Debate me, coward. (Please?)

Why I’m begging someone to fight me (emotionally)

I don’t want your agreement. I don’t want your limp nods and eye contact like it’s a gift. I don’t want your “that makes sense” or your “you’re probably right.” I want resistance. I want your stubbornness. I want to see the part of you that bites back.

Debate me, coward.

Say something with teeth. Show me your ugly conviction, the hill you’d die on, the sentence you’ve practiced defending in the shower. You have them—I know you do. I can smell the withheld opinions on your skin. You’re hoarding them, polishing them in your mouth, and then spitting out safe little compliments like mints. I’m not impressed. I’m starving.

There is nothing more violent than pretending to agree.

I know when you’re holding your tongue. I can hear the muscles in your jaw lock. You think you’re being kind. You think you’re preserving peace. But what you’re really doing is amputating something that might have grown. There’s no intimacy in silence. There’s only tension disguised as civility.

I want to fight because I want to know you. Because I don’t want to be worshipped—I want to be seen, disassembled, challenged. I want you to tell me I’m wrong. I want to tell you you’re worse. I want to see your beliefs naked and flinching in the cold. I want to bruise the part of you that thinks it's above being bruised.

Don’t smile at me like that. I see the calculation. The restraint. You’re waiting for me to finish so you can exit the conversation unharmed. That’s not dialogue—that’s a hostage situation. And I didn’t fall in love with a hostage.

Disagree with me. Publicly. Awkwardly. Let the dinner table go quiet for a second. Make it weird. Make it real.

Tell me the thing you thought I wouldn’t understand. Tell me the thing you know will disappoint me. Tell me the thing your ex never let you say out loud. I’m not scared of conflict. I’m scared of pacified love. I’m scared of dying next to someone who always said yes.

What you call peace, I call boredom.

I want friction. I want ideological sparring. I want the throb of mutual risk. I want to interrupt each other, misinterpret each other, and then stay anyway. I want the messy proof that you have a spine, a history, a will not made of wet cardboard.

I want to be thrown off balance.

I don’t want a partner. I want a worthy opponent.

So go ahead. Say it. Say the thing you think will make me leave. I dare you. Debate me, coward.

Because I don’t want to be right. I want to be ruptured.

I want your spit flying, your hands trembling, your thoughts snarling through your teeth like wild dogs you never meant to let out. I want you to forget how I part my hair, how gently I kissed your shoulder once. I want you to look at me like I’m not yours and never was, and I want to survive it.

Don’t you see? I’m begging for the violence of sincerity.

I want the ugliness between us to crawl into the light. I want to smell its rot. I want to peel our civility off like old wallpaper and see what festers underneath. There’s something sacred in the wound we’d make of each other if we stopped pretending. The skin split. The voice raised. The history dug up with dirty nails. That’s love. That’s proof we’re still alive inside this coffin of good behavior.

Do you remember the last time someone looked at you like you were unforgivable—and stayed? I’d do that. I want to see you unmask yourself in rage and still want to press my face into the heat of you. Still want to taste the salt of your humiliation.

God, argue with me.

I want the fight that ruins the evening. That scorches the air. That sends the wine glass to the floor. I want us both shaking, sweating, shivering in the silence that comes after—not because we regret it, but because we’ve finally said something true.

Your mother was wrong. I never liked her. I think you're too careful. I know you lied when you said you didn’t miss her.

Say it. Say something that costs you. Let it spill from your mouth like blood.

I’ll match it.

I’ll say the thing that makes your hands go still. I’ll say the secret I was saving for your eulogy. I’ll say the thing you’ll never forgive, and then I’ll hold your face and whisper, “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

No more agreement. No more curated conversations. I want the sour, clotted core of you.

Is that so wrong?

Is it wrong to want to be transformed by conflict? To want your hands not only in mine but around my contradictions? I want your disagreement to leave a mark.

You keep calling this love, but we’ve never even fought.

Don’t you know I came here to be wrecked?

Debate me, coward. Say something that shatters me.

Because maybe all I ever wanted was for you to see the ugliest parts of me and stay. Maybe I asked for the argument because I couldn’t say love me harder. Maybe I raised my voice because I didn’t know how to ask you to touch my hand. Maybe I dared you to disagree just to know you were still listening, still real, still mine.

I don’t want to win. I want to know we could ruin each other and still wake up side by side, blinking into the bruise-colored morning, your voice hoarse from saying all the things you never thought you could say.

Argue with me, not because we’re enemies, but because I believe you’re the only one strong enough to hold me when the truth arrives bleeding.