RELATIONSHIPS / CONFLICT

What A Coffee Mug Taught Me About Stronger Relationships

It took a few years, but I learned how to better avoid arguments.

I was 21, and new to the world of dating. I’d experienced my first love, which had, in turn, led to my first heartbreak. Now I was living out the excitement of dating someone new.

And I was about to learn a lesson about relationships that I wouldn’t recognize until years later.

It was a couple of weeks into our new relationship. We were happily and excitedly ensconced in that wonderful initial passion of New Relationship Energy. Our time together consisted of nights out, great sex, and deep conversations long into the morning.

Then one day she asked me why I hadn’t thrown away a particular mug.

I couldn’t understand why she’d think I would. Yes, it had a chip in the rim, but it was still perfectly useable. There was nothing special or unique about this mug.

Other than the fact it had been a gift from my ex-girlfriend.

She said I should throw it away, as it was weird for me to keep a present from an ex. Especially as it was damaged. I thought she was being ridiculous. My ex and I were still friends, and I wasn’t going to be so petty as to throw something away just because it had been a gift from her.

I wouldn’t call what followed an argument. We weren’t far enough into our relationship for something like that. But we both knew if we stayed together for any length of time, the issue of this mug would come up again in the future.

I doubt a single one of you reading this thinks our disagreement was actually about the mug.

But for years, whenever I thought back over this, I dismissed it as her feeling jealous and me wanting to stand my ground.

I never thought any deeper into it, as I hadn’t yet developed the emotional vocabulary to understand what we were actually both saying.

Neither of us had.

Then one day some years later, I thought about this again and suddenly it all made sense. I had at last grown enough to recognize what it was I hadn’t been able to see before.

The mug wasn’t the real issue. It was simply the trigger for deeper insecurities.

What the mug symbolized for her

For her, the mug was a focus for her insecurities about my past.

When we had started dating, I was still only a couple of months out of my last relationship. Which, of course, had been with my first love and which had left me devastated when it ended. My ex and I also shared a lot of our friends, and so we were always going to continue seeing a lot of each other.

So my new girlfriend had very valid reasons to feel insecure. With my last relationships so recent, and my ex-girlfriend still in my life, she worried about the possibility she was just a rebound.

What the mug symbolized for me

For me, the mug was a focus for my insecurities about my sense of self.

In my previous relationship, I’d been too passive. Always afraid of doing something “wrong” that I simply did what I was told. I never spoke up. Always waited for her to make decisions. Rather than being myself, I tried to change to be what I thought she would want instead.

A here we were, and my new girlfriend was already trying to change something about me. And as small as that change was, I dug in my heels. I was afraid that otherwise, I would just be making the same mistakes again.

With hindsight and the wisdom of age, it’s clear to me now what the actual problem we both had was: we were both worried I wasn’t ready for this relationship.

She was worried that I wasn’t over my ex-girlfriend.

I was worried I didn’t know who I was in a relationship with.

And because we didn’t recognize this, there was no way for us to resolve the problem.

Even if I had simply thrown the mug away, it wouldn’t have fixed anything. We would have retained the core insecurities that had been triggered. Eventually, there would have been something else that made her worried I still had feelings for my ex. Eventually, she would have asked for something I would have worried was her trying to change me.

But if we had been able to be honest — with ourselves and each other — and recognized the core problem, we could have worked on it.

In the end, the relationship in question didn’t last long enough for the issue to arise again. We separated, and luckily we were able to remain friends. It became an inside joke, with us giving each other mugs as birthday presents the following year.

Eventually, I threw the original mug out. I mean, it had a chip in the rim and no particular significance to me. Why would I keep it? (Unless I was trying to make a point is a pointless argument, of course.)

But the lesson it taught me would have been invaluable, had I been able to see it earlier.

I have had many arguments with one partner or another since then — as well as other friends, colleagues, and acquaintances — where I could never understand how the other side could have such violent emotions about something I saw as petty and unimportant.

But, of course, they weren’t angry about something petty. There was always something deeper that the two of us weren’t acknowledging.

When you argue with someone, you need to recognize what you are actually arguing about. If you can’t see past the trigger to the core problem, you will never be able to resolve and move forward.

Communicate. Talk to your partners, and make sure you’re ready to accept your own issues, as well as theirs.