Thoughts on Being in a Healthy Relationship

[superhappytime]

I never saw my parents fight when I was growing up. Did they disagree? Sure? Did one or the other of them sometimes get perturbed? Definitely. But I never saw a real argument. I never-ever heard them call one another names or use profanity out of anger directed at each other (or their kids). Did they argue? It seems likely. But they were

Comments

[kittenboo]

1. being open about ones thoughts and feeling, whats going on in your head, with a partner, is so damn hard. At least that has been my experience. And it isn't the telling that's hard, it's the other person hearing you and responding the way you want. It has always worked so well with close friends but it doesn't seem to be the same with a partner, and that probably has everything to do with the bond you have. The desire to fix, the desire that your partner feel ok, the worry about what it all means, etc. A middle ground works for me. Like maybe not discussing everything, but a general, I am having a bad week, day, i'm having nightmarea again, I'm feeling sad, maybe a few sentences about it, and that's it.

2. My parents also did not fight, they argued and it always went like this, my mom would get bothered about something, you coukd tell she was angry, but she wouldn't show it, she would use a stern voice to my dad about it, my dad would get annoyed and pretty much do whatever she said. So that was my model for relationship arguments. And as weird as this sounds, I had to learn how to deal with a partner not doing what I said, because somewhere in my subconscious I thought that was how it all was supposed to work. I also had to learn to deal with anger. Because I can explode, and never had any model to know what to do with that explosive feeling. It's a process of learning how to argue, especially when there is no model. And not having a model is good in the sense that it made for a calm and healthy childhood, but bad in the sense of not knowing how to make it happen in your own life.