How does conflict between us make me feel?

Dear LORD:

Help our marriage become resilient to all conflict. Let us be able to relate to each other so well that the conflicts that are the inevitable result of the pressures of daily life do not sway us in any way from the true course of oneness within marriage: Your Son and Spirit.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being willing to share me with our daughter. I was amazed at how easily you let me go with her to our Daddy/Daughter date, and how supportive you were of the relationship that exists between Jeanae and I. Thank you so much for your understanding and patient heart as I love Jeanae into a state of acceptance of the new relationship that you and I share.

I feel nervous when we have conflict. That is my strongest feeling. I think I have told you this before. It is not that strong, about a 3. It feels something like the butterflies that you have when you are going to give a speech in front of a large group. A little pit in the stomach feeling. I am a bit apprehensive. I keep thinking that we are going to snap back into the old patterns of behavior in which you were aggressive and I was passive/aggressive. I do not want to do that soooooo much! I want us to keep the newness of our relationship alive, which is why I am so supportive and consistent about our dialogging and maintaining our closeness in our communication.

Yeah, nervous. That's it.

I have that feeling fairly regularly. It happened when I said that question "What I need from you is very simple...." and you flashed up at me. Nervous. Similarly, I felt it when you reacted to my statement this morning: "There's nothing I can do about that..." Nervous.

There seem to be a few statements or phrases that I am using fairly innocently that you react to. I am not sure that I understand these reactions. Maybe I never will. I can certainly stop saying them if that is the issue.

I wonder if there is more to it. But I don't want to pick this apart. The bottom line is that I love you, and I want to be married to you. I want to minimize the friction between us (which is inevitable, as I pointed out in my prayer), and I want for us to get along as well as we have in the past few months for the rest of our lives.

I am willing to change just about anything about my communication in order to accomplish this that does not involve my becoming fat, doing anything illegal or otherwise immoral. :-)

If there is an underlying issue, please tell me. Otherwise, I will not know. If it is just me doing things that are plain-vanilla annoying, let me know that too. I can certainly change the way I communicate with you, including omitting flash-point phrases that annoy you. Whatever you need, in other words, in order to put up with me. I know I am an annoying, quirky guy. Heck, I am amazed that you successfully put up with me for so long! I certainly annoy myself. As Erwin Raphael McManus points out, we are all prisoners in our own skin. Finding peace with God is partly a process of coming to terms with that and realizing that we need to forgive ourselves, as well as those close to us, continuously.

Love,
Me