A year when they started talking to each other a little bit less. Keeping their worries and emotions a bit closer to the vest. When they stopped turning to each other first for closeness and support and started turning to others. They’d said, “Sorry,” but they were losing track of each other.

No piling on of other things! That means no “kitchen sinking” (dumping other issues or other fights into this one) and no patterns. You are not going to sit down to process a fight and point out, “And you did the same thing to me last week, and last year, and in 1985!” Look, it’s natural—people will want to point out a pattern of behavior that’s be

Those are the basic “do’s” of coping with flooding—now, a couple of important “don’ts.” Don’t … ever say, “Honey, I think you’re getting flooded. You should take a break.” (Your partner may feel blamed and condescended to and remind you that you’re no mind reader.) Say instead, “Honey, I think we need to take a break. Let’s come back in an hour and

When you’re disappointed and unhappy and are feeling something very negative, how do you say it?

For any given couple, any given topic—from finances to housework to parenting to how to load the dishwasher—might be solvable or it might be perpetual. The question is, is the problem limited to this one scenario? Or does it link to a deeper conflict, one that is echoed in other fights and that connects to an underlying, core difference between the

We stew on resentments for far too long before bringing up a problem. We start harshly, with criticism. We don’t know how to self-soothe, and we get overwhelmed and flooded with emotion. We get defensive. We don’t stop to figure out what the fight is really about. We miss or reject the attempts our partners make to repair and meet in the middle. We