Relationships that tick... like a bomb.
ahhh...apologies for the lack of blogs lately my few, but revered readers. i have been innundated with work as the semester draws to a close. but i have been meaning to write the following blog for almost a week now, and i fear if i wait longer, it will be relegated to the vast chasm of distant memory.
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so last weekend i spent in new york again, barely a week after i had just left the grand city from spending thanksgiving break there. why so soon? well, mostly because i felt i had to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap airplane tickets i had scored almost a month ago. come on, $60 roundtrip. please, when will i ever actually have to pay for an airplane tix that is that cheap? one of those instances, like pants at the banana republic outlet store... too cheap not to buy.
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anyways, so i stayed with my friends again in brooklyn, this time they decided to actually be there while i stayed at their pad. well, if their lack of company last time was of any fault, they certainly made up for it in the colorful show they put on for me the first night i stayed. well, basically, the couple, which the girl happens to be one of my best friends from college, and her husband, which i know through her and am friendly enough with in general, had a big fight. if anything could be said as an instigator for the alercation (and probably what needs to be excluded from their lives if they don't want to have such outbursts all the time) is alcohol.
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after an enjoyable home-cooked meal, then came the second bottle of wine, and a few six packs of beer. my good friend, bless her, hasn't come to terms with the fact that she's not a good drinker really... or maybe she hasn't realized what verbal poisons spill from her usually sweet mouth, when under the influence. so basically, the drinks were fun enough until a certain comment basically set them off. at first, it was just something she said, which she probably didn't need to say, and that kind of made the guy uncomfortable, being in a group of guest at the time, eventhough all of us were good friends...still... some things like a couple's lack of sex (and reasons for it)... should probably be not expressed beyond the ears of said couple.
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well, once you say something, you can't really take it back. so from that point on, my friend still didn't realize, or would not admit that she needed to censure her words a little, again, the lack of restraint i attribute to the budweiser coursing through her veins. usually, she's slightly more selective although in general she tends to be blunt. and with more drink (since no one was stopping her...maybe i should have? it was already getting uncomfortable for me), came a new boldness, indeed, and attempt to basically pick a fight. finally, her poor husband decided that his wife was drunk and talking shit and frankly he didn't want to hear it, and off to the bedroom he goes, slamming the door.
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speaking of which...isn't slamming the door when you are angry seem like such a cliche? seriously, i can remember only one time in my life when i got really pissed, walked out and consciously, noticeably, slammed the door behind me. even then, i thought... hmm, how cheesy. anyways, maybe that was just a less than subtle message to his wife to shut the fuck up. of course, wifey was in way too good of a mood (or bad of a mood depends on how you look at it) to shut up and proceed in talking to us (the guests) and explaining in more detail her dissatisfactions in her marital life. ok, it didn't take long though before i told her...ok, so if you know you shouldn't say it (she prefaced her diatribe by saying, you know, i really shouldn't say anything ...as if that was some kind of exxonerating excuse)... than don't fucking say it! simple enough no? but pandora's box was opened, and so was the only recently slammed door.
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out comes hubby for a show down. if you got something to say about me, then say it in front on me. usually, that putting on the spot might temper some people's words, not my dear friend though. well the rest is history. or maybe it was just unknown to me because, once i felt like the fight was moving into the stage of needed an "impartial mediator"...whoa, time to get the fuck out. not that i am not concerned about my friend's mental and relationship wellness, but probably being there, being asked to take sides, and possibly taking them... not a good idea. so i decided to say i was going to retire.
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walls are relatively thin, and through them...as i tried to earnestly go to sleep, i heard periodically elevating voices, way too many nasty expletives directed right at each other. probably a lot of things were said that opened up old wounds and maybe made new ones. then i heard the voice of resignment and pure hurt, despite being self-administered or not. ok, you can be the brattiest little girl on earth, but i'm sorry, i am a total softy and can't stand the sound of a girl crying. so once i heard my friend start sobbing, her husband still in some kind of self-justifying argument with her brother (my friend's brother was continually in this scene, for better or worse), i had to get up and go do what i do a decent job of... if not mediation, i do consolation relatively well.
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doesn't take much though when someone is crying their eyes out. girls are pretty easy let's say. all you need to do is just hold them and pet them and do little "shhh"ing sounds. go get some tissues and a glass of water and say ok, you've had enough fighting for a night, here, let's put you to bed. and so the night ended.
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well, it actually went on a little bit more. in her receeding drunkeness and impending exhaustion, my friend asked me the question that i think has constantly plagued her and her relationship, maybe all relationships, no matter how long they've gone on.... "are we right together"?
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of course, being someone who has yet to be in a real long term relationship, i really couldn't honestly answer that "kind" of question. the most i could muster was to say that some of the things that characterize both of them might be obstacles, challenges in their relationship... but ultimately that's kind of a vague answer isn't it? of course, mismatches are obstacles and challenges. or are they? depends on who i guess.
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in my own shoes, i sometimes think that i'd like someone who is distinctly different than me. who sees the world in some very different ways. but of course, than i realize that there are some things i am probably unwilling to compromise in and that "my" right partner, would also see "those" things in the same way i do. but what are those things? and does that feeling of uncompromisability change as you get older? probably.
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my last relationship i like to think as my most "successful" out of the very few i have been so lucky, or unlucky... to have. and honestly, if not for some circumstances, it might have lasted longer than it did... just bad timing. but i remember, thinking, especially at first, this guy is completely incompatible for me, and sometimes throughout the relationship, i caught myself wondering, exactly... exactly... why was it that i found myself not going somewhere else... not in terms of another boyfriend because singledom was a definite possibility in itself. but what i think, in the end, made it... tick... was this notion that he was willing to "put up" with me and that he didn't demand that i change into something he wanted.
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could it be that that makes a relationship "tick"... is actually working on the relationship... and not necessarily working on what "you" think the relationship is or would like it to be. to simply work on the relationship in its day to day happenings. going back to my friend's argument, one of the hot points included phrases like... "you forgot me, or you ditched me, or you are never there" but those were also countered by ... "i am trying so hard to please you, to make you happy, but you don't ever think i am good enough for you, i am fucking tired of trying". hmmm, does it seem like there are a lot of "i" and "you" and "me"... not so many "us" or "we". maybe its just a semantic point of view and probably not helpful to try to decode in that way, things that are said, but it does make me think.
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what i remember about my last relationship was there was always a distinct "me" and "i" and a distinct "you". i think both of us were distinctly individualistic. we had our own lives, and our own friends, and we valued what was important in our own individual lives. but the thing was, that there was also a strong "we" as well. i mean, it's probably idealistic and probably me romanticizing a past memory, but when "we" were together, it was about "we" and not so much about "you" and "me". but when we were apart, we were distinctly you and me and somehow we were able to "compartmentalize" our minds and hearts in a way that we were still our own yet somehow, when we were together, a new "person" would arise, and only then.
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i dunno, as i type that, i think... bullshit bullshit. plenty of moments where i probably said... why are you...or why am i... instead of why are we.
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my friend and her husband sometimes seem like the perfect couple. there is some kind of distinct love that holds them together, but it's kind of a tattered tapestry of love though. more or less held together by tight interwoven strands of shared history, a "we" indeed, but each strand a potential beggining to unraveling of that we, when each strand takes a position of being either "you" or "me". but that's the inherent nature of an individual fiber, to be individual. somehow, i think, we have to allow that though and hope that the tapestry still stays.
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well what i do know, is that as a friend, i'll try to do what i can. but their lives are their lives and they'll have to figure out what makes them tick, and tick together. anyways, the day after, when everyone was sober, guess who got a free lunch for having to put up with such hoopla? ;-) score!
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posted by faux chink @ 12:24 AM
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