The Relationship has been rocky and shaky the past 3 weeks or so.
He's got his bad and I've got mine.
Last night, what started as a harmless conversation turned in a jealousy-fit and me proclaiming that all his exes are biatches and that they should all die in a plane crash. Together. Of course, at this moment, having my heart filled with the loving thoughts from "Searching for God knows what", these feelings are so insignificant, so passe, so not worth my time.
I came to a realization at fight #367 that despite all our attempts to communicate, voice opinions, share feelings and reach a conclusion that would end all previous fights and misgivings, we always came back to another argument of the same sort.
He admits he is solution-oriented, always trying to talk things out right away to fix them so that the problem will (hopefully) never come again.
I am emotionally driven. I may not always be able to articulate my immediate thoughts but I know my feelings and sometimes feel trapped by my inability to define them. I will try to say something but it seems like they're shot down by his superior reasoning, against which I have no defense except deadly loathing silence or the glare of doom (which sometimes also looks like the ha-the-ceiling-and-wall-are-more-interesting-than-your-face of doom).
Back to the point, so sometimes we reach middle ground and think the issue is solved. We think we can let it go, but it comes back and we fight again. Every time we fight, there's more resent and anger accumulating. We cool down and it seems like things are better. But for the next 2 weeks, I couldn't find it in myself to express any love towards him. I thought about it, I had wanted to but I didn't do it. Not because I was holding back, but I didn't feel it. It felt forced if I did. It wasn't natural. It wasn't from the heart.
There was hurt in the heart. We did things that hurt each other. We tried to solve the problem, find tangible actions to fix the broken actions but what we really needed was to heal our pain. Never once did we apologize to each other after a fight. We reached out, held hands and hugged and thought everything was okay but two simple words never made it out of our mouths. We both felt we had done nothing wrong. We were both right.
He asked me what would make me feel better so that we would no longer be resentful of each other. I sat in silence for a while. Two things: finding my pearl ring...and an apology (of course this entire post went through my head by the time I said this and I didn't explain to him). It started out as a genuine apology but as it went on, it turned into a semi-rant of how he was "wrong" and what I did shouldn't have happened but we should stop fighting, blah blah blah. I stopped him. As I was listening to him, I realized how silly it sounded to "apologize" for things you didn't think you did wrong. In our case, neither of us was wrong and we didn't need to admit "we were wrong" to make things better. I explained that the apology wasn't for what he did or what I did, but rather for us hurting each other emotionally and causing pain. It was not to prove one person was right and the other wrong. You're not admitting you are wrong. What you are saying is:
"I'm sorry I let your feelings get hurt."
"I'm sorry our different opinions has pushed us this far apart."
"I'm sorry each time we fought, we created deeper wounds."
"I'm sorry I didn't show you I still loved you amidst our hurtful exchanges."
We both apologized. No one has to be right or wrong. We're all different. But what brings us together is the love we have for each other. Amazingly, it did so much more repair than I had ever imagined and my heart is happy again. Things are better.
So the next time you and a significant other have a fight, two words can bring you back together.
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