Every couple will have their fair
share of disagreements. After all, each person must meet or address
their own self-interest before they are sufficiently resourced to
tend to the interests of the other.
Then again, the “magical mystery
tour” we call marriage may purport to achieve loftier aspirations
than one’s own singular satisfactions.
“Fairy tales which come true, it
could happen to you,” lead us to believe in “happily ever after”,
but fail to tell the rest of the story of the in-between times,
which are not always so very happy and good.
When a contentious couple is not
behaving as a collaborative team, but rather act as stubborn,
non-matching “separates”, whereby neither “I” is prepared to give an
inch to the other “I”, either “for the love of God or money”, then
each will dig in for a long, hard, destructive, non-constructive
battle, usually, to a bitter end.
Wounded pride and hurt feelings
compound matters further and off to the races they go, like ships
passing in the night, concluding that “never the twain shall meet”.
Andrea Boccelli and Sarah
Brightman have made famous their haunting and poignant song, Time
to Say Goodbye.
For our purposes, here, a wise
general knows when to retreat and, as such, there is no shame in
backing off or backing down.
When you and your beloved are at
your worst, is probably not the best time to resolve thorny problems
exacerbated by harsh words and negative emotions and rigidified,
positional stands.
Better to distance yourself from
the fray and calm down so you can come back another time or on a
different day.
There is great merit in a cooling
off period.
Take a deep breath and count
slowly to a thousand!
Then see if you can argue the
other person’s point of view, as well as, and, preferably, better
than they!