Picking Battles and Breaking Out of Routine

You can read every book ever written on dating and still have no idea how to have a relationship.


I'm learning more with every argument to pick my battles. My mom always used this phrase as I was growing up, and I never really applied it to my life until now. I am an incredibly stubborn and hard headed person. If I get something in my mind, it better happen, otherwise I'm going to fight until it does. This isn't an okay way to be. I love Dave with all my heart and I hate fighting with him. I find myself coming to points where I realize that arguing my point is only going to make our fights worse, and all I want to do is surrender and let him take the argument. I can't decide if this is healthy or not. I believe fighting can be very healthy in a relationship because it's important to communicate our ideas and feelings with one another. But at the same time, I often find it doesn't get me anywhere but in a bad place with the one I love. But then, when I give up, I feel left with all of these feelings and opinions and thoughts about our relationship that just go unsolved, and still continually bother me. And I don't know what to do about that. I'm at a complete loss at how to handle these things. It's important not to make everything a fight and to sometimes just learn to pick your battles, but when you do that you're left feeling like nothing was solved or accomplished, and you're still left with hurt feelings and unresolved wants. I wish I knew how to do this.


I wouldn't change my living situation with Dave at all. I love coming home to him every day and waking up to him every morning. My world wouldn't be half as fulfilled if I couldn't be next to him every night. But I do believe we made a big mistake by living together so soon. Because we live together, we find it much easier to form a scheduled routine that we don't bother too much getting out of. We don't date. We don't go on walks together and I don't get taken out to dinner anymore. I understand that relationships take their course and go through stages, and eventually, that's going to happen anyway. I just feel like it came too soon for us. What I loved about Dave so much in the beginning is how, though I was seeing somebody else at the time who never took me on dates or treated me to anything semi nice at all, Dave would woo me with dinners and these special times together. I don't even need a dinner. I don't need any money spent on me. I've been talking about taking a walk together for over two months; that would be sufficient enough as a 'date'. I just want out of our routine and back into this spontaneous, exciting, surprising relationship. We've gotten too comfortable. I wish I knew how to fix that. And I wish I knew how to make it happen without having to fight over it and complain to him that I'm not getting that. He continually brings up respecting his wants and needs, and I need mine respected too. We're both in the wrong, and I wish I knew how to resolve it other than throwing my hands up, apologizing, and letting it die out.

I wonder if it's only about picking battles, or if it's more than that.


I love him so much. I just wish we could have stayed in a fresh, new relationship for longer. It only lasted about a month, and that's just too short. When you get settled down, get married, and have children, you don't have nearly as much time to do those things you can when you're in a new relationship. You HAVE to be comfortable and routine. We're not forced to do that, we just do. It's our own faults for settling in with each other so quickly. And it's just a hardship in our relationship that we have to work to get through and over. And I'm willing to do that. I only wish we did more with one another out of our daily routine. I miss the newness of our relationship. I miss going out to dinner and then spontaneously deciding on a late night trip to the beach. We don't have the money for fancy dinners and long road trips. But we have time for a late night walk down our neighborhood or a cute Friday night date to an inexpensive or free local event. It would just be nice to take those opportunities while we still can.

I'll figure it out, I'm sure. And I'm far aware that we're both tired, we're both pretty broke, and we both have certain things we don't enjoy doing as much as the other. I'm just too change-focused as a person to continue a daily, repetitive routine when I am constantly with somebody I love more than life and could spend so much more time with doing fun and interesting things to better our relationship and grow us closer as a couple.