Fighters...back to your corners?

The most experienced couples will tell you that putting on the boxing gloves and “duking it out” is not only inevitable, but is a benchmark of a healthy relationship.  This is the case not only for couples, but for friends, siblings, parents and children.  For the sake of this entry, or perhaps more appropriately labelled, this rant, we will focus on the fights between couples, or at least people who are in an intimate relationship (whatever that means).  There is no doubt of the benefits of sharing feelings with this person; your boyfriend, as opposed to expecting them to know the answers to everything (they’ll tell you so themselves). But, when it comes to wishing this thing and that thing were different about the person we love, how many wishes are too many? How many times should we ask, or feel like we have to ask, or even, feel like its okay to ask, for them to change? How many gripes are too many? At what point in a relationship does the sign reading “Caution: He is going to stay this way” pop up? There is always some big fight followed by some big talk, a few days of residual bliss and them somehow the old quality rears its ugly head again. When the apologies are increasingly being replaced by retaliation, resentment and fighting, when is it time to throw in the towel? If we feel we deserve more, don’t we?