Me and Mr. Wonderful have been together for one year and two months, and last week was the first time I ever remember being outright mad at him.

Sure, I’ve been disappointed, frustrated, or annoyed with him before, but these instances have never constituted what I would call a fight. Usually we are pretty good at getting to the root of the issue and talking about things before they get out of hand.

But I guess all it took to break down the machine was, ironically of course, wedding-related. We fought over our invitations.

It still seems weird to say/write that: “we fought.” I have this image in my mind of “fighting” as including yelling, blaming and outright horrible nasty meanness. But Matt and I don’t fight that way at all. When we fight, we withdraw and try to simply acquiesce to the other’s wishes. Usually there’s a handful of self-deprecation involved. As low-key as this may sound, it can get quite messy.

Even before we were engaged, there was no question in Matt’s mind that he wanted to design the invitations. He’s a graphic designer, it’s only natural that he should design his own invitations. He was so adamant about it, even as we walked around the wedding shop and looked at some of the beautifully designed and letterpressed wedding invitation designs they had available to order. I wasn’t sure what exactly he had in mind for the invitations, but he was so dismissive of the catalog invitations that I assumed he had a clear vision for what he would do with our invitations. I figured if he thought he could do better than the invitations that were before us, then I’d let him go for it.

What neither of us anticipated was the stressful 10-12 hour work days he pulled for three weeks straight. Like anyone would be, he was tired and drained. Little progress was made on the invitations, and I sensed that his creative drive had taken a hit. I got nervous. All the wedding planner guides say that you should order your wedding invitations four months in advance. We were engaged four months in advance. Time was running out.

I didn’t see what was so wrong with the invitations you could order from a book, anyway. Some of them are quite lovely. Sure, maybe it’s not as original to buy an invitation from a book, but it’s easy! Virtually stress-free.

But when I raised the suggestion to Matt, he remained adamant that we (he) design our invitations. He put a lot of stake into them. To him, it was the first meaningful and tangible design project he had worked on in a while. He viewed it as a chance to prove that he could do more than design .gif banners and e-mail templates for corporate America. It was about more than just the invitations, it was about proving his ability as a designer, and therefore (in his mind) his worth.

I just wanted pretty invitations. And I wanted them on-time.

Our conflict included a lot of back-and-forth. It all happened at a dizzying pace. I’m not going to cover all of the details. But I learned that when we get into a conflict, it is both of our tendencies to (outwardly) blame it on ourselves and insist that our partner just have it his/her way, while brooding in unrelenting discontent. Yet, our partner sees right through the flimsy facade and is unable to move forward with his/her own plans because of sensitivity to the unspoken, mounting resentment we both know is there. At this point, our partner wants to just give in to make the other happy, but that results in the same situation, just in reverse. So we’re at a stalemate, and it reaches a point where both of us are afraid to even speak openly, for fear of sending the other into retreat and making things worse.

Nasty, nasty stuff.

So how did we get out of that?

First, we let things cool off a bit. Slowing down helps things calm down. Then, we had to get to the root of the problem. The problem was not that we didn’t agree on what to do about the invitations.

One problem was the incredible significance they had been given and the stress that created. The other problem was that our conflict style left both of us feeling dissatisfied and resentful. We let our hurt feelings get in the way of working together.

I think we both learned that even though we may not be yelling at our partner when we fight, we’re creating the same amount of conflict by bowing out while still harboring hurt feelings. We need to work toward compromise that we both can feel good about, even if it’s maddening along the way.