Show your cards

In any battle — from a card game to war — keeping your strategy a secret is key to becoming the victor. You must keep your cards close to your chest, maintain your poker face and always keep your opponent guessing. If you do these things, you can pull the rug out from under them, kick them when they are down, and come out on top, again and again.

Except when it comes your marriage, I’m learning. Showing your cards is the best way to win.

Paul and I have worked hard on our marriage, and I’m proud of where we are as a couple and a family. Things haven’t always been unicorns and lollipops, and they won’t always be, but for now, we spew rainbows and cotton candy like an exploding toilet. It’s magical, truly.

Even on our greatest day, however, there are going to be fights. Actually, “fights” is a strong word. We don’t “fight,” I’d say we argue. Debate. Beat things to a bloody pulp til nothing remains but sweat and dust … you get the picture. Typically, we argue about little things, mundane life occurrences that don’t truly matter in the scheme of things. But with two bull-headed, stubborn know-it-alls in the house (our pet names for each other), a remark about where the dish towels go can sometimes escalate into a bit more drama than necessary.

We both have our quirks, and since this is MY blog, I will only speak about my own. If Paul wants to air his own dirty laundry, he can get his own blog (you’re welcome, sweetie).  One of my issues that I’ve repeated to Paul oh, 3 to 4 million times, is if he’s going to apologize or admit to being wrong, I want him to do it with sincerity and to MEAN it. Not just SAY it. In other words, don’t blow smoke up my ass. I’m a big girl. Fight me if you think I’m wrong. But don’t shut me up by giving me a “I’m sorry. You are right. I’m wrong” response.

It fills me with RAGE.

Seriously.

Paul and I don’t claim to be perfect at anything, but one thing I will say is that 99% of the time, we fight fair. No name-calling, no disrespect. We can argue, raise voices, slam doors, roll our eyes and act like teenagers with the best of them. But we NEVER get nasty. So it makes little sense that something as harmless as an unemotional apology would set me off so much. I knew I needed to do some soul-searching to figure out WHY I was turning such molehills into mountains.

It didn’t take me long to realize that it all stems back to, of course, my dad. I can’t escape this man.

But really, nobody can. Your parents can be a combination of the Bradys, the Cleavers and the Cunninghams, and they still will impact your future relationships. So I don’t want to turn this into a “woes me, my parents split up, my dad is mean” post. It’s not. What it is is a realization of how where I came from impacts where, and who, I am.

I realized that my issue (well, issues… this impacts a lot of my life) is that I never felt like my dad took me or my mom seriously. I can remember having good things happen to me, and when I shared it with my parents, my father mocking me or poking fun openly. I can remember bad things happening and him telling me to either get over it or, if he realized he was in the wrong, giving me a credit card to use rather than apologizing. After my parents’ split and our estrangement, there were several times we tried to talk it out, to work on things. But the NUMBER 1 thing I needed from him was ownership. I needed to hear him say he was sorry, that he fucked up, that my feelings were VALID. Instead, I was told I was “living in the past,” and to “get over it, it’s done,” and “we are both guilty and you don’t hear me carrying on like this.”

And as soon as he took that attitude, I stopped. I was not going to overlook my feelings, my truth. I was not going to allow him to sweep my pain away — the pain he caused — because it made him uncomfortable to admit his role in things. So ultimately, I walked away. And I’m glad.

But back to Paul.

Paul is a super genius. For realz. And while that quality about him is one of the top 3 things I love about him the most, it’s also a huge intimidation factor for me. I can’t stand the thought of him thinking I’m dumb, even when I am being dumb (it’s happened a time or two, oddly). So in the middle of an argument, when I need my feelings validated by him and he doesn’t, I immediately go back to that feeling of being mocked, being told to get over it. Which is unfair, because Paul is NOTHING like that man. Nothing.

So last night, after we had had a minor-tiff-turned-drama fight yesterday morning, I showed him my cards. I told him why I act the way I do when we argue. I told him why I fight back so hard and why I beat things to death. I laid out my strategy for defeating him, which is a battlefield no-no.

Even worse, he did the same. He told me what his strategy is when arguing with me, what his tactics are and what I can do to defeat them.

It was brilliant.

We know we will still fight. Hell, we’ll probably argue tonight. But that’s ok. Because I know that even though Paul knows what cards I have in my hand, he won’t exploit them, or take advantage. I won’t either. I will probably still beat the damn dead horse into glue, and he will still smugly try to get me to STFU when I’m ranting about some nonsense. But now we know why it’s happening, so maybe, JUST MAYBE, we can come to peace sooner and get back to making rainbows again. Get your mind out of the gutter, that’s not what I meant. Perverts.