What kind of fighter are you?

When you're meeting and getting to know someone, you look at all the good things you like about that person. You can't imagine ever having a fight with him, so it doesn't occur to you to ask, "What kind of fighter are you?"

I want to know if my potential partner is a negotiator or a yeller or a deep freeze or a crawl-in-his-hole-of-depression or a sarcastic meanie or a who-me?-mad?-I'm-just-going-to-hold-it-against-you-forever or, simply, a person who doesn't fight, whom nothing fazes.

I've had the depression. He would go four or five days without speaking to me. (At the five year mark, our therapist said, "You know, we've been beating this dead horse for two-and-a-half years now.") And I've had the hold-it-against-you. When he finally let it all out, it took him one hour per year we had been together to dump it all. There's working-things-out for you! John never fought. Uncle Sam had taught him to choose his battles. There were no differences in the marriage worth losing one's life over.

On Christmas morning six months after John died, I went to see "You've Got Mail." I was lonely and thinking about trying to start dating again and scared about doing so and thinking of trying online dating. So this seemed like a good movie to see. Then the scene where Joe Fox is trying to prepare Kathleen Kelly for meeting NY152, who is really him. He says, "and the worst thing we would fight about would be what movie to rent on Saturday night." And I totally broke down, because that's the kind of marriage I had had and was afraid I would never have again. I sobbed through the rest of the movie and walking to the car and for the half hour drive home. I couldn't stop sobbing.

So how do you ask someone what kind of fighter he is? How do you convey the real question — will you treat me with respect even when you disagree vehemently with me? And do you believe his answer? Is this one of those questions that can only be answered by actions?

Do you wait for the shoe to drop and you wait until the moment before you take your last breath and then if it hasn't dropped you breathe a sigh of relief?

I hope I'll get the chance again. And I hope he'll be someone who can treat me with respect, as I will strive to do with him.

Just don't discount my feelings. Please.