Love Question 19
Why don’t we take a break from discussing ages and answer this week’s Love Question from Short Sweet Love Poems?
As always, feel free to discuss in the comments and/or link to your blog where you have answered the question.
In a relationship, there are bound to be areas that are sore points for both people. For instance, your partner may not take your views on his family too kindly and on the other hand, you may not like him bringing up a past incident in your life.
Whatever they are, we may have sensitive spots in each of us that we do not like to be disturbed without releasing a host of negative emotions such as anger or frustration. In short, certain subjects can be touchy and basically not up for discussion in a relationship. Because they can be a constant source of disagreement, many people actually avoid those irresolvable sensitive topics to preserve harmony in their relationship.
For Love Q #19: Do you think avoiding a touchy topic helps or hinders a relationship?
This is another one of those where the line is drawn in different places for different couples. In general, though, I think it depends on the topic, how it got to be a touchy topic and how direct of an influence it has on a relationship.
For instance, take the topic of having children. That can have a huge influence on the relationship and could severely hinder things if left alone for the sake of keeping the peace. However, if you both agree on the having/not having children but it got to be a pushy topic because one partner natters on about it endlessly, then the partner in question would be doing the relationship a favor by stepping off it for a while.
I hope I’m making sense.
In the end, it all depends on the circumstances. In the past I would have said that you need to talk about as much as you can, but I have since learned the value of leaving well enough alone to keep the peace when discussion doesn’t solve anything.
September 7th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I think all of us have to learn how and when to talk about sensitive things. If we don’t talk about it, we are just leaving things to fester. Unless of course, over time, we learn to accept and gradually make it into a non-issue.
September 7th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Very true. I think there are steps involved, though. Deciding if it’s a big enough thing to turn into an issue or if you think you’ll get past it in time/it’s not a big deal. If it is, how/when do you approach it so things don’t turn into a fight.
So on and so forth.