Let’s Not Fight
“Let’s not fight,” said my husband on day three of our honeymoon, as we trekked back to our hotel. We’d spent all morning trying (and failing) to make our way to the end of a rocky promontory, breathlessly scrabbling over boulders, racing each other in half-hearted spurts, finally letting the rain turn us back.
“We’re not,” I said, laughing.
“No, I mean let’s not fight at all. In our marriage. Let’s just not do it.”
I thought.
“I don’t know. I think everyone fights. Isn’t it just kind of inevitable? I mean, we’re going to have differences. We’ll have to deal with them somehow.”
“We have to talk about them, but let’s not fight about them. Everybody says you have to, but I don’t think we do. We can solve things without fighting.”
I could see he was serious about this. But was what he was suggesting even possible? I had my doubts. My doubts didn’t come out of anything in our relationship up to this point: we’d had our disagreements and misunderstandings, and although they had been emotional, they had never become fights as yet. But the message of our pre-marital counseling, as well as the warnings of many a married couple had been clear: there are going to be those times. There are going to be slammed doors and angry words. There are going to be days when you don’t even feel like friends anymore, much less lovers. You have to expect and be prepared for this, or it will broadside you when it comes. That’s what they said, and since I’d never been married before, I assumed they were right.
And yet … the idea was undeniably appealing. I can hardly stand to even be on an opposing team when we play games (ask me about trying to play Axis and Allies against Micah mere weeks into our marriage), because I don’t like the feeling of not being united, even if it’s something as silly as a Pinochle game (yes, we play Pinochle — stop snickering). I hate the feeling of not being on the same side.
“Ok,” I said. “Let’s not fight. But we will have to be open with each other.”
“Agreed.”
“And we can’t just go along to avoid a fight. We have to tell each other what we really think.”
“We will.”
I wondered if we could do it then. I still wonder if we can do it now.
I can’t recollect that we’ve ever fought. Certainly neither of us have ever yelled at each other or left the house angry. We have failed to be open with each other. I’ve been silent where I should not have been silent, and let resentments fester longer than they should have. That part of the bargain has been broken time and time again. My husband is not a terribly verbal person and sometimes I have to keep prodding to get him to share what’s on his mind. But that naive, newlywed promise did give us a gift that I do not want to give up: we both know that our marriage is a place where we can share our thoughts and feelings without being made the enemy. The promise to always be on each other’s side, to purposely adopt a posture of standing shoulder-to-shoulder instead of toe-to-toe, has become a benchmark of our married life. We don’t remind each other about it. We’ve never had to.
We’ve dug this trench together and we share it in the midst of the world’s fire. We are so much more than just lovers. We are allies.
Thanks for reading! Click the link to follow my new publication, I Digress
