I can tell my husband loves me by the way we fight
He hates relationship influencer advice and he's bad at apologies.
I can tell my husband loves me by the way we fight.
He’s not a student of Modern-Internet Therapy-Influencers. Not only would he fail their interpersonal communications assessments, he’d seek expulsion from the course.
He’s repulsed by the phrase, “Your feelings are valid.”
He’s not great at apologies.
He’d rather say, “Well, that was a bit shit,” then get us a cup of tea. Tantrums, and most actions exclusively derived from emotion, are for children. He’s English.
He would argue the West let corporate robotic politics poison romance. He thinks jargon is a weapon.
He believes we love people because of their faults, not despite them. But that doesn’t mean we need to excavate them and study the fragments. He doesn’t want to talk about poop.
He likes to lift heavy things and mosh amongst punk music fans. If something means a lot to him, he’ll think about it for a week and then find time to explain his thoughts. After a friend of his ended his life, he began taking his male buddies to a nude, natural swimming pond. Pond Pals, he called it.
For a living, he makes commercials. He’s really good at it because he knows people. He knows emotion. Even though, unlike me, commercials never make him cry.
When our conversations skew heated, it’s because of me. He sees my feelings appear on my face, so I explain, “I can’t believe you would say you didn’t agree with that random man’s reel that said ‘difficult women are the best women’ because that one time you said I wasn’t necessarily easy, and so now you’re saying I’m not your ideal woman?”
If he’s being honest, he’d say he fundamentally doesn’t agree with the basis of most of my complaints. He has said you’re creating a labyrinth in your mind that you don’t need to make.
But even in my least valid feelings, he sits slightly nearby, faces me (even when I’m not facing him), and holds his ground until we’ve regained our equilibrium.
If I decide I don’t want to talk, he waits. He doesn’t remind me that he didn’t want this conversation in the first place. Usually.
Sometimes, he uses the wrong words. He’s said, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” and I’ve thought how someone online who doesn’t know him or us would say that’s gaslighting. The words he finds mightn’t be ‘right,’ but his intentions are never wrong.
I know he loves me when we fight because his attention is never wrong.
I’ve noticed that over the years, our tiffs are less heightened and don’t stretch as long. Not for lack of trial nor for lack of passion.
In those still moments of unwound tension, I can look back through time and notice our progress.
In those silent moments of repair, he’s taught me touch says more than words. And tea is more hydrating than water.
Soundtrack:
Love,
Abigail, sextech leader, born-again monogamist, love lover, and mother of two.
P.S.
Your presence here, at my wife-posting relationship peep show, is an honor. Thank you, dearly, for reading.
My Stranger Spouse
Sometimes I pretend my husband is a stranger. Someone I invite over, who cooks for me, whom my kids love, but someone I don't know.
For me, the whole Pond Pals thing is more than enough. I’d join at the speed of light.
This made me smile.
I like how he argued with when you did typical women thing: I'm mad at you because I'm showing you this thing that reminds me of how you love me and you're not agreeing with me!
I don't know if difficult women are the ideal. But he's right that we love people despite their flaws.
It's not like we have a choice in who we love.
The only choice we have is whether we stay with them.