mates.

We were fighting, and I guess we'd about reached the end of it without making up. At the beginning of the fight, I thought he was wrong and he thought I was wrong. Now, at the end, I was still pretty sure he was wrong, but it was hard to say because maybe he was right and man, I was just so tired. Either way, there didn't seem to be anything left to fight about without repeating ourselves. So I went upstairs to bed. And that was silly, because it's not like I was going to get any sleep. Who can sleep when you're all wound up and puffy-eyed, because I always cry during fights, I am a crier and there's nothing to be done about that either.

I brushed my teeth, and looked at my post-fight face. In case you were wondering, this is not a good way to make yourself feel better. You will only feel worse, because not only did you just have a fight with your beloved, now you see what you look like during a fight. Maybe it's different for you, but I look very unloveable. Once, I tried to smile at myself in the mirror to see if faking a cheerful expression would help; I burst into tears anew. Some people are criers.

Here is the Catch-22 of the unfinished fight: I wasn't going to be able to sleep, because I was feeling all upset and unresolved. But the only person to comfort me was the person I was fighting with. Sometimes you have to make up without really resolving anything. One of those tried-and-true tips of marriage is to never go to bed angry. I used to think that meant to always stay up and have it out until you can come to a nice resolution and then fall asleep snuggling. But maybe that means sometimes to just shelve it and snuggle anyway, because after a good night's sleep, this will all seem stupid anyway.

Snuggling is a soothing balm for whatever ails you. Sleep is good, too.

So that's what I did. I went back downstairs with my puffy eyes, and told him I couldn't sleep feeling like this, could we snuggle. So I became the little spoon to his big spoon, and after only a couple of minutes, my body was ready to sleep instead of cry. Somehow, we can fight and then end the fight by putting our bodies close together and just not fighting.

I think that this is possible because even in a fight, we are on the same side. He has his perspective, and I have mine, but we are both on the side of making the relationship work. A problem has come up - and they will always come up - so we are addressing it. We can each assume that the other is acting in good faith. We can focus on whatever we are arguing about, the annoying issue that is getting in the way of us just snuggling.

Josh told me once that he feels like I am his mate, which was not a feeling he had with previous girlfriends. And I thought at the time that he just meant that we were supportive of each other, that he was confident that I had his back. And that's very true. We are a team against the world. But I think it means that we are a team against ourselves, too. Us the unit versus our individual egos and fears and limitations and just how freaking hard it can be to be with another person all the time.