1. Conflict and anger are signs that your relationship is failing.
True, or false? How do you think your partner would answer?
I say false and I think H would say false too--it's how you deal with it that matters and contributes to the possible failure of R
How have you and your partner dealt with conflict and anger in the past? What is the "typical" thing for both of you to do? What do both of you do to either avoid conflict, or to instigate it? When are the times that you've been able to deal with anger and conflict successfully? When has it worked for them, and when has it worked for you? What were you both doing at the time?
i tend to be pretty easy going and usually avoid conflict and anger. But I do know how to push H's buttons and when he gets angry-the best thing to do is to let him have his space, but I tend to continue to want to talk it out, etc etc--which just escalates the situation even further--a few times to the point where he had to leave to cool down before he would say something he didn't mean..(shortly after moving into our house last year we had a blowout about me wanting everything to be done and perfect when we moved in and he was frustrated because he felt he wasn't meeting my expectations and that i wasn't complmenting him on what he had been doing--he called me a selfish b##ch-which he's never used language on me before and then he left--3 hours later, one STAR WARS movie later he was home, we apologized, made love and went to sleep in each others arms) However, overall, we never really got into huge arguments or heated discussions--we used to have the debate often about me mothering him and my reply was often either "well you didn't have much of a mother to begin with" or "if you'd stop acting like a child then I wouldn't need to mother you"--two very awful statements that just fester on-going resentments for him. I know this now and am diligently working on changing that behavior/attitude!!!!
