My wife Jen and I have a rule. Actually, she came up with the rule one night when we were both 25 years old and weren’t yet married. We might as well have been, though. We lived together, which meant there were no “dates,” just constant, intimate proximity to one another. Because of this, we were both privy to all the moods, frustrations, and boredoms of unromantic, everyday life. Basically, we argued from time to time.
She was a better arguer than I was, mainly because she wasn’t afraid of it. I, however, would do all I could to avoid one. Many years later my oldest son, then a teenager, told me that he assumed that once you had one argument with someone you dated, that relationship was over. I laughed and put my arm around him and said, “No, my boy! Arguments are a part of relationships. It’s how you work things out.”
All that was said after twenty-some years with Jen. In retrospect, I hadn’t been so different than him once-upon-a-time. I was naturally competitive, and arguments–it seemed to me–by definition had a winner and a loser. What’s more, there was always a villain and a victim. The villain was the loser, the wrong one, the one who’d caused the problem. They’d been unloving, selfish, or impatient. The victim was the innocent one, who’d suffered unnecessarily at the other’s treacherous hands. I didn’t want to be the villain, but I didn’t like being the victim, either. To me, the victim seemed weak, whose only power came from the extraction of retribution through an apology. In either case, there was no love.
Desiring to avoid arguments led me, specifically, to never admit when I was upset. This was always my best “play.” She couldn’t prove I was upset–at least not at first. She got wise to me, after a few months, and would corner me, demanding that I tell her what bothered me. I finally would, blurting out my complaint in a rush, to which she’d respond, “Why are you mad at me about that?” After a few of these, she came up with her rule.
“Here’s what we should do,” she told me that night. We were sitting facing each other on either end of our long, green couch that we’d bought at a garage sale for $25. We sat and talked there every night when I came home from my lunch shift and she had finished with her classes. Rarely, did we argue on it. We were there on purpose, whereas the arguments seemed more accidental. There, the paths of our lives and moods collided, while we made dinner or jotted down a shopping list.
“From now on,” she said, “nobody wins or loses an argument. The argument’s not over until both of us take complete responsibility. It will always be fifty-fifty. In some way or another, we have to both be responsible for the conflict.”
“I love it!” I exclaimed, and I did. It seemed so obvious to me, so perfect, that it felt like my own idea. We began employing it, immediately, but let me just tell you, it wasn’t always so easy. Sometimes, things certainly looked like she was the wrong one. I mean, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, she would just lose her temper. Literarily, one time I was just reading a magazine and, suddenly, I’d ruined her world. So, maybe, it’s not always fifty-fifty.
To be fair, her upset had more to do with a drawing she had tried to finish. She had just wanted to talk to me about it. However, the way I sort of ignored her, being more interested in my magazine than her struggle, reminded her of how it felt when you just can’t find the image in your mind, which was just so frustrating. Of course, sometimes I retreat from other people’s troubles because I think I need to have some kind of answer for what ails them. Often, I don’t. Therefore, I try to ignore them, so I won’t feel like a failure when all I can do is listen, which is, usually, all they want.
Anyway, once we began employing the rule, we learned that it could take an hour or two, sometimes even a couple of days, to find that fifty-fifty. Eventually, however, it became just another one of our domestic, marital habits like who did the dishes or when we paid the bills. It actually felt like I had been fifty percent responsible for inventing the rule, until one night, I said, “You know that rule we came up with about arguing?”
“Not we. I. I came up with that rule,” she corrected.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! We were sitting on that old, green couch we had, and I came up with the rule.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Not maybe.”
It took me a long time to realize Jen was as competitive as I was. “Okay. You,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “Might as well have been both of us.”
“I know what you mean. It’s like the rule existed before you found it.”
That’s true of all good rules, I think. You don’t make them, you just recognize them. They’re guiding you whether you admit them or not. It’s just easier to follow them. Just like when I met Jen, for example. I didn’t invent loving her; I just saw that I did. Once you see that, all you can do is follow.
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