Entry 10: Conflict

My boyfriend and I easily share a lot of conflict. We love each other a lot, but we are different people. Usually we get through things fairly easily, by laughing off things. Luckily, I have a boyfriend that is very easy to get along with and squash whatever beef we have at the moment through jokes. But then there are certain situations where jokes are no matter at all because he or I am straight pissed.

Last week my boyfriend and I got into some argument. The cause is basically irrelevant and most likely petty. But it got both of us extremely heated and forgetting the cause of the issue, and had me in tears and my boyfriend feeling that he just needed to walk away--something my boyfriend almost always does when he is extremely angry, you can say he's the passive agressive type. I on the other hand am the assertive type who uses emotion and intelligence to get my thoughts through (yes, I asked my boyfriend to pick me out from the different styles of personal conflict.)

So my boyfriend hung up the phone at midnight, because he was that pissed off. And I let him go, despite really wanting to settle the situation and get over it. The argument had turned into a lose-lose situation; both my boyfriend and I gave up on trying to get anywhere in a resolution. But 2 hours later, at 2 a.m. exactly, I called him to find out I was waking him up. I wanted something more than this catch-22, so I said something along the lines of, "Alright, this is all my fault. I will do my best to change, so that we wont have this situation again. And I apologize for getting upset."

My boyfriend groaned out an "okay." But that wasn't enough for me. I started to cry. This was turning into a win-lose situation which I felt shouldn't have been the case. I'd at least want things to be equal; so this could of been a win-win (which is ideal) or a compromise. But I definitely didn't want to be the one who cared about these situations.

"Don't you care? Why don't you care? I just apologized and took complete blame for both you and I. I can't believe that you have nothing at all to say. It takes two people to make arguments like these to occur, and yet I'm the only one stepping up to the plate to make a change. I wish you cared as much as I do." I said as I continued to cry. My boyfriend finally realized how stupid this all was, and felt really bad for hurting my feelings, so he says, "Dang, I'm so sorry. No I wasn't trying to leave you hanging, I was just tired when you called me. I was sleeping, it is 2 a.m. But baby, you don't have to be the only one to compromise. I mean, I messed up to. It's not all you. Let's work this out."

And that's exactly what we did. We talked out our feelings, our perceptions, and worked everything out smoothly. Techinically, this was all a compromise situation, as the text book describes, where both sacrifice but gain a little. But even though, it's a winning situation where we can admit to our faults and continue to see through these faults with love.