Why do couples fight?

Why do couples fight?

Marital squabbles can be over lots of things:

· Control struggles (who's in charge) and how decisions are made
· Degree of reciprocal control or independence
· Treatment of in-laws and significant relatives
· Sex: how, when, why, by whom, varieties
· Money: earning, managing, saving and spending

With the objective of controlling, humiliating or winning over the other, all kinds of negative things are said, that are difficult to retrieve. The results are very sad, because repetition of the fight, which is inevitable when it is not resolved, will sour the relationship.

Here, I want to let you in on a secret, the hidden motivation to connect and have a good, healthy fight. Once you understand this, it is easier to look at your current “enemy” – your partner –with empathy; to see their hidden motivations; and perhaps come up with some solutions to fill this deep need for confrontation.

Why is winning or losing a dispute so important? Why is there it so essential to our self-esteem? Because we think that we fight mostly for control of things, like time, money, the car, clothes or a good job. But really, almost every fight actually has at least something to do with the rarely acknowledged need for us to get some recognition from the other. That person is so important because she can give us the acceptance or recognition that we crave!

Go back in your memory to the last three fights you had with your loved one…..Imagine that each fight is a heartfelt quest for support, recognition and respect from him or her. If so, having your partner say out loud, “Yes, you are right on this issue,” validates you and makes the world right again.

Does it feel good? Now, compare that with the pleasure you get when obtaining the thing you were ready to fight about….how does it compare? No way!

Why can't we even mention our deep need for validation from our spouse? Very simple, it has to be offered, spontaneously! That is the crux of the matter: If we have to beg for it, it doesn't taste so good, right? It has to be proffered because it is an evident, undeniable fact that we are right, that we are intelligent and beautiful and lovable… not because we ask people to say so!

And that, by the way, is the reason we get married: to have someone, freely elected, who can say to the world that we are such a beautiful person they want to spend their lives with us!

And then, very shortly, this admiration we managed to achieve goes missing, and sadly the only way to get our partner’s attention back on us is to have a good fight.

NOW, if we could only know how to do a positive conflicts fight!!!

Visualize your Desires! Here is how:

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide

You have within you an awesome power that most of us have never been taught to use. Elite athletes use it. The super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields are now starting to use it.

That power is called visualization. The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams. Visualization of your goals and desires accomplishes four very important things.

1. It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.
2. It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.
3. It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.
4. It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.
Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.


Mental Rehearsal
Athletes call this visualization process “mental rehearsal,” and they have been using it since the 1960s when we learned about it from the Russians. All you have to do is set aside a few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the times you are most relaxed. Go through the following three steps:

1. Imagine sitting in a movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing — traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage in this activity.

2. Get out of your chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes. This is called an “embodied image” rather than a “distant image.” It will deepen the impact of the experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.

3. Finally, walk back out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine that each tiny piece — just like a hologram — contains the full picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It’s like one of those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the same channel.

When you have finished this process — it should take less than five minutes — you can open your eyes and go about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.

Create Goal Pictures
Another powerful technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture. With today’s technology, you could probably make an even more convincing image using your computer.

Create a Visual Picture and an Affirmation for Each Goal
We recommend that you find or create a picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual representation for every goal you have — financial, career, recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and so on.

When we were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul® book, we took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it into our computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the “Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” category. We printed several copies and hung them up around the office. Less than two years later, our book was the number one book in that category and stayed there for over a year!

Index Cards
We practice a similar discipline every day. We each have a list of about 30-40 goals we are currently working on. We write each goal on a 3x5 index card and keep those cards near our bed and take them with us when we travel. Each morning and each night we go through the stack of cards, one at a time, read the card, close our eyes, see the completion of that goal in its perfect desired state for about 15 seconds, open our eyes and repeat the process with the next card.

Use Affirmations to Support Your Visualization

An affirmation is a statement that evokes not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want. Here’s an example of an affirmation:

I am happily vacationing 2 months out of the year in a tropical paradise, and working just four days a week owning my own business.

Repeating an affirmation several times a day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen.

Expect Results
Through writing down your goals, using the power of visualization and repeating your affirmations, you can achieve amazing results. Visualization and affirmations allow you to change your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about the most important person in your life — YOU! They allow you to harness the 18 billion brain cells in your brain and get them all working in a singular and purposeful direction.

Your subconscious will become engaged in a process that transforms you forever. The process is invisible and doesn’t take a long time. It just happens over time, as long as you put in the time to visualize and affirm, surround yourself with positive people, read uplifting books and listen to audio programs that flood your mind with positive, life-affirming messages.

Repeat your affirmations every morning and night for a month and they will become an automatic part of your thinking — they will become woven into the very fabric of your being.
© 2006 Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and the nation's leading authority on Peak Performance. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at www.JackCanfield.com

How do You React to Conflict?

We can have several reactions to conflict, depending on what past experiences have taught us:

• Fight fire with fire and answer with more defensiveness, including verbal and physical violence.
• Deny the conflict, hide inside and avoid future conversations on problematic issues.
• Give up and go along with others, forgetting our own interests and finally compromising our souls.
• Decide to get our own way no matter what, and do "passive aggressive resistance" without ever getting to discuss our behavior and its deep motivations and its impact on the other.
• Go the way of skilful negotiations, and learn how to talk about difficult issues with the people we love, and explore different sides of a dispute and get an agreement.

If you have experienced your share of conflict in your life—and who hasn’t? — You may even be afraid of conflict. Perhaps you lost big time when you tried to impose your views on your spouse; or your best friendship ended in sour recriminations that nobody wanted, but nobody could stop.

What is the lesson here?

What did you learn?

Is there another way?


In the future, you may decide to escape; to do anything to avoid another conflict situation: giving in to other’s demands without being satisfied yourself, only to keep the peace; settling for second-best without getting your needs met, and in general taking refuge in a place where you don’t ever have to be bothered with anything related to confrontation, challenge, or friction.

If you adopt this response while in a relationship, the demands of the other person will be seen as intrusive and could lead, on your part, to all kinds of passive aggressive behaviors - sabotage, and self-isolation, to name a few - which will escalate the conflict. You may go deep inside yourself, in fear and mistrust, and refuse to get near other people again, preferring loneliness to anger and mistrust.

Sometimes, people never have learned the necessary skills to assert themselves with respect, to challenge toxic situations or to negotiate their own needs’ satisfaction with others! People never obtained the skills to negotiate with loved ones with little risk to the relationship, and this is the problem here, because now, they don't know what to do. You can see clearly how this terrible lack of skills compounded their loneliness and frustration.

Rremember that all avoidance ways of dealing with conflict will help you stay away from confrontation but will never provide you with the warmth, intimacy and confirmation you are always craving for! Besides, there is no learning of more productive strategies, if you keep avoiding. So, face on and do some positiveconflicting, right?

Fair Fighting improves Women's chances of avoiding a heart attack

Recent research has shown that our bodies are intertwined with all our emotional states. Our hearts, lungs, stomach and all our internal organs respond to the stress level we experience. Our bodies are faster than the mind to recognize emotional threats in a way that we are not so much aware of, and this can have devastating effects in our health.

What happens when you look for peace and love at home, and you find too many squabbles? You are searching for refuge and find instead constant quarreling with your spouse? Wouldn't it be healthier to be able to go home and find smiling faces and loving companionship? This kind of home will give your health a boost, and make your heart sing with joy.

We need to say that couple fights are inevitable given that both parties, male and female need to start a fight sometimes when in need of refreshing the connection and companionship, and to keep the relationship growing. But fighting without skills can do a lot of damage to your health and your relationship. It's the quality of the fighting the factor that matters in preventing unhealthy consequences.

There is the special case of marital conflict when one partner shows a propensity to yell, scream and blame the other person.

And if the partner tries to redress this issue, the response they get is not a good conversation about "what do we need to do now to improve", but more blaming, accusations, bad temper and either sulking or complete withdrawal.

Up until now, we knew that this was the making of a very unhappy relationship, like in this case:

"I find him sometimes lying about the littlest things, blaming everyone but himself for any kind of problems, and picking arguments when unnecessary. I know he loves me and I love him dearly but I need to find a way I can deal with this behavior that is putting such a severe strain on our relationship. What are some ways that I can converse and tackle this behavior in a constructive way rather than accepting either the constant fights and blaming myself for everything or finally silencing myself just to keep the peace?"

If you are like this person, you have two choices: either challenge and protest, and be considered "too aggressive" or shut up. Is this response, the silenced choice that seems to be the easy way out, to stop the aggression and endless recrimination, the one you would use?

When women make the decision to be silent, they are choosing the short way out to protect themselves from a sad situation, and it also signals that they have given up the hope to be treated with respect. Giving up your right to be respected is so stressful that affects women making them more vulnerable to heart attacks.

Now we know more about the price women pay for "keeping the peace by self-silencing": studies led by Dana Crowley Jack [1], a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., have linked the self-silencing trait to numerous psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders and heart disease.

The way the couple interacted was as important a heart risk factor as whether they smoked or had high cholesterol. And the main factor observed in the interactions was the degree in which the wife would silence herself to keep the peace. How often couples fight or what they fight about usually doesn't matter!

Instead, it's the quality of the interactions between male and female, and how they react to and resolve conflict that appear to make a meaningful difference in the health of the marriage and the health of the couple. The main difference in the quality of a marital fight is if it is done with respect for the other's opinions or not. The quality of the interaction hinges on the mutual respect they can show for each other, even in the heat of an argument.

Knowing this fact, is easy to realize that the silenced party is missing a strong sense of self. By choosing to be silent, they are repressing their legitimate needs to a point where in the end, they will be so repressed as to be forgotten.

Arguing is, of course, an inevitable part of married life. Both sides need to express what their expectations are, and what makes them happy…..if one side chooses silence, it becomes a losing game, because there is no way this person will get any satisfaction. Their partners are forced to be mind readers, and whatever they could offer, it will be seen in a dubious way.

But behaviors that control, diminish and humiliate one's partner take a heavy toll on health. Women who didn't speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt, according to the July report in Psychosomatic Medicine. SO, you need to seriously consider learning self-assertion and fair fighting skills!

There is an e-book providing a whole set of self-defensive strategies for managing an abusive situation, and also teaching couples how to do fair fighting at www.passiveaggresive.com. Nora Femenia, Ph.D. is the author, offering a free initial coaching session at www.norafemenia.com

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[1] Dana Crowley Jack Silencing the self: Women and depression . Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Focusing the mind on the positive

We all go through some tough times in life, that’s just life; it can’t always be a bed of roses, if we are going to learn and grow up.

However life is the total sum of your experiences, its meaning being what you make of it. The frame you use to understand your own experiences is the most important aspect of them. If you call them “learning experiences” the results will be different than if you call them “repetitive failures…”

It even gets worst when you go ahead and judge yourself in the most negative way possible, because then you are behaving like your worst enemy!

If you have this negative habit of framing your own actions in a very critical way, what happens when you go through some bad times? You tend to blame yourself, of course! It doesn’t help you find the best solution, which is what you should be doing….but keeps you repeating whatever your family did to you in the past! Yes, it’s a terrible deal, but at least we are in familiar territory, right?

Staying positive means that you see whatever happens with a frame that is compassionate to yourself. You know that you are learning, so every experience has a lesson for you, and you are here to take it!

If this more positive frame works for the good times, through the bad times it can make all the difference and can get you through the tough times with a smile.

Let’s go over on the basics of having a positive frame to make sense of your own actions. The first step is to have an honest look at the phrases you hear in your head all the time, identify them and ask yourself: whose voice is it? Many times you will recognize the voice of someone important in your childhood, mainly your parents. Then, now is the time to say: “Thanks mom for your opinion, but I prefer to see this situation as something better.”
Then, you begin peeling away at the negative propositions that your head offers you. The purpose is to transform an automatic process into a conscious one. It takes more or less one month of constant awareness to be able to replace old inherited negative frames with more functional ones….so begin working now.

But the big question is “how do you stay positive when things get tough?” Staying upbeat at times of trial is the last thing on your mind, but it should be the first, because you need to think positively now more than ever.

The key to staying positive is to detach your mind off your problems and worries, take a step aside asking yourself: “in what other perspective can I perceive this situation”? Or “what can be learned from this”?

Re-energizing your mind is especially appropriate when you are having a bad day and you would tend to feel sorry for yourself and want to sit down and cry. Well, you need to remember that it’s your choice! Frame the painful situation as your present learning opportunity, identify what you need to learn from it and move on!


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The Importance of Recognition

This skill focuses on the ability to appreciate the positive aspects of everything around you: and if you are in a relationship, all that concerns your partner. Instead of having a perception of a glass half empty, you should instead focus on the "glass half full."

It takes sustained practice, because all of us have been educated with a critical view. If you are an engineer doing a project, this is a very critical skill, because keeps you apprised of what can go wrong and derail the project.

So, you are as good as you can be very critical, focusing on what needs improvement.

But with people in relationships, it is the other way around: as much as you focus on the negative aspects of your partner and try to begin the project of "improving him or her" the more the other person feels not accepted and evaluated in a negative manner.

You are in a relationship to support and enhance the positive aspects of your partner. In a sense, you have chosen each other because we all want and need someone else who can be for us "warts and all;" who can accept and appreciate all of our aspects. This kind of attitude is generally called love.

Remember that whatever you focus on, tends to take center stage: if you focus on a negative trait of your partner, like her tendency to be late for appointments and dates, then this trait will become prevalent and it will negate the perception of other positive traits that attracted you to her before. So, let's begin:

1. Every time you need to talk about some changes needed, begin recollecting the good things done;
2. Try to find a positive thing to comment on daily;
3. Don't you dare to mention negative aspects without talking about how good the positive ones are, first.
4. If the results are awful, praise the good intention;
5. Be very creative and find unexpected aspects to praise: a busy person that accomplishes everything could be praised for her constant smile, or his good disposition even along the busiest day;
6. Don't be mean, don't link praise with immediate critique: "you did well, but forgot this part." In this case, the "but" will cancel the praise. The two propositions don't need to be linked.

Apply this techniques for a while and you will see a change in the quality of your relationship, having more trust, and pleasure in the mutual company.

If you care to improve the way you feel in company, and wish to make
other people feel happy with you, this small effort in applying positive conflicts skills will be very productive.

Eager to learn more? Do you need encouragement, practical ideas, even coaching to apply those suggestions in your own life?
www.positiveconflicts.com

Relationships & Disputes: It’s your attitude that counts!

Every relationship will have its share of conflicts, disagreements and arguments – and that’s normal! What is essential is the right personal attitude towards managing the confrontations… we are either scared into answering with a strong attack as defense, or frozen in fear.

For some people, disagreements send a panic signal, like a sign that the elationship is flawed, or that we are more flawed than we thought before!

They are afraid of the noise, the raw feelings, the way it can end….nobody has shown us how to have a difficult conversation with someone offended or angry with us, in a caring and productive way! So, as we keep imagining happy endings by magic, we are left with the weak hope that “this time, because we are in love, everything will be all right.” This is waiting on magic, or on divine intervention… without learning some good conflict resolution skills to deal with disagreements with the person you need the most, you are in risk of a sad disappointment!

Overall, the biggest roadblock is not differences of opinion, but attitudes. Look at this big contrast:

PERSON A: sniffing some upset on the loved one, and not willing to receive complaints or critiques, hurries to be very busy, leaving in a cloud of dust. All requests about: “do you have a little time to talk” are answered in the way out with “sorry, hon, perhaps this week end, I gotta go now.”

PERSON B: equally realizing that there is storm in the air, because of door slamming and long, sudden silences, decides to confront, and asks: “I see that something is bothering you….when do you feel like talking, let me know. It can be just now or any time you prefer.”

Person B is showing that she or he is not blind, that the “we are disconnected” message is received and someone is taking charge of building bridges. This is the attitude that you need to navigate the differences in a relationship: “I promise that, even when I don’t always understand, I will be there to listen and try to make sense of what happens with my best effort. In this way, I show that I care about us, and our relationship.”

The secret here is to acknowledge that your attitude is a reflection of the worth you place on yourself and your partner. If you have been educated to dismiss your deeper needs, then you will deny the satisfaction of those needs in your partner. If you value the feeling of being understood and appreciated by your loved one, then this is the attitude you want to have…At the least, there is something you can do to prevent miscommunication and anger build up and destroy your connection!

Negative attitudes towards relationship problems are shaped by unresolved anger and resentment from the past.

When a caring attitude is combined with effective communication, the road to healthy conflict management is all downhill... facing conflict even becomes something to laugh about: “How are we going to manage the new fight?”

“What complaints can we come up with, each more sophisticated than the last, to conceal my daily need: I need you to appreciate me every day?”

Is this the way you want to go?

If you would you like to learn more about the positive conflicting attitude that can save your relationship and your sanity, visit http://www.positiveconflicts.com/ now. And learn more about strategies to heal your relationship from conflict!

6 Keys to Understand Relationships & Fighting

Probably the vast majority of what you have learned until today about resolving conflicts wasn't very successful. Conflicts are often handled in two main ways: either to avoid or to confront and both were yielding very poor results. We need to learn other ways to manage conflict in such a way that we can come out of it enriched, with a sense of growing ability, and experiencing a stronger bond with the other person, born out of reciprocal satisfaction of both our needs.

In short, there are several concepts that I want you to consider.

Let’s go though them one by one, and watch your reactions to each:

1.- Conflict, as part of any relationship, is inevitable. All relationships have to include some understandings on how to process confrontations. If you two are not fighting, then one of you is repressing his or her needs and it blow up sooner or later.

2.- If we care about something, it will appear as part of a discussion, because it is an important part of who we are….our dreams, our values. It shows that you are alive, and that you care.

3.- It’s a call for attention to discover where our relationship hurts. If you decide to give the disputed thing away, (to be left alone) you are not looking carefully at the relationship behind the dispute! Or you did ignore the early signs, because you feel that you don’t have any skills.

4.- Each discussion helps you see better what you want…So, if you are confused about some issue, go and have a fight about it with your spouse, and it will become clear! If you have an agreement before it happens (“Honey, every now and then, when I’m itching for a fight, please, could you go along? You don’t need to defend yourself, or be offended by what I say, only listen and let me vent…it will be OK very soon, but I need this!”)

5.- When you recover your senses, she will have a lot of very funny stories to share with you, so you can learn how others see you! Isn’t it fun?

6.- There are strategies for resolution that are available and DO work. Even when forced to fight, you can always fight fair, and send a powerful message.

So, now, it’s time for you to be grateful because you have your share of conflicts in your love relationship, through which you can learn about yourself and grow, right?

We will never know what we can do without challenge and opposition. We will never develop new skills if sheer necessity does not force us to do so. In short, without necessary conflict, we will never grow up.

When you engage others in positive conflict, you are telling them that he/she is important enough for you to invest some energy in improving the relationship, by challenging the sore points in it. You are giving others a big compliment by having a positive conflict with them!

Doing positive conflict is having the courage to confront others in order to change a hurting situation and find a better, more inclusive agreement, which will benefit both of you. This is the key here: the search for a mutually acceptable solution, doing a respectful process that answers both sides’ needs.

This is just the beginning. Once you see that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, you can start exploring the techniques that will allow you to use conflict as a way to strengthen relationships.

To your healthy relationships!

Discover Why 99% of Disputes in a Relationship are not what you think they are

We all understand how challenging arguments or even simple differences of opinion can be in relationships. People get very afraid of confrontation, and use any pretext to hide from the actual heart of the dispute. Many will quickly resort to asking for a lawyer’s help, hoping the professional will spare them the nasty interaction they are trying to avoid.

Every relationship will have its share of conflicts, disagreements and arguments – and that’s normal! What is missing is our personal attitude towards managing the confrontations… we are either scared into answering with a strong attack as defense, or frozen in fear.

For some people, disagreements send a panic signal, like a sign that the relationship is flawed, or that we are more flawed than we thought before!

And then, we are left with the weak hope that “this time, because we are in love, everything will be all right.” This is waiting on magic, or on divine intervention… without learning some good conflict resolution skills to deal with disagreements with a loved one, you are in risk of a sad disappointment!

It doesn’t have to be so! Here, I want to let you in on a secret, the hidden motivation to open up and have a good, healthy fight. Once you understand this, it is easier to look at your current “enemy” – your partner –with empathy; to see their hidden motivations; and perhaps come up with some solutions to fill this hidden need for confrontation.

Why is winning or losing a dispute so important? Why is it so essential to our self-esteem?
Because we think that we fight mostly for control of things, like time, money, the car, clothes or a good job. But really, almost every fight actually has at least something to do with the rarely acknowledged need for us to get some recognition from the other. That person is so important because she can give us the acceptance or recognition that we crave!

Go back in your memory to the last three fights you had with your loved one…..Imagine that each fight is a heartfelt quest for support, recognition and respect from him or her. If so, having your partner say out loud, “Yes, you are right on this issue,” validates you and makes the world right again.

Does it feel good? Now, compare that with the pleasure you get when obtaining the thing you were ready to fight about….

How does it compare? No way!

Our hidden needs are pushing our daily actions, everywhere….if you get to understand this simple fact, then a whole perspective opens up….If you see someone embroiled in a big, fiery dispute, you can think: what is this person lacking just now? And how can you provide exactly that?

One big advantage in the provision of symbolic goods, like affection, is that you move away from money or expensive things, and have at hand a whole set of new “carrots” to reward people! And people around us are craving those symbolic rewards: appreciation, recognition, support…. Why is this so difficult to remember each and every day, while dealing with others?

Now, you know….
Apply this techniques and it will be easy for you to deal with confrontations.
Give appreciation, be nice from the start, and listen.

And, if you want to know how to get recognition from others, check the Fair Fighting techniques chapter of the Positive Conflicts eBook at http://www.positiveconflicts.com/

6 Keys to Understand Relationships & Fighting

Probably the vast majority of what you have learned until today about resolving conflicts wasn't very successful. Conflicts are often handled in two main ways: either to avoid or to confront and both were yielding very poor results. We need to learn other ways to manage conflict in such a way that we can come out of it enriched, with a sense of growing ability, and experiencing a stronger bond with the other person, born out of reciprocal satisfaction of both our needs.

In short, there are several concepts that I want you to consider.

Let’s go though them one by one, and watch your reactions to each:

1.- Conflict, as part of any relationship, is inevitable. All relationships have to include some understandings on how to process confrontations. If you two are not fighting, then one of you is repressing his or her needs and it blow up sooner or later.

2.- If we care about something, it will appear as part of a discussion, because it is an important part of who we are….our dreams, our values. It shows that you are alive, and that you care.

3.- It’s a call for attention to discover where our relationship hurts. If you decide to give the disputed thing away, (to be left alone) you are not looking carefully at the relationship behind the dispute! Or you did ignore the early signs, because you feel that you don’t have any skills.

4.- Each discussion helps you see better what you want…So, if you are confused about some issue, go and have a fight about it with your spouse, and it will become clear! If you have an agreement before it happens (“Honey, every now and then, when I’m itching for a fight, please, could you go along? You don’t need to defend yourself, or be offended by what I say, only listen and let me vent…it will be OK very soon, but I need this!”)

5.- When you recover your senses, she will have a lot of very funny stories to share with you, so you can learn how others see you! Isn’t it fun?

6.- There are strategies for resolution that are available and DO work. Even when forced to fight, you can always fight fair, and send a powerful message.

So, now, it’s time for you to be grateful because you have your share of conflicts in your love relationship, through which you can learn about yourself and grow, right?

We will never know what we can do without challenge and opposition. We will never develop new skills if sheer necessity does not force us to do so. In short, without necessary conflict, we will never grow up.

When you engage others in positive conflict, you are telling them that he/she is important enough for you to invest some energy in improving the relationship, by challenging the sore points in it. You are giving others a big compliment by having a positive conflict with them!

Doing positive conflict is having the courage to confront others in order to change a hurting situation and find a better, more inclusive agreement, which will benefit both of you. This is the key here: the search for a mutually acceptable solution, doing a respectful process that answers both sides’ needs.

This is just the beginning. Once you see that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, you can start exploring the techniques that will allow you to use conflict as a way to strengthen relationships.

To your healthy relationships!