Diary of a Marriage: Fighting Dirty
Hopefully, you see tools for home sanitation when you look at this picture, and not handy weapons of war.
I’ve never been a good fighter. I don’t stick to the point, I shout unfit-for-print words, I yell and I pout and I slam the door. Throw me and my already piping hot temper into a just-room-for-two condo with a husband who finds my fits of anger laughable and, well, you’ve got a perfect battle plan for an all-out war.
It’s not that J. and I didn’t fight before we tied the knot; we were well-versed in the painfully domestic disagreements of long-term coupledom well before we ever made it official. It worked out well pre-marriage, though, because, since we didn’t live together, I could do what I’d always done during unpleasant conversations: Slam down the phone or hop in my car and peel away mid-fight, then diligently ignore him until I could once again breathe normally without spitting fire.
Now, there’s no getting away from each other. Worse, he’s there — calm and unruffled — studying me as my anger flares and my cheeks grow hot and my jaw sets and my hands clench into tight little balls. He’s there … and he’s laughing at me.
This gets to me like nothing else. The idea that I could be so angry, so ragingly furious, and he could find it funny?
He laughed during one fight we had when we were first married. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I’d just finished mopping our kitchen floor. I was at the sink, cleaning out the bucket while we argued. I yelled. He snickered. I yelled louder. He let out a baritone belly laugh, knowing he was getting under my skin. It kept escalating like this, two children baiting each other. Then I did something I’m not proud of, something I’ll never tell our children, something I’m embarrassed even to confess:
I threw the bucket at his head.
Not one of my finer moments, obviously. But, even if you don’t resort to hurling cleaning supplies at your significant other, it’s true: Those whom you love most in the world are also the ones who can get you mind-numbingly mad at the drop of a hat — or an inappropriately timed chuckle.
“It’s not that I’m laughing at you, babes,” J. explained one day, months later. “You’re just really funny when you’re mad. And you say the dumbest stuff.”
“Dumb? Like what?” I spat.
“Well, that one time you said you’d divorce me.”
Oh. Oh yeah. That. Whoops.
Before we got married, my mom gave me a sage piece of advice: Never threaten divorce. Even when you’re spewing fire, don’t go there. I’ve really tried to keep the D-word out of our fights, but sometimes it seems as if it’s the only thing — the only really big, really important, really serious thing (well, other than throwing buckets) — that I can use to say: “I AM VERY, VERY MAD. PLEASE TAKE ME SERIOUSLY.” (After all, I cashed in the breakup card when I married him.) So J. and I set out one day to figure out another word that would mean the same thing. We settled on “apple”.
Nowadays, if I blurt out “apple” mid-fight, J. knows to hold back the taunting giggles, to let me vent, and to give me space to simmer down. It doesn’t always work, but it helps to prevent meaningless D-word threats — and buckets — being thrown about in the heat of the moment. Plus, spouting the name of a random fruit in the heat of an argument is sometimes bizarre enough to diffuse the anger that was there in the first place, leaving us both in fits of giggles. And even if it’s not, well, we always come back to each other in the end — usually stronger and better for it — vowing the same things that have been vowed by countless couples before us: To always talk issues through rather than yell, to never go to bed angry, and to try really hard to not throw buckets.
Go on, give us the dirt: What was the worst thing you ever did/said/threw during a fight with your significant other? How do you keep your arguments from escalating into all-out wars?
Getting married? Start and end your wedding planning journey with Philadelphia Weddings' guide to the best wedding vendors in the city.
