The Long Haul Project

One couple's quest to explore the meaning of marriage by traveling the world to interview other married couples.

Archive for the ‘fights’ Category

Want to stop that recurring fight? Figure out what you’re REALLY fighting about.

September 19th, 2011

Fights. We’ve come to accept them as a sometimes unpleasant but ultimately necessary part of a healthy marriage. If you’re part of a married couple and claim that you never fight you are either 1) A liar or 2) In really big trouble because one or both of you is holding A LOT of stuff back.

From what I’ve read, the key to ending a fight once and for all is to understand what you’re really fighting about. For Tom and I, the most common fight is about driving. I hate two things in life:

1. Not being the boss

2. Driving

A rare photo of Tom and I NOT fighting in the car

That lands us in a situation where Tom does most of the driving but I get frustrated because I’m not in charge and behave like the ultimate backseat driver. I criticize his technique, emit elaborate gasps if he so much as goes through a yellow light and (this is Tom’s favorite) scream like a banshee if I think we’re in any form of peril (which we almost never are, although I still defend myself for the one time I screamed when he nearly ran over a squirrel).

No surprise that all of this gets Tom annoyed, ESPECIALLY because he pretty much taught me to drive when we lived in London. On the first day out, I drove the car into a bus. While no one was injured, it eroded my ability to plausibly criticize his driving forever. Except I don’t let that stop me. So most car rides result in me either criticizing, dramatically gasping or ill-advisedly screaming. That results in Tom getting frustrated and yelling at me. Usually sulking follows.

Every couple has their particular hot-button issue. Some couples fight about money. Others fight over chores. Couples of with kids often fight about child-rearing. Recently we talked to a couple who said their recurring fight is about how much olive oil to use during cooking.

I really wanted to stop our recurring fight about driving, and I figured maybe Tom and I kept having this fight because we weren’t addressing the real problem. When I asked myself what that bigger issue could be the answer I came up with was: control. It’s all about both of us wanting to be in control of decisions.

When I asked Tom what he thought our recurring driving fight was about, his answer was different. He said it was about respect. The mumbled comment I make about checking his speed makes Tom feel like I’m critiquing far more than his driving ability. It makes him feel that I don’t respect (and maybe even trust?) him.

So, I was right! There was something deeper behind this recurring fight. What amazed me was that Tom and I didn’t even think we were fighting about the same thing! No wonder this fight never had a resolution. How could we resolve it when he was fighting for one thing and me for another? And no way we could resolve it without talking about these significant and fundamental topics: control, respect, trust. These touch the very core of a marriage.Now that we understand those are the issues, we can address them.

The next time you find yourself in that fight you have all the time, stop for a minute and ask each other what you’re actually fighting about. You never know, it might put an end to that recurring fight once and for all.

Ok, what your recurring fights all about? We want to hear!

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Posted in fights

Tags: communication fights marriage marriage advice relationships

Does being ambivalent about kids make me a hypocrite? Discuss

June 22nd, 2011

Last week Melissa wrote about wanting kids, and while most of what she said gets my whole-hearted endorsement, there was one sentence that stuck in my craw. She wrote:

There she is again

I secretly suspect the people around me, even my husband, are waiting for the day when I “get over it” and am ready to have a baby.

Now, whether she means to be passive-aggressive or not, I think I know what she’s driving at, which is that, right now, our plan is to not have kids. And I’m perfectly happy with that arrangement. But if Melissa turned around tomorrow, or next month, or next year, and said she wanted kids, I’d get to the baby-making and I’d be perfectly happy with that arrangement too.

She can’t understand that I can be ambivalent about the idea of children, and therefore suspects that I secretly, desperately want kids, yet am subsuming this desire so as not to piss her off and earn myself more passive-aggressive digs in blog posts.

I get that it seems ridiculous to be ambivalent about something as life-changingly huge as having children.

But I’m also ambivalent about many other decisions for which Melissa feels there is a right answer.

Dinner at Gaslight or dinner at Beehive? I don’t care. Either is fine.

I mean that genuinely. Either is fine. Ultimately, there are pros and cons to either option, and I’m fine with not getting truffle fries if the trade-off is live music. Equally I’m fine with not getting the live music if the trade off is truffle fries. I guess I’m happy with the imperfection of either choice.

And, don’t get me wrong, there are many, many decisions about which I’m not ambivalent. This isn’t just a case of me being incapable of making a decision. When we were looking at apartments last August, we ended up choosing between two places that had different strengths and weaknesses, and we had to choose based on which strengths were most important to us.

When we interviewed Tony and Meghan last July, we talked about their decision not to have kids, and, somewhat like us, that decision was driven more by her than by him. But Tony put it beautifully when he said (and I’m paraphrasing slightly):

“I’m not anti-kid, but if it’s a choice between having Meghan or having kids, I choose her.”

So I’m going to co-opt that sentiment. For me, I choose Melissa by a huge margin.

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Posted in fights, Musings on Marriage

Tags: ambivalence children kids marriage

We went to Pennsylvania and forgot something very important

January 21st, 2011

This past weekend, we went to Emmaus, Pennsylvania to meet and interview Alisa and Mark Bowman. This was our first TLHP interview since September and our goal was to raise our artistic game.

We’ve been obsessively watching and analyzing documentaries for inspiration. We were armed with lots of expensive new equipment. We scheduled a prep meeting on Thursday night and went over every detail for the shoot. We were ready to make this interview the best quality yet. But we forgot something important.

We forgot that we’re supposed to be having fun.

For me, The Long Haul Project isn’t just about meeting and interviewing married couples. It’s also about the chance to explore new cities with Tom. But we scheduled this trip to Pennsylvania so we had almost no time to explore Alisa and Mark’s hometown of Emmaus or Philadelphia, where we stayed. The whole weekend was rushed, and therefore Tom and I were cranky. We spent plenty of time preparing for the interview, but didn’t even bother to make a dinner reservation for ourselves. After the long day, all we had the energy to do was grab a burger at the closest restaurant with an available table.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear we had a fight and went to bed angry. And woke up angry, too, in my case. The show had to go on, though– we needed to film our “post-game” interview, during which we usually talk about what we learned from the couple we interviewed. Instead, we bickered with each other. Eventually, the camera ran out of memory and the fight ran out of steam. We decided to get breakfast and spend a few minutes exploring the Old Town before rushing to the airport.

So, what did we learn? Well, after watching the footage back we learned that our fights are kind of pathetic and vaguely amusing (you can get a little sneak peek below). We were also reminded of why we started the project in the first place– so we could share amazing experiences in new cities together. So next time we’ll make sure we don’t forget the fun.