Monday, August 14, 2006

The joys of disagreements

-- an old post from my old blog --
Whoever said a perfect relationship is one with no fights must have been living in utopia. Good for him, but for us ordinary people, 'major disageements' are a part of the deal. It's at that point in the relationship where you leave your mask of agreeability and take a stand on something as if it truly mattered to you that the other person see your point of view.

It's not how major the disagreement is, or how vehemently you argue about it, but how you achieve closure on the issue that determines the strength of the relationship and its potential to last. Open issues mean open doors to the same conflict cropping up again, and if there's no understood way of dealing with it, you are back to either fighting about it, or masking your point of view for the sake of peace. The former is actually better, because you are at least open enough, but closing the issues when they come up .. that's the way to go.

Here's to more fights and better understanding between you and those you love.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think fighting is healthy if done right. I've heard it said that the way people fight (not how much they fight) is a strong indicator of their lasting potential. If a fight escalates really fast in the first minutes, that's a bad sign. I read this in a book by John Gottman, a UW researcher