Please explain something. Why is fighting with someone you are in a committed relationship with more painful than fighting with a spouse? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? When you fight with a spouse, shouldn’t it hurt more because you have more years invested, more commitment, and definitely more at risk? Not to mention that the spouse knows exactly where your soft spots are, and he’s never afraid to go there: well at least my spouses weren’t.
But so far, from my experience, fighting with a person who you’re in a committed relationship with is a whole lot more painful. Maybe it is because you don’t have that marriage commitment, and it’s not that hard to dissolve a committed relationship. All you do is say to your partner, “This isn’t working out for me,” and presto, it’s done. Over with. Nothing to worry about unless you did something silly like move in together, have children together, or co-mingle funds.
You’d think that not having that entanglement of legal issues would make the fighting easier because you could step into the escape door anytime. But it’s not easier. He could step through that escape door anytime too, and if he did, it would really suck because he’s so great to hang out with, and no one understands you like he does, and besides, he gives hugs to die for— seriously they are that good.
So maybe the fighting is more painful for the very fact you don’t have years of layers together. Years to build up resentment, years to become jaded, years to realize it really doesn’t matter what he thinks.
Maybe the fact that we are both new to this game and haven’t taken the dive into falling out of love, that the pain comes. Strange though, I hurt more from a disagreement from my committed than I did when I learned my ten-year marriage was over. Maybe there’s more pain because all my other relationships accumulated and stacked onto this one. So I am not only hurting from the current but also the past.
Maybe the pain comes because I care more what he thinks, says, and does.. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve allowed myself to open up more, be more vulnerable, and be more myself because I’m committed to that, and well, frankly, he lets me be the real me with all my humanness, flaws, and shortcomings.
Or maybe it’s like childbirth, I forget about all the pain in the past because it’s simply too hurtful to remember … whatever the reason, this is what I have to say: My current’s eyes are windows to a beautiful soul. I see his pain too. That sucks. I hate that.
I don’t know the answers to why I am hurting more. Why he’s hurting or how to stop it. I just know that sometimes relationships hurt—really bad, and I want all the pain to stop.
