What are we fighting about, honey?
Talking about relationships is fraught with peril, mainly because it's not easy to change the way you relate to your lovers. No matter what I say here, for many people it won't do much good. Most relationships are built around a way of communicating, and changing that can be really tough, even when one or both partners can clearly see the dynamic going on. These thoughts are offered as personal observations; Lord knows if anyone will actually learn anything or, if they do, use what they learn in their relationship. But with that disclaimer, and a big gulp, away we go.
What makes for a successful relationship? As far as I can see, it's that you feel that the other person knows who you are, cares about you, enjoys your company, and listens to you even when it's difficult. And, of course, vice versa. Without this base, there's not much to go on or grow on.
Feelings are important. Listen to your feelings. But don't get attached to them. Feelings come and go... unless you grab on and start running with them. Then they can get much, much bigger. ("Oh, is that all that was the matter?")
You can't argue about feelings. If you can trust your lover to tell you how they honestly feel, and to listen to you when you tell them your feelings' truth, you can go pretty far.
Not everyone likes to talk about their feelings. But if you can do it when you need to, that's enough.
Where do you start when you're angry with your lover? Or scared, or insecure, or jealous? How can you talk about it without it blowing up?
First, what is the feeling that is demanding attention? What are you feeling? It all starts with this.
It's tempting to refer to all these sorts of emotions--anger, jealousy, fear, insecurity, loneliness--as "bad feelings." The problem with "bad feelings" is that it's easy to get confused about why they're bad. Sure, they may not be pleasant. But if they're honest, then they're vital. It is not wrong to feel these sorts of feelings. Don't squelch them when they come up; if you do, you bury part of yourself. And remember that if you let yourself feel these things, and if you can be real with your lover, and if it leads to you working things out... there is then nothing bad, at all! Where then is the "bad" feeling?
The next question is not "Why are you feeling that?" The reason is that feelings just happen. Emotions are not rational. Arguing about whether a feeling is genuine or legitimate is just a plain distraction from the situation: that something happened, and you had difficult feelings about it.
Another huge distraction is overgeneralizing. Going from "I felt this way when you did that" to "You always do that!" changes the discussion from a statement of personal truth into a battle over the cosmos. It's no longer about feelings. It's about reality, about arguing over who's right and who's wrong. Those arguments are distractions, once again. A feeling, by itself, doesn't make anyone right or wrong. It just is.
What went into that feeling? What prompted it, what other worries or concerns are in the background? Look under the surface.
The next challenge is, can you tell your partner this feeling? It's real easy to think, well, it's no big deal. I don't need to mention it. Little niggling resentments can grow very, very large if you habitually don't tell your lover how you feel. Be careful of a molehill growing into a mountain, because you wanted to be polite rather than being honest.
This isn't a license to be hurtful; telling someone how you feel is different from accusing them or blaming them because you feel that way. If you feel angry towards your lover, you can tell them about it without insulting them. If you lose so much respect for your partner that you can't resist insulting them or being sarcastic when having discussions like these, then your attempts to work things out will turn into withering crossfire. This may be your idea of fun, but I doubt it. Just say how you feel, here and now.
Does your partner listen? Before anything else happens, your partner needs to let you know that they heard you. If they ignore you, or dismiss what you're saying, or immediately start telling you how they feel, then there's not much communication happening.
Listening isn't the same as hearing successfully. You may tell your lover that you had a hard feeling when they did something, and they may hear that you think they're evil, when all you're saying is that you felt something. Check that your lover understood what you meant.
If your lover becomes defensive, that's understandable. It's hard not to. But it won't get you far. The question is not, were they right or wrong to do what they did? The question is, what to do about the fact that you felt what you felt? Defensiveness is a diversion. The challenge is to avoid putting your lover on the defensive; the challenge is letting them know that you care about them, that you want to work things out, even while you are dealing with intense emotions. Good faith is essential; if you don't want to work things out, or if they don't, then none of this will work.
Emotions can amplify themselves. Taking a feeling personally--dwelling on your lover's motivations, or letting a momentary irritation rise into a daylong vendetta--may give you an exciting emotional ride. But it doesn't help you work things out with your lover. The more you work yourself up into a towering panic or a quivering dread, the harder it'll be for you to talk things over without your lover reacting intensely as well.
What a worthless point? It's numbling obvious that you won't freak out if you don't freak out? Perhaps. I know that sometimes emotions are literally overpowering, in which case my advice isn't much good. But I also know that many people spend years in a simmering state of discontent, going over and over the same ground. It's easy to go from a feeling that comes up, arising from something that happens, into a long litany of past grievances. The more grudges you hold, the easier it'll be to turn your present feeling into a righteous battle over wrongs past and present. Stay here and now, if you can, both when you're talking to yourself and when you're with your lover.
Once your lover's heard you, then what? Then, perhaps, nothing. Maybe you just wanted to tell them to let them know what was up with you, and you don't particularly feel they needed to or should have done anything differently. Not every feeling demands a solution; if you leap too quickly from saying what's up to deciding what to do about it, you can miss the intimacy that comes with telling difficult truth. Sometimes tough feelings just happen, and all you need is support. Talking about the feeling is a complete goal in itself; it's not the prelude to anything.
If that's not the end of the story, then what is? Maybe your lover can't do much more than support you and tell you they care for you. If you're feeling insecure, well, that isn't always something your lover can fix. They may try, but ultimately many emotions come from within.
Though, of course, not all. If your lover broke an agreement between you, or acted in a way that you had told them you would feel badly about, then an emotional response is pretty understandable. Agreements are troublesome things; vital for giving the outlines of a relationship, distracting in that you can disagree over exactly what agreements were made. Again, good faith is key. What is the spirit of the law you're trying to letter? If you lose sight of that, the rules will be empty and hollow.
If your lover breaks your agreements, over and over again, then there are two questions: why are they doing this? and, why are you reentering the agreement with them? Trust is essential for a strong relationship. Trust comes from two things: knowing that agreements made will be kept, and knowing that you will both be there for each other, in good times and in difficult times. When that goes, it's not easy to recapture.
You do not have to put up with anything. If your partner doesn't have much concern for how you feel--if you don't enjoy being with them because of how they behave--then it will be very difficult for you to stay with them. Of course, good faith is needed; if you haven't let them know how you feel, then it's partly your responsibility that they continued to act as they did. And if your feelings have changed, you'd better have let them know about it, or else there's not much way they could be expected to act differently.
I'm not good at telepathy, and nor are most people I know. Anytime I hear "You should have known I was feeling this way," I wonder how helpful that is. The best way for me to know what my partner's feeling is to ask and find out. Nonverbal communication can only go so far, in my opinion.
There is no excuse for violence! Physical abuse is never something to dismiss. This is a complex topic, discussed elsewhere in my adult pages, but the bottom line is that someone who hits you when you don't want to be hit is someone you can't trust. Abuse is never just deserved.
This whole essay is really about trust. Avoiding the distractions, staying with your truth, not fighting or battling but talking and feeling. This is the way to a strong and lasting relationship. If you get into it for real, you will experience the whole sweep of emotions, sooner or later. Riding those waves with your lover is the path to a much deeper joy than the mere avoidance of "bad" feelings.
For more on relationships, see my Polyamory*** essay. (coming soon!)
Back to Unreal Enterprises. Created 6 May 1996, last updated 6 May 1996, and copyright by Rob Jellinghaus.