Most of us tend to see arguments as a rather ghastly thing. It’s a little too close to violence. True love, we believe, is about tenderness, not insults and fury.
And we’re right to be frightful of abuse. But when done right, fiery exchanges have an incredibly powerful ability to bring new life into a wilting relationship.
Even if things are going well now, our connection will almost certainly wither if we feel we’re only supposed to show tenderness to our significant other.
Because to always be kind means to hide our true feelings.
No matter how good the relationship is, sharing a life with someone will lead to difficult situations that hurt our feelings. Whether it’s when our partner doesn’t remember our special song, when they stay late at the office and make us feel neglected and lonely, or when they speak to us about the groceries in the wrong tone.
What makes this all the more confusing is that tolerance and politeness work in most other situations. Withholding our little upsets and disappointments from friends and colleagues almost never does any lasting damage.
But this approach doesn’t work in our love lives. To bottle up our feelings here will lead to resentment and, eventually, to breaking up.
To keep love alive, we need to occasionally hate each other and express our pain.
“You never listen to me!” “You’re so self-absorbed!” “How did I ever end up together with someone like you?”
But rather than feeling offended and retreating, our partner will shrug off our outburst and understand that this outpouring of raw emotion is nothing else but a sign that we deeply care for them.
We don’t scream and curse because we hate them. We crucify our partner because we’re so lost on how to make things right that we explode in a helpless rage.
It’s not hate fueling our anger, but fear that we might lose the relationship and person we care about the most.
It’s similar to how a toddler might behave when daddy accidentally catches Mister Rupert’s teddybear neck in the car door, tearing off its head. The child doesn’t hate daddy, but because he’s unequipped to restore his closest friend to its original, lovely state, he goes berserk.
In sum, fierce arguments and fights are rarely signs that the love is gone. They often mean we’re terrified of losing someone who means the world to us.
Sometimes venting our hurt in ugly ways can be one of the best things we can do to express our love and desire for change.