Fighting Fair

I have some redeeming qualitites that I bring to this relationship Better Half and I have.

I'm a decent cook (as I can read and therefore can follow a recipe).  I'm a decent seamstress (again, due to the reading thing).  This is beginning to look like it was written in 1950.  For the love.

I saved us thousands of dollars in private school tuition by home schooling when the kids were small.

Although I am not an extrovert, I am MORE extroverted than Better Half, doing my part to ensure that we don't spend so much time with only each other for company that we start looking like each other.  Or looking like our dog.

I say what I think.  Almost.  Always.  So we discuss things like politics, religion, replacing our 50 year old furncace with a new one, etc. etc. etc.  And he   we make better decisions because of the dialogue.  :o)

Fighting fair, however?  That's not really one of my redeeming quailities.

I have a short fuse.  I can get angry and frustrated very quickly, and I get over it relatively quickly.  I try to bite my tongue and count to 10 or 20 or 1,000 when that happens, but I'm not always successful.

I'm historical when I get mad.

And I have NEVER followed the advice given to almost every married couple from Paul's letter to the  Ephesians--"Be angry and do not sin; don't let the sun go down on your anger."   I choose instead to follow the advice of David in Psalm 4--"When you are disturbed, do not sin.  Ponder it in your beds and be silent."  I mean, come on.  Paul was never married (that we know of).  And David...well...David was married.  Lots.  Whose advice would you follow?  :o)

Okay.  Fine.  I'm still working on the "do not sin" part.  But the  "Ponder it in your beds and be silent" thing?  I've got that DOWN.

It has never bothered me to go to bed angry.  I find that 6+ hours of time-out and rest goes a LONG way towards giving me a reasonable perspective on whatever I was ticked off about.

Irritations are harder long-distance.  A friend of mine, who has done this a number of times, had this advice to give:

  "the great 'thou shalt not' is fighting over email.  If you have something angry to say (and you will - remember, he'll be kickin' it in LA with Lil 'Wayne and the Kardashians in the VIP section with Tanqueray while you're managing 4 kids that are aggravated that their dad is gone), say it over the phone, not over email."

This sounds resonable, and I'm finding from other experiences in my life that email/text/etc. is a HORRIBLE way to express one's frustration with a situation.  So I'm really making an effort to handle conflict this way.  And I'm shocked that Better Half has only been gone two weeks and I've already had to discipline myself to excercise this gem.  More than once.

I'm still not sure why I'm shocked by this.  Sort fuse = me.

So I'm saving it--my irritation--for when we talk on the phone.

But here's the problem:  Although I have absolutely no qualms whatsover about retorting tersely, "Fine.  Whatever. Good NIGHT!" and flipping off the light and seething in silence until I fall asleep; I cannot even bring myself to say, "Fine.  Whatever.  Good NIGHT!" and hit "end" on the cell phone.

That feels like a level of unfair fighting that even I'm uncomfortable with.

Instead I'm learning how to offer forgiveness when I'm not ready to forgive. How to see it from another side when I still want to look at it from just my side. That not everything is done with the express intention of ticking me off.

And I'm learning that you can do both:

"Not let the sun go down on your anger (at least the sun in the Golden State--the sun goes down here before dinner is even on the table) and "Ponder it in your beds and be silent."

And maybe that's gonna be a big part of figuring out this "Be angry and sin not." thing.