I'm not very good at arguments, I'm so un confrontational that I'll try to smooth things down between friends and lovers if they argue while I am around, well not even argue but bicker.
I've been talking to my sib about this and we both agree that we never saw or heard any arguments between our parents when we were growing up. This is not good. I never saw how any disputes got resolved. I was not shown that even if you argue with your partner you can still love them.
When I have an argument with someone I care about, or am starting to care for, be it a friend or a lover then it scares me, I don't think they will want to know me anymore, I think that after this argument they will pick up their life and move on from me. I constantly seek the reassurance that even though they disagree with me about something they are not going to turn their back on me. My best friend here in HK is great at this, he is the only person that I allow myself to vent AT rather than run away from. I can tell him just how he has pissed me off with his actions and he will argue back with me, but with every email or phone call or face to face exchange he will throw in the line "but I still love you", and then carry on the argument. He knows that if he doesn't remind and re enforce that, then I wont argue with him, I'll just curl up in a ball and fear that I've shown him a side of me that he doesn't like so he will ignore all the good bits of our relationship and walk away. He finishes up conversations with
"And I still love you. Even though you rightly give me a bollocking on occasions"
"No matter what happens or how hard you try and push me away, I am not going anywhere. I don't do that. It isn't simply inertia. I am the singularly most stubborn person you can imagine when it comes to relationships."
"Well I love you too. But I still want to make you less vulnerable. I need reflective glasses so you see what I see"
This only works with him though, with everyone else I still panic when they argue with me. After all no one really likes me, I know this because my mother told me so!
