Tag Archives: Fights

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Friendships

I had this impressive student in 2015-2016. He’s now a licensed psychologist. Last night he and I walked around a couple of parks and then the trail by the creek and had Mexican food at a Taqueria. We’re friends now because he’s done with school and we both want to stay in touch. He’s 14-years younger than me.

He had a really bad breakup. He told me about it two-weeks ago.

I told him my whole story.

He was horrified.

I asked if he like the piece about my being “fake.” And he said, “You’re a lot of things, and fake isn’t one of them.”

It is true that I’m direct. To a fault. I also have to be really careful so I’m not sharp.

I got good at being gentle with my ex-GF.

I know that I was as kind as I could be with Scorpio and my worries about her threesome.

He thought reading that in a text was inappropriate and extremely hurtful.

We hung out for two-hours. Here was his text:

“Home safe and doing laundry. Thanks for a great convo and meal together. My heart is heavy for you and all you’ve had to endure or be subjected to–it’s not fair and it’s not right. But, I’m also struck by your awareness, resolve and unwillingness to tolerate bullshit. You’re amazing.”

I have lived so many days more than the ones that I have left. I don’t want volatility, belittling, communication that is gamey and can’t deal with deflecting responsibility.

Unless something happens again, I think that I have laid to rest the topic of Scorpio’s and my four-months together.

I’m lucky.

I don’t want to wash myself clean of her. I don’t regret meeting her. She was fun, funny, passionate and great to be around. We had some amazing travels. We laughed so hard. Just because we don’t have healthy conflict, and she hasn’t treated her demons and mood, it doesn’t mean that I want to vilify her. I wish her peace.

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Common Denominator

If you are abandoned by friends of many years, have really short stints of dating boyfriends, or have to mass remove people from your friends on Facebook, you should probably examine your role in conflict.

It takes two people to fight.

I don’t engage when a woman is yelling. I just listen. If she is yelling at me, it’s my job to listen. When it doesn’t abate, it’s my job to point out the yelling.

Name calling is never productive.

My ex-GF and I never called each other names.

My ex-wife criticized me, definitely called me names, attacked my character and generally gave me feedback about how I was failing everyone around me.

I won’t sign up for designated asshole in any of my romantic relationships going forward.

My Boss checked in with me yesterday because he was out Thursday and Friday given that he’s in an elite fellowship through Columbia University and had classes last week. He wasn’t at work until Tuesday. He wanted to make sure that I was ok after I had my ass handed to me during a restraint. Scorpio was to get an extraction today and maybe a bone graft too, so he asked how my partner was as well.

I told him that I had to break up with her. He seemed shocked. I said that she yells during conflicts and I can’t manage that. He’s an 8–I would bet all my pension on it–and so he said, “You can’t do this job everyday and deal with crazy at home.”

I told him that I don’t live with anyone and won’t ever again.

It’s not that I’m sitting around regretting the decision that I made.

It’s not that I don’t love her or that she doesn’t still have space in my heart.

A reader wrote recently on an entry that she may be afraid to love.

I think that’s possible.

I also think that it’s possible that she’s never learned how to fight right.

With an 8 (like me) and a 4 (like her) you have to learn how to not react at the same time. Both types are reactive for different reasons.

I didn’t react on Thursday. I simply asked her when she wanted to deal with this difference of opinion regarding going dark, leaving my texts seemingly unread, and getting into contact late at night or early in the morning on Monday by texting about her threesome.

My being hurt doesn’t make me controlling, manipulative or does it make her have to check in with me every three seconds when she is partying with her friends. That’s strange conflation and leaves my feelings completely unacknowledged. She said some odd things to me on Thursday night, and I still wonder if that was the THC.

It’s been 6-days. I’ll keep doing what I always do and that’s try to make sense of what happened. Regardless, I’m the one who decided to break up with her, and so I shouldn’t be surprised that she attacked. She is after all: Scorpio. Seems related to going dark and then having a threesome.

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Phases

When I had a two-year-old, I was single. Two is a tough age generally. The good thing about it is that they can talk, and the bad thing about it is they are still a baby.

She came over yesterday afternoon and gave me a big smile in her car as she was parking in my driveway. She wasn’t wearing her glasses so her green eyes were not obscured and beautiful. I like them when it’s overcast.

My dog got so excited that she pooped in the house and there was a loose dog outside too that I thought maybe my neighbor had adopted, but he just put it in his backyard and said he’d call. The little dog had a collar on. We finally got into my house and I took her hands and led her back to my bedroom.

My son was studying at the library yesterday.

I know that much of our obstacles are her getting used to seeing someone who doesn’t want to co-habit or remarry. However, she has said that now she likes having all of her parenting choices within her sphere of influence and that is easier in most respects.

Anyway, Baby Daddy is a piece of work. No financial, emotional or any support. He’s not seen her daughter in a couple of years and he texts “Hi,” late at night and ignores all of her texts of pictures that she used to send. He also has or has pawned a 3/4 karat diamond that he has had in a safe for their daughter which was my girlfriend’s mother’s ring. He ignores texts my girlfriend sends to ask to get it back. He’s an asshole.

The ring makes me feel awful. For that reason, I am working with a jewelry designer who I know to make a white gold ring with rhodium overlay. There will be a lab diamond and two gemstones. Hers is a ruby and her daughter’s is an emerald. I want her daughter to inherit something given that her dad may continue douchebaggery.

Yesterday after we’d connected and talked a bunch, I asked her if she wanted to go get some food.

She said that she needed to get her finger sized. (I was super concerned that she wouldn’t wear / like her birthday present so told her about it on Tuesday after we were getting a late bite after the concert.) I told her that she’s a 5. She said her finger is bigger. There is no way.

However, we went to an expensive European jewelry store in our expensive shopping district. She’s a 5.5 and she barely listened to me, but believed the proprietor when she explained European sizing, bandwidth, and when it’s cold not wanting it to slip away forever. She texted the designer her size when we left.

Then we picked up fast casual burgers and I ate mine in the car. She told me that she can’t believe how fit I am with how much I eat. She said that her ex-husband couldn’t do that either. I told her that I exercise a lot and she said, “Not really. When I was doing various tris and marathons, I was in the gym an hour a day everyday.” I didn’t tell her that a mother could never do that. And that’s true. You can’t do lots of things that you’d like to do with a kid. Some of your previous self never comes back.

I asked her if I could tag along to the daycare school and hang out with them. We talked about interesting clients on the drive over. Her daughter was stoked to see me. We all played at the park together and then I asked her not to take the highway back to her house but take street because I intended to bail out when she was at a stoplight. I did and walked home.

I’m so glad that we talked through this conflict. I can’t wait to blog about what she does for plans for us this upcoming month. We’re in different phases of life. It doesn’t change how much of my heart she has.

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Good

My girlfriend wound up talking to me for 15-minutes on Sunday regarding that brunch was cancelled. I felt like it was a related behavior when she had her best friend accompany us for Thanksgiving Tree Lighting. She had asked if my voicing a concern was to be in person or on the phone. I said that either was fine, but that sending screenshots would feel awful. And it would have.

I told her that I had a piece of fun and also something that was friction when she called me. It hadn’t become a fight yet. She said that she’d like the friction first.

I said, “Ok, it made me feel bad when we got back to your house last night and you said that swimming was now 10-12. I realized that _______ and I would be at your house for under an hour and you’d be getting up to leave for _____’s house and be rushed. There was no brunch anymore and that was our family plan for the holiday. It seems related to my telling you that Thanksgiving is the only holiday that I really care about and then _____ was included in the tree lighting.”

She said, “I’m sorry.”

She paused and I said, “Thank you.”

She explained that it didn’t feel good at all to change Christmas Eve Brunch plans and she didn’t like it either. Then she talked about how she understood that it wasn’t fair that our only plans just us three with her daughter included her best friend after we’d made concrete plans after Thanksgiving.

So easy. I was heard, validated, and she made a sincere apology.

Then she told me that scheduling has generally never been her forte, so when these things happen again, I should remind her.

I said I understood that it’s a shortcoming, but feeling like I was an afterthought was upsetting.

She said, “You’re not an afterthought.”

Without my suggesting it, she said, “What I am going to do is cancel with _____. [Her daughter] doesn’t know what dates are, so swimming anytime in the next few days will mean swimming with _____.”

I didn’t want her to do that, and I asked her not to, but she did it anyway.

We had family brunch.

Her daughter told my metamour that the best thing about the day was [my son] that night.

It was resolved. I think that our plans will now be our own. I have a piece of data proving that, too.

I asked her if she would go to dinner with me before the concert that she’s taking me and her best friend on New Year’s Eve (NYE). She said that she would and I’ve made reservations for us. We will meet her friend an hour before the concert begins. We’ll all watch the concert together. It’s funny, but I spent NYE with her best friend last year.

What feels good to you when you’re resolving a problem? How do you like to fight? What do disagreements serve for us in relationship?

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Fighting

There was a conversation that I had with my girlfriend after she had been hurt about my not telling a woman who was hitting on me that I had a girlfriend. I said that I don’t lead with that because it’s weird. She wanted to make sure that when we’re together, there are specific times that we don’t talk about other people at all. (However, she was doing that a little bit last night, but I wasn’t going to mention that. That kind of thing doesn’t make me feel jealous.) I need to be gentle and sensitive about my current outings and such. It will be interesting to navigate when I go out on more than a first date with another girl.

I am using this morning to write out what is hurting me.

I’d rather resolve it through working through conflict.

I’m not easy to fight with in general.

I have a memory like a bear trap.

In fact, bear trap is probably just a good way to describe fighting with an Enneagram 8.

She had told me that she was very sad to have not engaged in an adult Halloween activity with me. I knew that it was her favorite holiday, but she already had plans as it was. I told her that going forward I would check in with regards to what she wanted to do each holiday.

I told her that thinking on it, Thanksgiving was an important holiday to me.

We’d planned to go to a Tree Lighting just us three.

Her best friend came.

We had been texting back and forth a bit about Christmas a few weeks ago and she asked what my plans were. Then she said that she and her daughter were free Christmas Eve morning. I’d said that I’d make a quiche and we could hang out. She sent the rosy cheeks smiley face.

Except that’s not happening. She wants me to hang out at the pool at her best friend’s house. I told her that I’d do it.

However, when I took her home last night after the movie, she found out that swimming was 10-12.

I feel like an afterthought.

There will be no quiche. There will likely be not much of anything because she’ll have to rush home, get packed, and then see me and maybe my son for a second and then rush to my metamour’s for their plans and overnight.

I don’t like it. The plans have changed twice when we were going to hangout just us three.

My therapist isn’t seeing his clients until 1/6/25. I’m thinking that I won’t make an appointment with him anyway until the 20th…

How do you fight with a significant other? How do make sure that your words land well?