I'm coming at her with all the firepower I've got
We had a great time, but things, as they say, did not go smoothly. I slid my kid's passport into the kiosk at the airport and saw, "Travel document expired." My face fell. The kid panicked. First I calmed him down, but I instantly knew what the rest of my day was going to look like. I was gonna recite identification numbers into telephones. I was gonna quest for strange and magical ingredients for a modern incantation to renew the passport of a child. I was gonna wait in lines in government buildings. I was going to give a lot of money to an airline. In what I consider to be my finest bureaucratic hour, I held a new passport that afternoon and we left the next morning.
We arrived in the burnt out woods of the Northwest Territories, 2 hours from any kind of civilization by car. We left 90 degrees and humid and arrived in 40 degrees, wind and rain forecast. We forgot the tent poles. Tent 2x4s, really. It's an old school canvas tent that ties. Anyway, the kid panicked. First, I calmed him down. Then we cut new tent poles. We were there to harvest wood for granddad's wood burning furnace so we had chainsaws. Easy.
The next leg of the trip left the Northwest Territories and flew to Edmonton where we have cousins. We arrived to the airport 20 minutes before our flight and they didn't want to let us on. The kid burst into tears. I did not calm him down, and that worked out pretty well actually because then they let us on. Those child tears were probably worth $800.
I've gone through this sort of nonsense enough times. I usually don't panic. I really felt for my kid though. I feel like, humans can adapt like crazy, but we don't tend to have a lot of confidence in our ability to wing it. We see threats and they loom large and menacing. We become convinced the wheels will fall off. Then we adapt and it's fine.
My kid, who looks like me, reminds me of me when I panic. And I realized I did a lot of panicking when girlfriends fought with me. I think I'm just now learning to understand romantic fights a little better and not panic so much, because folks, when women I love fight with me, that's some bewildering chaos right there.
Conflict is rarely straightforward. I mean, grownups aren't straightforward. They're irony machines. They say one thing and accomplishing the precise opposite. There's a face and an underbelly. There's an agenda. There's the Instagram version where the baby is always happy and the real life version where the baby is crying half the time. I point to my left and tell my boy, "That's where I'm going," then I break right and score a point on him. Bible camp lovingly lied to me about sex, lies that I used to lie to myself in order to lie more effectively to girlfriends in my 20s who believed the same lies.
In conflict, you get that kind of behavior all the time. We become passionate and yell all sorts of things that make no literal sense. One insight I have is, there's what we say, and there's what we do. I'm of the belief that you are what you do. What people say has a lot to do with their dreams or maybe how hangry they are.
So when a girlfriend yells at me that it's over and she's leaving forever, that means SOMETHING, but leaving is probably the one thing it doesn't mean. I mean, ok, maybe some day she'll mean it. But girlfriends have been threatening to leave and not leaving for years. So that got me thinking. On the matter of staying together, there is really just one signal that counts, isn't there. Do you both keep showing up.
So what IS she saying? I think it's along the lines of, "I'm worried. You haven't made me feel very special lately. Do you still love me even?! If I try to leave, do you try to keep me?" Fighting is a way to test boundaries. Looking back, I think most romantic quarrels were really about reassurance. My ex used to pick fights about sweeping the floor and I was really super confused because I'd just done the dishes, paid for everything, and put the kid to bed. Wasn't that enough for her?! Now I appreciate. The fight was never about sweeping. It was about feeling secure in love, which she certainly didn't and for good reason. You might think that being married would be reassuring. After all, we trapped ourselves legally and tried to ward off evil spirits with ancient spells like, "Till death do us part." But nope, it's not that easy. Of course it isn't. My ex is no dummy. You can't just SAY something and now she's reassured. You have to prove it. I think folks get hung up on a lot of signals that don't actually have a lot to do with lasting relationships. Monogamy, for instance. In the movie Tangerine there's this scene where a girl is yelling at her fiance who cheated on her, and he rips open his shirt, points to a tattoo on his chest and yells, "Whose name is this?!" And I could totally see that working! I think that's a big insight right there.
OK you know what gets a girlfriend purring? A new poem. My opinion, poems generally suck. But for poems between lovers, it hardly matters that they suck. They represent the concentrated romantic energy of a human being, and THAT'S reassuring. Wildflowers are good, mainly because they're harder to get. Promises of monogamy, marriage, saying "I love you," I get the sneaking suspicion those don't go very far. They're poor proxies for what's really at stake here. The real crux of the issue is love, and love is expressed through real, recent, sincere insanity.
Sometimes, yelling back is reassuring. My dad, to this day, absorbs all damage in a fight with my mom. He nods sympathetically and hears her out. I think that works for them, and he's turned into a kind of saint who can take any amount of verbal damage and stay nice to people, which probably comes in handy being an ER doc. I tried that, but with a few girlfriends in particular it was a terrible strategy. When they would yell and I wouldn't, to them, it was as if I didn't care. Now I've learned to look for a tell-tale sign: what she's yelling about makes no sense. That tells me the fight isn't about things that make sense, logistical issues with straightforward solutions, say. It's about emotions. And you know what works for me when my girl is yelling emotionally? I yell back. "You think this is easy for me?! I'm doing the best I can! I care about you SO much and this is TEARING ME APART!" Then I spank her or cry or break something or whatever. The point is to get into it. I think women talk a lot in their heads. There's a lot of worry about details, a lot of second guessing. I think sometimes that gets exhausting and it's nice for them when they get some kind of romantic shock that cuts through the noise. When she knows deep in her heart I love her, she stops caring about stuff that didn't make sense to begin with.
I think yelling back is important too because it lets both of us play it out. I have this picture in my head of how conflict works. Bob and Claire politely go about their business when Claire accidentally steps on Bob's foot. Bob assumes it was on purpose and yells and shoves. Claire, surprised, yells and shoves back. Now it's on, and they can kind of say whatever they want, including a bunch of superlative nonsense (You always want what you want!), but also including all the stuff they were too scared to open up about in more polite times. This continues until both are exhausted, hands on knees, heaving chests. They had a big catharsis. And they both got to express what was really bugging them. Then they make up. "Let's never fight again," they joke. Jokes are good at this stage. So is sex.
I'm going to call that a routine, and I've learned to enjoy it in a way. Routine is a good word because that makes it seem expected, something you can practice and get good at, something you can handle. Or maybe it's a play you act out. These exchanges have taken on a kind of odd beauty for me. There's a rhythm to all the old phrases and inflections. I'd go so far as to call it reassuring slash terrifying. I've done it enough times to know how it plays out.
When I was in my 20s I hated all fighting. But that's no good because, reality check here, fighting happens. It's too much to ask that you never fight. I like my thing now because the fighting can come and go and it's OK. It used to think fighting was bad. Now I think good fighting takes practice.
We arrived in the burnt out woods of the Northwest Territories, 2 hours from any kind of civilization by car. We left 90 degrees and humid and arrived in 40 degrees, wind and rain forecast. We forgot the tent poles. Tent 2x4s, really. It's an old school canvas tent that ties. Anyway, the kid panicked. First, I calmed him down. Then we cut new tent poles. We were there to harvest wood for granddad's wood burning furnace so we had chainsaws. Easy.
The next leg of the trip left the Northwest Territories and flew to Edmonton where we have cousins. We arrived to the airport 20 minutes before our flight and they didn't want to let us on. The kid burst into tears. I did not calm him down, and that worked out pretty well actually because then they let us on. Those child tears were probably worth $800.
I've gone through this sort of nonsense enough times. I usually don't panic. I really felt for my kid though. I feel like, humans can adapt like crazy, but we don't tend to have a lot of confidence in our ability to wing it. We see threats and they loom large and menacing. We become convinced the wheels will fall off. Then we adapt and it's fine.
My kid, who looks like me, reminds me of me when I panic. And I realized I did a lot of panicking when girlfriends fought with me. I think I'm just now learning to understand romantic fights a little better and not panic so much, because folks, when women I love fight with me, that's some bewildering chaos right there.
Conflict is rarely straightforward. I mean, grownups aren't straightforward. They're irony machines. They say one thing and accomplishing the precise opposite. There's a face and an underbelly. There's an agenda. There's the Instagram version where the baby is always happy and the real life version where the baby is crying half the time. I point to my left and tell my boy, "That's where I'm going," then I break right and score a point on him. Bible camp lovingly lied to me about sex, lies that I used to lie to myself in order to lie more effectively to girlfriends in my 20s who believed the same lies.
In conflict, you get that kind of behavior all the time. We become passionate and yell all sorts of things that make no literal sense. One insight I have is, there's what we say, and there's what we do. I'm of the belief that you are what you do. What people say has a lot to do with their dreams or maybe how hangry they are.
So when a girlfriend yells at me that it's over and she's leaving forever, that means SOMETHING, but leaving is probably the one thing it doesn't mean. I mean, ok, maybe some day she'll mean it. But girlfriends have been threatening to leave and not leaving for years. So that got me thinking. On the matter of staying together, there is really just one signal that counts, isn't there. Do you both keep showing up.
So what IS she saying? I think it's along the lines of, "I'm worried. You haven't made me feel very special lately. Do you still love me even?! If I try to leave, do you try to keep me?" Fighting is a way to test boundaries. Looking back, I think most romantic quarrels were really about reassurance. My ex used to pick fights about sweeping the floor and I was really super confused because I'd just done the dishes, paid for everything, and put the kid to bed. Wasn't that enough for her?! Now I appreciate. The fight was never about sweeping. It was about feeling secure in love, which she certainly didn't and for good reason. You might think that being married would be reassuring. After all, we trapped ourselves legally and tried to ward off evil spirits with ancient spells like, "Till death do us part." But nope, it's not that easy. Of course it isn't. My ex is no dummy. You can't just SAY something and now she's reassured. You have to prove it. I think folks get hung up on a lot of signals that don't actually have a lot to do with lasting relationships. Monogamy, for instance. In the movie Tangerine there's this scene where a girl is yelling at her fiance who cheated on her, and he rips open his shirt, points to a tattoo on his chest and yells, "Whose name is this?!" And I could totally see that working! I think that's a big insight right there.
OK you know what gets a girlfriend purring? A new poem. My opinion, poems generally suck. But for poems between lovers, it hardly matters that they suck. They represent the concentrated romantic energy of a human being, and THAT'S reassuring. Wildflowers are good, mainly because they're harder to get. Promises of monogamy, marriage, saying "I love you," I get the sneaking suspicion those don't go very far. They're poor proxies for what's really at stake here. The real crux of the issue is love, and love is expressed through real, recent, sincere insanity.
Sometimes, yelling back is reassuring. My dad, to this day, absorbs all damage in a fight with my mom. He nods sympathetically and hears her out. I think that works for them, and he's turned into a kind of saint who can take any amount of verbal damage and stay nice to people, which probably comes in handy being an ER doc. I tried that, but with a few girlfriends in particular it was a terrible strategy. When they would yell and I wouldn't, to them, it was as if I didn't care. Now I've learned to look for a tell-tale sign: what she's yelling about makes no sense. That tells me the fight isn't about things that make sense, logistical issues with straightforward solutions, say. It's about emotions. And you know what works for me when my girl is yelling emotionally? I yell back. "You think this is easy for me?! I'm doing the best I can! I care about you SO much and this is TEARING ME APART!" Then I spank her or cry or break something or whatever. The point is to get into it. I think women talk a lot in their heads. There's a lot of worry about details, a lot of second guessing. I think sometimes that gets exhausting and it's nice for them when they get some kind of romantic shock that cuts through the noise. When she knows deep in her heart I love her, she stops caring about stuff that didn't make sense to begin with.
I think yelling back is important too because it lets both of us play it out. I have this picture in my head of how conflict works. Bob and Claire politely go about their business when Claire accidentally steps on Bob's foot. Bob assumes it was on purpose and yells and shoves. Claire, surprised, yells and shoves back. Now it's on, and they can kind of say whatever they want, including a bunch of superlative nonsense (You always want what you want!), but also including all the stuff they were too scared to open up about in more polite times. This continues until both are exhausted, hands on knees, heaving chests. They had a big catharsis. And they both got to express what was really bugging them. Then they make up. "Let's never fight again," they joke. Jokes are good at this stage. So is sex.
I'm going to call that a routine, and I've learned to enjoy it in a way. Routine is a good word because that makes it seem expected, something you can practice and get good at, something you can handle. Or maybe it's a play you act out. These exchanges have taken on a kind of odd beauty for me. There's a rhythm to all the old phrases and inflections. I'd go so far as to call it reassuring slash terrifying. I've done it enough times to know how it plays out.
When I was in my 20s I hated all fighting. But that's no good because, reality check here, fighting happens. It's too much to ask that you never fight. I like my thing now because the fighting can come and go and it's OK. It used to think fighting was bad. Now I think good fighting takes practice.
I appreciate your perspective a lot, Dave. Thanks for putting it out there!
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