I Don’t Get “Fighting”

I don’t understand how to get in a fight with someone.

My family, and pretty much everyone else’s family that I know is super Scandinavian and there are no conflicts in Scandinavian families. There’s an applicable joke about Canadians- did you know a car accident in Canada is never anyone’s fault? Everyone just apologizes. This isn’t a helpful model for feeling respected or comfortable in a relationship.

Like, what do you do when you love someone and you don’t like something about them. When do you say something? When do you ignore it?

I used to be friends with this girl who everyone dreaded because things would be going fine and then one day you’d get a 3,000 word email in your inbox listing the things you’d be doing wrong for the past three months. I’m sure from her perspective this kind of exhausting exactness felt super cathartic and like she was really going to address the problems and deal with them! For everyone else it was just confusing and bottom-dropping-out-y to be with someone who was having a great time with you one day and then you’re reading the extent of all the times you’ve made her feel disrespected the next. That’s just terrifying.

The best people in the world are going to get on your nerves if you spend enough time with them. Ryan Gosling probably makes a really disgusting sound when he slurps his coffee, or something. This, you should ignore I think. Right? Like he probably can’t stop it and you have just spent a lot of time together and you’re crabby because he also snores and you aren’t getting enough sleep.

What’s the difference between these things, feeling annoyed at some little thing someone does. What if you heard Ryan yelling at his mom on the phone? You don’t want to be with someone that treats women disrespectfully but how can you bring us something so serious as the relationship he has with his mom? He’s going to get really defensive and turn it around on you and leave forever. At least, that’s how it plays out in my head.

So what’s the right balance between letting things slide, recognizing things that will not change, and telling someone that they need to change a negative aspect f their personality or behavior?

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