My boyfriend, Dan, came over last night after he had taken my son and I to my son’s water polo game. After the game Dan took us out for a yummy meal at In and Out Burgers.

When we got home I still had cleaning to do. Dan was tired and he didn’t want me to clean. He wanted me to watch a movie with him. He got attitude while sitting on my couch. So I stopped my cleaning and watched the movie with him.

His attitude was one of the problems I had when we had dated before. He seemed to think that if my universe was not constantly spinning around his, that he could throw a hissy fit. He threw some stellar hissy fits for the record.

He slept on the couch during the night because we have both made a commitment to keep God and His word as a priority in our relationship. In the morning he came in to give me a goodbye kiss and he got “attitude” again because I guess my kiss was not loving enough. Go figure.

This “attitude” was a major problem in our relationship previously. My common reaction was to ignore it in the past and pretend like his “attitude” didn’t bother me. That was a lie because it did bother me.

Last night and this morning I was contemplating my decision to open the door to reconciliation with this man. Wondering if God had really changed him because “attitude” did not fit my idea of a Christ-like man.

I prayed a bit before I got up and when he called me I answered but I decided to confront the attitude. I asked him what his problem was the night before. He said that he had become accustomed to relaxing on Saturday nights and that is what he wanted to do.

I, on the other hand, rarely stop working, so Saturday nights I am usually working like a slave trying to get my house in order to be able to rest on the Sabbath.

He said he had come into the evening with certain expectations and I had not known those expectations until the next morning. I mean, really, was that even fair?

He apologized, I apologized and we made a plan to try and make Saturday evenings a relaxing time for us to reconnect.

Somehow I think we both felt like we had won in the conflict. No harsh words were spoken, no raised tones and definitely no profanity.

I was thinking about this all day long at how magical it was that a conflict was diverted and that we both gained something from the civil discussion.

I think there were two aspects to this conflict which could be construed as wisdom.

The first aspect is to always pray before you confront someone.< The second aspect is to have a goal of understanding, instead of winning, when you walk into a confrontation. Understanding tends to give the award of winning to both parties and a conflict where both parties win is not really a conflict at all.