‘I love arguing with my boyfriend’

Odd confession: I get a feel-good buzz after arguments with my boyfriend.

I’m not some kind of debate-loving masochist — I usually run away with my hands over the ears at the first sign of confrontation. I’m also not one of those people who get a kick out of every weird made-up milestone, such as “we’ve been together five weeks today!”, “I just ate pasta with him for the first time”, or “we just had our first fight”. No.

I don’t enjoy the arguments when they are happening but after they are over and we have made up, I get a feeling of accomplishment.

My reasoning is that my boyfriend and I always have fruitful arguments. I always suspected I was highly reasonable and extremely fair [and also modest], and my rows with my boyfriend have confirmed it.

First, let me say that I don’t have many arguments with him. But that’s one of the things that makes it so great; we rarely escalate things to a row [mainly because he’s cool as a cucumber and I am too lazy to argue] but, when we do, we go through the horribleness of it and then calmly discuss our point of views and come to a compromise, or one of us apologises.

So far so normal, right? Well, yes. That’s what pleases me so much about these arguments. They are reasonable and solved calmly, the way I always thought it should be when you have a disagreement with a fellow adult who you care for.

My parents were entirely the opposite, they laid into each other and never got anything solved. But they had over 20 years to build up hatred and destain for each other and, while I can’t tell what I would be like if I had been with someone for over two decades, I do know that I have never got off to such a great start, argument-wise, with a man before, so I am viewing this as extremely positive.

For example, my last boyfriend and I never had a single argument. While this may sound like bliss, I can assure you that the lack of disagreements wasn’t because there were no issues between us. On the contrary, the fact that we couldn’t discuss them was one of the problems itself.

There was so much tension and so many unanswered questions bubbling under the surface but both of us avoided confrontations. We thought if we are not discussing the elephant in the room, then it wasn’t there. Had I been a bit braver, I would have screamed at him: “why is it that you never tell me you love me?” But I didn’t, because I suspected I knew the answer already and I chose denial instead.

Another boyfriend used to call me Teary McTearason because I used to often break down during our arguments. I tried to tell him that he was wrong but when he saw me puffy-faced and snotty almost every day, it was hard for him to believe me. That was a terrible relationship and it destroyed my confidence for a long time. We were ill-suited to each other [in fact, I will say he’s probably ill-suited to anyone]. Anyway, these were vicious, verbal attacks more than arguments.

So, it makes my heart soar with happiness that my boyfriend and I can [thus far] calmly discuss our issues. We never say dreadful things to each other and apologise when needed. I really feel that with every argument we get to understand our limits a little better and what is important to each of us.

I felt a little bit smug, to say the least, when he told me that he has never been into a relationship where he told his partner why she’s being moody and evasive.

I know you may be thinking that I am in the honeymoon period and it’s only a matter of time before I will start calling him names and he will start ignoring me and switching on the television to drown out my harassment, and that might well be true. But, while I don’t look forward to arguments, I do at least feel they are making us hardier for the future. Who knew it was even possible to be smug about fights?