Her blonde hair gleamed in the lamp light, reflecting the light back on me. Her blue eyes gleamed like distant stars capturing my imagination of what might be.

"Damn—Why did she have to look so good when we were fighting?" I thought, hoping my admiration didn’t show through.

"I’m not saying you can’t handle money at all, John. I just think you could work on it a little. Well..." I knew what was coming next. Her poignant rap was as inevitable as puberty. It was just going to keep on developing until it blew up in a swarm of hormones.

"Well, you could work on it a lot," she said. "It’s just not important enough to you, and that’s why you get behind on your part of the bills. It affects us both."

"You need to give me some credit. You always seem to look at the few times I make mistakes. I never said I was perfect."

"No, John. You’re definitely not perfect." The words flowed out of her mouth with only the hint of sarcasm, just a dash of fire and spit: that initial spark that lit the first primordial fire, which probably burnt the hell out of some poor unsuspecting cave man. Yeah, I was lit all right.

"I’m outta here!" The words were as strange to me as they were to her. I never felt the need to leave during an argument. Tonight was different. Something strange was boiling up inside of me. I felt like something was going to shift and change. And although I had no intention of packing my bags because of our argument, I had  at least to follow my urge to leave that night.

I jumped in my car and glided away, my only comment the buzz of the rubber tires trimming through the recent rain puddles. With no particular destination in mind, I sat back and let the wheel guide me. Maybe that was what I needed to do: just give in to the moment and hope I would somehow feel better. But it wasn’t easy. All I could think of was our argument and how utterly pointless and unproductive it was.

"Why does she always frustrate the hell out of me?" I said out loud. "I don’t remember any past girlfriends producing such frustration in me." It was true. But it was also true that I never stayed with those women either, and Heather and I were about to celebrate our fifth anniversary together. When I recall my past relationships, the women evoked practically no response in me other than the desperate craving to find the door. It always seemed that they didn’t know or understand me. They could never reach down into my soul and possess my emotions as Heather could.

I turned on the radio to calm my thoughts. Talk radio should do it. I can get pissed about some current issue, instead of Heather. For some reason I flipped past a talk-radio station I rarely listen to, and they had a special guest, Dr. Wayne Dyer. I had heard about him before, a motivational speaker or something like that. The station went to a commercial just as I tuned in, but I decided to wait to hear what he had to say.

As I listened to commercials about Turf Soaring School and Seafood Central on Shea, I thought of Heather and how many times she had torqued my mood and twisted my way of thinking to the point of seeming irreparable. I thought about how different we are. I tend to be outgoing; she tends to be shy. Yet she is assertive while I tend to be more reserved. She worries more than I do. I thirst for information and knowledge about everything, and she is content with knowing about the weather. My head tends to be in the clouds while her feet are planted firmly on the ground. She’s picky about her food, her dress, and the house; I am not. The interesting and frustrating part about it is that she reminds me about those differences constantly. If I am not worrying about something enough, she nags me until I do. If my perspective on an issue is too esoteric, she reminds me of the obvious and grounded perspective. It is so damned irritating. Why can’t she just leave me alone? Why can’t we be more similar?

I turned the volume back up as soon as I heard the talk show host reintroduce Dr. Wayne Dyer. The psychological expert was there to talk about relationships. Of course.

"O.K.," I thought sarcastically, "this should be interesting.

On first hearing, Dr. Dyer's mild voice was not that inspiring. But his message that night was concise. His words traveled over the radio like sparks of light illuminating the dark caverns of my mind. That night he spoke directly to me.

As thoughts of Heather and our argument that night and all the difficulties of our opposite natures and all the problems I have ever had with her raced through my mind, Dr. Dyer spoke of soul mates and life lessons. He explained that we are here to learn, and that all things that we encounter that enrage us and push us out of balance are not evils to be avoided, but things to be embraced and thankful for. For those things that push us from grace remind us of the flaws that need improvement. And they should be viewed as invaluable gifts. We should not curse the ones who can to push our buttons and expose our flaws. Rather, we should bow our heads and thank them. A soul mate, he said, was the one person who brought out the best and the worst in you. If a partner can not elicit the intense extremes of emotion in you, good and bad, then the person is not a soul mate.

I wiped the tears of truth from my eyes, turned the car around, and picked up the pace. Heather would be waiting.

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