Could you pit your SO?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not for leaving the empty milk carton in the refrigerator or forgetting the credit card bill under the car visor, I mean for the type of things likely to get a doper pitted.

I have been dating a woman for a short time and everything seems to be going as well as can be expected. The other night we were talking and I mentioned that my work was becoming more stressful because I had had some successes without really knowing why. I said something along the lines of, “it’s just luck.”

She said something along the lines of, “There is no such thing as luck.”

For just a second, I thought I agreed with her. Then she went on.

We all, apparently, have paths of destiny which extend beyond the scope of our mortal lives. We can undergo hypno-therapy (regression therapy) to access our past lives and find the cause(s) of our current unhappiness and help make our next lives (our future destinies) happier and healthier.

:frowning: :confused: :frowning:

I am actually finding it difficult to avoid the topic. I don’t feel the need to “correct” other people’s beliefs in general, but this is someone I have been spending more and more time with!

Is there any chance this is going to work out?
Does your SO have beliefs you could see yourself pitting them over?
—If so, how do you work around them?
Are there other people in your life who have views that offend your sensibilities?
—If so, how do you work with that?

2

I’ve never been in a situation like this but my grandparents were.

My Grandpa was very religious and my Grandmother was not. They were married for about 40 years. Their solution was to just not get into topics of religion. I’m not sure how they were with each other before I was born or when I was a kid but as I grew up and became aware of such things they seemed happy in their situation.

My grandpa would go to church every sunday while my grandma would do stuff with her friends.

They were able to find a happy medium. So it’s not necessarily doom and gloom with you and your lady. Unless she constantly brings it up which would be very annoying.

3

My wife is Catholic; I am atheist. We really just don’t discuss it much.

Although I certainly thought of pitting her this morning when her alarm went off at:

5:00
5:09
5:18
5:27
5:36
5:45
and finally
5:54.

It’s like this most mornings, and although I’ve tried repeatedly to get it through her skull that this is really non-appreciative of my concerns she doesn’t see it that way. I don’t need to get up until 7:30, and at that time I have the kids to make lunches for and get on the bus, then get to work myself. This morning I had to pee at 4:30 and was just getting back to sleep at 5:00 when, you guessed it.

Her defense? “I’m not like you. I can’t just get up when the alarm clock goes off.”

No. No. That would mean you actually gave a shit about me and my feelings…

4

Um, past lives? Yeah, that sounds like a deal-breaker.

My husband and I have been married for about two years now and I am just finding out that our views on child-rearing are worlds apart. It was never an issue before, as his kids lived with their mom and I pretty much handled all issues relating to my own kids. Now we are frequently dealing with all the kids together and I’m constantly being amazed at his opinions. Furthermore, he is more of a children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard authoritarian type of parent, and I’m an authoritative…[del]helicopter[/del] no…whatever the *best * kind of parent is.

Also, I don’t need a whole lot of TV in my life and he has to have it on at all times.

Oh, and he smokes constantly. I quit years ago and now it makes my head ache.

Hey, screw this thread, I’m going to go pit him right now! :mad:

Nah, but in a couple more years when the shine’s worn off a bit, sure, why not?

5

I could Pit my SO for always leaving a pile of dirty washcloths on the bathroom counter. They’re dirty but not yet to the washing machine, and stay on the counter for several days.

I put up with so much.

Ah, but you say “well do the laundry yourself you slovenly bastard.” Well I would but she has all these weird laundry rules like you can’t wash towels and washcloths with other clothes. Plus there might be clothes in the dryer which I would have to put away, and I hate putting clothes away more than any other household chore. So there.

6

I tend to be fairly accepting of religion and religious differences. (She’s also into zen which I have become extremely disenchanted with!)
I just don’t see past life regression as being like Catholicism or any other mainstream religion. It’s not as though she were raised wacky. (Or maybe she was?)

7

As for this bit, yeah, I call them “my whole family”. Sometimes I will spar with them for fun, but for the most part, they are too vehement about their crazy ideas. Yes, I’m sure they’d say the same about me. They get a pass, though. I loved them for a long time before I knew they were lunatics.

8

Oh I absolutely could! My SO is a terrible debater–logical fallacies, ad hominems galore, takes any disagreement as a personal attack, refuses to cite sources, anger issues, the lot! The worst part is that he is intelligent but he truly believes that he’s a master debater and I’m just a bitch but since he doesn’t argue much with anyone but me he has no perspective. Me now, I argue with other people IRL, online with fellow Dopers and I also read the arguments of others ALL THE TIME so I think I’m a tad more versed in good debate tactics vs. crap ones but he doesn’t agree, of course. So I avoid getting into discussions with him because it’s like foreplay but no sex. Or worse yet, foreplay that doesn’t go to sex because it turns into a fight.

It’s a bummer because I end up avoiding talking with him about anything lest it turn unpleasant. My all time favorite activity is the bull session so this means that there’s a huge part of my life and interests that I just can’t share with him at all which is depressing. At least he isn’t into woo-woo claptrap so that’s nice–I’d kick him to the curb if I had to listen to him spout total airhead shite without feeling free to tell him he’s full of it!

9

I can’t pit him here, no, since he’s a member. Also, I tend to tell him what’s making me mad, rather than the internet. We’re good like that.

10

My husband’s alarm went off at 4:30. He apparently hit the snooze button… then got up, leaving me to scramble across the bed 10 minutes later, fucking with his clock in my sleep, until I finally just unplugged the infernal thing. He likes to press the snooze button, but if I wake up more than once in the middle of the night, I can’t go back to sleep, and then I’m totally screwed the entire next day. So I feel you on this, in a big way.

Hitting the snooze button repeatedly when the other person is a light sleeper and has a few more hours they can sleep is RUDE and selfish. I am going to find him an alarm clock that does not have a snooze button. Then, if he turns it off and goes back to sleep, guess what? Late for work. He’s capable of getting up after one alarm, he just doesn’t want to.

Grrr.

11

Are you me??

What I do, when the first alarm goes off, I get up and plop down in front of TV and just try to lay there and do my best to stay half asleep. When she finally gets out of bed I go back to the bed and fall back asleep.

12

My wife is half Italian and she fights like it. She can be brutal not just to me but her father and some of her female employees. She also fights dirty. If you question her about anything that she may have done wrong, she throws it right back in your face and starts a counter fight about something that you did once. It usually doesn’t have any relevance to the matter at hand and it could have been months or years before.

Last summer, our lawn tractor was broken and I had trouble getting it to a John Deere dealership. I still mowed the lawn with our push mower but, during that time, I could absolutely not question her on anything or she would launch into a diatribe about my failings with the lawn tractor. She also fights in monologue. Some of her abusive monologues last 5 minutes or more and she won’t let you interrupt. They involve screaming, contorted faces, a waving of arms Italian style.

I had a serious talk with her about the maturity of all this behavior a couple of months ago and it has gotten a little better but I think it is built in to her personality. Being her also means never having to say you’re sorry. She apologized to me a number of years ago for something minor but nothing since then. She told me that she would apologize if she ever did something that warranted it. If have learned just not to make her mad or just ignore her when she does.

I love her and we have been together 16 years but that gets to be a little much. No, we aren’t going to counselling. We tried a session about this once and she spent most of the session in unproductive monologue. She is petite and sweet most of the time though.

13

Mine is a member, too.

I just let the minor annoyances build up until I become a seething cauldron of rage.

Not really. I just accept those as part of the package.

Robin

14

There are certain things that make me want to pit my SO, but then I wonder how he’d feel if he found it, so I don’t. Yes, I’ve posted things on this message board that annoy me about my SO, but I can’t imagine ever thinking that it’s acceptable to post a true vitriol-filled Pit thread about him.

With that in mind, here are my answers to the question at the end of the OP:

I strongly believe that it is possible for two people with very disparate viewpoints to either work through them or find some mutually-agreed-upon way of dealing with them (even if that way is to not talk about them), as long as those viewpoints don’t have some profound, fundamental effect on the relationship or the way the two people work within the relationship. For example, religion was noted earlier. I see no problem with one person being very religious in a relationship while the other is not as long as both parties maintain whatever promises, explicit or implicit, they’ve agreed to. So, if the couple can rock along, great. But if one decides to become celibate and doesn’t meet the other’s needs, or the other partner ridicules the other for his/her beliefs, well, those situations are both dealbreakers.

My SO does have beliefs I could probably get worked up enough to pit him over, but why bother? He knows what bothers me and I’d rather deal with any serious issues directly with him unless I have doubts as to whether I’m handling things appropriately. Plus, what if he found the thread? That wouldn’t do either of us any good.

Plus, most of our arguments are fueled by miscommunication, not fundamental disagreements, so we work through each one as it comes and get over it.

My mother and my aunt, uncle and one of my cousins have viewpoints that strongly offend my sensibilities (disbelief in evolution being the one that offends me the most), but they’re still my family. I’ve tried having a rational, educated discussion with them and we’ve gotten relatively far, but have resolved to agree to disagree. Yes, I hate it that my mother doesn’t entirely believe in evolution. It makes me frustrated because I’m an archaeologist by education and somewhat by trade when I was younger. But I can’t change her mind and I love her just the same, so that’s a subject best avoided. (That and politics.)

15

Personally, I don’t think I could ever manage it. I think it’s a personality thing, both in terms of myself and the people I date… I’ve yet to be in a relationship where I’ve managed to avoid The Ongoing Debate when my SO believes very strongly in something I just as strongly do not believe in (or vice-versa).*

My in-laws seem to have managed to make it work, though I suspect this is because the differences of opinion only became apparent after several years of marriage. When they married, they were both secular Jews with an ambivalent relationship with their faith… then, for whatever reason, FIL began to grow ever more orthodox and observant, while MIL has remained staunchly secular. They’ve found some compromises… things observing basic tenets of kosher law regarding pork products, mixing meat and dairy, and the like (but without going completely kosher). I don’t know how much they argue about this behind closed doors, but in public she behaves as if she’s tolerant of her husband’s beliefs without giving in on her own.

  • These discussions have ranged from mundane things like eating steak rare vs. well-done, or less mundane things like an ex’s argument that “smoking dope on a daily basis doesn’t mean I have a problem”, or outright controversial things like my pro-life stance.
16

I could think of a lot of things but at the end of the day I’d still have to live with her. And love conquers all.

17

Never. She could pit me though, I’m sure of it!

18

Believe me, I had serious second thoughts when I found out he voted for Bush. Not once, but TWICE. The fact that he now regrets it doesn’t make it any better.

We just don’t discuss politics, as it would make my head explode. But it’s very hard sometimes.

19

My current SO is also a member but as we’ll be divorcing soon and we’ll both need you all, I wouldn’t pit him or otherwise vent here.

20

I’ll admit right now that I am already having a problem keeping my tongue about this. I think I could look the other way, but I find myself wondering what other weirdness there may be.