Overcoming lovers’ fights a choice, really

Dear Carolyn: What do you do when two people love and care about each other but repeatedly have the same problems that are seemingly unsolvable and lead to vicious, hurtful fights? – D.C.

Stop leading the unsolvable problem to a vicious, hurtful fight.

It is a choice. Every couple has unsolvable stuff, because every couple has two separate and imperfect people. But not every couple goes 12 rounds over a can of tomatoes.

You need to identify where you disagree, where that escalates into a fight, and where that fight escalates into ugly.

Then, identify what each of you is hoping to get from the other, and why neither one of you is getting it.

I love the smell of abstractions in the morning.

But the answers are always concrete: You both just want the other to do X. Right? And s/he either can’t do X, or refuses to, or agrees to but doesn’t come through.

So, you answer two more questions: Why do you want X, and why won’t you take no for an answer?

Try it now. The answer is no, you will never get X. At least, not from this person.

And this is where you choose to stop having that fight. You accept: S/he will never do X.

And then you consider: Which is more important to me, the person or X, since I cannot have both?

And then you choose: You stay with the person and DROP the ISSUE of X. Or, you drop the person. Fight over, whichever you choose.

Hi Carolyn: I am going to a wedding and I know an ex will be there. We didn’t date for long and I always knew he wasn’t the right person for me, but I’d had a HUGE crush on him for years so it was exciting to go out with him at all. The problem is that he can be very smooth, and charming and it makes me weak in the knees! I feel like a total dork when I’m around him and really want to keep my cool this time. It’s an entire weekend affair so I’ll have many hours around him to get through. Any suggestions on how to play it smooth myself? – S.

Enter room, wave to ex, trip over shoes.

That, or whatever else it takes to rid you of the idea that you have any chance of being smooth around him.

It’s precisely this pressure you put on yourself that makes you babble and spill things and reach for the spinach when you know full well it’s a fiasco on a fork. So, release the pressure, give in to nature, be dorky.

More precisely, don’t feel the need to be anything but yourself, even the adrenaline-addled one. For one thing, as experience already told you, it’s not like you have any choice.

And, if the only way to get his attention is to be perfect, then a big display of cool perfection wins you the chance to be under constant pressure to remain perfect lest you lose his attention again. Whoopee.

The right person for you is someone you feel no need to impress because you’re so comfortable that you forget yourself – and you have no need to impress the wrong person. Dance badly, eat spinach, enjoy.