I've been living with my partner for less than two months, so I doubt we've settled into a pattern yet. But we've been together for years, and ... he doesn't start fights with me, ever. That seems to be my job! It's pretty silly because he loves arguing with people online and he and his father fight basically whenever they're in the same room. Whereas I hate conflict.
My current analysis is that he thinks of fighting as the appropriate response to people you're contemptuous of (his horrible father, online conspiracy theorists) and, since I am not contemptible, he doesn't need to pick fights with me. So far, when I'm doing something he doesn't like, he's either comfortable enough to calmly tell me to stop it, or he retaliates with escalation. (E.g. if I am annoying him by playing with his hair, instead of saying "Stop playing with my hair," he will ruffle mine back until I look like a sad poodle. If anyone else did this I would probably kill them, but he has somehow figured out how to be maximally obnoxious without actually upsetting me at all.)
Whereas I think of conflict as something that is unpleasant, not a fun voluntary activity, but the means to solving problems that seem like they could cause resentment later. The more I care about and respect someone, the more it matters to me that we solve our problems and that I be honest with them about how I'm feeling, and so the more likely it is that I'll bring problems up. I guess I notice problems more now that we're living together, too, because I'm the one with higher standards for living-space tidiness.
I think I need to work at remembering that the individual things I bring up to fight about are not, really, that important, so that I don't get all emotionally invested in winning an argument. And I wish my partner were a bit better at telling me what he wants. But we're doing okay. And we definitely don't fight eight times a day.
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I've been living with my partner for less than two months, so I doubt we've settled into a pattern yet. But we've been together for years, and ... he doesn't start fights with me, ever. That seems to be my job! It's pretty silly because he loves arguing with people online and he and his father fight basically whenever they're in the same room. Whereas I hate conflict.
My current analysis is that he thinks of fighting as the appropriate response to people you're contemptuous of (his horrible father, online conspiracy theorists) and, since I am not contemptible, he doesn't need to pick fights with me. So far, when I'm doing something he doesn't like, he's either comfortable enough to calmly tell me to stop it, or he retaliates with escalation. (E.g. if I am annoying him by playing with his hair, instead of saying "Stop playing with my hair," he will ruffle mine back until I look like a sad poodle. If anyone else did this I would probably kill them, but he has somehow figured out how to be maximally obnoxious without actually upsetting me at all.)
Whereas I think of conflict as something that is unpleasant, not a fun voluntary activity, but the means to solving problems that seem like they could cause resentment later. The more I care about and respect someone, the more it matters to me that we solve our problems and that I be honest with them about how I'm feeling, and so the more likely it is that I'll bring problems up. I guess I notice problems more now that we're living together, too, because I'm the one with higher standards for living-space tidiness.
I think I need to work at remembering that the individual things I bring up to fight about are not, really, that important, so that I don't get all emotionally invested in winning an argument. And I wish my partner were a bit better at telling me what he wants. But we're doing okay. And we definitely don't fight eight times a day.