fight fairly and express anger with respect

...just gets away from me. And if both of us would just remember to do this, most of our fights could be avoided.

This is a major struggle for me.

This year, I was placed into a dorm with someone who has taught me an important lesson about respect and love. She has a boyfriend with whom she is constantly on the phone. While they are on the phone, she says some of the most awful stuff to him. They can be fighting or just having a regular conversation and her attitude is the same.

She constantly is calling him names, things that I wouldn’t even type in here. She says some of the most horrible things to him. She tells him about how she doesn’t care about how he feels or what he’s thinking. She calls him awful things and makes horrible, insensitive observations. This goes way beyond the realm of playful flirting, it becomes hurtful and rude. It gets so bad that I have to leave the room when they are on the phone.

I’m not trying to judge either of them or their relationship, but this has taught me an important lesson about respect. When I’m angry, I am even more careful than I was before to be respectful while being open and honest. I see now how rude cursing is, no matter how much better it may make me feel. I see how important it is to let my love express his feelings and listen to him like I’d want him to listen to me.

Even though it’s hard to listen to, it’s a constant reminder of some of my shortcomings and how I need to deal with them and express my anger with respect and keeping our love in mind. I see now how it could push someone away, no matter how much I would apologize in the end.

It was an important lesson to learn, though it was a hard one.

But I am learning. And think I’m making progress. Baby steps.

it’s gone horribly this week with “the love of my life”. Of course I love him, but we’ve had so little time for each other recently and when I approached him about needing some us time, and about how he had treated me recently, it just seemed to go horribly wrong.

He has acted horribly and I have acted horribly. I do try to keep a track of right and wrong in the relationship, and I feel he tries to excuse himself from a lot of his wrongs. It shouldn’t be about keeping count, but it should be when he excuses himself from everything and doesn’t bother being accountable.

Eck. Things are not nice right now and I don’t feel like building a bridge – I feel I’m always the one who offers the olive branch. It’s his turn to make an effort. I have to try to stay calm and not get angry or disrespectful, but it’s so hard when he comes across as the most useless, selfish and arrogant person in the world. There, I said it.

... I believe that I have made so much progress on it that I can (for now) mark it as done. I can always pick it back up again when/if I need to do so.

...I am a completely different person, a person who I am not fond of. I curse, I say things that I don’t mean, I walk away and talk over my love. I hate it.

But we came up with a system, one that keeps both of us respectful and friendly, so small misunderstandings don’t become huge fights.

1. No cursing
2. Let the other person finish his thoughts before continuing.
3. If one party wants to hold hands while fighting, the other has to relent to that wish.
4. Think before we talk.
5. Never walk away in the middle of a fight. No matter the consequences, we now resolve fights before we leave, so things don’t become distorted with time.

These are rules for both of us, as we both hate being wrong and are rather hot-headed. But with these “rules” set, we are a lot more respectful – when we remember to follow them.

But we’re getting better, because we care about each other a lot, and the fights have gotten more frequent and more intense lately. We’ve narrowed it down to the fact that there is distance and, because of the distance, he’s focused on himself rather than us. We’re both working on our problems, because we are bigger than this, and fighting is not fun. ;-)

I lashed out last night and I shouldn’t have. He hurt my feelings, then ignored me when I tried to tell him why I was upset, and I was absolutely furious. Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have expressed my anger the way I did. I apologised and have decided to put it behind me and try to take the high road. I will need to work on this. But next time it happens, he will also need to work on things too.

We had a big fight over the weekend, triggered by talking about finances (which is a touchy subject). Of course, it ballooned into arguing about arguing and all sorts of other issues were dragged into it.

He wasn’t careful enough with my feelings, and I said some stuff I really shouldn’t have said. I need to learn to count to ten and not just blurt out stuff because I’m angry. Once things are said they can’t be taken back. We’re good again now, but I’ll work to make up for what was said and try to learn and become better at conflict.

Much better at apologizing when warranted.

Grade: B-

I have made some progress in this goal. While I am still, in heightened emotional situations, likely to lash out, I am much better at recognizing that I have lashed out disrespectfully, and much quicker to try to deescalate and apologize.

I was also recently able to recognize Frog’s defensiveness for what it was: not an attempt to hurt me, but a dysfunctional pattern that he unthinkingly uses, just as I employ dysfunctional patterns during conflict. It made it much easier to keep myself calm and not lash out in the first place.

Grade: C+