The Art of Marital Arguing
When you are young lovers you quarrel over "deep issues" such as: who loves who more and the ever-popular who should hang up first (you hang up, no, you hang up! okay...we'll do it together...1 2 3.................well you didn't hang up, either!). The prospect of ever having a serious fight never enters your mind. To your way of thinking, this is it. This is true love and as bad as it's ever going to get.
And then you get married.
My husband and I once found ourselves yelling at each other (in the pet aisle of Walmart, no less) about who bathes more than the other. I had just put a bottle of the cheap-o Suave body wash in the cart, trying to be frugal. (Don't get me wrong, I do love most of the Suave line, but every now and then a girl likes her fancier soaps, too!) We walk down the aisle to pick up hubby's body wash. He throws in a bottle of Axe body wash. Yes, it smells divine, but it costs almost 5X more than my bottle of Suave! I told him that it wasn't fair that he gets the more expensive bottle of soap, that if I had to be thrifty, so did he. He, apparently, didn't agree with my point of view. He told me that he showered more than I did, therefore that entitled him to a better brand of soap. As we went on through the store (much to the embarrassment of our children) our voices got louder and more angry. "I do not stink! I want good soap, too!" I found myself yelling at him, next to the Puppy Chow display. "We don't need to buy you the expensive soap if you're not going to use it as much as I'll use mine," he spat back at me. And that's when I stooped to the low level of actually trying to reason with him: "well, if I don't bathe as much as you do, then I should get the more expensive one since it'll last longer!" What was I thinking?! What in the hell possessed me to actually admit (in a supercenter, don't forget) that it might be possible that I don't bathe as often as I should?!? (please note: I shower as much as the next guy, but for some reason I felt the need to try to be logical at that moment)
Yeah. That's when you realize that you are (maybe, just maybe) a little too comfortable in your relationship.
Another example of Marital Bliss:
"Where's my shirt?" asks Antonio, running through the bedroom frantically.
"Which shirt?" I ask, wanting to help, but still knowing that I'm in trouble because I am WAAAY behind on laundry (and with no good reason).
"The shirt your mom got me!" he exclaims, rummaging through the closet, tossing everything about.
"Umm....well, there's 3 shirts hanging in the closet, right in front of you, that Mom gave you," I said, turning back to the computer screen (CafeMom was in front of me, please don't interrupt me for too long, I thought)
"No!! The work shirt your mom got me!!"
Now I am confused. My mom never gave him a work shirt. He had been wearing various polo shirts, button downs, etc to work and I had never heard one peep of complaint out of him before today, concerning this mysterious Work Shirt that is now MIA.
"Can't you just wear one of those shirts that are in the closet already? Because I'm not sure what shirt you are looking for."
"Fine!! I guess I don't have any choice. I just don't know what happened to all of the dirty clothes that were in the laundry basket," he says, gesturing towards the over-flowing laundry basket. Hmmm....could this be a trick question? As he can plainly see, the basket is still full and sitting on our bedroom floor, unwashed.
It suddenly dawns on me that I had thrown a few of his old t-shirts into the wash with the kids clothes, which have been waiting for me to collect them from the dryer for a few days now. I told him that I would run downstairs to get him one of those shirts.
"No. Nevermind. This one is fine. Whatever." was his reply.
I'm not winning here. I know the reason that he doesn't want me to run down to the basement laundry room: his brother (aka: The Unrepentent Womanizer) has been staying with us and his bedroom is down in the basement. Geez, Louise, I am wearing some ratty old flannel pj pants, a hand-me-down sweatshirt (that used to be my grandma's, mind you), my hair is all oily at the roots and frizzed out beyond belief. I have noxious morning breath. Yeah. I can see how his brother won't be able to control himself once he sees my sexy self coming downstairs. LOL
So, I cancel our Date Night. Yes. I am the idiot that just cut off her nose to spite her face. I told him something along the lines of....I don't care what he does after work, or even if he decides to come home. WHY DO I KEEP TALKING?! I think to myself as I hear the words coming out. But, to open the Door of Opportunity to redeem myself later on, I ask him if he has his cell phone with him. He angrily reached into his pocket and told me that he had his phone, then walked out the door, to go to work.
Right away, remorse hit me. As I watched him pulling out of the driveway, I tried calling his phone, ready to apologize profusely. HE HAS HIS PHONE TURNED OFF, AND NEVER BOTHERED SETTING UP HIS VOICEMAIL, SO I CAN'T LEAVE A MESSAGE!!! So then I call his phone back about 20 times, because at this point I am angry again, and figure that if I call it an obscene amount of times in under a minute, the phone will magically turn itself on, sensing my impending fury.
Well, in the end it all turned out fine and I got my Date Night, but still....... Yeah, fights take on a whole new meaning as the comfort level of a relationship rises.
But for now I don't want to worry about it. My honey is lying in bed, waiting for me, and I'm going to go join him. No fights or arguments. Just the two of us in our comfy bed, watching a movie.
Uh oh.....I just remembered that I forgot to wash his work clothes for tomorrow........
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