here is a secret. part of me actually likes fighting with my fiancé. before you get your panties in a wad  hear me out. Brandon and I rarely fight. I am SURE this will change and we are soon to spend all of our days together and surely things will occur. we have been dating 15 months and engaged for 10 days. while dating we had honestly probably 2 fights. one knock out drag out fight, and another where I got mad and we talked about it and it was over. for the first six months of dating we didn't fight. at all. literally. and i would talk to my friends and say "i want Brandon and I to fight." and they'd look at me like I had three heads which you may be looking at your screen right now and thinking the same thing.

here is why: I wanted to see how we would fight. Would we yell? Would we listen well? Would we be honest about things? Would things come out in fights that we had been holding in and building resentment about without ever expressing them until the lid came off the pot and we fought? Would we seek forgiveness? Would we need space? Would he push me to tell him what was wrong when I inevitably said "nothing" when asked?

I'm not always great at sharing my feelings. I'm really great at being honest until I actually feel hurt about something. Then I close up like a little clam. My poor family knows the struggle of my silent treatments, refusing to actually acknowledge hurtful things. I've tried hard to get better at letting people in in the moment. The first time we fought I remember driving around in silence with Brandon, who surely did not actually know why I was mad or refusing to talk, but who has always been very gracious and patient in all things. I remember him saying something to the effect of "ok yeah you can be mad but when we get to (insert destination here) we need to talk about this." He gave me space but also acknowledged what needed to happen without me even telling him that's what I needed.

This weekend (7 days after getting engaged) we had a huge fight. The subject of the fight mattered in the moment, but it doesn't matter now. What does matter now is that Brandon listened really well, he apologized, and he gave me a real plan of how to change the situation, he gave me endless words of affirmation, and at the end of it all when I was feeling worn out, sad, and semi sheepish for how I handled things, he gave me constant reassurance that it was all ok and that it was going to continue to be ok. He gave me space to be honest about what hurt me. At one point I could tell he was super frustrated with me and he could have easily reacted poorly but he didn't. I don't mean any of this patronizingly like oh pat on the head good boy Brandon. All this to say, we fought really well.  Yes, he did something that hurt me, VERY unintentionally and indirectly, but we fought well. Through my tears, through him letting me verbally process why things hurt me so badly, and through holding me tightly.

I'm CLEARLY no saint (see above paragraph) and I am sadly certain that I am going to hurt Brandon way worse than he hurt me on Sunday. I don't want to ever hurt him but I reckon it'll happen. I am hopeful and pray that I will have as much grace as he has shown me.

Brandon is also really good at carrying on with life. Yeah, it sucked to fight on Sunday but he didn't dwell on it (that I know of...). Without this blog probably a month from now we wouldn't even remember it. Similar to how I can't recall all the details of the other 2 fights we've had. We are good at choosing love and joy and are so excited about our lives together that we aren't trying to live in the crap times. When asked how my weekend was yesterday by my best pal Sarah in passing I said Brandon and I had a fight and she said unless it was funny or very important to our relationship I didn't need to tell her about it because it is over and we are ok. And that is very good advice.

So, fighting sucks, and it is hard and sad but also can be really great to see how you and your person react and carry on in love in the midst of it all.