Fight v. Flight

We probably each tend one way or the other when faced with life's threats and frightening moments;  I think I lean towards fight - Irish heritage and all that. I've been told that after the Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), I fought off an oxygen mask and then attempted to argue with the cardiologist as he described my heart's suddenly stopping, three shocks with the paddles, all that.  NO - not me: no heart disease, no family history, nonsmoker, good BP, perfect cholesterol, lots of exercise, admittedly a weight issue.  What did I think - perhaps he had strolled into the wrong hospital room?  Or maybe that I could talk him out of it??

I surely fight for relationships - all of them, probably to an absurd degree.  After all, reconciling with the ex-husband roughly 142 times was probably excessive.  But I'll fight for relationships with lovers, friends, family, siblings, dogs --- stubborn.   Maybe even more since the SCA.   And I admit, with a nod to the Irish, I believe there may be more honor in fight than in flight.

But I must also acknolwedge that there may be more brains in flight. (And I have flown - to be sure. 118 feet down in Belize's Blue Hole when the scuba equipment failed - I was in full flight).  But in relationships, do the flee-ers have it right?  Why bang away and bang away when a relationship hits bumps in the road or when a situation is futile?  Well, we fighters would say that we can't tell the difference between a bump that can be addressed and a brick wall.

So we fight and they flee.   This may be one of those genuine impasses:  I see honor to the fight; they think it is idiotic not  to face the reality of inevitable failure.  Who am I to judge?  I wasted a decade or more on a doomed marriage.... flight out of that would have been the far smarter choice.

I think this may be yet another skill for me to practice - throwing in a towel.  The idea of giving up without a fight is just not comfortable; it seems I'd rather be an idiot than a person who flees.  Perhaps the answer is slowly walking away.
Yup, more skill development on the horizon.