Staying happily ever after
Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"I Can't Believe You're Going To Keep A Few Little Letters Of The Alphabet Keep Us Apart!"*
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Pat and I had some rules in our relationship. Don't worry about other people's secrets. Don't bring other people into our arguments—or even let other people know we were arguing. Go to bed angry.
The other-people's-secrets thing came from years of watching sitcoms. Practically every show had an episode where a friend would have a secret that one half of a couple finds out about. Then the other half finds out, and is angry that their espoused didn't confide in them.
It made Pat and me angry. "It's not her secret to share!" we'd yell at the TV.
This actually came up in our relationship. A close friend called up, distraught, and talked about things from her marriage. I assured her with great confidence that I would not repeat anything to anyone, including Pat. When I got off the phone, I reported that our friend was upset and told me a bunch of stuff in confidence. Pat didn't even ask what was said. It had nothing to do with her; it was our friend's secret, not mine. I believe this is called being an adult.
The not-bringing-other-people-into-our-arguments thing came from a couple of things. One was watching my cousin inflame the family's dislike of her husband by calling her mother every single time she had an argument with him. My aunt would tell my mother (and who knows who else), my mother would tell me, we'd all be angry at the husband. Half the time, by the time anybody else even heard about the argument, my cousin and her husband had made up, but we were still pissed.
I wanted my family to like Pat—and this was before we'd come out. The very most I would do was a casual "Pat and I had an argument last night," kind of thing, but never details, and always very lightly, amusedly, and in the past tense. It's over, it doesn't matter. (I think I once answered the phone, "Pat and I are having a fight," but we'd been together ten years by that time.) I never tried to make Pat the heavy with anyone, and she didn't do that with me.
That was the other part: we presented a united front. We were together, period.
A long time ago, I had a friend who was always talking about her husband in very disturbing terms. My friend had health issues, and she'd talk about her husband "making" her work (they worked together) when she was unwell. Pretty much everything she said about him made it sound like, at the very least, a borderline abusive relationship. A mutual friend really thought she should leave her husband because of the way she talked about him. If you want your friends and family to like your spouse, you have to act like you do. If all you ever tell about are the bad things, your friends are going to think you're married to a creep.
Going to bed angry is just common sense. When has being exhausted ever made a situation better? How many arguments have you ever been in just because you were so tired you wanted to cry? My feeling is that there are two things people fight about: important things and unimportant things. Unimportant things will look unimportant after a good night's sleep. Important things shouldn't be discussed when you're exhausted.
So we'd go to bed not speaking to each other, lying with our backs to each other, not touching. Then one of us would reach out a foot and touch, and everything would be fine. You can't do that with words.
*Peter Wright
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Pat and I had some rules in our relationship. Don't worry about other people's secrets. Don't bring other people into our arguments—or even let other people know we were arguing. Go to bed angry.
The other-people's-secrets thing came from years of watching sitcoms. Practically every show had an episode where a friend would have a secret that one half of a couple finds out about. Then the other half finds out, and is angry that their espoused didn't confide in them.
It made Pat and me angry. "It's not her secret to share!" we'd yell at the TV.
This actually came up in our relationship. A close friend called up, distraught, and talked about things from her marriage. I assured her with great confidence that I would not repeat anything to anyone, including Pat. When I got off the phone, I reported that our friend was upset and told me a bunch of stuff in confidence. Pat didn't even ask what was said. It had nothing to do with her; it was our friend's secret, not mine. I believe this is called being an adult.
The not-bringing-other-people-into-our-arguments thing came from a couple of things. One was watching my cousin inflame the family's dislike of her husband by calling her mother every single time she had an argument with him. My aunt would tell my mother (and who knows who else), my mother would tell me, we'd all be angry at the husband. Half the time, by the time anybody else even heard about the argument, my cousin and her husband had made up, but we were still pissed.
I wanted my family to like Pat—and this was before we'd come out. The very most I would do was a casual "Pat and I had an argument last night," kind of thing, but never details, and always very lightly, amusedly, and in the past tense. It's over, it doesn't matter. (I think I once answered the phone, "Pat and I are having a fight," but we'd been together ten years by that time.) I never tried to make Pat the heavy with anyone, and she didn't do that with me.
That was the other part: we presented a united front. We were together, period.
A long time ago, I had a friend who was always talking about her husband in very disturbing terms. My friend had health issues, and she'd talk about her husband "making" her work (they worked together) when she was unwell. Pretty much everything she said about him made it sound like, at the very least, a borderline abusive relationship. A mutual friend really thought she should leave her husband because of the way she talked about him. If you want your friends and family to like your spouse, you have to act like you do. If all you ever tell about are the bad things, your friends are going to think you're married to a creep.
Going to bed angry is just common sense. When has being exhausted ever made a situation better? How many arguments have you ever been in just because you were so tired you wanted to cry? My feeling is that there are two things people fight about: important things and unimportant things. Unimportant things will look unimportant after a good night's sleep. Important things shouldn't be discussed when you're exhausted.
So we'd go to bed not speaking to each other, lying with our backs to each other, not touching. Then one of us would reach out a foot and touch, and everything would be fine. You can't do that with words.
*Peter Wright