I Believe in Choosing Your Battles

I believe in choosing your battles. When you are in a situation when you know you are not going to win the argument, and it is not worth it; just let it go. This is something that is most commonly found in relationships. And it is most frequently the guy being "wrong" and his lovely partner being "right." There is no sense in having to hear the "I'm not talking to you" speech after an argument that started because you wanted to watch ESPN.

So one day, my girlfriend at the time and I were in the City for the day. Everything was going great; we had tickets to a concert, we had a great lunch, and it was a beautiful day. Now there is this one street with four or five music stores on it, and if you're a musician, you can't resist. Even if you are thousands of dollars in debt and you know you can't buy anything, you have to go look around. Now women will do the same thing with any store, but they're never wrong... DUH. So anyway, I say "hey, can we check out the music stores?" And I get the look that says, "No" but she chooses her battle and says yes. Now an hour later I am still looking around and she politely says, "Can we go now?" And I, like an idiot, respond with something like, "Baby, we've been going in your stores since we got here!" Now, it was very true, but I should not have said it. That blows up into the "all the things I do for you" speech followed by the guilt trip and then the grand finale, "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU!"

All I had to do was say, "Sure baby." I couldn't afford anything anyway. It was simple and I didn't choose my battles right. This was a very small scale example, but it applies all over; Politics, families, relationships, friends. Learn to choose your battles. Life is hard enough without having to fight every war.