It's almost 4AM. I am currently wrapped in a blanket after waking up from an uncomfortable nap. By uncomfortable nap I mean, have you ever watched a movie and fell asleep through it and woke up on the couch, movie's done, and you're too wide awake to go to sleep sleep but you should cuz you have to be at school at 8am? I hate those. I could and should be studying for my business law midterm which is taking place tomorrow night (or, I guess tonight) since I still have one more chapter to make q-cards for but I'm just NOT in the mood. I've been studying all friggin weekend and my brain is way too dead to absorb any additional information. What's nice is that I have a 12-hour school day so I'll have 5 and a half hours to study. It really only takes a little less than two hours to go through a chapter, which still gives me like 3 hours to actually memorize my q-cards and that. I might commit some spelling or grammar mistakes as I write this post, because I'm so tired. Like, I'm too tired to do anything useful but I'm too wide awake to actually put my head on the pillow and sleep.
I'm so excited for tomorrow to be over. Tomorrow night I will be writing my last midterm and, though I'll have to start worrying about my assignments again and my finals in a few weeks, I feel like a huge weight will be taken off my shoulders. Seriously. I've been studying my butt off for my midterms, so not only do I deserve A's, but I also deserve a break or a treat or something. I haven't hung out with friends (except on my birthday which was only for like 3 hours), I haven't had time to focus on my road test, get my Canadian citizenship application going, job hunt for the summer (AH. NERVOUS!), blog, work out, or go grocery shopping and cook for myself. I seriously have just been taking drive-thrus all week on my way to school, it's insane! I need to start being more frugal! But I keep looking ahead and hey, in less that 24 hours this'll all be over. :)
I just realized I didn't do a Valentine's day post. I probably forgot. So I guess I'll do it now since I'm running out of ideas. I came across a video by some movie critic dude on the top 11 strangest couples. Some of them I had no idea who they were, but I still enjoyed watching it. He's insightful and I like the details he picks up on each relationship, which takes an insightful person to pick up on. Not to mention the obvious fact that the details he picked up on were realistic things that every relationship faces outside the movies.
About a year ago I was on a date with a dude and as we're getting to know each other and asking each other questions, he asks me what are some things I look for or that I find to be important in a relationship in order for it to work. Though my answer here will be different from the answer I originally gave him, I will answer it to you guys.
When I was a teenager, I used to think that couples shouldn't fight, that they should love each other unconditionally, and not give each other reasons to start fights. If they do fight, they must not be right for each other. That was when I still believed in soulmates. Then I started witnessing numerous divorces in my stake, two of which involved the husband being a bishop, some where they'd been married for over 20 years and had kids, some even had grandkids. This opened my eyes to reality. Marriage isn't a walk in the park for anybody. Every couple is composed of two imperfect people whose heads may clash. I remember thinking to myself, "I don't ever wanna get married because this is too hard and I don't think I could have the strength to stay married if those people couldn't. If I do get married, it would have to be to someone I never fight with, who's 100% patient and perfect for me and whose flaws I can put up with. In the meantime, I'm gonna work on myself to make me an easier person to be married to."
Little did I know that no matter what I did or who I dated, I will NEVER be perfect and neither will my husband be. And my marriage will NEVER be perfect. I have this friend who I don't get to see very often anymore cuz she's so friggin busy and lame. But I love her. Anyways, back in the day where she used to come over all the time and stay up til 5AM talking to me, she was saying how arguments are actually healthy for relationships. Not arguments like you're yelling at each other, insulting one another and competing to see who's right and who's wrong, but just communicating and being completely open and honest with your spouse. For someone who naively held this belief that couples shouldn't fight, that blew my mind. I didn't disagree or anything like that, but it definitely opened my mind.
I've come to realize that it's true. I'd way rather be with someone who I've clashed heads with in the past but at least was able to make things better from there, instead of someone I'm not happy with but I'm not comfortable being honest with (or the other way around) and just stay that way. Obviously I don't want to marry someone I constantly fight with, but I do want someone I can communicate with openly and honestly. I think what makes someone communicable in a relationship is just loving and caring about the other person (even when you want to rip their head off) to the point where you're willing to listen and learn how to make them happy. When you love a person (even if it's the love you have for friends), you go out of your way to make them happy. Seeing them down makes you down. Seeing them succeed makes you feel accomplished. Seeing them hurt makes you upset. You can't rest until you see that person smiling again. That's not a sappy-chick-flick-movie feeling because I can honestly say that that's how I feel about my friends and family. As Brooke Davis once put it for me, "I used to be a bit of a bee for the sake of being one, but now I'm a bee for the sake of my friends and family. You do NOT wanna test that." Another thing that makes someone communicable is having traits like humility, tough skin, or a genuine desire to be better and more Christlike. When you're teachable, tough and you want to be better, your ears are open to any constructive criticism.
However, there's a balance that people need to find that I failed to establish on previous posts. You'll notice I always talk about how we shouldn't be passive-aggressive and that we should stand up for ourselves and let people know how we feel. I wholeheartedly believe that. How many times do I see people (especially women) with no confidence in themselves to open up so they just keep it in but they eventually get frustrated that there's no change so they just explode? So being honest is important for me. Looking at it from the other person's perspective, I'd way rather my partner tell me straight-up "Kim, please don't do/say this. It hurts my feelings." right away then if he didn't say anything and acted all weird and denied that anything was wrong if I asked. I have an impulsive problem-solver personality; if something is wrong (and it bothers me) I NEED to get it fixed right away so it won't be on my mind. I see that with my relationships, my house, errands, school, and work. It drives me crazy when I need to wait for something first in order to fix it. So for me, I NEED to get problems out of the way as soon as I can. I could never be one of those couples who say "let's just go out for dinner and forget this whole thing happened" before we can first sit down and have a rational exchange of thoughts. Or else I won't know what I do that hurts or bothers him and I'll do it again and he'll be upset. So I definitely don't want one of those sweep-it-under-the-carpet-and-pretend-it-never-happened relationships. But yes, if the problem is solved then I for sure think doing something relaxing that brings you closer together after you work things out is an excellent idea.
Here's what I failed to establish though: there's a way for you to be honest without being a jerk or a bee or nagging. Yes, you should be honest. But you don't have to raise your voice, name-call, accuse, assume, or hurt your partner in order to do so. There's a difference between "Oh my goodness you're such a douchebag! I HATE it when you say stuff like that, it pisses me off." and "When you say that, it hurts my feelings because of this and that." I remember learning that when you're giving your spouse feedback, you should always start your statements with "I feel" and to be very specific when you're pointing out things they did or said and how you interpret them. It's important to remember that people don't intend to hurt you, and most of the time it's the way you take it rather than their intentions that leads to the frustration. Another thing to keep in mind is nobody's perfect and in this life, nobody will ever be. I notice a lot of women constantly beak on their husbands for a bad habit they have, but fail to acknowledge their effort. That's where the Homer & Marge Simpson part of the video hit me. Homer screws up, but Marge sees potential in him and she knows he's trying, and that's why she accepts him and keeps coming back to him. It's so important to observe and to commend people for at least trying, because it means they want to change.
Another thing I've learned the hard way is sometimes you just need to drop it. I don't know if this happens with you guys, but sometimes someone will say something that upsets me the moment they say it, but give it a few minutes or a day or two to cool off, I forget and it doesn't bother me. So sometimes I do get genuinely hurt or upset, but I deliberately don't say anything right away for two reasons: first, it may not phase me if I just give myself time to cool off and second, if I say something now I'll probably say things I'll regret once I cool down. I've learned to ask myself "okay, is this really worth an argument? does this comment/action truly have a direct impact on my happiness with this person? will I get over it give it a day or two? if someone were to say what I'm about to say, will I be able to take it well?" before giving people constructive criticism. Otherwise I'll find myself nagging at those I love.
That lame busy friend of mine that I mentioned earlier also made a comment that kind of shook me at first. We were hanging out with a newlywed couple who was telling us that they fought earlier that day (which was true, but were only telling us with the intention to shock us) and the wife said, "it's important to find someone who works well with your temper so you can work things out" and my friend said, "Yeah, I totally wanna fight with my husband before we're married just to see how we are when we're at our worst and to know if our tempers work together and if we can work things out after". That's where my opinion of fighting changed. I thought if a couple doesn't fight before they're married, they'll have less problems when they do get married. True; if you're constantly fighting with your boyfriend, you're probably gonna keep fighting (if not more) with him after you're married. But what could also happen is you're dating a dude and everything's all fairy-tale and happy, you never fight, so you get married thinking they're perfect for you when really, you made that decision before you have the chance to really see their flaws. That's why I don't believe in the Mormon short-term relationships. There's exceptions, but I know that for me, I'd like to date my husband for a longer time than your average Mormon couple before deciding to seal myself to him. I wanna know as many of his flaws as I can so there won't be any surprises, because let's face it: on dates and when we're with people we're really into, we're on our best behaviour. Not because we're tricking anyone, but because it's a natural instinct. So I want to give it time.
I have another friend who was dating this dude. They were constantly fighting. I asked her, "At what point do you know it's time to stop trying to make it work?" She said when you realize you don't want to marry that person then it's time to stop trying. Which she eventually did. Adding on to that, I think it's important to establish a difference between a cycle and reality. A cycle is when you guys fight because of reason A. You work it out. Later, reason A shows up and the situation is exactly like the last one and you fight. You work it out. Later, reason A shows up with the exact same situation again, you fight and probably say the exact same things. And so forth. In this cycle situation, it's as if there was no effort from one or both the parties to work on that. Or maybe there was but the other party failed to acknowledge it. Whatever the case, that's not a situation a relationship should have unless you learn to let it not phase you anymore, because it'll just be constant frustration and no progress. Reality is when you guys fight over reason A. You work it out. Reason A comes up again and that'll lead to frustration, but your argument or scenario is different in the sense that once you do work it out, reason A is better comprehended by both parties. You work it out. Then reason B comes up. You work it out like you did with reason A. Then reason C. You work it out like you did previously.
In the reality scenario, yeah there's reasons A, B, and C whereas in the cycle all you got is reason A. In the reality scenario, however, each reason is a building block to getting to know your partner better, growing close to them, learning how to make each other happier, and loving them more. In the cycle scenario, reason A is a hammer that's tearing down all the other building blocks. So I think to answer the question I asked my friend earlier, if after you work things out you feel stupid the fight even happened and just want to make up for it and never let it happen again, if you feel like you know them and your relationship better, and you feel closer and that you love them more, that's where you know it's worth trying. In the cycle scenario, I think you'll eventually get tired of trying and in the reality scenario, you just want to keep trying because you see things progressing and it's rewarding to stay with that person.
Here's some love songs whose lyrics relate to this topic. Of course one of them had to be by Katy Perry!
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