Our First Fight

My boyfriend and I had our first fight last night and it was a doozy. We don't do the yelling and screaming, but we were both angry, focused on being understood, and completely on different sides of a canyon.

What started it all? Oh, I would love to use this blog to vent vent vent, but I won't. It wasn't the subject matter that caused the fight, it was the delivery. My boyfriend wanted to ask me a question about my side of a conflict (with a third party), but, instead, he gave me feedback, constructive criticism, information on what I should know about myself and how I am sometimes.

As a woman, I'm sure you can image just how welcome that feedback was; as a man, you might recall a time when you decided to give someone unsolicited feedback - are you cringing at the memory? Not that all men do this, because I've been guilty of offering up my advice and I learned to (1) tread carefully and (2) ask if people would like my opinions.

I took a deep breath, and then took a few more, and reminded myself that my boyfriend is just trying to help, in his way, and I listened and tried not to scream and yell. For some reason, men shut way down in the face of our drama, so I stayed cool (well, as cool as I could at the moment). We talked it out and everyone is fine. We're still on track to move in together, but several questions were raised for both of us.

So I guess disagreements do have a place in a relationship.