THAT'S MEN:Couples who have regular rows can remain close
‘OH SHUT UP!” A woman on the other side of the Luas line was addressing her husband who had muttered something or other when she got off the phone.
Her voice rang across the track and briefly drew the attention of a man who was playing Angry Birds on his phone – appropriate in the circumstances. The man returned to his game and left reality to itself.
I would place the couple in their late 50s, maybe a little older. The man uttered some response. She ignored him. It struck me that she was not a woman I would want to be married to.
Then they were standing side by side reading a Luas notice which had caught their attention. Evidently, her sharp tongue had not caused a suspension of communication, though I noticed that at no stage had they looked at each other. Each addressed the other by speaking to an invisible audience.
It was then that a thought came winging into my mind. It was this: a certain level of hostility is necessary for every long-term human relationship to survive.
At first I was taken aback, but then I reconsidered. After all, this pair were still together. Instead of flinging each other onto the tracks, they were calmly reading and critiquing Luas literature.
And, come to think of it, I have known couples to have hectic regular rows but to remain close to each other.
What they are doing is re-setting the distance between them to one that works for them. The alternative is for each to disappear into the other person, and most of us don’t want that.
I have written here before that conflict is inevitable in marriage because human beings are just too contrary to be able to live in harmony all the time. But maybe that’s not it: perhaps conflict is what enables two people to live together in some degree of equality.
People come into relationships with different histories and personalities. It stands to reason that their rough edges will rub against each other the wrong way. To put it more bluntly: each partner will fail, in some way, to live up to the other’s expectations.
Then the classic conflict begins – the conflict that can be summed up in the question, “Why can’t you be more like me?” Unless one becomes completely subservient to the other, the conflict is likely to go on flaring up ad infinitum.
Ultimately, with luck, each can accept that the other is never going to be perfect and the level of hostility goes down.
The problem with us human beings, though, is that we may accept reality but we often do it with ill grace and so hostilities break out every now and then.
That’s alright: it keeps everybody in their place, so to speak. In other words, the fight is really about equality.
Perhaps my thought can be rewritten as follows: a certain level of conflict is necessary to maintain equality in long-term human relationships.
Needless to say, this is not an invitation to be an obnoxious bully or a head-wrecking whine. Sometimes, the level of conflict that is needed to keep a particular relationship going is just too high to pay.
I said above that most of us don’t want to merge with another person, but there are exceptions. These are people whose insecurities are so deep that they expect their partner to merge with them and who will use emotional or physical violence to get their way.
Usually, the price of the relationship with these people is intolerably high.
Sometimes the conflict between partners is hard to figure out if you’re watching from the other side of the tracks. After all, the wife (as I’m assuming she was) in this case was loud enough to be heard at a distance.
But we don’t know what the husband was muttering. It may not have been sweet nothings coming out of his mouth.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is free by email.