The Big Argument!
Have you ever been so mad at your partner that you say things you regret? How about your so angry you can’t express yourself, and the things you want to say you can’t?
I’m sure we have all been there, and every relationship experiences moments of anger and disappointment. The problem comes with how we do or do not express ourselves during that big argument.
I know when I am upset I go in hard. I become so angry that any smirk or facial expression of thinking I’m a joke from my partner can cause me to shout and scream or shut down and lock myself away from everyone.
If I could choose which way is healthier to handle an argument, I would say get it out.
I, most times, have a hard time expressing myself vocally. I mean give me a piece of paper and I can write all day about my feelings and how you hurt me. Talking it out, makes me seem like I am all over the place and I don’t know what the real problem is. I become so unorganized with my thoughts and why I am angry that I just run away from the problem and try to convince myself it is not worth arguing about.
Holding it in and bottling up all those emotions just makes the next time we argue even more intense, because I am still upset from unresolved issues. It can make something as simple as leaving a pair of socks in the middle of the floor seem as serious as seeing a text message sent to an ex-lover.
It can be healthy to talk to each other about disappointments and heart-break. The key word would be talk, like calm rational adults. Not over the phone, not on social media, and not in a text message. Come together and talk about the things that are causing you sadness in your relationship or the thing that was done that was disrespectful to the relationship.
There are two endings.
- Work it out or
- go your separate ways.
*Don’t make a decision in the heat of the moment and don’t complicate things with sex or intimacy. Until your issues have been addressed and you both have found some common ground. Complicating things with irrational actions only makes the situation worse.
*Relationships are just that relationships. You are learning how to relate to others on different levels and in different moments of your life. You love, you argue, you make up, or you move on.
*Talking it out instead of arguing with loud hurtful words and actions allows you to organize your thoughts and create meaning and substance behind what you have to say.
I believe nothing is ever too trivial to talk about and express how it makes you feel. Leaving your socks in the middle of the floor makes me feel like you don’t respect the time I put into trying to keep our home clean. Texting your ex-lover makes me feel like you are disrespecting our relationship and the secrecy makes me feel like your intentions are to be unfaithful. Be honest about what you are feeling, stay calm, and create solutions and understanding. They will either say Yes, I will try to do better with picking up my socks or No, I will not stop texting my ex and if that is a problem for you maybe this relationship is not what either of us want right now.
The goal is to express yourself and your feelings, so that anger does not get bottled up inside waiting to explode or that anger creating a block for you to move on to a healthier relationship.
