Can a relationship start drama-filled and turn out okay?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are times when I read threads here where I feel like most of the world has a whole lot of drama in their romantic relationships: Lots of power struggles, head games, insecurities, craziness, ultimatums, flouncing, and misunderstandings that escalate to something just shy of thermonuclear war.

Most of these relationships seem doomed. Indeed, often people are talking about them in the past tense.

But do these drama-fests ever turn out okay? Do these big, loud relationships ever settle into something quiet and comfortable?

I’ve never experienced anything approaching DRAMA! cue jazz hands in a relationship, so I’m kind of a baffled spectator to a lot of the more interesting threads!

3

It did for me. I was a big, old, insecure baby who had drama with my future husband, my family and pretty much everything around me, and took that to my marriage. But after almost 18 years, I’m incredibly laid back now and we don’t hardly ever even have a tiff, let alone the World War III knock-down-drag-outs we used to have sometimes daily. If I stayed up to 4:00 in the morning arguing these days, I’d expect to have my head examined.

We are indeed the epitome of “quiet and comfortable.” Thank God.

4

I wouldn’t expect them to settle down, but faithfool proves it can happen. I think the drama is caused by two main causes - youth/insecurity and dramatic personalities. If it’s youth causing it, I can see it settling down. If it’s caused by insecurity and/or dramatic personalities, I don’t see that getting better.

5

Yeah it can settle down. My relationship with my SO was rough at first but there was something powerful holding us together. Love, I reckon. But at first he drank too much and I thought he was always looking out for a better woman. Three years into it and we started acting like it was against the world instead of each other. Now I can’t remember the last time we had drama between us. We have enough drama dealing with outside shit together!
Seven years together this month.

6

I had a drama filled relationship that settled down for me. When we started dating, our time together seemed to consist of binge drinking, cocaine snorting, wild sex, rampant jealousy, epic arguments and fights, and not much else besides. After about six months, we calmed down quite a bit, laid off the substances, and learned that we really loved each other. We did eventually break up after four years, but that was a desicion that we discussed maturely before acting on.

7

It did for us.

When we started dating ten years ago, I was 21 and he was 20. I had low self esteem and he was still influenced by his best friend, who was, in a word, an asshole (who didn’t like me). The first few months went by all right, and then at eight months (we moved fast!), we bought a house together and he started working in the oil field.

His schedule was 15 days out, six days home. I had very, very poor self esteem. Over five years of this type of lifestyle, I went through anorexia, bulimia, and alcoholism. All of this was due to my self esteem issues and jealousy. He is very friendly and had female friends. He was a young guy who went to the strippers sometimes. He made a lot of money and I spent it on clothing and other things that made me feel better about myself (up to $5K a month). He worked 15+ hours a day and was tired all the time, and all I wanted was a guy who would spend an hour on the phone with me at the end of the day, professing his undying love.

It sucked. We fought ALL THE TIME. Not only on the phone when he was away, but also when he was home. He finally made me go to a therapist when I was so skinny I was kind of gross and I had finally admitted to him that I was bulimic. Our relationship at that point was 95% drama.

In 2006 (I was still fighting my drinking problem) he was accepted in to the city Fire Department, his life long dream. He was to start training in the fall of 2006. About a week before he began his training, I broke up with him because of all the drama of our relationship. We still owned a house together, but he was staying at his parent’s house. Three days before he was to start training, he quit his oilfield job, and that day we went indoor climbing (we were still ‘friends’). He made a bad move and broke his arm.

I took him to the hospital. He cried. He was crying because he thought this was it for him and he wouldn’t be able to be a fire fighter. He was crying because he loved me and I left him. He was crying because he didn’t have a job and wasn’t covered for disability. I fell in love with him all over again because of his vulnerability at that moment. I saw who he was.

Since then, he finished his training and is a Fire Fighter. His attitude changed and he is so happy with his job that his outlook on life has changed. He’s just a happy guy. I continued with my therapy and am no longer fighting with eating disorders and have quit drinking. Going through the drama has caused us both to learn so much about each other that we feel like we just belong together. We know how bad it can get and strive to keep ourselves from getting to that point again. We went through the shit and now when we get in to it, we both realize that we’re no where near how bad it could get and don’t feel overwhelmed.

I think that drama, if you can properly work through it, can lead to a long, fulfilling relationship. But it take a LOT of work.

8

This is how it’s been for us. Although if I were to list the events of the last 16 months, they’d include plenty of dramarama: two separations and divorce proceedings, three moves - one cross country, a period of homelessness, an unexpected major life threatening illness and life saving surgery, the (brief) hospitalization of a child, one of us going back to college, unemployment and a major lifechanging business deal which WILL NOT LEAVE THE LAWYERS’ DESKS…I mean, it’s worth a season of Days of Our Lives at the least.

And yet, there’s been no drama between us. There’s lots of drama all around us, but it’s like we’re at the calm center of a whirling hurricane. Going to sleep being held in his arms, I have a brief sense that I should be more anxious than I am, but I’m just not. I’m safe, I’m loved, and the world can whirl without us.

9

Oh, ours absolutely did. Thirteen years ago we started with all kinds of things. My best friend even told me it would never work out. She had valid reasons for saying so…but as it turned out, she was wrong.

10

I think the source of the drama has everything to do with whether the relationship will “calm down” and make it. Often it is an obvious issue or person outside the relationship that is the root cause, and if that can be removed or fixed, the problem goes away.

I would say my wife hasn’t had too much drama over the years herself, but she is one to make friends easily with people on message boards, usually over TV shows she obsesses about. 95% of these people she meets are normal or at least if they are weird, they keep their issues to themselves. The other 5% are complete train wrecks that suck her into their drama, and I feel I have to systematically help her get rid of these people like weeds. I’ve had plenty of friends on my end as well who otherwise have a great relationship with their spouse, but the spouse’s brother or sister is an off-the-rails idiot who gets into constant trouble/debt/whatever and always needs to rescued from their own self-made disaster. That can really wear down a relationship.

The other thing is that sometimes a major tragedy can change everything. A buddy of mine married the ‘attractive crazy girl’ who was always belittling him in public and was just plain nasty to be around. Then one day he got leukemia and almost died, which really put the fear of God into her. She suddenly realized what a good thing she had with a supportive husband, and her attitude changed 180 degrees. Of course now that he’s gotten treatment and is recovering, her attitude is starting to change back…

11

Well, a lot of posters have chimed in about surviving drama. I’ve yet to read any proof that a relationship can survive jazz hands, though.

12

I assume you are working on a screenplay. So what should happen with the Harry character is …

13

I know that feeling, and that’s a beautiful way to express it.

14

It can, but it needs two essential ingredients: maturity and a willingness to change one’s perception. You generally cannot have one without the other.

15

Oh yeah, it can work out. Both my husband and I came to our relationship 20+ years ago with plenty of baggage and lots of insecurity-based issues. We even split briefly shortly after we got married (although we kept dating). We made the decision to try and talk through all the problems and work on creating good habits. We had a couple drama-filled years that eventually began working themselves out and after about 5 years we only had the occasional flare-up once or twice a year. I can’t recall the last time we had an argument or an issue that we really struggled with.

We never stopped being best friends no matter what. We both had pretty dysfunctional upbringings that had to be worked past. So yes, it can work out but everyone needs to be prepared to really work on it and want it. Rule number one - once you know your partner’s hot buttons, never press them.

16

I’m glad to hear that people can say a relationship can start with drama and work out. I’m in a new relationship and you could say there is drama and I’m hoping her and I could have a good relationship

17

Those are two very different questions.

My maternal grandparents’ marriage was over 60 years of “making war so we can make peace” followed by 10+ more of “making war because we don’t know any other way to communicate, but sadly the peacemaking doesn’t work so well any more”. And yet, they were both absolutely crazy about each other, and anybody who made the mistake to, for example, make any noise more complex than a non-commital “hmhm” when she was cursing his ass would have had his head ripped off (if disagreeing with her, for disagreeing; if agreeing, for attacking him).

It worked for them; pity it worked like shit for their daughters, though.

18

I wish you hadn’t brought up jazz hands. I was just getting hopeful…wistful, even.

hh

19

I think it’s also important to remember that problems written down can seem a lot bigger than they are in real life. Which is why you’ll see a lot of ‘omg get a divorce’ and ‘omg get counselling’ with the OP coming back and going ‘woah woah woah, it’s not that bad’.

20

There’s a difference between people who have dramatic episodes and those who thrive on drama. Some people just live for chaos. They’re not happy unless everything is a tragedy of some sort.

21

I came from drama, that was part of the problem. I mean, I come from a family, that when my cousin asked his wife for a divorce*, HIS MOTHER laid down on the floor and said he could just step over her dead body as he went out the door, since he was going to kill her with the heartbreak. Let me make it clear, his mother, not his wife. This happened about a year ago. She’s over 60. That would be MY AUNT, one of the defining influences of my young life.

*It wasn’t even a real marriage. It was a marriage for immigration. But we’re supposed to marry for life and all that jazz. I swear, that rule causes so much misery sometimes!

My whole family was full of drama like this. And my SO’s family had NO drama, to the point where they were (are) cool in everything, even in love. So he never really talked to me about his emotions, and I was just all emotion - you know, one fiery little angsty girl.

We were both young and immature, and there were a lot of bad fights and tears and slammed doors on my part and silent coldness on his. Over the years I distanced myself more and more from my family, and started leaving the drama behind, and realizing I really hated having drama in my life. On his part, he began to realize that showing emotions was not a sign of weakness, that I needed him to tell me what was wrong. I started realizing that even though I thought I was telling him what I needed, I was mostly just shouting. When I started calmly telling him my issues I was amazed at how much he loved me and how much he took care of me.

I was insecure and immature. But he stuck by me, and I stuck by him, and now we are best friends as well as life partners.