Stanley Fish had an interesting post in his blog this morning on domestic conflict. An excerpt:
"It is tempting to think that domestic quarrels are the occasional eruptions that disturb the otherwise tranquil surface of a relationship, but in fact the reverse is true: strife, in progress or just around the corner, is the default condition of domesticity, and tranquillity is the anomaly...
Is there no way out of this unhappy spiral? Is mutual accusation the only possible career of a quarrel? Can’t we learn from our mistakes? Well, there are three things to know about domestic quarrels. The first is that they have no beginning. There is no bell that announces the passage from ordinary and amiable conversation to conflict. You only know you’re in one when it has already been going on for a while. In this genre, in medias res is all there is."
Fish's post clearly grew out of a fight he had with his wife, and the observations are certainly valid though the advice isn't that valuable. I liked the comments the best, including this one from Bill:
"All relationships engender conflict and of course conflict generally leads to tension and, ultimately, disagreement and argument. It occurs to me, however, that there is something wontonly self-righteous in the semantics of argumentative discourse, which makes it all the more challenging to break through to making up (though it gets easier as I grow older). Is it even realistic to imagine that one could be humble in fighting while retaining a spine and still being an attractive personality to heir partner? Good fighting seems to lead to good loving, at least in my experience."