When your parents weren't getting along, did it get ugly or did they keep it subtle?

It could get really ugly.

My real father things got REAL ugly... With my stepdad, they weren't as bad.

It was never subtle but it was also never physical. As a kid I figured out that they fought even though my mother tried to say that 'when people fight they throw things and break stuff'.

It got very ugly.

Never got ugly. They were always subtle.

It was usually tense but not loud.

My parents were notorious for their fights. My mother had a tyrannical temper.

Physical fights, not really, but my dad hit Mom about three times that I remember. I won't say that he "had" to hit her but she certainly did provoke him to the limit. I know ~ eventually came the day when she provoked me, too.

It was more than subtle, but usually stopped 1 or 2 pegs short of getting ugly....usually. There were a few ugly exceptions. I can remember one time when I was like 5 or 6, my parents had company and later that night I went with my mother to drop someone off at home. For whatever reason she took her spare key ring that only had the car keys on it....not the house keys....when we got back, my father had locked the doors and wouldn't let us in. They must have fought earlier, but I didn't know what was happening. Moms got hysterically mad and wound up breaking one of the windows to get in, and the police were called.

The last time they got into a fight when was I like 15. Glasses broke, and again the police were called....this time to escort my father out of the house.

My folks were neighborhood legends for their fights.