Why Having a Massive Fight With Your Other Half Might Not Be Such a Bad Thing

According to this article from Science Daily (it’s science, people) fighting on occasion actually makes couples live longer.

They did studies with couples and found that the ones who suppressed their anger died earlier than members of couples where one or both expressed their anger. So I guess I’m not going to die any time soon.

It was literally just two weeks ago when I wrote Is Your Partner your Best Friend? And clearly someone, somewhere was laughing at me saying yeah; let’s put that shit to the test because we seriously had one of the biggest fights EVER last night. Over absolutely nothing.

Now I need to back-track a little here. I did mention in that article that my husband can drive me crazy, nearly on a daily basis. For example, we have a double shower and so we are often in that thing together and he thinks it’s absolutely hilarious to annoy the living crap out of me when my eyes are shut while I’m in shampoo-mode. This can consist of poking me in places I’m not in the mood to be poked, peeing on me or farting in a confined space amongst other things that crack him up. And when he does that, I’ve been known to call him an IDIOT.

And then, a few nights ago, one of his drivers was on night shift and his truck broke down at 1am. His phone rang and he gave the driver a suggestion, then he probably lay awake waiting to hear if it worked (it didn’t). The phone rang again 45 minutes later and he told him who to call to come and rescue him. Then he probably lay half awake waiting to hear everything was resolved. Somewhere in that space of time, our little tiny dog made a few snuffling noises in her bed. This is def-con 5 to him. Apparently when he was a kid, he shared his bedroom with a brother who used to make lip-smacking noises in his sleep and it drove him MENTAL. So anything resembling a similiar noise must spark off something in his brain akin to driving spikes into his eyeballs. I was actually awake myself when the dog made these noises and I heard him tell her to shut up. Which she did.

Two full days later, around 9pm he shows me a video on his iPad of a cute dog playing with a toy.

I said “Isn’t that sweet, aren’t dogs awesome!”

And he lost his shit.

Stood up, yelled at me: “Your fucking dog better not make any more noise tonight.”

I responded with something along the lines of whattheactualfuckiswrongwithyou. And he stomped off to the kitchen and started bashing and crashing things around while muttering loudly. I did a lot of muttering of my own in the other room. Then he came stomping back in again, gave me this weird “duty” kiss and said I’m going to bed while I sat there stunned.

When I went to bed half an hour later he laid curled up on his side of the bed and completely ignored me. Next morning I got no “I love you”, no “have a nice day” and not even a “see ya” as he headed out the door. I’m thinking, someone is definitely getting their period. Then, the morning rolled on and the phone call I would’ve gotten at 9.30am didn’t come. By 11am it got the better of me and I sent him a text saying, “Ah yeah, don’t know exactly what it was I did to upset you but it would be a lot easier if you actually told me instead of letting me guess.”

It was about 2pm before he finally called me and when we got past preliminaries he said “I don’t want to talk about it while I’m driving because you’ll just want to DEFEND yourself and then I’ll get angry and so forget it.”

Talk about a red flag to a bull. I’ll want to defend myself? There was no fucking way he was hanging up that phone without telling me what dastardly crime I’d committed. After “promising” (with my fingers crossed behind my back) I wouldn’t get mad I pleaded with him to tell me what his problem was.

He said he was sick of me calling him an idiot and playing second fiddle to a dog.

I was struck dumb.

Literally dumbstruck.

I said, “Well for a start, the only reason the dog is in the bedroom is because when we left her in the family room she went outside at random hours of the night, barking and annoyed the neighbours. She literally made a noise for 5 seconds. And…as far as calling you an idiot, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He said “I told you I don’t want to talk about it now.”

I hung up the phone. Seething. And then as the rest of the day went past I re-played any and every time I possibly could have called him an idiot and knew hand-on-my-heart that I have never said it for anything that truly mattered, like how he ran his business or what sort of man or father or friend he was and then thought ya know what? Let it go Carolyn. Just Let It Go. He’s obviously got things on his mind, stressed out, having a bad day. It’s over.

It wasn’t over. He came home and I could tell it wasn’t over.

He pretended everything was OK but I definitely wasn’t feeling the love. So I chatted away about my day, being all cheery and friendly and happy and shit, thinking seriously? We battled on until about 9pm when he tagged me in a Facebook post about how it’s a real thing that people can’t stand listening to annoying noises and I wrote back to him, yeah sorry for breathing and shit. And then it was on for Young and Old. Holy fuck-balls. The things that were flung back and forth over the next hour (most of which made no sense) would’ve made a sailor blush. Accusations flew. Counter accusations followed. Things which had nothing to do with anything got brought up. We completely blew everything out of proportion and massively exaggerated imagined slights. But these mean, hurtful words kept flying out of our mouths.

I cried. He didn’t care.

I said “Well how about I just flounce off to bed like you did last night,” being all dramatic and such.

He followed.

More arguing and yelling followed. In bed. More tears. Nothing made any sense at all.

Eventually, exhausted we both fell asleep.

Today, everything is back exactly where it was before it all began and I have no freaking clue what actually happened. Maybe it’s like a relationship spring-clean and every now and again you’ve got to blow out all the cobwebs; get it off your chest all those niggling things that you can’t be bothered mentioning the rest of the time. Who knows but I’m glad this is an extremely rare event in our relationship because it was exhausting (and I look like hell after I’ve cried).

But, for the record: I was right.