Quick

You know that moment when something comes out of your mouth, and you're surprised to hear it, and you know as soon as you've said it that nothing good will come of this?

Yeah. Sucks, right?

From where comes the impulse to hurt those we love?

Fear.

I know it. I recognize it in myself. I've put in effort and seen success in stopping myself reacting from a place of fear. Yet there's still a well of it from which spring dark things.

I've thought it many times over my journey, and I'm thinking it again: in the movies, to dispel the ghost, one usually needs 2 things: knowledge of the injustice that created it and an act of justice to set it free.

So what do you do when you've solved the mystery, and you've done what you can to reverse the wrong, but the ghost still lingers?

Years ago, in my twenties and early thirties, I treated conflict with my wife as a chance to show my cleverness. A fight was an opportunity! We jabbed, probing for weaknesses. We went for the knockout shot. If I could turn a phrase, a smart, well-crafted sentence that went straight to the heart of her, the immediate satisfaction was like a drug. I could prove my brilliance on multiple levels in a few well-chosen words, demonstrating my keen understanding of her psychology and my incomparable skill with the English language, all in one shot. Pow!

But as every married man knows, winning a fight with the wife is a logical paradox: winning is losing and losing is losing. Winning hurts the relationship; losing hurts the self-image. If I win the point, I drive us further apart. If I lose the point, all those moments of conceding, of giving in, of apologizing for wrongs for which I sometimes did and sometimes did not really feel sorry, piled up over the years. They accumulated in my heart and mind and contributed to my feeling that I was the weaker partner and ultimately the powerless partner. Which lead to me lashing out more, to fighting for points that didn't really matter just to have the win and feel the moment of power, of rightness, of righteousness. Oh, that feeling of, "It's my turn, goddammit!"

It's a pretty stupid way to show love.

We went through couples therapy in the early 2000s. The first appointment or two may have been more like fighting with a referee, but in time, we learned a lot about how to speak without attacking and more importantly, how to listen. I came away from it all with the lesson, "Just be nice." I couldn't, I knew, change her behavior, but I was sure that if I changed my treatment of her, her treatment of me could only improve. And it did. It extended the life of our marriage, but it didn't save it, and I'm glad for that. Ending it was best for both of us.

Often, the things my now ex-wife and I fought about existed only in my mind as fear-based fantasies. Conflicts with my first girlfriend after marriage were the same. My exes tell me that I projected onto them emotions and motivations that they didn't actually have. I projected onto them the worst of my own feelings about myself, and I got angry at them for feeling that way about me. It was a destructive dynamic to my relationships. I've worked hard over the last 2 1/2 years to change that dynamic. The most effective means for doing this is choosing to see the positive in me.

Individual therapy helped with that. So did finally going after pursuits of which I'd dreamed but had been too fearful and self-critical to reach for before. I quit drinking. I made physical activity a more central part of my life, and my health and self-image improved. I danced. I stepped up to new challenges at work. I began to suspect I wasn't as shy as I'd always told myself. I accepted and then sought out chances to speak in public. All of these things have come together until now I can finally say truthfully: I like myself. That helps my life in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is that now I project onto others the best of my own feelings about me. It lifts me up, lifts them up, and lifts my relationships up.

That doesn't mean the negative thoughts go away entirely, though.

I've been in a different kind of romantic relationship with a different kind of woman for a little over a year now. We communicate well, so well that it fills me up with joy and wonder and gratitude. We talk all the time, by text, by phone, face to face, in letters, and in email. We tell each other everything, usually over and over again because we both have shoddy memories. Shoddy memories probably help, too. It's harder to hold a grudge when you can't remember why you were mad. We have very few moments of conflict, and with only a couple of exceptions, usually it's mild and short-lived. I was fully confident that I'd resolved my old ways of seeing myself and my old ways of relating to people that I love.

On Sunday, in the car as we talked on the way home after a lovely bike ride by the river, I was shocked to hear myself fire off a hurtful riposte to what my brain had instantly interpreted as a criticism from her. It was quick. We went almost instantly from holding hands and chatting to daggers. It happened too quickly to process it rationally, to recognize the fear response rising, to reassure myself that the perceived attack, the criticism, wasn't real, and even if it were, it deserved a calm and measured response. Instead, my brain jumped straight to the clever and hurtful, sought out the weak spot and attacked it, effectively.

I took it to heart for a couple of days, the idea that I still haven't learned my lesson.

But this isn't the movies. The ghost doesn't go away because you know why it's there. There is no denouement in life. The music doesn't swell, the credits don't roll, and the lights don't come up. Personal growth and change come through practice. These moments of Fear! Defend! Attack! don't happen very often any more, so I haven't had much chance to practice my reaction to it. I believe the key is to recognize my own human fallibility and embrace it instead of feel shame for it.

So we talked about it several times over a couple of days. I apologized in a few different ways. I thought through the perceived criticism and saw it shrink in stature before my eyes.

And then? I forgave myself. I trusted her love and her forgiveness of me. And I let that shit go.