"Honeymoon Stage"
So, we're hitting an interesting point in our courtship (an old fashioned word, I know, but I love it!) and I'm starting to wonder, is this the part that people look back on and say "the honeymoon ended"? I really really (really) hope not, but it's kind of starting to feel that way.
The honeymoon period, as far as I can tell, is a relationship's rosy start - where a hazy blanket of pink falls over the realities of life making it all a bit pillow-y. You both bounce around, enjoying all the good and forgetting for a time any of the bad. You're lives are not yet intertwined, so you just effortlessly find yourselves landing sure-footed together on the same page. It's all easy peasy lemon squeezy. Your heart still flutters away any little annoyances. Your hands still take individual frustrations and put them in your back pocket, saving, for a time, your sweet little love from being infected.
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I swear this stage is why people cheat (and before you say anything, neither Matt nor I have ever been cheaters and never will be!). That blanket is the warmest, most exciting blanket in the world! It picks you up and carries you away. It makes you 15 years old again. It fills you with potential and promises and injects you with energy and enthusiasm. It's the bees' knees. Why wouldn't you want to feel that way over and over again?
The trick really is to keep that feeling going throughout the life of your relationship, isn't it? Three years in, reality for us is just starting to creep in. I don't like how he reacts to things and he doesn't like the way I do either. Our first fight was typical. It was a soft pink honeymoon kind of fight, where even the reason for it was sweet and thoughtful. I was of the opinion that he buys me too many gifts of the expensive variety. Oh yeah. Whoa is me, right? This has always been an issue, but in the beginning it didn't matter because we were still separate people just loving the fact that we love each other. And then we evolved into two people/one couple and the reality of our finances creeped in. We are trying to pay for a wedding... buy a house... save a nest egg. And so we fought. Hard. Harder than I thought was possible for us to fight and certainly harder than I thought a first fight deserved (we didn't talk for four days!). In hindsight, that's really been worrying me. If our first start was so big, how big will the next fight be? And the next one after that??
Well we've had several fights since then, not nearly as gigantic, and we have officially entered this uncharted territory. We never so much as ruffled each others' feathers for three years and now here we are at odds on a fairly regular basis. I blame text messages for one. You really can't get across what you want to say in those damn things and there is no guarantee that it's received the way you intended. I also blame our schedule - we don't see each other a good couple of days out of every week. But I mostly blame our completely different styles of communication and also our jarring histories. As far as talking goes, he's a minimalist. And I'm, well. I'm a writer. I like words. Lots of them! When he doesn't talk to me, I convince myself that he must be talking to someone else. I mean, how can anyone not talk as much as I do?? He must be bursting at the seams with things to say about his feelings if he's not talking to me. Everyone likes to talk and talk and talk, right? I know. That's an insane generalization to make, but I feel it's a common one. People assume others' feel and think the same way (or that they should) all the time. I'm just as human.
I'm sure it doesn't help that I read too much too. There was this article I came across a while back -wish I could find it for you!- that compared communication within a relationship to the structure of a house. When everything starts out, you have walls and doors in all the right places. You talk freely and openly to one another in all the right directions. There's a proper flow. The door to the outside is shut and locked, where as the doors on the inside are always open. Basically, family business stays in the family. But then maybe one of you finds yourself having a conversation with someone else that you should really be having with your partner and only your partner and the result is that you have built a wall where there never was one before. And when your partner hits that wall, they turn to find a choice; they can either walk through the door and talk openly with you again or they can talk to someone else and build up another brand new wall themselves. Too many walls and everything get's tight and soon you can't move at all, leaving you perhaps stuck all together. I love that visual. And it scares the crap out of me.
The other bit, the history, is what we all have fondly come to refer to as baggage. Aaaaah, gotta love that baggage. Mine is being lied to. Or at least the fear that I do not know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That fear is mighty deep in me. Thanks, crappy x-husband. His is a form of fighting that grows to mythical proportions, that drags the night out for days and that is so uncontrollable and explosive that surely no mere human could survive. Thanks, crappy x-girlfriend.
Here's the thing - I don't fight and certainly not irrationally, and he doesn't lie, so how have we gotten to this point where the fear of these two things have caused us to war? The minute either one of us triggers these fears, we're done for. The week is ruined. And our natural reactions, though well intended, just fuels this fire. Something minor happens, I bring it up and try to talk through it rationally... he fears it will start a fight he can't control (plus he's just not that into talking about his feelings) and to save us from that he shuts down... I fear he is withholding truth from me and so I push further... which he takes as a second step toward an epic blow out fight, which he tries to cut off by shutting me down with some sort of over the top-ness. And then, for me at least, I'm left sitting there will the million psychology articles I've read in my time ricocheting around in my head.
Ugh. Exhausting, no? How do you we get out of the cycle before it becomes a habit?
The honeymoon period, as far as I can tell, is a relationship's rosy start - where a hazy blanket of pink falls over the realities of life making it all a bit pillow-y. You both bounce around, enjoying all the good and forgetting for a time any of the bad. You're lives are not yet intertwined, so you just effortlessly find yourselves landing sure-footed together on the same page. It's all easy peasy lemon squeezy. Your heart still flutters away any little annoyances. Your hands still take individual frustrations and put them in your back pocket, saving, for a time, your sweet little love from being infected.
.JPG)
I swear this stage is why people cheat (and before you say anything, neither Matt nor I have ever been cheaters and never will be!). That blanket is the warmest, most exciting blanket in the world! It picks you up and carries you away. It makes you 15 years old again. It fills you with potential and promises and injects you with energy and enthusiasm. It's the bees' knees. Why wouldn't you want to feel that way over and over again?
The trick really is to keep that feeling going throughout the life of your relationship, isn't it? Three years in, reality for us is just starting to creep in. I don't like how he reacts to things and he doesn't like the way I do either. Our first fight was typical. It was a soft pink honeymoon kind of fight, where even the reason for it was sweet and thoughtful. I was of the opinion that he buys me too many gifts of the expensive variety. Oh yeah. Whoa is me, right? This has always been an issue, but in the beginning it didn't matter because we were still separate people just loving the fact that we love each other. And then we evolved into two people/one couple and the reality of our finances creeped in. We are trying to pay for a wedding... buy a house... save a nest egg. And so we fought. Hard. Harder than I thought was possible for us to fight and certainly harder than I thought a first fight deserved (we didn't talk for four days!). In hindsight, that's really been worrying me. If our first start was so big, how big will the next fight be? And the next one after that??
Well we've had several fights since then, not nearly as gigantic, and we have officially entered this uncharted territory. We never so much as ruffled each others' feathers for three years and now here we are at odds on a fairly regular basis. I blame text messages for one. You really can't get across what you want to say in those damn things and there is no guarantee that it's received the way you intended. I also blame our schedule - we don't see each other a good couple of days out of every week. But I mostly blame our completely different styles of communication and also our jarring histories. As far as talking goes, he's a minimalist. And I'm, well. I'm a writer. I like words. Lots of them! When he doesn't talk to me, I convince myself that he must be talking to someone else. I mean, how can anyone not talk as much as I do?? He must be bursting at the seams with things to say about his feelings if he's not talking to me. Everyone likes to talk and talk and talk, right? I know. That's an insane generalization to make, but I feel it's a common one. People assume others' feel and think the same way (or that they should) all the time. I'm just as human.
I'm sure it doesn't help that I read too much too. There was this article I came across a while back -wish I could find it for you!- that compared communication within a relationship to the structure of a house. When everything starts out, you have walls and doors in all the right places. You talk freely and openly to one another in all the right directions. There's a proper flow. The door to the outside is shut and locked, where as the doors on the inside are always open. Basically, family business stays in the family. But then maybe one of you finds yourself having a conversation with someone else that you should really be having with your partner and only your partner and the result is that you have built a wall where there never was one before. And when your partner hits that wall, they turn to find a choice; they can either walk through the door and talk openly with you again or they can talk to someone else and build up another brand new wall themselves. Too many walls and everything get's tight and soon you can't move at all, leaving you perhaps stuck all together. I love that visual. And it scares the crap out of me.
The other bit, the history, is what we all have fondly come to refer to as baggage. Aaaaah, gotta love that baggage. Mine is being lied to. Or at least the fear that I do not know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That fear is mighty deep in me. Thanks, crappy x-husband. His is a form of fighting that grows to mythical proportions, that drags the night out for days and that is so uncontrollable and explosive that surely no mere human could survive. Thanks, crappy x-girlfriend.
Here's the thing - I don't fight and certainly not irrationally, and he doesn't lie, so how have we gotten to this point where the fear of these two things have caused us to war? The minute either one of us triggers these fears, we're done for. The week is ruined. And our natural reactions, though well intended, just fuels this fire. Something minor happens, I bring it up and try to talk through it rationally... he fears it will start a fight he can't control (plus he's just not that into talking about his feelings) and to save us from that he shuts down... I fear he is withholding truth from me and so I push further... which he takes as a second step toward an epic blow out fight, which he tries to cut off by shutting me down with some sort of over the top-ness. And then, for me at least, I'm left sitting there will the million psychology articles I've read in my time ricocheting around in my head.
Ugh. Exhausting, no? How do you we get out of the cycle before it becomes a habit?
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