5 RELATIONSHIP HACKS TO HELP YOU FIGHT WITH YOUR PARTNER WITHOUT RUINING YOUR RELATIONSHIP.
Everybody fights.
Everybody has a belly button. Everybody poops. And everybody fights. These are 3 inarguable truths, behind which lies all psychological health and spiritual success.
You know who didn’t fight? Ward and June Cleaver. And were they happy? No. They were miserable. Every night after dinner, Ward stumbled into the basement to look at pictures of his ex-girlfriend, and finish off a bottle of gin he’d refer to as Wilson, until he blacked out. All the while, June tucked herself into her twin bed, to recite the serenity prayer exactly 103 times before falling asleep.
Conflict in our relationships is a lifeline to their health. Conflict, like sex. Conflict, like acceptance. Conflict, like love, is the beating heart of our partnerships, transmitting the blood, sweat and tears necessary for survival.
THERE'S ONLY ONE RULE AND IT WILL SAVE YOUR LOVE LIFE.
So I'm having a conversation the other day with a lovely human being. She and I are in her car, blithely arguing about systems theory or flash mobs. I'm almost certain that I'm right and she's wrong, as is so often the case between us.
Thanks to my interest in neuroscience, I happened to know that my autonomic nervous system was doing it’s thing, via my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems which were regulating my cardiac and vasomotor activity, balancing my cortisol levels, and integrating input from my limbic system. In a nutshell, keeping it real.
SUDDENLY, THIS LOVELY HUMAN ACCUSES ME OF GETTING DEFENSIVE.
I was doing no such thing, so I might have snapped back and told her that the British woman inside the GPS system was better attuned to me than she was, and that her ability to be wrong so many times in a row was as impressive as it was sad.
