Dumbo

J and I have been married for four years. And we have had maybe two or three real fights. Honestly, even those turn into brainstorming sessions after a bit of yelling. We both try really hard to be reasonable and fight fair and that works for us.

Today we had a very ugly fight in the car. Complete with screaming and red faces and very strong hand flingly on his part. For one of the first times in my life I actually really wanted to punch some one. Obviously, I would never do that but even having that urge (and it was very strong) scares me.

J is not much of a talker. I mean he will bore you to tears jabbering about video games or politics or sports. The man talks non-stop about that crap. But he is not good at articulating how he feels. And he is really not good about just letting some one talk something through. When we were first married it made me nuts. I would tell him about a problem and he would immediately switch into fix-it mode. I am an adult. I really do not need some one else to fix my problems. I just want to talk about them with him. Get his point of view. He has tried to do this. But honestly he just ends up sitting there, not even looking like he is paying attention. I know he is trying and he gets points for that but he is just not good at dealing with emotions.

But there are things that I need to talk about with him. And we are going to disagree a lot. And he can't do what he did this morning--tell me I was just being dramatic and ridiculous. He can't expect me to know what he is thinking. And he can't expect to talk about serious things once and then never again.

He married a woman. He is stuck talking about crap he doesn't want to. I may be like a guy in my love of sports, poker and most complex carbohydrates but we still have to talk. A lot more than he wants to. Tough.

So for the first time in our marriage, or our relationship, there is now a subject (which I do not want to get into here) that we can't talk about. That is one thing we swore we wouldn't do--I grew up watching my parents dodge any difficult topic. Politics, religion, controversial issues, their parents--they avoid those topics like the plague when at all possible. They have been married more than thirty years, love each other and my mother hasn't talked to him about any of those things since my sister or I were born I think.

I don't want to do that. J and I are not always going to agree. We certainly have not up until now. But even on highly personal and sensitive issues we have managed to keep the peace. With some effort we can respect each other's opinions.

That doesn't apply right now. This is going to be the big purple elephant in the room for quite a long time. I guess after a while we will get used to him. Maybe we will call him Dumbo.