
Arguments are actually, kind of romantic
I've come to believe that a strong marriage is built on arguments. I've also come to believe that arguments are, believe it or not, actually kind of romantic. When you argue about something important, what you’re really doing is holding each other's hand and saying we are about to go somewhere chaotic and terrifying but I'm not letting go no matter what.
It's powerful because each good argument is potentially relationship-ending. That's why it takes so much courage to start one. Love is what gives us that courage.
If we argue well, over the decades, eventually, there will be nothing left to really argue about. You will still have problems, that's the nature of life.
But the problems will come from outside and not from within.
This poem by Yehuda Amichai talks about our need to be right, to win an argument and the effects of winning. The way I understand "flowers will never grow in the spring" is that if you argue to win a fight, even when you win, you'd just end up with a loser. What’s the point in that?
Arguments are chaotic and terrifying but they can also be life giving and relationship affirming.
Here’s Amichai’s poem in full:
The Place Where We Are Right
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
house once stood.
Yehuda Amichai, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Read by Pádraig Ó Tuama