"what's our first fight going to be about?"

16 Nov 2023

many months ago, i was in a really excellent conversation with my partner about all the things we imagined our first fight could be about. he shared first and totally nailed several very likely first potential blow outs. then he turned the question on me and i responded with something like “it’s really hard for me to imagine both of us being so off our game that a fight breaks out. usually one of us has it together enough to hold the container for the other person…” but with a little agitation from him i came up with a bunch! and then we kept going back and forth and laughing and being real and it was wild and beautiful.

some highlights:

• we talked about the difference between a conflict and a fight. he said thinks it’s about when each of us are feeling understood and angry and then double down on trying to make ourselves understood by the other but the presence of anger would probably make it spiral out of control rather than towards understanding.
• we realized that we had backed our way into talking about the subterranean territory of issues that aren’t yet problems but could emerge to be
• we put out the idea that maybe we’d come back to this emerging practice every 3-6 months and see what happens…

truly, it was so much fun and i never would have imagined a more easeful way to surface potential conflicts.

i brought it up to two therapists (one who is a good friend and the other who is my actual therapist) and they both had really postitive responses to it! when i brought it up to my therapist he was like “you know, i might borrow that and give you credit for it!” i gave him full permission. he also named that one potential way to go forward from here is to do individual and pair preventative work. i was loosely thinking about that and hearing him say it made me sure that it was a good idea to actually act on that thought.

so anyway, i hope reading this will either inspire you to try something out like this! if you do and it goes well, let me know! or if you do and it goes terribly, i’d also love to know. or let me know why you think this would never work in your situation. it’s all good data!

ok that’s it for now. gotta go turn my sourdough….

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words / writing / post-processing
432w / ?? min / 5min