Contempt Breeds Familiarity
Nothing helps a relationship along as much as a lively debate. So they tell me. Fortunately, to facilitate this, my partner and I agree on absolutely nothing at all. We exhibit utter polar disagreement in everything, ever, which comes as no great suprise, what with me being a calm, rational, spiritual kind of guy and she being a dangerously violent psychopath.
Factor in that I am male and therefore responsible for the whole of gender warfare since Adam and Eve and yes, we do live in interesting times! This also opens up a whole field of sub-arguments grounded in grammatical and semantic disputes which make it impossible to just say something and walk away.
I know peole who use the technique of EASING into arguments gently over a period of time, but The Best Beloved and I prefer the Ground Zero to Mach 3 in 1 second method.
Such topics for animated discussion include:
Am I allowed to find her friends attractive....(apparantly not)
Women who leave all the doors open.
Why women put the central heating on full blast and then open all the windows to let the heat out....
The best way to hang out washing...
Playing the same mindless game (or derivation thereof) on the computer for 12 solid hours... not me this time !!!!
Best Beloved enters the room and a woman in a television programme is slightly undressed. "Oh, so you're watching HER again..." "No..its just ON". Repeat endlessly for the duration of the programme
Whether I should charge her for these discussions and claim she is recieving Therapy....
She starts by saying..."but all the other men I've been with...." I could hug her for that one.
When she really over acts as she catches me sniffing her underwear from the laundry basket...
When I tell her at least it's not her friends underwear....
Cooking: Chicken uncooked = 90 mins Oven chips = 20 mins.. All in at once..
To her, sweet 'n sour translates magically into Cremated 'n Fatal.
When making cheese on toast means utilising every pot, pan, tureen, wok, grater and colander in the building and she says... "but I NEEDED them...".
In the art of communication, timing is of critical importance. The Best Beloved has this off to perfection. She will institute a complex financial theorem at the exact time I am leaving for work or in the middle of putting out a kitchen fire (hers). Or best of all, during the last 10 mins of a particularly tense thriller that I have watched, undisturbed for the last 2 hours.
We usually close our animated discussions with the complex bonding ritual of me curling into a ball, protecting my head, whilst The Best Beloved kicks me in the kidneys as hard and as often as possible...
Yes, as time goes by, I really think we are becoming closer.