18 Comments
User's avatar
Madeline Howard's avatar

"heated chat comes as hot days do." <3

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

❤️ humans on earth just trying to love and live

Ellen's avatar

love this, and appreciate the window into your relationship. i'm trying to get faster at cutting to the heart of my hurt(hardest part). i have so much ego! so does my guy. but he has less than me a lot of the time...<3

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

It is indeed the hardest part! Noticing the patterns in our arguments has been the most useful trick for me. Seeing the repetition of the argument styles and finding that interesting, and informative, instead of frustrating, you know?

I like to think of all human characteristics as coins. I’ve found the things that most draw us in are directly correlated (like opposite sides of a coin) to the traits that most annoy us about our loves. Joe’s dogmatic perspectives on not accepting ‘rightness’ relate to his generous open-mindedness and distrust of authority, which I adore. Noticing that reminds me that annoying things aren’t problems to fix, but things to understand and appreciate in some way.

Anyway, thanks for reading this and I’m glad it might’ve been useful for you. I with you and your loves the best!!

Leah A-M's avatar

The heat certainly causes heated tempers. I always think of the climax of The Great Gatsby—everyone sweaty and snippy in that hotel room. It didn’t end well for them either.

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

As a fellow Minnesotan, I’m sure Fitzgerald knew all about the suffocation of well-sealed ‘personal business’ 😉

Thanks for reading and for this perfect reference.

annie & words's avatar

Tell me if I am reading this right:

“We were laughing after an hour. Maybe in another five years it'll take half as long.

But if it ever takes none, I’ll worry.”

As in, if it takes no time to come back together, then this is cause for alarm, for I have surrendered my piece as an individual inside my coupleship; my right to be angry and to clash, my inner desire to be seen, to feel respected, to be met in the middle. If it takes no time, it means we’ve given up, and we’re not trying anymore.

Is this correct?

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

Yes, 100%!!! We need our individual selves to make the couple work. And if we instantly agree, I have a hard time imaging our individual selves still thriving, OR that we’ve somehow lost passion for the couple.

Thanks for asking and sharing your analysis 💋

annie & words's avatar

Ooohhh! Like a dangerous meshing. Got it.

I feel this. 🫶

Student Of Life's avatar

And even when you’re certain of something, you can be wrong. I’m a high school physics teacher and I enjoy the indignant confusion my students express when I tell them that there’s no such thing as color, that color is simply a label that our brain assigns to different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation to distinguish them from each other. I had a cousin who didn’t find out until he was applying for admission to the Air Force Academy that he was color blind…so he lived for the first 17 years of his life completely unaware that his perceptions of the world around him were different from those of everyone else. So he would have argued with you not just about what type of pants your baby was wearing, but even about what color they were. He would have been convinced that he was right, even if no one else agreed with him about their color. Who would be right? Everyone? No one?

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

Totally ❤️ I hope for a future with more openness toward, and grace with, disagreement. In another comment on this post, I dropped a Voltaire quote that often comes to my mind: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one." I forget, but at least I too remember.

imarkanx || istvan markan 🍁's avatar

I rather enjoyed this post and its delightful rambling journey has left me panting for more…

But really, in the end, what are pants anyway? What deeper ontological meanings might we explore? Pants cover the lower part of the body in some fashion. Our human need to assign a designated purpose to a covering strikes me as somewhat bizarre. These pants are underwear. These pants are for sleeping. These for running. These for weddings. These for funerals.

Yet, no matter the designation, in the end our end is still covered.

Now, let’s talk forks. There are as many forks as there are pants. Still it puzzles me: can I use a fish fork to eat my dessert?

And do my pants need to match my fork?

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

😂😂 and as with the useless variety of these utilities, we mirror the useless variety of disagreements that all circle the same pattern... a pattern that shows our unique Venn overlap... Our differences that we can only see because of our togetherness... and isn't the shape of that kind of beautiful? We made it! It's ours.

Haha glad to exchange rambled thoughts inspired by each other... Thanks for being here :) xx

xena upside's avatar

Hmmmmm, nilson the point is good 👍

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

Amazing reference I hadn’t considered when selecting the soundtrack. I’m a sucker for a musical and a fable.

Sophy Drouin's avatar

"relational debris" MY GOODNESS

Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

Natural by-product of real human love 😘😘

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Jun 23, 2025
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Abigail A Mlinar Burns's avatar

Hello again Quentin. I thought I was going to share something about blame and division this week. But this one spoke to me. As does this Voltaire quote, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”