Another Tale of Relationship Distress: Only One Bag of Noodles

It happened again. A small little thing went down with my significant other and my eyes filled with tears, I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly, and my brain did that thing where it goes from a trillion racing, negative thoughts to why are you actually this upset?

Only One Bag of Noodles

My boyfriend was napping after a long day at work. It was Thai-noodle night, my favorite. Naturally, I was starving in an instance. It was that feeling of: you were fine 90 seconds ago, but now if you don’t eat in the next five minutes you may die of starvation (or have a really hangry fit).

He was sleeping so beautifully and he is constantly doing things to help me, so I wanted to help him. I gathered all the ingredients for our scrumptious Thai-noodle dinner (bag of noodles, carrots, peppers, cucumber, peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, and honey — thank you TikTok!)

I awoke the chef to prepare dinner. He hopped up, skipped to the kitchen, and asked, “why do you insist on this dish being only one bag of noodles when it’s always two bags?” I’m sure in his head the tone was his usual joking one. But to me, it was a put-down. One that said I’m not good enough.

You see, it wasn’t that he even thinks this. He thinks I’m more than good enough. He shows and tells me this daily. But, my previous partner did not show or tell me this. In fact, the only thing he regularly reassured me of was “I don’t know if you’re right for me.” He said this so often that I never felt like I was enough for him. The good news for my ego — I am pretty sure no one is good enough for him. Naturally, this feeling he gave me carried over to my current relationship. I almost always separate the two partners (because it’s quite easy). However, as many of us know, scars don’t always completely heal.

My Disappearance

As I sometimes do when I feel shamed, I quickly shut myself off. While, I prefer my healthier techniques to fight off bad feelings, this time I forgot about those. So, I snatched up my glass of wine and escaped the whole situation. I sat on the porch chair, sipping my wine, feeling all sorts of stuff — sadness, anger, frustration. You see, the thing with me is that when I feel the least bit sad, my ability to do anything feels quite nonexistent. I didn’t even want to lift the glass up to my mouth to consume the much-desired wine. I forced myself. Why is it that a bad mood can do this to us? Especially a bad mood over a bag of noodles.

Then, I forced my feet to drag to the bathroom to blow-dry my wet hair from showering before the noodle drama continued.

For 20 minutes, I silently avoided my boyfriend at all costs. He was far from impressed by this. Therefore, it transpired from a small noodle incident into a whole noodle argument. Eyes rolling. Rude comments. Luckily, nothing too detrimental. But, an argument regardless. Finally, we were on non-speaking terms. This doesn’t happen that often for us so when it does, it feels like a huge deal to me.

Dinner for One

Once Thai-noodles were prepared, he brought my dish over to me, then made his way with his bowl in hand to the porch. For the first time in 3 months of living together, we ate our meals separately.

Eating solo — another thing that traumatized me from my past relationship. My ex and I both worked from home and our daily tradition was to have lunch together. One time, we got in a fight and I went out for a walk. When I got back, he was having lunch by himself. This devastated me because it felt like a huge jab. Since it was also much earlier than our typical lunchtime, I definitely felt like he did it just to be a jerk. Now that I am removed from that situation, I realize he did it for just that reason. That boy was not so hungry that he had to break our tradition. He did it to be mean.

Healing is an art. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes love.

So, anyways, dinner-for-one was spent feeling like I was in that last relationship. Only I’m not and this was much different. This time, it was a normal relationship fight where two people put a (physical) wall between them because they need time apart.

The Resolution

This story has a happy ending. While it took me some time, my grudge over the noodle fight only lasted about a day. As I constantly remind myself, everything is impermanent. Twenty-four hours later, it was time for our next dinner together. We were back to our usual dinner routine. He cooked, I drank wine, we chatted. And, of course, we talked about the real reason there was a problem the previous night.

You see, a lot of the times, negative feelings are not about what the other person did. Usually, there’s a deeper-rooted issue and those emotions can come up when you are reminded of that past ‘trauma.’ In my case, it wasn’t so traumatic of course. However, hearing that I always wrongfully think the recipe calls for something else, then shunned at dinner time brought back bad memories. The bad memories brought up negative feelings. And, being the person I am, I will say he could’ve handled it a little better. We can all handle life a little better sometimes, but we are only human!

Something I always try to stop and do when I get upset about something is think about what is truly causing my negative emotions. If we do this more, we will oftentimes realize that people (especially loved ones) are very likely not out to get us. They don’t want us to feel hurt by them. In realizing this, we are able to experience more happiness, more peace, and more love.

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Previously published on “Hello, Love”, a Medium publication.

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