Long drives with your spouse have one of two inevitable results: they either end with you needing couples therapy, or with you feeling like you’ve just been through 8 hours of therapy while traversing Interstate 80.
It’s not surprising, then, that on our most recent road trip the talked turned to fighting. Notice I didn’t say we were fighting, just that we were talking about fighting. And for reasons that I can no longer recall, we decided to try and remember the biggest fights we’ve had in the 12 years of our relationship.
Despite weekly – sometimes daily – bickering, only a handful of fights emerged as real milestones. We dissected these a bit and came to the conclusion that the fights weren’t really about what we thought they were about. In other words, in a moment of heated exchange, it may have seemed that The Battle of the Ceramic Snowman was about ceramic snowmen … but in hindsight it had nothing at all to do with handicrafts.
So what are we fighting about? We tend to fight to assert ourselves as individuals – my preferences, my hobbies, my thoughts. It sounds selfish as I write it now, but essentially I believe the intentions are not so much selfish as elemental to the process of staying a couple while developing as an individual. Read on and see if you agree:
The One about the Ceramic Snowman
We are not a volatile couple. We know others – including close family members – who seem to thrive from a good knock-down-drag-out. That’s not us. Even so much as an angry look tends to illicit copious apologies within minutes of its being offered. And when we do argue, we tend to do so in very even-toned voices, with each word enunciated with care. (Parents know this tone of voice: it’s the calm that belies an undercurrent of very strong emotion.)
We were more than a year into our relationship before we faced our first argument. Not that we hadn’t disagreed: I’m sure we had, though I can’t recall about what or why. Until the The Battle of the Ceramic Snowman, that is.
The scene: We’d taken a short road trip and had a few hours to kill before returning home. We were looking for cheap ways to spend a little time … and I casually suggested a walk through a small craft shop. It was cold outside and the store looked inviting. And while I eschew the sort of kitsch these stores usually sell, I don’t mind a meander through the aisles every once in a while. Cliff, apparently, is anti-meandering, and particularly in stores that sell Ceramic Snowmen. (You must read those words with an incredulous sound in your voice … as if I had suggested that he get a mani/pedi while we were out.)
To be honest, I can’t recall the way the fight devolved. I know it had something to do with his unwillingness to enter the store, and my sense that this was unjust. I watch football, I’m sure I argued. Why won’t you enter a girly store? I’m sure his reply was something to the effect of, But I thought you didn’t even like this kind of stuff – why do you want to look around? And why can’t we find something we both like to do?
The argument went on for what seemed like hours – but was probably better measured in minutes – and ended with us both exhausted, melted into the seats of his ’89 Ford Taurus. The time we needed to kill had mostly evaporated in arguing.
What it was really about: Almost immediately, “Ceramic Snowman” became our code word for the relational tendency to hold your ground on a topic of monumental unimportance. And, to some extent, that’s all it was: an inconsequential fight over an unimportant topic.
But with the clearer vision of 12 years passed, I now think it was about something more fundamental: how much of myself do I have to sacrifice to love you, and be loved by you?
From my perspective, I wanted the freedom to go girly on occasion. Though I mostly saw myself as an urban girl with a personality driven by rationality and a wardrobe firmly rooted in shades of black and brown, I wanted permission to slip back to my country roots, to be drawn to something sentimental and ornamental.
Cliff, on the other hand, just wanted a warning for when these shifts in personality were coming.
We fight about these sorts of things less now than we used to. I think we’ve come to respect the inconsistencies in each other’s likes and dislikes, moods and temperaments. We’re better at giving each other space: we’ve learned to spend the occasional Friday night in separate rooms while he watches a “The Wire” and I watch “Designed to Sell.” This would have seemed unthinkable in the early days of our relationship, but now seems oddly refreshing.
As for Ceramic Snowmen … those small fights over unimportant topics seem unavoidable. The best we can do is to name them for what they are – cheap, worthless kitsch – as early as possible. And then move on.
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