Fight! Fight! Fight!

A friend of mine with a notoriously sharp wit is in a fairly new marriage. She mentioned today that she managed to suppress her snark in an argument with her husband, taking the high road and diffusing the situation.

Screw that.

The Husband and I have fine tuned our arguments to the point where they don't even require direct interaction.

"What was that look for?" 
And I say, "What look?"
"Oh, you know exactly! What? Now I'm the crazy one? I'm the asshole? Of course, it's all my fault. It always is. You always manage to turn it around and make it my fault."
"I haven't said anything!"
"You don't need to!"

(I will admit to there sometimes being a look. Don't tell him I said that.)

Our fights almost always end the same way. After a brief cooling off period, he will sidle up and put his arms around me.
"You know you can't be mad at meeeeeee."

If I'm the one reconciling, I'll do something like stick my butt out at him and make fart noises and call him a poo poo face. Because I have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old boy. We may differ in our approaches, but the goal is the same.

But here's something we do very wrong - we fight in front of the children. Granted, our fights are generally snippy fits, and don't entail cursing and throwing and stomping. At worst, there may be some intense teeth-clenching or eyebrow arching. But the kids know what's going on.

"Stop it, you guys!" the girls will say. "Be nice to each other! You love each other!"  We look down at those earnest little faces and feel guilty and silently promise not to do it again. And when they say "Now kiss and hug.", we do.

Because showing them how to make up is even more important.

No segue, just a cute picture taken this weekend. Julia is engrossed, Katie is bored, and Henry is bummed. Yes, I did let him eat it.