Every Couple Has a Hot Button. What’s Yours?
Posted by Laurie
It’s taken me two years to figure out what leads my husband and I to bicker about little things like how much our son ate for breakfast and whether he’s trending upward or downward in hour of sleep. This hot button that that creates our fights is… math.
While my husband’s job relies on numbers and calculations, mine relies on words and thoughts. It’s not surprising then that as we experience life with our son, my husband is obsessed with the numbers of our son’s life, while I am not. I’m good at math, but I simply don’t remember how late my early-rising son slept last Friday. “He got up early! Who cares if it was 5:20 or 5:35? It was early!” My husband cares.
Any attempt by me to contradict my husband’s numbers, or to persuade him that the numbers don’t matter, is dumb. We don’t resolve anything and we end up frustrated with each other. So I’ve reached a new place mentally. I will give in to his numbers. He probably does have a better memory for the numbers, so why fight about them? Regardless, the numbers don’t mean much to me. It’s the present moment or the next morning wake-up time that matter. It’s the fact that our son is talking more and more that matters to me, not how many words he knows.
Today I make a pledge: I’m not going to have those dumb arguments anymore. Now that I am aware of our hot button, we can avoid it.
What repetitive dumb arguments do you have? What are the triggers for your couple spats? A certain person? An event? A memory? Numbers? Your child’s eating habits? What would happen if you decided that you would no longer fight about this issue?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 10:29 am and is filed under Balance & Fairness, Emotional Support. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.
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