This Is Why We Fight

I have had a lot of arguments with my ex over the seven years we were together. Most of them could have been avoided, and more of them were over something ridiculous, but it is my opinion that all of them were necessary. I am the kind of person who needs someone to fight with me. I need that back-and-forth, that five minutes of hurling obscenities and name-calling, and then I need to realize I'm being a dickhead and apologize, and I always do. Gino and I fought like crazy, at least twice a week, for the duration of our relationship. I am not counting the two months near the end, when he stopped fighting with me because he had already checked out. We fought over really important things (like what we were going to do about that one pregnancy scare) and we fought over really stupid things (like whether pickles "belonged" in tuna salad). I am not exactly proud of this, the fact that I am difficult and need someone who will rise to the occasion and fight out every little thing with me, but everyone has something that they need. Some people need the person they are with to sit there silently while they vent, some people need to keep everything in until they develop a bleeding ulcer. I need to get everything out in the open, to outline, in perfect detail, just what exactly is pissing me off, and then I can get over it. The make-up sex always helped with that as well, because, of course, Gino and I had crazy Aries-on-Aries make-up sex after a fight.
I was with Gino again the other night, even though every single one of my friends has told me I shouldn't. If we are at his parent's house, though, and we aren't really alone, I don't feel like I'm really risking that much. He asked me how I'm doing. "I'm okay," I said, "I'm really busy. I'm not lonely, really, but being alone is still hard. And I miss you."
Gino looked at me, kind of suspiciously, and asked, "What do you miss?"
"I miss fighting with you. I never fight with anyone anymore and so I have all of this built up aggression. Don't you miss it?"
He looked at me, still suspicious, as if he was afraid I was trying to trap him into something. "Yeeaah?" he finally said.
"You don't miss fighting with me?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, I do, kind of. Fighting isn't good, though," he said.
"Whatever. Fighting can be good. We hardly fought at all leading up to when you broke up with me, and you know why? Because you didn't care anymore," I said.
He nodded, halfway there to the point I was making, but I let it drop because I didn't feel that I was really making myself clear. I never really do when it comes to this topic. Most people do not understand what I mean when I talk about needing to fight. I don't like fighting, I am not proud of myself for feeling that I need it, but nonetheless, I do. A lot of the people I talk to are uncomfortable with just the topic of fighting itself. Admitting that you fight with your other half, according to most people, is admitting that there is something wrong, that you can't just be civil with each other. I realized this before I was even involved with anyone. I can remember, when I must have been 21, going to the bar near our house and a friend of my sister's asking me, "Where's Sarah?"
"At home with Ed," I explained, referring to Sarah's boyfriend at the time.
"Oh, what are they doing?" she asked.
"I don't know. Fighting, fucking, what they usually do," I said.
A look of judgement came over her face that was, I felt, unwarranted. "They fight?" she asked.
I didn't see what the big deal was. Sarah and her boyfriend fought often enough, but it wasn't as if they beat the shit out of each other on a regular basis. They just had couple's spats, and they were usually over before they even really got going. Fighting was completely normal, in my opinion, and not just because I was used to it. "Yeah, doesn't everybody?" was my response, but I was starting to see that, no, not everyone fights.
I don't know where it even started, this need to fight stuff out, or leave in a huff for a little while, rather than have a calm, fair discussion about something. The times that Gino and I attempted to discuss things in a calm, rational way, we each just got more annoyed and the fight lasted longer. We both used a fight, big or small, to let some of the pressure off. This need to fight about things can't have come from my childhood. It's hard to remember everything from my parent's marriage, as they got divorced when I was 9, but I don't remember them fighting. I remember my mom being a wiseass and my dad kind of being amused by it, but I don't think they fought things out all that much. My dad isn't a fighter. He has zero interest in telling my stepmom in excruciating detail just how angry the way she stacks newspapers at the end of the counter makes him. He doesn't trap her with a twenty-minute-long monologue about how much it annoys him when she loses her keys or forgets to pick something up. He just moves the newspapers to the recycle bin, locates her keys, pours himself a glass of whiskey, and watches some Nascar. The one time I saw him bring up something she did that got on his nerves, it was completely irrelevant to the conversation and we all kind of had to laugh at it. Debbie was complaining about something to do with how much my dad spent on groceries that week (my dad has a food-shopping addiction) and for the first time, my dad got pissed. He initially tried defending himself, bringing up the fact that he did most of the cooking and he could spend as much money as he wanted on whatever groceries he wanted to buy, but then he lost his train of thought in the midst of his argument and pointed at the microwave, yelling, "And you always stop the microwave when there is one second left! And then the light flashes all day! Why can't you just let it stop on its own?"
This is one of the only real arguments I can recall my dad having with my stepmom. It was too funny to even really count as an argument at all, since it ended with my stepmom and myself both getting church-giggles and running out of the room. My dad and my stepmom bicker about things, but they don't have huge, screaming arguments all the time. They have a great marriage, and they don't need to fight. Neither do my aunt and uncle, who never fight. They don't need to. They prefer to avoid an argument and they don't feel that they are missing out on anything by not fighting. I have felt, since my marriage ended, that I am missing something by not fighting with anyone. I am worried that I will meet someone else, they will be great for me in a lot of ways, but they will either refuse to fight with me or be scared off by the fact that I think arguing is important. I understand why people don't like to argue. No one really likes being yelled at, after all, and it is much easier for most people to just not bring something up if they know it will start a fight. For me, though, it is harder to keep it in and avoid an argument. If something is bothering me, I would rather get it out, loudly and, usually, in a poorly-timed manner, than not say anything. And, if something is bothering someone else, I also prefer that they get it out instead of bottle it up. I might move past the need to fight eventually, but for now, it is still something that I need.