The Good Fight

“Our quarrel was such
A way of loving so much.”
-“Reunited” by Peaches and herb

Healthy couples fight. Not too often; seldom viciously; never violently. But they do fight, and usually, to my thinking, they’re better off for it.

The surface reasons are so obvious they barely need reference. Two people, no matter how deeply in love, cannot agree on everything. Nor can they avoid irritating each other in close quarters over long periods of time. Nor, for that matter, can they really know the quirks, bad habits, and dark sides of their partner until after the I Do’s have been said and the deal’s sealed. In that sense, all couples remind me of the joke about the newlyweds who check into their honeymoon suite, the bride going into the bathroom to remove her false teeth and padded bra; the groom retiring to the bedroom to yank off his toupee and wooden leg, while both of them call out, “By the way, did I ever mention —?”

There’s always an element of the old ‘leap of faith’ in marriage.

There’s also – and this is where I think it really gets interesting – the unfinished emotional business we bring into the union. I considered myself reasonably matured, healed, and prepped by the time I married Renee in 1987, only to find my emotional self unraveling those first two years as more and more ‘old stuff’ kept coming up. (And, FYI, those early years with my baby were incredibly happy and I can honestly say they’ve only gotten better) Still, the raw intimacy of the husband wife thing squeezed some awfully weird emotional juice out of me, juice I was unaware of and not just a little shocked by.

A supervisor I once worked with told me, “Relationship forces pathology.” Bullseye. Where there’s true intimacy, there’s a lowering of defenses, an increase of honesty, and less general guardedness. In that greenhouse environment the real self emerges, warts and beauty and all, often clashing with the other real self who’s going through the same process. To marry means to attempt, through your love and partnership, to heal your partner’s old wounds, correct misconceptions your partner may hold, and take the brunt of unresolved hurts, wounds, rage. So when folks take those vows at the altar, I wish they’d be modified to something like, “I take thee to love, honor, cherish, and tolerate all the neurotic projections you’ll dump on me.”

So yeah, given all that, a good fight now and then is inevitable.

And “good” is the right word for what I call healthy fighting. When couples engage in that, they express their anger, volume up and language often a bit coarser than usual. Both parties vent their frustrations; both make their points; both eventually get around to clarifying the bottom line of what they want from the other.

All of which is done without name calling or denigrating (felony offenses; never commit them!) and certainly absent anything approaching physical threat. Below the belt blows are also prohibited, because knowing your spouse’s most vulnerable area means accepting the solemn charge never to hit her/him there. Major and long term penalty points if you do; expect the marriage to suffer long-term
as a result.

Other than that, there’s something unifying about a good fight. I really don’t know why, but my guess is that when we realize we’ve trusted each other enough to blow up, dignity and niceness be damned, in front of each other, that alone can be a statement about how far we’ve come and how comfortable we’ve become. It also, once the smoke’s cleared, testifies to the resiliency of the relationship. It really can be exhilarating, after the tsunami, to look at each other and say, “Wow, that was a big one, and look at us, we weathered it just fine!”

I know, of course, some couples fight too often and easily, and some marriages are war zones, draining to both partners and truly destructive to their children. But in general, I’ll put my money on the couple who have occasional healthy fights, messy though they be, over the polite twosome who hold it in, stifle honest expression, and slowly but surely generate horrendous resentments.

Better to say “I’m angry; here’s why; this is what I want and this is what I’m sick of!” than to avoid uncomfortable but at times very necessary confrontation. And all in all, when the sun sets on our marriages, it’ll be great to yank Paul’s words terribly out of context by saying, with all the easy comraderie and affection of an old married couple who’ve been there and back, “I have fought the good fight.”