I don’t talk about my marriage on the blog very often. I don’t have a very good reason for that, either. Maybe it’s because we’re not the kind of couple that really does romance (remember 23 date nights that aren’t super cheesy?) and sometimes (read: most of the time) – we’re pretty boring.
It’s definitely not because we have the perfect relationship where fighting ceases to exist. Because we don’t, I promise. We have our ups and downs just like I’m sure every other worthwhile marriage does. And while it’s comforting to know we’re not unique in our situation, something still gets under my skin. A lot.
The repeat fights. The fights that I’m certain we argued over last week or last month or last year.
Those drive me insane.
I have little patience when it comes to repeated conversations and arguments. See, my memory seems to cling to things like superglue, and I’m not a huge fan of repeating myself. And since my dear husband has the worst memory I have ever witnessed, our lives aren’t always easy. We’ve both worked on improving. I’ve become more patient while he’s improved his memory. But I don’t think these attributes of ours will ever go away.
So arguments aren’t exactly an ideal time, especially as I can usually count on myself asking “How many times have I asked you to do XYZ?!”
FYI: The answer is nobody knows and nobody cares. Including me. I hate the scorecard game because I’m not competitive at all so it’s essentially the most useless of questions for me. But I ask anyway. Because my fury and frustration knows no logic. It only knows angry hand motions, sarcastic rhetorical questions and an inability to see the flaws of my actions.
In case you were wondering, yep – I’m human. I have crazy emotions that poke through this calm and laid-back exterior that I work very hard on maintaining.
But the fact is that I hate those moments. I hate getting so angry and I hate watching the situation dissolve into a pointless argument that solves nothing. So one day, I got tired of it. And I went to the all-knowing Google and typed in “same fight.” Plenty of things came up. If I wanted to learn a fight song, now was my chance! Luckily, “same fight over and over” and “same fight different day” populated as well. I selected same fight over and over and Google reassured me that I was indeed not alone with it’s millions of results.
And I found this article on WebMD.
As I read through it, I found myself nodding along a bit as I saw similar situations in the examples they provided. And then I finished the article and I stared at it, thinking it would never work. Three steps to end the dreaded repeat fight? No way. Never. Not gonna happen. That’s way too easy for something that’s been plaguing me for years.
But I was desperate.
And I needed something to get me off the merry-go-round.
So I tried it anyway.
And it worked. It magically solved a fight that we have had for years now in the matter of an hour. There were no angry hand motions, no sarcasm and we found a solution that worked for us both. In 60 minutes. Magic. Pure, unexplainable magic. Except that it is explainable because that sanity-saving article told me how to do it.
My response to that blissful hour was to cry because I have spent so many years being frustrated over these fights. And my second response was to try it again in case it was a fluke. It wasn’t. It took less than an hour the next time for something we spent the last week bickering about.
Magic, obviously.
The moral of this story?
Trust WebMD. Or trust in calmly having a discussion about how you feel and working on understanding why on Earth your partner is doing crazy things that make you feel like your head is going to explode. It may not sound hard. It may sound really flippin’ easy. But in those moments when you want to scream at something and break every valuable thing you own – it feels like it’s the hardest thing anyone could ask of you. But it is so worth it.