Anatomy of the Argument

Nothing vexes personal relationships than silly arguments. We know it can be infuriating and exasperating. And that is a very mild side-effect compared to where we sometimes find ourselves - deep in a hole that shouldn't have been dug in the first place. Then as we look up from the bottom of that hole we see a bright light and behold, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't I see that before?" You see, if we knew ahead of time where one doltish argument will take us, we would have taken two steps back before lurching half a foot forward. We notice that the deeper the hole the more it quickly resembles a long tunnel and how we now long to reach that light at the end of it, and be out of the predicament we created from the silliness of it all. Arguments that escalate to levels we don't really want cause temporary mental blindness that could lead to permanent regret.

Argument: "an exchange of diverging or opposite views, typically a heated or angry one".

  

I read, and I cannot attest as to how true it is, that more than half of arguments between people, man and wife, two friends, neighbors begin as a conversation over trivial things. If that is the case, why are we not capable of retracing the steps each side took to get to the proverbial hole, and get out of it?  The problem, of course, is that soon the argument had summoned peripheral elements into the discussion, feeding more heat into it - like a vortex sucking every little piece nearby that had nothing to do with the original focus of the discussion. A hurricane will keep its devastating circulation for as long as heat from the surrounding atmosphere keeps adding to it. Only cooler air drains the hurricane's energy just as cooler heads often put an end to or prevents arguments from intensifying into places people may not be able to come back from.

 The other tangential pieces that come into play are those plucked from memories, some from not too long ago while others from the deep recesses of an almost forgotten past. They are remembered but only if accurately so; however, we find ourselves being confronted by a set of altered memories, more often than not, kept too long as ammunition but not realizing that gunpowder does have an expiration date. And they're used by the opposing protagonists in an argument - the best scenario being that they could only be firing blanks all along, with reconciliation as the moral equivalent of a peace treaty.

  

Sometimes arguments ensue from things that should have been well below the threshold of silliness. Unfortunately, thresholds are defined differently from one person to the next. Generally, men seems to have a higher threshold than women when it comes to defining what is important and what is trivial. A husband may forget to do something once or twice and to him that might seem trivial. Anyhow, it may start a little argument. The pitfall a husband soon realizes is that  a host of so many other little misdeeds are retrieved from his dear wife's vast storehouse of memories. How many times did he forget to close the refrigerator door tightly, left a toothpaste tube uncapped, plates, coffee mugs and utensils left on the table when the sink is a mere 7-1/2 feet away. Dirty clothes, articles of clothing, that did not make it to the hamper twice or thrice are treated like articles for impeachment. Improperly shut refrigerator doors may thaw some of the food inside but is it worth the cold shoulder that lasts  for a day?

In all fairness, husbands are not immune from memory issues. That is, we forget often. Worse, however, is forgetting something over and over. We can't blame our wives for suspecting that we do it on purpose. We really don't forget, we only fail to commit them to memory. Men, husbands in particular, as a whole sleep well and how quickly they fall into it is legendary. Men fall asleep with the lights on, TV blaring, and explosions will wake them up only if it is within a 100-yard radius.

  

What perpetuates an argument lies in the eternal view that winning is paramount when, in fact, nobody really wins. The ecstasy of victory only lasts for a moment, a battle won is not worth the agony of regret. Below is a popular quote whose authorship or endorsement is no longer acknowledged by either man or woman. But its truth remains.

"A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of another argument."

Please simulate dead silence for a moment because I share the only antidote known by man.

Thus, all I have to say now is "Yes Dear".