In Retaliation

I have been married for five years now.  We have been together for ten years.  I recently had a friend ask me how I knew things were going to work between us.  I told her very bluntly that I didn’t… still don’t.  As a matter of fact my husband and I had just been through a series of brutal arguments, and it had crossed my mind several times that we wouldn’t work things out.  

I have recently discovered that our relationship is cyclical.  We have a pattern.  The entire cycle takes around four months to play itself out.  We get along wonderfully for awhile.  Then there is about a week of picking at each other in which both of our moods slowly deteriorate as does our patience.  Then the fighting begins in earnest.  Sometimes we can work our way up and out of it.  Like swimming towards the surface of a murky lake after an especially deep dive.  Other times we drown in our refusal to give way.  Then it is another week of cold shoulders and withdrawn love.  Finally one of us realizes that we don’t have to kill our relationship in order to stand on principle. I can see how easy it is to forget how to love this other person, to believe that we really mean these small things we say to each other.  To cycle forever downwards until there is no surface any more.  What is more important, that we fight for what we want or that we give for what we want?

This entry was posted on February 18, 2009 at 2:59 am and is filed under relationships with tags love, Prince Charming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.