifically are like.

I think the danger with what Jordan's describing is that he has made assumptions about someone who might actually be awesome that may not be true. I don't know if this girl is The One or not, but there's absolutely no reason not to date her if a) you're single; b) she's interested; and c) she's attractive to you.

not fighting until 1 year in is probably a bad omen no? i mean if the person can't arise I CANT DEAL WITH YOU feelings in you or you in her/him you probably can't arise strong feelings to the opposite right?

This is an emotionally immature viewpoint, IMO.

Flings are built on swinging between I CAN'T LIVE WITH YOU/I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOU extremes. Relationships are built on the middle ground between them. It's boring, it's how it is, you got to deal with it!

I don't know how to do any of this. I think I need to move to a cave on Mars.

Oh man I disagree with J.S. & E -- I am part of the simple, straightforward, and equally pathological lot for whom "I can't deal with you" actually means "I can't deal with you," and the person I really like is someone I have no interest in fighting with, because I associate fighting with people not liking each other and the act of losing your temper with someone as a mean thing to do to them

xpost - yeah Dan that's why I said neither of those things probably matter when it's like "do I date this person"

im not saying the I CANT DEAL WITH YOU stuff is the path to a working relationship, just that you won't get to that point unless you genuinely commit yourself to a person to some degree - i've had flings where the girl was loco & i didnt give a fuck, so its not fling-logic, its a 'oh no im actually taking a chance on this & its not working' response

hopefully the day will come when i can actually get deeply involved with a girl and not be thinking I CANT DEAL WITH YOU after a month, but i dont regret any instance ive sincerely tried to make it work & ended up with that

Hey, married people: Did all y'all get into these coping methods AFTER you got with the person you married, or are they supposed to make sense before that?

I associate fighting with people not liking each other and the act of losing your temper with someone as a mean thing to do to them

im with sarge and ethan on this front but it should be noted that i dont associate fighting with these things at all

and judging by the way ethan posts on the board i doubt he does either

i mean losing your temper i guess is a shitty thing, but i dont do that hardly ever. but i like arguing/debating or whatever. maybe thats different than fighting?

After. Definitely.

Yeah, that's true, but I can be affected/upset by how someone acts without it getting to blow-up fight status. And obv. I don't work well with girls who jump right to I CAN'T DEAL WITH YOU.

xp to and what

That's why I said "equally pathological"

i think it's tough to tell at the time bcuz i can think of plenty of ppl that i honestly can't deal with that i don't ever want to see again, but if i think in my head about the ppl that i "love" or have loved (family, friends w/e) i can pinpoint at least one time where we've had a fight of some sort that made me hate the person for a bit. ppl that fall in between i usually disconnect with after a short while.

yeah seriously... i know the 3 of us are younger than everybody else on this thread & may well grow out of this stance but right now it seems like if you're prepared to be serious with a girl you should be tuned in enough to potentially get upset if she gets upset, instead of being all distant & logical

i don't think fights are healthy per se but hopefully unavoidable. not fighting until 1 year in is probably a bad omen no? i mean if the person can't arise I CANT DEAL WITH YOU feelings in you or you in her/him you probably can't arise strong feelings to the opposite right?

-- J0rdan S., Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:16 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ this is how i see it too

-- and what, Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:16 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

concur with Dan - it's kinda romantic bullshit to go "oh i can't really be in love unless they drive me CRAZY!" - I Corinthians 13 has some good words about what real satisfying love feels like and you can even be a easily-trollable ex-Xian like myself & see that

xpost - "equally pathological" was re: associating fighting and temper-losing with meanness and not-liking-each-other

I think I got over that, at some point

rly, amanda? i can't imagine getting married to someone unless we had already been through some shit and had our coping mechanisms in place.

So...maybe you marry the person who makes the conflict dealable for you, and v.v. Or maybe like N suggested you figure out the conflict BECAUSE you are married and that, said John, is that.

i dont really get madd at ppl i genuinely cant deal with or never wanna see again its just like PEACE HOMIE!@!@! fresh adidas squeak across the bathroom floor

t seems like if you're prepared to be serious with a girl you should be tuned in enough to potentially get upset if she gets upset, instead of being all distant & logical

riker vs picard?

basically if im madd & still talking to you i kinda love you a lil bit

She said AFTER you got with the person you married
not married the person
We were together for 4 years before we got engaged. It was during that time that we negotiated enough to know that being married would be good. Four years after that things are still good, so I think it worked out fine. Not much changed after the marriage, if that's what you mean.

no homo to darnielle

concur with Dan - it's kinda romantic bullshit to go "oh i can't really be in love unless they drive me CRAZY!"

this isn't what i mean. i'm saying, i've gotten to points with anyone i love/have loved that i really hated to love them (be it over 5 minutes or an hour or a day), and anyone who i haven't felt that for i've disconnected with as my life has moved on

After. Definitely.

Same. I got married at 21, one week after finishing college. I didn't know SHIT, about relationships or anything else.

Loose quote from years ago: "I think my husband and I survived our young years together only because in our day, divorce just wasn't an option. Murder, yes. Divorce, no." -Madeline L'Engle

you know, i am so against the orthodox jewish (or indian or take your pick) mode of more-or-less arranged marriages, but there's something interesting about the scenario of "shit, we're stuck together, so i guess we had better figure out how to deal with this and try to be happy".

^^^this leads to so many murder cases on svu

haha jordan i think thats one of the things that made knocked up so popular--thats a more common crypto-fantasy than youd think

esp if it involves schlubby guy + dime

Hey, married people: Did all y'all get into these coping methods AFTER you got with the person you married, or are they supposed to make sense before that?

I see it as parenting: You have to learn it a day at a time. You're not born knowing how this marriage thing works, you gotta learn it. Well, I do at least. My cousin was perplexed when friends of her, after having been together a long ass time, married and then divorced after a year or so. "But it's the SAME! They were together before that!" Uh, marriage changes everything.

Then again I don't think I'll ever know how to "cope."

You know, Jordan, that's why I stayed with the Republican for so long, I kind of felt like, well, we weren't bosom buddies and we were never going to really understand each other, but if we had our own spheres of responsibility and we respected each other in those areas, we could pull along in the same direction. I suspect a lot of marriages have been like that throughout history, ie it takes two people to run a farm/business/whatev and the other person is there and moderately not unattractive to you and that is that.

Plus I was having anxiety at the time about whether I had the right to expect anything else, or whether feeling entitled to like open-heart triple-bypass bonding and rainbows was some kind of modern bullshit. So...I went with it. Mistakenly, as it turns out.

I think its bad to work each other up a lot and fight over small things but if you don't ever get really intense somehow about yr relationship in general it implies its sort of interchangeable. Unless life generally being good and workable is more of a priority than yr relationship. But I don't think most people think that?

ive never dated a republican, thank god

Most people in long term relationships rather, i.e. I care more about this person than I do about my day to day welfare.

Don't ask me, when we met he was all into alt-country and playing indie rock and getting fucked up at shows and had a tattoo, I never thought he'd turn out to be dumb/blind enough to believe Rush Limbaugh or whoever.

he got rid of his tattoo?

Anyway, that kinda makes sense, Laurel. Dating can be annoying but it's better than settling, for sure.

Re the tattoo: I didn't realize the fact that it was of an elephant actually MEANT anything.

hahahaha

lol

'when he talked about his friend sean all the time i didnt realize it was SEAN HANNITY'

Laurel, the compatibility thing is tricky. Obviously Democrats and Republicans can have successful relationships with each other; my parents are an awesome example of this, the main thing being that they both agree on social issues but disagree about the best political solution for them. Dating someone who disagrees with you on basic social issues is going to be very different from someone who disagrees with you on whether tax cuts will stimulate the economy but agrees with how you feel about abortion and gay marriage.

my wife understands that I don't think she should have been allowed into the country when she was an infant, we've agreed to disagree

Oh that's okay, we had lots of problems, his political leanings were just a shallow front for his being not very quick on the uptake, ie you could repackage an idea and he might not realize it was the same as that other one that was actually really racist or falsely nationalistic or etc. Plus I mean he liked Mr Bungle and all Mike Patton projects EVER, clearly I should have packed my bags at that point.

I played the first Mr. Bungle album on repeat yesterday ;_;

wait, no ^_^

You taught me a lesson/THANKS, MOM

Laurel your ex boyfriend sounds like the Beeper King.

Starting to feel like there are two kinds of people, or at least a spectrum with clumps toward either end: (a) those who can feel "GOD I hate you" for a moment and then have it ebb quickly back to "GOD I love you," and (b) those who do not easily get to "GOD I hate you," but once they get there, it's going to leave barbs and resentment without some serious resolution or time away.

But that is just a question of how quickly and confidently you're willing to externalize your annoyance by doing or saying something about it

my wife understands that I don't think she should have been allowed into the country when she was an infant, we've agreed to disagree

-- J0hn D., Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:58 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lou dobbs?

i know im repping for the kind of "passionate" relationship that involves a lot of fighting but i should add as a caveat that ive been in an "on-and-off" relationship for three years now and as "romantic" as it might be a lot of the time i just want it to either settle or end.

OR it's a question of knowing which annoyances are worth speaking up about and which ones should just dissolve because they're baseless or petty or stupid...

man my last relationship was really very bonkers and i stuck with it for a long time, for reasons that now completely escape understanding.

uh so good thread, for serious!

I agree with La Lechera.

This is a good place for me to mention that the most profound thing I've ever seen posted to ILX was when Mark S was like "don't even speculate about what other people are getting out of one another in relationships; it is mysterious and ineffable and you can never know."

I'm trying to imagine what the most universal relationship advice ILX could give would be, but I can't get past "if you're having an argument and your significant other accuses you of trolling, that is a bad sign"

Huge difference between properly hating the person or just hating the way they're being about one thing. If you go from 2 into 1 its bad news.

Thanks nabisco, I am now imagining someone trying to cut off his/her partner's line of argument by throwing a photo album.

I'm trying to imagine what the most universal relationship advice ILX could give would be

Never say "I don't even know who you are"

ha

xpost

This is a really great thread btw :)

My last bf who I was with for 4 years, I never fought with. But to me "fight" is raising voice, using harsh words, accusing the other person of something/insulting them needlessly. I dont see why that ever *ever* needs to come into play, even when you are frustrated at yr partner.

Maybe it was just we were both fairly passive people, and also good friends - and the fact N was as logical as Spock when he analysed things. Some of my friends said our NOT fighting was unhealthy, which used to worry me. But its not like we buried anything, we talked all the time, constant communicaion on what we did and felt, and it came naturally too.

We broke up for reasons entirely unrlated to such things, and I am still very close friends with him.

The one time I did raise up a fuss against an angry partner, he picked me up by the neck and strangled me for a while.

I dont do that shit no more.

SEE? ANGER IS BAD AND DANGEROUS.

So is holding your breath for too long!

Yeah I'm kind of in your boat Laurel :) I can worry and fret but I'll usually keep it all in, often out of "oh I dont want to piss them off" fear. I know its a bad thing. I'm working on it.

But I dont get angry at my current guy (or the last one), beyond silly things like "oi pick up stinky socks". Shit, we don't even fight over music, we BOTH like Mr Bungle!

I'm working on it, too. xp Ew, I am not working on that.

Heehee :)

Can't wait to see what BJO thinks of this thread when he catches up.

Big Jim Owells

i pretty much am guilty of what laurel said above about keeping conflict/confrontation to an absolute limit until i end up losing my shit and going ballastic after a few years.

not. good.
anyway next relationship im going to try the open communication thing.

wtf i might be the opposite, i am all about confrontation partially cause thats how my parents were.

I think I was like this when I was younger, but now it really just wears me out. Work's a pain, life is full of annoyances big and small. Can't a relationship be kind of a respite from all the BS? I mean, if there are issues that need to be addressed, or somebody feels their emotional investment isn't being reciprocated, then by all means, air those grievances. But fighting just to be fighting? or starting arguments about something you read in the economist when you're really upset with your sister? No thanks. I firmly believe it will take years off your life.

(just typing out loud folks, don't mind me)

thats whats funny, with friends and family i am totally into confrontation.. just opens up a whole nother conversation about my weird relationship to the opposite sex (i.e. terrified they'll leave me for someone better).

Yes, exactly!

Or, you know, just leave me.

note to the world: don't marry me, the minute we're in a committed relationship i'll wither into insecure doormat

I have to say that the fact that boys keep leaving me is not helping my abandonment complex or the communication-of-anger thing. It's like they wait until I care just enough....

when we met he was all into alt-country and playing indie rock and getting fucked up at shows and had a tattoo, I never thought he'd turn out to be dumb

I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE YOU CAN'T MAKE ME OH PLEASE I HAVE PLANS oh wait I might love you. Yes, actually I'm pretty sure I do. What d'you mean, it's not working out?

xp oh shut up.

:D

I propose a new adjective: gabbnebbious

What it describes = ^^^^^

http://www.typophile.com/files/evilCalvinHobbes_4821.gif

Wow, this thread is so great. So much OTM stuff being said here.

Uh, on the whole.

I think that my most recent long-term relationship dissolved in large parts due to both of us having come from family backgrounds which resulted in both of us being very poor at expressing anger and resentments in general in anything approximating healthy ways. Definitely, that was the case with me. Historically speaking, I've been terrified by anything approaching confrontation, which leads to things eventually coming out in horrible ways.

Whoa, that first sentence in my last post is clumsy. But hopefully it's semi-parsable.

I find this thread to be esp. poignant, b/c I'm gathering that pretty much everyone posting here is good people, with best of intentions...but some of us have been through the wringer in relationships, which is really sad, when all of us without exception ultimately just wanna be loved and give love.

And the folks who seem to have cool relationships going on, wow. That is really awesome. I salute you. In my experience, it's been hard.

It IS hard. Marriage (and long term relationships in general) require work, and that of course requires energy...

And even those of us who are in good relationships have been through difficult, confusing, and/or hurtful relationships in the past. So hang in there; you never know when you're going to meet someone new and awseome!

Cool!

And I agree mostly.

The possible caveat which I would throw out is that I have a certain appreciation for the school of "well, human beings should just accept the fact that they are serial monagamists"...but at the same time, I definitely think that throwing one's self in for the long haul can prove to be eminently worth it. I suppose much of it just comes down to your priorities in life at a given time. It's a big world; no outside authority (at least in the cultures that ILXors inhabit) is gonna breathe down your neck and force you to ultimately choose between the marriage or "woo-hoo, I'm single" lifestyle.

Right now, meeting someone in that sort of context is very low on my list of priorities. I'm trying to sort myself to be a "better" person in the meantime...hopefully not in some neurotic perfectionistic sense, but more in the sense of trying to get personal shit together that I wish I had gotten together years earlier; plus just trying to get on better terms with myself in general so that I have more to give to others instead of having all my energies tied up in my various ancient nonsensical self-detrimental patterns.

at least in the cultures that ILXors inhabit

zing culture?

precisely

not saying I'm perfect, I've said a few evilminded things in my life, but I think the key question in any disagreement is "how would mr. rogers deal with this shit"

OH J0hn D. I love this. I ask myself the same thing, but with Miss Manners.

<3 Fred Rogers, a truly good man and a truly good soul.

he wore creepy shoes tho

apparently my mom would see him going to work everyday while walking to school in pitts.

he never molested any kids as far as i know.

part of the problem is that im sort of weird and fucked-up and i tend to be attracted to sort of weird and fucked-up girls NOT because of their weirdness or fucked-upness but because those are the girls who tend to be the most interesting--i mean i know this is a cliche but the girls who i get along with best tend to be the kind of smart/funny girls who hated middle school and high school and are still dealing (to various extents) with the kind of emotional baggage that gets leveled on a lot of women who have strong opinions or do particularly well in school (maybe thats a bad example tho). and you know im hoping that that dating pool will get less fucked up as we all grow up (since im only 22) but it seems really hard to find a girl who is really smart and funny and interesting in cool shit and isnt also messed up with self-esteem issues or anxiety problems or what have you.

Hey max, yeah, wait a few years. Some of them will have figured things out more in their own time. (I think most people just start calming down if only because you don't have the same energy you used to!) (I know my sister, who is 21 now, will be way WAY rad and fun person in a few years once she's had some time to unravel and maybe introspect about why some of her actions really upset people.)

haha I am still stuck 1/3 up thread, sory to interrupt whatever you're talking about down hjere.

Oh my GOD I had no ideas you guys were talking about Fred Rogers

b-b-b-but....

<3 Fred Rogers, a truly good man and a truly good soul.

-- Abbott, Friday, January 25, 2008 12:07 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I posted that and then for some reason thought you were talking about some random guy someone had dated bcz it was an xpost.

I always thought he was wearing bowling shoes!

he wore kinda creepsy retarded kid shoes.
that sounds meaner than i meant it to.

http://www.tvjab.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/helloneighbor.gif

They really look a lot like bowling shoes. (I guess if Keds made bowling shoes.)

nah, he was just a skater.

wtf those shoes are nice ;-)

god i love that man.

dang this thread exploded!

haha totes jordan

missed a good discussion :(

I met Mr. Rogers when I was two. He started singing to me and I told him to stop.

JESUS CHRIST I go away for a day and there's 354 posts? :)

So, update. Newest developments are not too surprising.

He talked to her today, she's still upset (as I figured she would be). Nonetheless, conversation was opened up, and I am fairly sure he apologized.

He sounded a lot better too, although he's still very down...but again that's not surprising either.

So did u have beers with him then??

nah I haven't seen the guy at all this week, I've had rehearsals at night while he's been working....Just phone conversations yesterday and today.

In the previous 354 posts we figured out that they should split up, BJO. Sorry to break it to ya.

IS THER NOTHINE THAT CULD BE DON, KAN I TALK TO UR SUPERVISIRE

lol, i notice nobody upthread mentions anything about kids. you think you're having some bad fights in your marriage now, wait until kids complicate everything.

do you mainly revive old fights or do you come up with new topics?

hahaha

estale-a, morelike
i am married to a message broad

One thing I learned: apologize even if you feel you're right. What's more important: being *right* or being with the one you love?

Also, I fight like my dad. Not so good. :-(

lol, i notice nobody upthread mentions anything about kids. you think you're having some bad fights in your marriage now, wait until kids complicate everything.

Because I don't think that it changed *that* much. We're still together and love eachother dearly.

yes, same here, but increased burdens & perpetual tiredness = more fights in my experience (not necessarily worse fights, but many petty flareups)

I can imagine that'd be the case. I don't have kids and have decided not to but I have great admiration for any parent. Its a tough job.

One thing I learned: apologize even if you feel you're right.

this is pretty key. and it feels way better if you know youre in the wrong and you apologize and the other person also says sorry.

lol, i notice nobody upthread mentions anything about kids. you think you're having some bad fights in your marriage now, wait until kids complicate everything.

This is so OTM, and not just because the kids are complicating things, but also because you have this new role to adjust to. You're NOT just a couple anymore, you are PARENTS.

Hmm, I prefer to keep my kids out of it (in every single way imaginable: from not having them present during a fight, which is hard, but also that they do not become an issue in the fight). But Gershy's right: When I came home from the hospital with Ophelia and the weeks following the delivery, I was so "pooped out of my brain" a minor thing would already set me off. I now realize this and thus warn my husband. At the moment I am running on near empty so I get all GRRRR when something minor is in my way. Remember husbands: ...

Shit gotta run, kid's crying. hah

Also, what pisses me off but is also the GREBTEST thing EVAH: how my husband can see the signs (that I will be prone to *combustion*). This is teh great thing about being in a relationship: knowing eachother through and through.

Nath, I don't mean that the kids are present for the fights or that they are even necessarily the topic of the fights - just that you are tired, more stressed, and suddenly there are whole new worlds of things to fight about.

Over the past 15 or so years, the time my husband and I fought most was when multiple factors collided: J. was about two, Alex was in kindergarten and had just been diagnosed with PDD-NOS (sort of a mild disorder, related to autism). I was going through a depression at the time and A. was in the middle of training for his first marathon.

It's not that we were fighting about the kids; we were fighting because of the other stressors. Some of them wouldn't have existed without the kids, it's true, but it's not that we were fighting about, say, who was going to change diapers or drive Alex to school or whatever.

Ha, I also think it's cool and also aggravating that my husband can tell when I'm about to get mad. (I hate to hear, "you're not in a very good mood." WELL THAT'S NOT GOING TO CHEER ME UP, IS IT! Oh wait, you're right!)

haha So so so true. When I start cleaning up and throwing shit in the bin, he knows and warns me (and himself).

But you are right, having kids -> tired -> more stressed out. Especially when the kids themselves are sick/have problems, it's VERY hard not to fight.

And even though the line 'staying together for the kids' is crap, it does have some importance. Of course you shouldn't at all costs, but kids do change matters.

Nath, I don't mean that the kids are present for the fights or that they are even necessarily the topic of the fights - just that you are tired, more stressed, and suddenly there are whole new worlds of things to fight about.

This is very true. We ended up getting a dish washer a couple of weeks ago because we have only ever argued about doing the dishes after Megan was born. Sometimes when you are very tired and stressed it really is about things like the dishes.

Your friend may need to read up on 'borderline personality disorder' tout de suite - I got out of a relationship of I hate you/I love you, get out/don't leave me etc etc and I'm so glad I did - black hole of an emotional state and it sucks a person right in with 'em if they're not careful ...

I don't think that accurately describes their situation though.

ie, the source of their fighting is understandable given their circumstances, and from what he said, she has a valid reason to be mad at him right now that even he understands. this type of tiff was extremely uncommon for the two of them.

Oh! Money's tight and he bought a 42" plasma.

Sucks...seriously, I hope things work out for the best for them, whatever that entails. I'm guessing it doesn't place you in an esp. comfortable situation to be witnessing all of this going down.

this thread is retardo montalban

When I start cleaning up and throwing shit in the bin, he knows and warns me (and himself).

why do women clean the house when they get mad? ok i'm sure not all women do. but lots of them do. maybe some guys do too, i don't know. when i'm mad my impulse is to leave the house. could be both impulses stem from lingering sense of domestic space as the woman's space?

anyway fights. my first wife and i had too many of them, but the bigger problem was we never really evolved a way to get beyond them. they'd fade over time, but the resentments accumulated. my 2nd (lovely wonderful understanding) wife is much better at compartmentalizing disagreements and allowing occasional venting without it turning into longterm bitterness. i've gotten better at those things too (a divorce gives a lot of time and a lot of incentive to think about all this stuff). it also helps of course to fall in love with someone who is basically sort of reasonable. reasonable people can usually work things out. they're just a little hard to find.

Pretty much all I look for in a person (a person) IS reasonableness.

t also helps of course to fall in love with someone who is basically sort of reasonable. reasonable people can usually work things out.

Totally OTM this. I mean it seems kind of duhoy but I've experienced a lack of it plenty of times (and have been the unreasonable person, I'll happily admit that). And for me, having a partner who is more reasonable and calm than I am is a blessing, cause I hate to realise this about myself but someone being that way helps give me perspective. Like this morning: I was trying to untangle the stupid damn fucking clothes horse thing, and it was all stuck and I was getting the shits, and my bf came out to the balcony and calmly put it together and grinned and walked back inside.

I'm never sure how much of a dill I should feel after such things, but it does humble me.

latest update is that she came back tonight and he's still in the doghouse but he's doing the right thing by being gradual....

this thread is retardo montalban

Really? I thought this was one of the best threads ever. Most of the relationship advice being offered smacks of some serious wisdom, imo.

you would think that.

Yes, I would, wouldn't I. uh, wtf?

As with most good threads, this one was derailed early and often.

I haven't been able to read a LOT of it due to my busy schedule but I think there was a lot of good advice given.

retardo montalban

Defend the Indefensible: People who think that just referencing Mr T or David Hasslehoff makes them some kind of comic genius

Whatever the advice, I hope they patch things up. :-)

Man I got a text at 7 am this morning so since he had told me he wouldn't contact me unless something bad happened, I was worried a bit, and it turns out to be another one of my best friends telling me he just saw this girl that I was supposed to go out with and blew me off back in 2006.

I was annoyed but relieved!

well he emailed me and things aren't so hot....I won't say what, but I'm not taking any of it as one way or another because at this stage, she's still furious.

If you were a real friend you'd tell the rest of the internet all the details so we could give better advice.

rock hardy 4 REAL

ok, I'll bite, since things got a lot worse.

So...they had been arguing due to bad circumstances. For whatever reason, she logged into his myspace account (for some reason she decided to be privy to his passwords but won't share hers) and found an exchange with another girl online in which some inappropriate comments were made.

He told me what they were...I definitely agree he messed up, but so does he, and he was not cheating. The girl in question he has never met...we all used to talk in Internet Relay Chat back in like 2003, and hell I even co-wrote a song about the same girl as a joke. He's never even been in the same state as her at the same time. He made the comments because he's prone to bad judgement, always has been since I've known him...he regrets what he did and didn't mean anything by it, it was the internet and he made a silly decision.

(Won't even get into how invading your hubby's privacy is a 'bad decision', but well he shared his pw so....)

Supposedly things looked better today and then he just texts me saying he thinks its over, that she opened another bank account and her mother is helping her find paperwork for a divorce.

I understand her right to be angry, but this is flat out RIDICULOUS. She hasn't really given him any chance to atone or explain himself, and I won't even get started with the mother. That the mother would encourage this silliness, that at the first sign of trouble, you bail, is just irresponsible. They haven't even been married all that long and have had very few fights. The first incident, and you run?

I'm hoping they're both using it as a flight mechanism but I'm starting to doubt it more and more. My friend of all people does not cheat, and in fact he's been cheated ON before and knew it while it was happening (not with this girl but other girlfriends in the past).

I know he won't take this well if it happens. I'm just hoping the crack his mother-in-law is smoking wears off soon.

(sorry, I'm a bit mad at the moment and that's hurting my ability to be rational)

(and for the record, I'm not suggesting that there aren't some items that should be a one and done. for instance, domestic abuse, actual sexual infidelity, or etc....but what happened here shouldn't be a dealbreaker).

he's better off without an email snooper, that's creepy

yea but this just makes me sad. I mean, they really looked like they had a great thing going, I didn't see this coming.

He's going to be devastated if this really happens. Plus I think he's going to be afraid to ever commit to a serious relationship again given the whole 'you screwed up, its over'.

However, if the mother overreacts just as much as his wife, maybe they'll both realize how silly they are being.

2 lessons learned: 1. Don't netsex with an account yr spouse has access to, and 2. Don't marry a snooper. Valuable lessons both, I figure. Now it's time for him to find someone new.

He didn't really netsex, per se.

Apparently she has refused to iron it out with counseling, other than the mandated counseling that you have to go through in Florida before a divorce.

I hate to say it but it sounds like there's something else at play here....and I shudder to think what.

per se

it wasn't cybersex, he was trying to cheer this person up (again that we never met in real life) as she was depressed, and in the process made a comment he shouldn't have made...

When brought forth the idea of counseling to save the relationship, her response was "I don't want to...". she's not willing to listen.

a comment he shouldn't have made

since you're obviously here to be a shithead, kindly fuck off.

unless you are truly that idiotic to think that it warrants a divorce, despite the fact that she did much worse 2 years ago....

All I'm saying is that you are probably casting a kindly gloss on remarks that reasonable people might find to constitute cheating.

She probably just wants out and has been looking for any excuse to do so. He provided one, and she found it. Cruel and stupid behavior, but if she's opposed to counseling as an attempt to work it out, that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

that's what i think too, she wanted to leave him and now she feels she righteously can.

yay!

:(

This has been insane.

So, she actually wants to go through with it, taking a myspace message meant to cheer a friend (re: online only) up as 'cheating'...and now thinks that in her mind, because it's "his fault", she now has to pay none of the mortgage (which is in her name) or any of her car insurance, and won't discuss finances.

I can't believe how this has played out.

tell your friend to get a divorce lawyer and that hes better off without this bucket of crazy

because it's "his fault", she now has to pay none of the mortgage (which is in her name) or any of her car insurance, and won't discuss finances.

I would suggest that if she's going to go through with divorcing this guy, lawyers will straighten her out. I'm watching my friends go through a divorce, and I really think that doing it through lawyers is the only way to do it. They aren't emotionally involved.

Also, what max said.

I think he's given up trying to save it. He, as I suggested, is keeping a record of every statement/event that occurs as it will be useful later. I knew he would though.

Just a case of a girl getting married thinking it would be all unicorns and butterflies and not realizing that occasionally there are manticores.

sara,

Yes, I definitely agree with you. in florida, marriage counseling is required as well (to make sure they won't just get back together), so I think using lawyers will really be the only way to go.

The sad thing is that my friend's life will be turned upside down for ungodly amounts of time now because of this, when just not too long ago he was really happy.

keeping a record is a good idea but seriously the earlier he hires a lawyer the better off he will be in the end

and buy him 30 rack and take him fishing or bowling or whatever

I'm fairly sure he will...for a while he was trying to still save the marriage so at that point that wasn't where his mind was at, but now that it is, I'm sure he will.

actually chatting w/ him right now so guess I'll ask, lol

yea myself and another close high school friend of his have been keeping him company.....trying to get him to come w/ me to a super bowl party tomorrow to get him out of the warzone.

"bucket of crazy" is a good term. If he has any possessions he cares deeply about, he needs to hide them whenever he leaves the house, or take them with him and stash them at a friend's place. He'll come home and find them in little bits.

because it's "his fault", she now has to pay none of the mortgage (which is in her name) or any of her car insurance, and won't discuss finances.

Florida isn't a community property state, so if his name isn't on the mortgage, he's not liable for any of the debt.

actually they're both on it I believe.

Wow: I can't imagine what kind of flirty MySpace message would be grounds for immediate no-talk divorce, unless it's "I would much rather be married to you than my wife, who is awful and who I'm planning to poison next week" or is being sent to a 14-year-old or something. But you say she was snooping because of "bad circumstances" to begin with, so yeah, kinda sounds like she was already looking for a reason.

I always had the common assumption that people who get married are on some infinitely more solid footing than people who are just dating, and it's been weird over the past 5 years to notice how much that isn't the case: having committed to it that way doesn't seem to make the usual problems all that much less likely to kill it! I mean, it's an artificial step, and then you're still the same people with the same issues you had a year ago.

ding ding ding ding

that's true, but there's significance in the artificial step. obviously it doesn't keep people from splitting up, and obviously some people commit to less than fully from the start. there are plenty of bad reasons people get married. but i still personally find it a valuable thing. even if the sense of solidity and dependability it provides is basically an illusion, in the good cases it's a mutually-agreed-to illusion. getting divorced definitely showed me the limits of that, but i was still happy to get married again.

Well, here's an update:

horseshoe, unfortunately, was OTM. my friend got divorced. his bitch wife made him feel guilty as hell for what he allegedly did for a while, and then it came out that she cheated on him before that incident happened....and said it was his fault she cheated on him.

I'm just glad he can finally move on and pick up the pieces now that it is official, though I know it's one of the toughest things he's ever had to go through.

My advice at this point: change the locks before she cleans the house out of all the furniture. And I mean all the furniture. Also, if she has any kind of charge card in your name, watch out! It'll be maxed out in hours.

fella wanted a coffee and a stroll with me this mornin so grand few sips in he says the missus was bein a right cunt all weekend so sunday afternoon i sat her down and made us a cuppa tae and i says to her

i think we need to be kinder to one another

and she laughed and then got mad and told me to harden the fuck up for gods sake now what dyou think of that man

i said it sounds like ye'll be alright he says oh i dont doubt it but still

and then you both looked down for a moment to see what might be there in your hands to be looked at, such as a cup with coffee, which there was.

no- jesus no

we were strolling up talbot st, we were on full fuckin alert lookin about us man

so that's how it was with you

This Pinter play is a little weird.

btw my friend in this thread got remarried