But this week:
Writing in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reported that the media has been as guilty of ignoring the ongoing genocide in Darfur as the Bush administration has been. In June, he said, the main TV news programs collectively ran 55 times more stories about the Michael Jackson trial than they did about East Africa’s crisis. CBS gave three minutes of coverage to Darfur in all of 2004, and NBC five minutes. As soon as you finish reading this horoscope, Virgo, I hope you will take aggressive action to avoid falling victim to equally misplaced priorities in your personal life. Don’t you dare let trivial spectacles divert you from healing the sorest spot in your world.
I feel like this actually means something to me. I ignore Rob most of the time, but I kind of feel like there is stuff I need to do to heal right now.
Last night I cornered Puppy and told him how very upset I am about his inability to compromise. He just doesn’t seem to be able to. He either entirely gives in to appease me or he gets his back up and won’t move. I told him I don’t want either end of this crap. I really really don’t want to deal with him vascilating between the two extremes. I don’t know how I can make this situation any better or any easier for either of us. I am trying to think of the issues that exist in our relationship. We are both very sensitive to being teased and yet we both spend a lot of time teasing. This isn’t a great situation. We are trying to figure out how to understand the teasing as non-hurtful. Every time I am in any kind of a bad mood he is convinced it is all his fault and that I am about to walk out and this escalates any irritability on my end because he gets somewhat dramatic. And I get into bad moods pretty easily: sleep deprivation, hunger, being too hot, not feeling well…. Any can cause me to be really pissy and grumpy. ARGH! I think we need to work on the expression, “Are you mad at me or near me.” Because as soon as someone says this to me (and I have a few friends trained) I realize what I am doing and mellow out conisderably almost instantly.
Compromises we have to work on:
I am moody. It is just kind of unavoidable. I have tried and tried and tried meds to deal with this and I haven’t been successful yet. I will probably try again when I have insurance again because I would like to be less psycho. I get unreasonably angry about simple things and I am very demanding and attention needy. I know these things aren’t easy for him.
He is forgetful and lazy. To the degree that both cause actual problems in my life. If he was only influencing himself it would be a different story. He is very unyielding about difficult issues and continues to push far past where it is ok with me to do so.
I really don’t think either side is any easier or harder than the other, just very different. *sigh* Everything in this relationship is kind of on turbo drive. I kind of feel like we skipped the honeymoon phase (or at least had a very short one) because we are both very conscious of wanting long-term stuff and we want to get started on that sooner than later. The next six months are going to be very telling. We are almost at six months. He commented that he has never had this much trouble learning to communicate with a partner before. I counter that he has never really learned to communicate with a partner before. He believed he knew what was necessary to keep his wife happy, but he also threw down about things and wouldn’t compromise and she left him because of it. I wonder what he has learned from this? He told me last night that there are going to be things that he won’t ever compromise about but he couldn’t come up with examples. That scares the hell out of me.
I thought you might enjoy, or be driven insane, not sure which, this example of people who have to be right no matter what. This is a section of an email my mom sent me this morning, detailing my father’s latest exploits. At the very least, it’s a fabulous example of how not to behave. Be afraid. But don’t resist laughing at the insanity.
Quoted:
So help me out here,love. Your father says I am so stupid that I can’t understand it and it is “elementary”. He says the measurement diagonally from corner to corner is 108″ so I would need that height to straighten the armoire up when we got it up stairs. I measured the height of the room it is in and that is only 101″ high. I say if you got it upstairs and then you just push it straight up from the front as the armoire is 92″ high and the distance from the floor to the ceiling on the 2nd floor is 94 and1/2″ high why shouldn’t it go up? I realize your father knows everything but perhaps you can help me understand this. Allowing him a tool in his hand is very dangerous. Yesterday he was sawing some plywood to cover walls in his shower and when he started sawing with the electric saw I saw black stuff being thrown up where sawdust should have been seen. I screamed, “Bud, you are sawing through the table!” He sawed through almost the entire black plastic sawhorse on which the plywood was supported. I would have seen it sooner but I usually close my eyes while still holding down the wood. We were going to carry the large piece of plywood upstairs but the ladder was on the stairway so it had to be moved. He told me to hold the wood while he moved it. I said, “Bud, just put it down on the floor” His usual reply when someone makes a suggestion is to do the opposite. “Don’t give me any fucking advice” So in attempting to carry it across the room he hit the chandelier and broke off part of the orchid on the sideboard. If I hadn’t screamed the whole orchid would have been yanked off the sideboard. His response always is if you hadn’t screamed and distracted me it wouldn’t have happened. It is the same thing in the car. “Bud, stop, that car is stopping” His response again is always “Shut up you are always distracting me!” I do not go out to dinner very often because I don’t want him to drive. We got a $100 ticket the other day for his not wearing his seat belt. So when I reminded him another time he bellowed, “fuck the seat belt” and refused to put it on. Nobody tells Bud N* what to do.
Distracted by the math and spacial geometry(and having done too much moving in the last year)…I suspect he has a point about the up-righting of the armoire, but the rest of it is, indeed, nuts.
What it is about fathers that appears to cause high amounts of crazy? *sigh*
on Geometry – Sure, if he insists on keeping it laid down, there will be a problem, but if they turn it upright as they arrive on the floor in question (it’s going upstairs) it can be slid upright into place (barring doorways, of course).
On fathers and crazy? Testosterone poisoning.
We are both very sensitive to being teased and yet we both spend a lot of time teasing. This isn’t a great situation. We are trying to figure out how to understand the teasing as non-hurtful.
Perhaps you need some different pet names for each other? Some agreed-upon class of names that will signal “playful banter” as opposed to “possibly hurtful teasing”.
Consider the Shakespearean Insult Generator (http://www.william-shakespeare.org.uk/a1-shakespearean-insults-generator.htm). Anytime you tease each other in a Shakesperean manner, for instance, you know it’s just banter, and not at all meant as hurtful.
Just my first, off-the-top-of-my-head, thought.
IMX and FWIW, people do rub off on each other over time. Chances are you are both beginning to influence each other in subtle ways you may not even see. And the longer a couple is together , the more in sync they become. Or if not in sync, at least acutely aware and tuned in to each other and how they operate.
Are you enjoying each other? Are you still having ‘fun’?
Yeah. We go to sleep giggling pretty much every night. Even the nights with big fights. He dances with me. He talks to me. He is a complete and utter goofball and is cool with me being as lazy as a cat. Pretty much anywhere we go, if we stick together, it’s fun.
The problem with compromise is that both parties end up dissatisfied. and I first got together we had many fights that devolved into us staring at each other with our jaws clenched. There was no more to say, no solution had been reached, and neither of us was allowed to leave the room. That’s about when we decided that trying to compromise was a bad idea cuz it just pissed us both off more than losing the argument.
When
We started to look for a 3rd option rather than a compromise. Our last name is probably the most successful example of this.
The agreement that you and Puppy came to Re. guns is another. He does not require you to go shooting with him. You do not require him to sell all his guns. You came to a third position that is comfortable for you both.
Maybe you guys could work on something like this.
/assvice
The problem with compromise is that both parties end up dissatisfied.
I have to say I had a visceral reaction of disagreement and perhaps even an audible squeak, which I’ve managed to process down to “I think YMMV on that one….depends on personality, and on ones definition of compromise.” Jaw clenching stare fests? Not so productive. Thorough discussions of who needs what and why and how various solutions make each person feel? That’s my personal favorite. To me compromising a matter of give and receive, and the way I look at it, giving up certain things in favor of receiving others is a positive outcome. Takes work, though.
it totally comes down to the definition of compromise.
J and I are both pretty easy going, but when we do find a topic which we feel the need to stand up for, we are both stubborn as mules. With compromise, both people get a little of what they want, but for us that just served as a reminder that we didn’t get all of what we wanted. Childish, I know, but that’s how it is. We found that if we could find another thing that we both wanted as much as the thing we were fighting over, it was a much more satisfactory answer.
As we’ve been together longer, the fights have become less frequent, and the third option seeking almost automatic.
I guess what it really comes down to is finding the compromise, or third option or what ever you want to call it, before the battle lines are drawn. And that will just come with time and practice.
Arent there things you would never compromise on?
Oh yeah. Things like… if someone held a gun on me in anger and pulled the trigger, even if I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the gun wasn’t loaded, that person would be out of my life forever.
Understood. I think we all got things that don’t seem like we could compromise on. Even if we don’t know what they are we can feel them under there.