Thursday, August 31, 2006

Learning How to Fight

[This is cross-posted from the Integral Relationships pod at Zaadz.]


I hope that Kira won't mind me sharing this, but I think it's a crucial part of relationship growth.

When we first got together, we had disagreements and they sometimes even got heated, but we didn't fight. And by fighting I don't mean screaming at each other in some kind of blind rage or calling each other names. That's not fighting so much as it is regression and abuse.

I mean being able to passionately disagree and stay with the fight until resolution emerges. There might be yelling, but no name calling, statements of feelings but not ad hominem attacks.

Whenever Kira and I actually fight instead of pussy-footing around each others feelings, we tend to break through the impass and find resolution and a new ground to our relationship.

Do any of you have experience with this? What are your feelings about fighting and intimacy? Do partners need to have reached a certain developmental level to fight fairly ansd productively, or is this possible for everyone?


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height to be taken.

Ruth said...

I've been married 28 years. At first, when we fought, it most often came about because I was so egoically/emotionally attached to situations, I took everything personally. In the last couple of years as I've found, through meditative practice, ways to live in what is, and not be attached egoically, our "fighting," i.e. resolution seeking, has become much more fair and productive. And conflicts have decreased.