The moral of the story is: damn you, Tonya Harding.
BF and I can't seem to figure out how to have value-centric conversations. Perspective please.
My boyfriend and I have been dating around 1.5 years and we have a really happy relationship. Much of what makes us so happy is that we're great friends. We laugh together all the time, we like to talk for hours about television, art, and movies. We're really similar socially, we have great sex, and in general, enjoy being around one another. The issue is that nearly every fight we've had started with a conversation about a hypothetical situation, that turned into a conversation about values, that led us both to digging our heels in the ground and being mean and surly.
Tonight's blow up was while watching the Tonya Harding special. I made the comment that I feel bad about the fact that Tonya's life has been so hard for her; bf responded, "why? she's clearly not a good person." This led to an hour long slog about whether or not a person can make choices that are unforgiveable.
If this were an isolated event, I would chalk it up to two people being dumb and not very thoughtful about how they're having conversation with each other, but we've had at least a handful of fights that start off with something banal but end in two people huffing in different rooms.
I realize that two of my problems are in conjunction here. 1) I enjoy engaging in discussions about complex topics, conversations that start with a question and end with more questions; bf doesn't really love that. He's intelligent and sharp, but doesn't really see much point in talking for talking's sake. It's too emotionally heavy for him and he'd rather talk about topics that are lighter in nature. 2) I'm a teacher in a hard-to-serve school, which means I'm pretty good at keeping my head in tense emotional situations, but bf doesn't really have those skills; when he starts to get upset, he doesn't really listen to what I'm saying, which makes me upset, leading to the huffing in opposite rooms.
I guess the real answer here should be "don't engage in conversations that might be contentious" but I just don't always know what's going to be contentious. Or perhaps, "try to keep the conversation free of emotion" which I feel like I try to do, but bf doesn't do as well (I'm sure I have room for growth in this area, too). Or maybe the answer is, "hun, this is what normal relationships are like. People only fight about the things that are really important or really, really stupid." I'm hoping this is the case. It's just that I don't fight with any of my other friends about value differences. We can just talk and be different.
I'm just curious your thoughts. What am I missing/should be doing better? Is this a normal part of other people's healthy relationships? |
Video
Web
Image
Music
BlogU
