People can be happy alone, but as long as others are coming in and out of our lives, we must make an effort to maintain each other’s peace.
Reklam
I’ve since mastered the art of fighting. Step one, apologize sincerely and as quickly as possible; step two, verbalize exactly what I’ve done wrong; and step three, assure the other party that their feelings are understood and valid. It took a year of living with somebody before I learnt these basic steps. In Korean, the phrase ‘cutting water with a knife’ is used to describe the brevity and impermanence of marital fights. I suppose the same words can be used for squabbles between friends.
I’ve learnt that my biggest mistake is taking everything as an attack and jumping straight into defending myself.
Later, I learnt that the way I dealt with conflict was due to what psychologists called an avoidant attachment style. People like me tend to phrase things carefully or beat around the bush instead of saying things outright, and though we appear independent and composed in the face of conflict, we’re actually trembling with fright. Fearing disappointment, we pretend not to care and write our problems off as trivial. I didn’t avoid fighting because I was mature, but because I sucked at fighting. And if I ever got hurt, I could always retreat into my cave and sleep it off. But not any more. When you get into a fight with someone you live with, there’s nowhere to run. Now that my back was against the wall, I had no choice but to face my problems straight on. No choice but to fight.
When I first heard the English phrase ‘cry me a river’ in a song, I scoffed at the idea of someone crying enough to fill a river. Initially, I thought the phrase meant something like, ‘Go ahead, let it out,’ but later on, I found out that it meant, ‘Cry all you want, I don't care.’
Reklam