Fight Club

I know the first rule of Fight Club, but I find it interesting when couples who have been together a long time have a fight (as happened between spousal unit D and me quite recently). Because we've heard these same old saws over and over, there is a tendency not to hear what the other person is saying. (We think we know what the other is saying and we think we know what the other will do.) I think I was wrong on both counts.

In our most recent incarnation of the "Surely you are not going to do that.", "Yes I am." ritual, I found myself both incredulous and divested from the argument and yet the fact that I had felt so incredulous and thus must have seemed very dismissive to my husband bothered me so much that I could not sleep last night. (I was the "Surely you are not going to do that" side of the production and have to confess I was truly bewildered when first confronted with the activity my husband proposed for today This meant I did not behave sympathetically, because I simply couldn't believe we were having a serious discussion - until I suddenly realized we were. At that point I was in way over my head and there was no turning back.)

The activity was simply making a trip to a store 90 miles away that has grocery items that cater to people with a particular dietary health problem from which my husband suffers. I mention this because as I was writing this and trying to remain abstract about the activity, the wording made it sound like my husband might be transporting to higher spheres, involved in pursuit of some pornographic pulp material or off indulging an excessive midlife crisis fetish. NONE of that is the case.)

As is usually the pattern, over night I changed my mind about where I stood on the issue. This infuriates my husband even more than my taking the wrong side of the argument. He finds it inauthentic that the next day I will accede and adopt the opposing position. Somehow I always manage to hoist myself on the petard of emotion and the fact that emotion is not logic. My emotions say that the action in question is dubious and this is motivated by logical reasons (none of which are really important here). What is significant, is that I realize that no matter how irrational I find the proposition, it is not out of line with what a reasonable person would do and it is my own disbelief that is actually out of proportion. Secondly the action does not involve harm or loss to anyone except possibly the person inclined to undertake it and certainly involves no harm to me emotionally or financially. Thirdly, it is something that seems to give my husband pleasure, so I am a fool to enter into a discussion about it in the first place. If he wants to do this and it makes him happy, then it really shouldn't concern me and I don't know why I let it do so. So now I feel stupid for having gotten emotionally involved. I feel stupid for having let it disturb my sleep and I look stupid for having once again reversed my position (even though it is (in my opinion) the right thing to have done. Spousal unit D is not going to take his trip, nobody is happy, and no matter how hard I try, I am sure that at some point I will stupidly repeat the pattern with some minor variation.