Love Is a Battlefield (Sometimes)

I got in a huge fight with Little Miss over the weekend. I'm not going to go into details (they're none of your business anyway, you People-reading, paparazzi-loving, red-carpet-screaming, no-life-having jackals!), but it's worth talking about because of what I learned.

When I was younger, I used to assume that sustaining a relationship meant turning myself into whoever my would-be girlfriend wanted. I figured that because I didn't look just right, didn't have experience, and so on and so on, no girl I was interested in would want to date me, and would in fact run screaming into the night if I so much as mentioned the word "love" in her presence, never mind the word "sex."

Above all, I thought that if I was in a relationship with someone and made her angry, or got angry at her, the relationship would be dead, dead, dead.

So over the weekend, Little Miss got furious with me over something I did - I thought it meant one thing and she thought it meant another, and she was very hurt. As she shouted at me over the phone, I tried to soothe her - "Oh, baby - please, baby..." That kind of thing.

At some point, though, I realized that trying to soothe her wasn't working. It just made her angrier, and I can see why - if you're angry with someone and they try to soothe you, it feels like they're not really with you, doesn't it? There's something disrespectful about it.


So I shouted back.

I'm not saying that I shouted on policy, exactly - that is, I was genuinely angry, not pretending. It's more like I let myself express what was really in me instead of pretending it wasn't there.

I don't think I've ever shouted that loudly in my entire life.

Then Little Miss told me what was really bothering her, and we both quieted down and whispered to each other like you do when you're feeling genuinely close, and my experience of love got more powerful than ever before.


Benshlomo says, I love you, Little Miss.