Saturday, June 2, 2012

find someone who makes it worth the fight

Last year while living in a 4-bedroom home in Belchertown during my last semester at UMass, I remember speaking with my roommate Ryan about his girlfriend.  He said, "We've been having a few fights lately, but it's getting to that point in the relationship where it's worth the fight." And I remember thinking, God I don't think I have ever felt that way. 

Too many times I have been in a relationship where a fight made me want to give up on the person.  I thought that it couldn't possibly be worth it if everything wasn't going perfect.  Lately, I have learned from experience that I fully understand that statement. 

The past few weeks have been tough on my stress level, because my job is revolving around building a show from the ground up.  My family is going through some personal things, I've gotten into silly tiffs with friends, my roommate's cat continues to sneeze on me while I'm writing blog posts and crawl on my back and annoy the crud outta me (despite his ridiculous cute factor) and I've been going going going trying to babysit and audition for other shows and rehearse for music gigs and do my best to keep working even outside of work.

Then of course my boyfriend, (who probably knows my moods better than I do somehow) has noticed that I have been extra grumpy lately.  Apparently I have been snapping, tired, and on edge for about two weeks now.  I literally had no idea that this was noticeable to anyone aside from myself, as I haven't been sleeping very well at all.  I stay up nights trying to rehearse lines with myself and I dream about work friends or have nightmares about my costume ripping or getting ruined, or losing lines in front of tourists.  This can't be good for my moods with coworkers, and it can't be good for my jaw that takes all the stress of my nightly teeth grinding routines.

So my wonderful boyfriend decided that this week he was going to surprise me with a fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant in a fancy hotel.  No, we didn't stay the night at the hotel, but we certainly had what I would consider to be the nicest dinner anyone's ever taken me out to.  I shit you not, the Omni Parker House made the best baked schrod I will probably have in my lifetime.  It tasted like it was dipped in butter churned by the virgin Mary herself, and baked in an oven by Jesus Christ. It was that good.

And what did we do after this wonderful dinner?  Well, we took a romantic walk in the Public Gardens of Boston, that's what.  And we kissed next to a fountain.  And a statue.  And a Hundred Acre Wood Tree.  Basically it was a perfect evening.  An evening that I will never forget.  So what did we do after that wonderful walk together?

We fought.  We had a ridiculous, bickering, nothing fight.  Something completely out of character for us!  And I was so upset by the fact that I thought I had ruined our evening, that I cried. Because I am an absolute stressball, and anything at all could have set me off. 

And what did my wonderful boyfriend do to make it up to me that we had fought over absolutely nothing?  Well, he happened to stumble upon some Red Sox tickets and asked me to go to that the very next day.  Again, did I mention that he's the most wonderful man that a Boston Irish girl could ever hope to date?!?! 

(Did he buy me a hot dog at the ballpark? ... DUH.)

And today, after a wonderful couple of days with my wonderful boyfriend, we had yet another nothing fight

But no worries my lovely readers, because for those of you who are unawares, we are truly a good couple and we are very much in love, and I have discovered something about relationships with every fight/bicker/back-and-forth that we have.  I have been told by many people in relationships that every couple fights, and I have been told by those people that you get through it, but I still remember what my old friend told me that really stuck with me about him and his girlfriend (they are still together) that when you two are really in love, it is worth the fight.

Here's how you know it's worth it: when I have fought with past boyfriends, I could feel the tension that would never break.  I knew that if I made my feelings too well known or couldn't keep my mouth shut when they weren't treating me well, it would end us, and that either one or neither of us truly thought that fighting would help us understand each other better.  We didn't have the real love or connection between us that would build a relationship up after an argument, but our differences would only separate and crumble us.

However when I am having any sort of tiff with my boyfriend, whether it be that I was too curt with him in the morning because my mind is elsewhere, or a full blown argument, I think we are fully aware the entire time, that no matter how right we both think that we are, neither one of us want to be fighting.  Not to say that other relationships have included people that always want to fight, but what I mean by that is, we are doing everything in our power during the talk, to get our points across, get past the anger, and continue forward together.

Never before in a relationship have I been in the middle of an argument with someone and thought to myself, they love me and I love them and we're just gonna say our piece and be better off at the end of this.  Granted, it's never fun or a great experience to have it out with the person you love.  But I will say that I do find a sense of knowing how much you love someone when you make it through to the other side and realize you're still just as secure in your relationship as you were before you started.  It's that discovery of knowing you're both on the same page with how committed you are to one another even through disagreements, that builds up your relationship.  The commitment to hearing and understanding your significant other can only help you both in the end and keep up a healthy relationship, even if you're both hating the fact that there is a raised voice or a heated temper.

I'm aware that this is a very long explanation, and I know there are books on this topic and I'm silly for trying to explain what I mean in a very long blog post but very short explanation on an extensive topic.  But I guess I'm saying that even though fighting sucks, right now I think I've got someone who's worth it.  And that's saying something right there.  I'm pretty lucky to know what that means.