I was talking to an old friend about her flourishing new relationship, when we found ourselves going down the rabbit hole of discussing her once-upon-a-time ex. She said, “I can’t believe I dated him – it just goes to show my self-worth back then. I realize now that who I date reflects how much I love myself.”
This got me thinking back to the summer of 2019, when I met Dave. I was 32 and, after years of letting guys walk all over me, my self-worth was finally out of the red zone. I was happy with myself, no longer wanted to play text-deciphering games, and was ready to meet a person who would treat me with the respect I deserved. Sure enough, I soon met a man who was considerate, supportive and never once attempted to mess with my head to suffice his own ego. I found a reflection of my self-worth.
And yet, three and a half years later, my personal life is not exactly that of Allie and Noah of The Notebook (post rain-soaked reunion, that is). In fact, the best movie analogy I can think of is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, sans lethal weaponry. Every week or two, a big, explosive fight breaks out seemingly out of nowhere, wreaking havoc on any semblance of domestic peace and setting off a series of volatile after-storms. Very few of said fights have to do with child rearing, money, trust, reliability, or any other issue that couples often fight about. Even fewer have to do with discrepancies in our values, which have always been aligned. Instead, most of our fights are prompted by our reactions to each other and our inability to communicate well in the midst of conflict. If you dig one layer deeper, it is evident that most of our fights stem from deeply-rooted issues that Americans like to label as “trauma” but I will simply call “baggage” – our childhood fears and insecurities that provoke inadequate responses and lead to blowout arguments over the most mundane of occurrences.
In case I’m speaking psych-gibberish, here’s an example. I often get up from the table the minute I’m done eating, which is a habit that Dave hates and has asked me on multiple occasions to work on. And yet, because I have a toddler, a domestic checklist, and a brain that tends to temporarily go blank, I often forget and start cleaning while he’s still recounting some story from his day. (The guy has the personality of an actor, with the kitchen counter being his stage.) Because he has baggage and a short fuse, cutting him off mid-monologue can cause him to explode and walk away in a huff. Because I have baggage and a short fuse, I refuse to give him time to cool off. Instead, I follow him to the other room, pressuring him to get over it so we can resume our evening. He tells me that “it’s too late” and to leave him alone, which instantly sets off a feeling of uncertainty within me and makes me push him more. He gets annoyed and snaps at me again. I get more upset because now I feel pathetic and he seems like a big bully. A big tearful fight ensues, and we’re still barely speaking the following morning – and barely remember why.
Knowing our personal histories, it doesn’t take much to understand why we react the way we do. I won’t share Dave’s reasons, because he never signed up for Oversharers Anonymous. I, however, can openly state that many of my reactions have something to do with my parents fighting a lot when I was a little kid, which now makes me lose it in situations when the state of a relationship feels uncertain. My adult self knows that we live together, have a child and won’t break up over a run-of-the-mill kitchen argument – and yet, the little kid in me panics that we might.
As a result, we have myriad ridiculous fights like this, fights that could have been easily avoided but instead drag on for hours and even days, provoking hostility and resentment when none needs to exist. While I like to blame Dave for more or less everything, I would be remiss not to admit that we are both screwed up at pretty much the same level. That being said, I might need to propose a theory to segue off my friend’s: perhaps, the person you’re with is often not just a reflection of your self-worth, but also a reflection of your emotional baggage.
We are working on it, both separately and together – because we have a daughter and don’t want her to take on our patterns, because we love our family and each other, because nobody wants to live in a madhouse. We have long, reflective (and boring) conversations. We establish ground rules to avoid mutual triggers (me not getting up while he’s mid-story is definitely on the list). Slowly but surely, we’re developing tools to mitigate our emotional battlefields, to minimize the length of our fights and maximize the time in between.
And yet, some things are much easier said than done, especially when you’re older and set in your ways. Dave and I met when I was 32 and he was 42. By then, we were both fully developed humans who had comfortably cohabited with our emotional baggage for the duration of our adult lives. Our issues are part of us, they are our defense mechanisms and our armor, the tools we use to control the world around us. Getting rid of them feels uncomfortable and vulnerable, like walking down the school hallways naked. Unless we both decide to dedicate the bulk of our free time (and disposable income) to therapy, the chances of us unpacking all our baggage and leaving it behind are slim to none.
I recently tried to explain some of this to my mom, a highly intelligent woman who can digest many a complex concept. She looked at me like I was speaking Swedish, shrugged, and said that these things were never examined back in her day. With the exception of the progressive few, our parents’ generation never really “did the work” and simply spent years either battling it out or ignoring each another, until finally arriving at some point of mutual acceptance. My parents’ fighting has all but dissipated throughout the years – but not because they saw shrinks and read self-help books and learned breathing exercises, but because they finally accepted each other and learned to avoid each other’s triggers. They recently celebrated their 50th anniversary, so I think it’s safe to say it worked for them.
Which begs the question, one that I would love to ask Esther Perel, but she’s not available, so I will ask you guys. Is all the work worth it? Or is it easier to simply accept one another with all the flaws and stop trying to constantly change and regulate the other person? For example, maybe Dave needs to accept that I’m a careless schmuck who gets up in the middle of dinner, and I need to come to terms with his ability to go into a quick fit of rage in three seconds flat. “That’s just who he is,” we could tell others, with that wisdom of two people who have come to truly embrace one another, “That’s just who she is.”
As a novice to the complex world of adult relationships, I’m looking to you, my more experienced readers, to guide me. Is it worth trying to fix yourself – and each other – to be more of what the other person needs? Or should you simply learn to accept one another for the slightly damaged people that you are? Or is it a little bit of both?
I’m all ears.
Is The Work Worth It?
This article couldn't be more perfectly timed for my own life. I don't have any answers (I'm urging my partner to go to therapy and work on emotional issues before baby arrives, but also struggling to accept that there are things that won't change and working on my nuclear reactions), but I empathize with you! If you find the answers, please let me know!
Oh, I can relate to this exact issue - my fiancé/baby daddy inhales his food, and then immediately gets up, usually also when I’m mid-story, and starts cleaning up while I’m still eating. This drove me crazy and would ruin my mood for the entire evening, because here I thought we were sitting down to an nice dinner and conversation together. I sulked a few times and then called him out on it and told him how much it upsets me. Did he stop doing it? Not exactly. But somehow, somewhere, in the last few months it just stopped bothering me - I’m not sure if I just accepted it and got used to it, but I now realize that he’s someone that has trouble sitting still in general, he always needs to be up and doing something. I understand that he’s not doing it because he doesn’t want to spend time with me. So I’d say that ‘simply accepting it’ IS working on it, because you’re consciously catching yourself getting irritated by these actions but are tapping into the rational response instead of the emotional. Accepting one another as you are IS fixing yourself to get to the point where these actions no longer bother you.