According to all, and I mean all, the web links and books out there in the universe on maintaining healthy relationships, there are clear and correct ways to deal with conflict between couples. I have read many of these books, indeed, I have worked with couples on how to 'fight fair' in relationships. Sometimes I am guilty of forgetting my own advice. let me take you through the past 24 hours:
Yesterday I bought a dress. No big deal, you might be thinking, but this was a dress I thought I might wear to my nephew's wedding in May. So this was a dress that was much more than just a dress. This was a public statement about who I am, how I present myself, how I am judged, how fat/thin/in-between I am at the moment, how successful I am, how much I have or haven't aged and generally how I arrive down the red-carpet anxiety of family occasions. So you can see that the purchase of this dress was loaded.
When I saw the dress in the shop I thought that it wasn't the usual sort of thing I wear (it's a dress!) but maybe it would suit me. I tried it on and actually thought it looked okay, but it was a shaky ok. It was black fairly simple and eminently suitable. I came home and in the evening I tried the dress on so Ralph could see it.
Well, he didn't like it. It was black which he doesn't much like on me. It was a style he wasn't crazy about. He didn't think it looked that good. And then I asked the fatal question, the question every woman should know not to ask and the question that every man should never, ever answer. I said, "Does it make me look very fat?" and yes, boys and girls, he answered, and better yet, truthfully. "Not very" he said.
To say I was upset is to understate the ensuing situation. I was beyond upset. I cried. I shouted. I insulted him. I reacted much like a woman whose husband had told her she was fat. I went to bed, turned my back and fell alseep, still upset. How dare he say I was fat. I woke in the middle of the night and in the way of overweight women everywhere I drowned my sorrows in a cup of hot chocolate and two slices of toast at 3 am.
This morning I was still upset. We ate a largely silent breakfast together. I was reminded of the scene in Citizen Kane where Orson Welles was sitting opposite his wife at the breakfast table, each of them behind their individual newspapers. I fumed inwardly. I carried this all day and then at some point early this evening I was able to say why I was hurt and what might have been a better way to approach the delicate flower that I inwardly am. We both apologised, me for telling him he looked like a little Jewish cab driver in his flat cap, and him for not being a bit more sensitive. He really didn't think the dress was right for me. Was he right? Was I right? Did it matter?
The whole area of fighting fair in relationships looks so simple on paper, but in reality there are only a few simple rules: women NEVER look fat or old to those who love them and it is more important to be loving and compassionate than to be right!
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