Don’t let the yoga fool you. We can still be a-holes. In my write up about my experience completing the 30-day Bikram challenge, Z said I should have mentioned that our relationship has improved since we began practicing daily. (He also completed the yoga challenge with me.) We had noticed a pattern where, after yoga, we would both feel amazing if not a little hungry. Despite our good moods, we would often bicker on the drive home from yoga. It felt particularly bad because it felt like we were trying to rain on each other’s parade. Once we noticed the pattern, we made a few jokes, chalked it up to hunger, and moved on. As we do.

Olive branch. Flickr image by dale.n

After the 30-day challenge, Z commented that we don’t do that anymore. We don’t argue after yoga. There was also a sense that, in addition to the hunger, perhaps the yoga was helping us work through issues in our relationship and arguing was a result of that. Perhaps we were arguing to work through subconscious problems. Perhaps the 30-day challenge, and the process of going through all of that, had helped us work through our problems. Indeed, we agreed. We don’t argue now that we’ve completed the challenge, we said. We are officially an enlightened couple, we said.

Wrong. The very next day we had our worst post-yoga fight ever. It was so bad that afterwards, when I made a light joke, trying to move on, he didn’t take the olive branch. It took several more minutes for him to calm down. Yes, I wrote “minutes.” The good thing about us is that our arguments are very short lived. I think that’s a good thing. Though, maybe we never get them out of our system because they’re too short?

The point is that we are probably not enlightened…yet. Really, though, the overwhelming story about us is that we get along really well. Except when we get too cocky about it.