One heckuva fight

Every year or so, my husband and I have our bi-annual argument. We use to have more, but I'm a sore loser so I asked if we could plan our biggies every other year...that way, I could regain my emotional constitution and lick my wounds.

Every relationship has that moment when you realize that the person you married doesn't quite meet your expectations. And if they do, your expectations start to change. And the new expectations freak out your partner....Let's face it, marriage is hard. Relationships are hard.

When people tell me that they and their spouse never "talk about divorce" or seperation, I try to suppress my laughter. I figure they lie about other things too. Or they just aren't very honest. Or maybe incredibly naiive.

Dan and I have slugged it out (metaphorically speaking) on so many issues, we can recite, line by line what the other will say about our rehearsed lines. Dan even does a great impression of me and nails it, everytime. 17 years of being together, you do get to practice, y'know.

At that moment when its a toss up to stay or leave is a moment of incredible opportunity. There will be, no doubt, more compromise, more let-downs, more tears. Yet there is that seed of change that working through the difficulty brings. It changes both people, both organisms and fundamentally a new relationship can emerge. That seed of possibility, so ripe with opportunity and promise, is worth holding out.

I worry about relationships that are the "quick and the dead" type. I worry that the people involved never get past an important growth opportunity, destined to only repeat that scenario in a different way, with a different partner, with the same outcome...no one wins and no one grows.

I don't limit these comments to only marriage...relationships can take the form of employer to employee, friend to friend, congregant to congregation, parent to child, student to school.

Someone not meeting your needs? How would Jon Stewart say this..."Get over it." "Grow over it" Something like that?

There is more opportunity in the process of getting over it, than in rebuilding with a new "partner" on a faulty premise: that anyone one of us is perfect, that any relationship will be anything but exquisitely painful and elegantly disasastrous on many levels.

Those moments when expectations are dashed, needs are ignored are seedpods of love.