On Fighting

So I keep thinking back about when David and I had been married about a year. We were living in Utah, in our little house, and we always had friends over. We were like, party central. People came over to eat, to study, to watch movies - whatever. We had a comfy couch and no curfew rules.

Anyways, one night David and I had gotten into some disagreement (over who knows what) and were both mad at each other, and it just so happened that I had a couple of friends over at the time. If anyone knows me, they know I am not a very private person, so I felt no need to hide our "fight" from my friends. For one of my friends, it really really upset her that we were fighting, but I could not for the life of me understand why she was so upset because while I was angry, I was also not like, unusually pissed off or anything. I am just a very passionate person and so my small disagreements most likely look pretty heated to most people - which you would expect one of my close friends would realize, but whatever.  I just couldn't understand her view and I think it was because I never viewed disagreeing passionately about something as a negative thing.

The point of this is to say I have been thinking a lot about fighting and the roles it plays in relationships. I don't know if I have ever met a couple that never disagrees or fights, but I HAVE met a lot of couples who don't face their issues head on. And to me, not fighting when there is actually something to fight about is way worse than just having it out and being done with it. That is something I am actually really good at - if I am allowed to get something off my chest and a person will talk it out with me, I can let it go pretty quickly. I can't think of any bloggable circumstances of this, but let me assure you there are many. But for some reason, many people view the fact that I like to talk about things even when things are heated as a bad thing, and I just won't ever get that. They think that I am pushing things or being a jerk or whatever, but I just want to get the fight over and done. I don't want to be passive aggressive for weeks after, I don't want to be cautiously civil, I just want to yell and argue and then hug it out. Done.

Anyways, I feel like David and I have a pretty healthy fighting relationship. I think that when we have something that bugs us, we address it. Yes, my voice is usually raised, but we aren't ever rude to each other, or call names, or whatever, we are just loud. And I will take being loud over being mean spirited any day of the week.