This dream is a fantasy that’s undermining your ability to maintain harmony in your intimate relationships and could possibly be keeping you from identifying an ideal match to share your life with.

When you’re ready to accept that even happy couples argue, then you can become curious about happy couples and what they know about arguing and making up that you haven’t figured out yet.

Unhappy as well as happy couples:

• Sometimes raise their voices at each other.
• Sometimes say things they regret.
• Sometimes freeze each other out when they are upset.
• Sometimes disappoint each other.

So what’s the difference between happy couples and unhappy couples?

Here’s the deal: It’s not one thing. The difference is in how happy couples perceive each other and the actions they take when conflicts arise.

7 Secrets Happy Couples Know About Arguing & Making Up

1. Happy Couples Take Responsibility Instead Of Assign Blame

Relationship is like a funhouse mirror. At the carnival, you look in a funhouse mirror and see a distorted image of yourself. You might have a long head, a tiny torso with big giant feet, or some other odd image staring back at you. And sometimes what you see is so weird that you don’t even recognize yourself.

This is what happens when you’re in an intimate relationship. You aren’t looking at your partner. You’re looking at a distorted image of yourself. And all your flaws and frustrations with yourself get projected onto your partner.

Happy couples realize this and take responsibility for their projections.

It’s much easier to blame your partner when things go wrong and to judge your partner’s strategies for dealing with stress. Their behavior makes you uncomfortable and you’d probably handle things differently. If only he/she would just do things your way the two of you would get along so much better.

Ultimately blaming and judging your partner leads to a power struggle between the two of you. Just let go of the rope.

Happy couples take ownership of their discomfort whatever it may be and allow their partner the freedom to make his/her own choices. It’s this acceptance that creates harmony between you and a bond that lasts over time.

2. Happy Couples Don’t Require Agreement

One of the biggest causes of a power struggle in a relationship is the need for your partner to agree with you. The need for him/her to agree with your desires, your opinions, and your strategies will cause a lot of conflict between the two of you.

Instead, happy couples understand that intimacy doesn’t require agreement.

Agreement won’t bring you closer together, but authenticity will. When you share your truth and take responsibility for your emotions, you open the door for your partner to share his/her truth. Authenticity is a high vibration, and its expression creates intimacy between the two of you.

You both feel seen, heard and understood. You may both still disagree, but it suddenly isn’t that important because you feel connected. That’s the magic of intimacy.

Happy couples know the importance of being authentic. They don’t have the unrealistic expectation that they’ll always agree with one another. Being authentic and speaking up to share and express feelings allows a deeper bond to grow over time.

3. Happy Couples Fight For The Relationship, Not Each Other

The only way out of a power struggle in a relationship is to fight for the relationship instead of each other. When you choose to fight for the relationship, you put aside your ego desires to be “right” and commit to finding understanding for each other’s experience.

Letting go of the need to be right isn’t about giving up what you value or what’s important to you. It’s about letting go of the rope and listening to your partner so you can understand his/her point of view. You can have empathy and compassion for your partner’s upset and also share your experience.

If you believe you have to give up something you value just to get along, it won’t feel like love. It’ll feel like you’re constantly sacrificing your needs to have peace.

Happy couples don’t sacrifice their needs thinking it’ll make things better. Instead, they fight for the relationship and understand the importance of reconnecting and repairing after a fight.

4. Happy Couples Don’t Accept An Apology Until They Are Ready To Let It Go

Rushing to forgiveness can cause a lot of problems if you aren’t ready to let the argument go. It’s great that your partner is willing to take responsibility and apologize for his/her behavior.

This does not mean that you’re ready to let it go. If you find yourself still arguing in your mind about what was said or done, you aren’t ready to accept the apology that has been offered.

When you accept an apology, it means that you’re ready to let the argument go. You’re committing to not bringing it up again. Don’t accept an apology because you want the fight to end. Accept an apology from your partner because you’re ready to let it go and reconnect with your partner.

Happy couples make the effort to clean things up entirely rather than rushing to forgiveness and avoiding the uncomfortable conversation.

5. Happy Couples Don’t Forget To Repair

Mistakes happen. Words get said that you wish you could take back. Sometimes you take actions that you’re not proud of. This is all part of the human experience.

Happy couples are different because they never forget to repair when arguments occur. They take responsibility for their behavior, apologize, and they offer amends when necessary.

When an argument hasn’t been repaired, it’ll fester, and flare up without warning. You may find yourself in a fight cycle that feels like it’ll never end. This is what people mean when they break up because of irreconcilable differences.

They never took the time to repair the fight so the space between them feels insurmountable. How could you let go of those hurts if you never did the work of healing them?

Happy couples know that the most important step in any argument is to repair and reconnect with each other.

6. Happy Couples Have Clear Ground Rules About How To Fight

Creating ground rules about arguments gives you a feeling of safety when there’s conflict. You know that an argument won’t end the relationship.

Happy couples create clear rules and boundaries so that they fight fair. These rules may bend sometimes, and ultimately, they do the work of taking responsibility and repairing and making best efforts moving forward.

Happy couples have clear communication and a system to take a break if things get too heated, and for letting their partner know when they’re ready to reconnect and repair.

Creating ground rules for disagreements can be an uncomfortable conversation, however, they give you a structure so that you and your partner can make it through the challenging times that’ll inevitably come your way.

No one would bring a baby home from the hospital without a plan of what to do with all the dirty diapers. Make sure you plan the same way for the crap that will show up between you and your partner.

Happy couples know the importance of having clear ground rules that allow for mutual respect even when there is conflict. The secret sauce is having clear communication and a plan rather than the fantasy that fights will never occur.

7. Happy Couples Clean Up As They Go

Holding onto little frustrations can lead to them building up and eventually exploding into a much bigger argument. It’s like a volcano that has built up so much pressure that it spews lava and ash all over the place.

When this happens, you feel terrible, and you decide that you don’t like conflict. So you keep things to yourself until they blow up again.

Happy couples know how to release the pressure by cleaning up the little frustrations as they go. This doesn’t mean that you nitpick everything with your partner. It does mean that you regularly share how you feel and make requests for adjustments.

We call this process “keeping your sink clean.” When you tell your partner that you have a dirty fork you need to clean up, your partner can relax knowing that you aren’t going to mention half a dozen things you’re upset about.

This open line of communication allows you to reconnect again and again with your partner so that you don’t find that one day you’ve grown apart. It also means that you’re not going outside the relationship to complain or seek comfort elsewhere.

Clean your sink as you go and you’ll have a happy and healthy relationship.

Happy couples may fight and behave like any other couple, but it’s what they do after the fight that makes all the difference in creating long-lasting, soul-satisfying love.

Are you struggling to find common ground with your partner? If you are looking for more tools to navigate your disagreements, download our free guide: The 5 Stages Of Relationship. You’ll get a map to move past any power struggles to create a lasting partnership filled with co-creation and bliss.

I hope you can help me. I thought it was real love when I met my BF, but now I don’t know. We’re not getting along, and I’m sad and tired… I don’t know what to do.

Our souls connected immediately, and I fell in love with him. Everything about our relationship was easy and comfortable at the beginning. Now, I’m rethinking everything because we keep arguing about the same things and it seems we don’t understand each other at all. It seems he doesn’t hear me or understand me no matter what I say.

We have a fight and then a couple of days later things are good between us again and I get hopeful that we can find a way through this together. Unfortunately, we have a similar fight and things happen all over again.

Why isn’t it enough that we love each other? If it’s real love, why does it take so much work?

Cheryl”

Hi Cheryl,

It seems like real love should be easy, especially when things go so smoothly at the beginning. You’ll end up having conflict no matter who you’re in relationship with. It’s okay to get mad and disagree because getting stuck in a fight cycle is a normal relationship progression. The problem appears to be that you’re missing the skills to find your way through conflict to create a deeper connection.

Even when it’s real love you can’t sustain consistent conflict or the repetition of the same issues over a long period of time, so the problem is that you’re not able to repair and reconnect after a fight.

The good news is that you (and your S.O.) can learn new skills that allow you to create a stronger bond through the conflicts that arise. When you accept disagreements and miscommunication as a natural part of any relationship, you can focus on developing the skills to strengthen your love.

Real Love Doesn’t Exempt You From Conflict

When you experience real love with someone, it’s partially because of what you share — similar sense of humor, taste in music and/or movies, life goals, and mutual attraction and chemistry.

But a major component of your attraction and chemistry comes from your differences.

The person you’re in a relationship with is a completely different person than you. They have different beliefs than you, different strategies for dealing with stress, different strategies to respond to the same stimuli, different mental/emotional patterns, and different life experiences.

These differences are the foundation of your disagreements. Navigating through your differences together is the most important skill for real love to thrive and prevail. Just because you love each other doesn’t mean that your differences won’t cause friction between you, it’s normal and a part of every relationship.

Real Love Doesn’t Just Happen By Accident

Real love doesn’t just happen when you find the mythical “right person.” It’s unrealistic to believe that the feelings of falling in love will last forever, and that you’ll easily navigate conflict together. This unrealistic expectation puts too much pressure on the relationship. It doesn’t mean that real love doesn’t exist between you.

Sharing a lifetime with someone requires you to navigate through issues together, allowing you to create a more satisfying and deeper connection over time. Real love stands the test of time because each person chooses the relationship over their ego needs and desires.

Don’t let your resistance to conflict color your perception of the relationship. Real love relationships require effort to last, but that work shouldn’t be the primary dynamic between you. If you’re constantly at odds with each other there is a more serious problem at hand.

Real Love Is A Choice, Not A Feeling

When you think of love as a feeling, you focus on how you feel about your partner, as if that is the only measurement for love. This is why so many people fall in love and then fall out of love — as if love is entirely out of your control.

However, if you think of love as a choice that you make about someone you care about, then you can choose loving thoughts and behaviors. Real love requires you to take loving actions, even on those days when you don’t feel like it.

Love is not just a feeling, it’s a decision you make every day of your life. Even when your partner doesn’t take out the trash, spends too much time playing video games, when they don’t pay attention to what you said, or get defensive about your feedback — you can still choose loving thoughts and actions.

Relationships follow a natural path from the initial bloom of young love to the more mature bond between a couple that has been through tough times together. Examining the first two stages of relationship will provide insight into why you’re stuck in a fight cycle.

The Romance Stage Should Be Easy

The first stage of relationship is the romance stage. During this stage you’re a wee bit delusional about your partner due to the chemicals released by the brain. You can foolishly think they’re just like you, that you’ll never have problems, and that this feeling of intoxication will last forever.

Expecting the romance stage to last forever is a fantasy. During this first stage of relationship, your brain is flooded with feel-good chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. You’re literally high on love.

Don’t mistake this chemical high for real love! The purpose of the romance stage is to fill the tank of the relationship so you bond together and can make it through rough patches. The longer the romance stage, the more positive memories you have to draw upon when times get tough.

During this stage, it’s like your partner can do no wrong. This is when both of you have blind spots to the other’s faults. It’s all new and exciting and it’s truly a chemical high that simply can’t last. It’s not everlasting, but it is the promise of what can be if you continue to choose each other.

Every Intimate Relationship Will Have Power Struggles

Once the chemicals of the romance stage wear off it’s like you’re hungover. Suddenly your partner’s adorable behaviors become annoying. Instead of agreeing on everything and seeing them through rose-colored glasses, you now see them as they really are, and they are different than you. This second stage of relationship allows both of you to individuate from the other.

The power struggle stage is an emotional tug-of-war because you’re each fighting for your way of thinking and doing things. The differences that brought you together are now seen through a critical filter. You may find that you’re overly critical or annoyed by your partner’s behavior. It’s likely you’ll each get triggered causing big fights.

Both of you could find yourselves thinking (and even saying) “If you’d agree to do things my way we’d get along better.” Stressful events reveal your strategies for coping with life events. When your coping strategies conflict with your partner’s strategies then friction arises.

This is where most couples get frustrated and give up on the relationship. The false belief that real love protects you from having conflict is the actual problem. No couple skips the power struggle stage. Nature brings two different people together to safeguard the family unit. The fact that opposites attract is built into species survival.

The only way to overcome the power struggle stage and strengthen your bond is to learn a new approach to handling conflict.

6 Steps To Reclaiming Real Love

1. Take A Pause When Triggered

If you’re triggered, you’re likely to say or do something you’ll regret. You can’t reconnect and repair until you compose yourself. It’s not your partner’s responsibility to calm you down, it’s up to you to calm your own nervous system.

Take a pause as soon as you realize you’re triggered. Use this time to get your brain back online and feel serene (do not sit and stew about the events that upset you). When you’re triggered, your mind is in fight/flight mode, and you can’t think clearly.

Try this out next time you’re triggered: Tell your partner you need to pause and then find a space where you are alone. Sit or lie down and place your hand on your chest or on your navel. Breathe slowly in and out until you begin to feel your body and mind calming down. Once you are present, grounded, and tranquil, reach out to your partner and find out if they are ready to repair and reconnect.

2. Let Go Of The Rope

In a power struggle both of you are pulling on the rope in a figurative tug of war. It’s an ego battle between right and wrong. In reality, we live in the gray where things are not so black and white. Release the rope by choosing not to take your partner’s behavior personally.

Your partner’s behavior – their strategies, their triggers, their actions – aren’t about you. They were put in place long before they ever met you and would show up in any relationship. Instead, do your best to have an open mind and not jump to conclusions. When you’re curious about what’s going on with them you’re less focused on your own hurt and anger, plus you’re no longer pulling on the rope changing the dynamic between the two of you.

Letting go of the rope allows you to be curious about your partner, their strategies, and opens the door to compassion creating an opportunity to repair and reconnect.

3. Take Responsibility For Your Triggers

Just like your partner, you developed strategies, behaviors, and emotional reactions for dealing with stress long before the two of you ever met. They’re not responsible for your triggers.

The hard work of a relationship is taking 100% responsibility for your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. Without responsibility, there can never be any healing. Keep a boundary by not taking any responsibility for your partner’s thoughts, feelings, or actions — these are all on them.

Imagine you’re each on opposite sides of the highway with a cement barrier down the middle. Keep your side of the street clean and avoid trying to clean up their side of the street. You’re never responsible for your partner’s behavior, you are responsible for your own.

4. Real Love Requires Authentic Communication

Instead of focusing on what he said or did, begin by sharing your feelings. Use statements that begin with “I,” and avoid statements that begin with “you.” Feelings are not opinions about his actions. Identify how you feel using clear and straightforward language and complete the sentence, “I feel…”

Authenticity has a high vibration and communicating authentically is like an invitation asking your partner to meet you there. When you’re both willing to be authentic you can create emotional intimacy and connection. This creates the space for real love and a deep bond with one another.

5. Real Love Doesn’t Require Agreement

Conflicts often arise because you’re emotionally disconnected from your partner or yourself. You‘ll never be connected to your partner 24/7 365, no person can give you that. Getting triggered is part of the human experience. The goal is to restore intimacy and connection as soon as possible.

Emotional intimacy doesn’t require agreement. Going over the play-by-play of the argument is futile; you’ll never reconnect that way. There’s no need to decide who was right and who was wrong — usually there’s a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or a mistake.

Needing agreement is an ego desire, and it keeps you in the power struggle between right and wrong. When you’re emotionally connected it’s likely you’ll find the conflict itself is insignificant. When you’re in a committed relationship your partner has earned the benefit of the doubt, and so have you.

6. Don’t Keep Score

Once you’ve both taken responsibility, offered apologies, and reconnected let the conflict go. There’s no need to keep score. Harboring anger and resentment will deteriorate the love between you and push you apart.

Instead, clean things up as they arise. Imagine conflicts are like dirty dishes in a sink, you don’t want the dishes to pile up. Instead, clean as you go. Clean up the little misunderstandings and the minor annoyances before they become something bigger that can blow up like a volcano. Say what you need to say and then move on.

Real love doesn’t have to be hard work, but it does require that you become a master of uncomfortable conversations. It may feel like a risk to reach out to your partner to reconnect, but it’s a risk worth taking. Conflict can be a doorway to a deeper connection if you approach it with an open, curious, and loving heart.

If you’re looking for more tools to get past the power struggle and navigate through all five stages of relationship, download our free guide: The 5 Stages Of Relationship. You’ll get a map to create real love that lasts, and a partnership filled with co-creation and bliss.

Disagreeing, fighting, bickering, or whatever your label of choice is not only common in intimate relationships, but when done properly can lead to a deeper connection between the two of you. In order for that to happen, you both have to have the same goal in mind.

Conflict is a natural occurrence in all relationships, and when you understand the common stages that all relationships go through you will have a clearer vision on where you and your partner are, and how to reconnect and bring the romance back.

Understanding The Stages Of Relationship Creates A Roadmap For Reconnection

In order to stop fighting with your partner and rekindle the romance between the two of you, you’ll need to know how to navigate through the stages of your relationship.

When you first come together, there is attraction, the discovery of common interests, the excitement of sex, and all the other good stuff that two people can share together. This is the Romance Stage of relationship, and it is a chemical high.

Both of your brains are being flooded with feel-good chemicals like dopamine and norepinephrine that stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain and create a feeling of excitement.

In this stage, the two of you are mainlining love like an addict mainlines heroin.

This stage is so important because it bonds the two of you, and ultimately puts fuel in the tank of the relationship so you can continue further down the path toward lasting love.

Unfortunately, these chemicals wear off over time, and when they do, there is a natural hangover. This is the beginning of the Power Struggle Stage of relationship.

At the beginning, there is the excitement of discovering someone new. “Wow, this person is different from me. This is exciting!” When the chemicals wear off and the Power Struggle kicks in, you discover yourself thinking, “Wow, this person is different from me. If only he/she would do things my way we would get along so much better!”

Another aspect of the Power Struggle that is important to understand is that each of you is being triggered into your core wounds. Even though it may appear that this person is the problem, the real problem is that your subconscious mind is seeing his behavior through the core wound of your childhood experiences.

The Power Struggle Stage Reveals The Deeper Reasons For The Conflict

If the two of you argue about the dishes and who does them and how they are done, the argument isn’t really about the dishes.

Your side of the argument may be that you were raised by a controlling mother, and his criticism of how you load the dishwasher triggers a feeling in you that he is trying to control you.

His side of the argument may be that he didn’t feel respected as a little boy, and your criticism of how he does the dishes triggers a feeling of disrespect inside of him.

Neither of your issues is really about the dishes. The argument over the dishes is simply a catalyst for your childhood wounds to be triggered.

There is a way out of the power struggle and into the third stage of relationship – the Stability Stage. This third stage of relationship occurs when the two of you stop fighting each other and start fighting for the relationship. In order to stop fighting with your partner, you’ll have to make a conscious choice to approach conflict in a new way.

When you learn to fight for the relationship, you’re ready for the next stage, the Commitment Stage. This is where you are ready for a deeper, long-term commitment. This stage starts when you feel like you don’t need your partner to change. You accept him as he is warts and all and you decide to love him anyway, and he feels the same about you.

The final stage is the Bliss Stage or Co-Creation Stage. This is where the love between the two of you is so strong that you decide to create something larger than just the two of you. In younger couples, this is a great time to start a family. In older couples this can mean taking your love into the world through a philanthropic cause, creating a foundation, volunteer work, or fostering children or pets.

In order to stop fighting with your partner, you have to be able to get past the Power Struggle stage and into the Stability Stage. This transition is one of the most powerful steps you can take as a couple and create a bond that lasts a lifetime.

Let’s Look At 7 Steps To Stop Fighting With Your Partner And Start Creating A Deeper Connection

1. Learn How To Stop A Fight From Escalating So That The Two Of You Can Reconnect

If you’re stuck in a quarrel cycle and really want to stop fighting with your partner, you first have to learn how to calm yourself down and prevent an argument from escalating or falling into a cold war.

Realize that when you are in an argument you are triggered and your mind has gone into survival mode. Your big powerful pre-frontal cortex has gone offline and your fight/flight/freeze system has taken over. All of your strategies while triggered are designed to keep you safe and are detrimental to creating connection with your partner.

First, recognize that you are triggered into survival mode and you need to take a break. You may need to create a signal or phrase with your partner to request a break from the argument. This break should have a time frame. Leaving it open-ended can create an extended cold war from the argument where the two of you are not openly fighting, but you are withholding love and affection from each other.

During this break, you’ll want to actively work to calm your nervous system. Instead of using the time to refine your arguments about why you are right and your partner is wrong, take the time to reconnect with yourself and calm down.

One effective technique is to place one or both hands on your heart as you inhale and exhale to a count of 5. Continue doing this until you feel your heart rate slow and your body calm down.

2. Find Neutral Ground To Meet With Your Partner

When you have calmed your nervous system you’ll want to have an agreed spot to reconnect with your partner. Over time this spot will develop positive associations and a subconscious understanding that you’ve come together to reconnect and repair.

If you are home, a great place to start the reconnection process is on a couch. You can sit facing away from each other or facing toward each other, and when you are ready to reconnect your partner is right there next to you.

In order to stop fighting with your partner, create rules about how you communicate when you come to the agreed-upon space. Agree to allow each other to speak without interrupting. Take your time if you feel yourself getting triggered again and remember to breathe.

This is the time for the two of you to begin the process of de-escalating the argument and to start reconnecting.

3. Take Responsibility For What Belongs To You, And Don’t Blame Your Partner For Your Wounds

From the example above: He didn’t create your fear of being controlled, and you didn’t create his fear of being disrespected.

When you stop blaming your partner for a wound that existed long before he came along, you are able to step into responsibility. From the seat of responsibility, you can find your way through to deeply connect with one another.

What bothers you about your partner is something that is already inside of you. This is “The Funhouse Mirror Effect.” You don’t recognize that your partner is really a reflection of yourself and your wounds. The image is distorted just like inside a funhouse at the fair.

To stop fighting with your partner own your wounds and stop blaming your partner for being triggered.

4. Have Compassion For Your Partner’s Childhood Wounds And Your Own

Want to transform your relationship and stop fighting with your partner? Realize that you and your partner are not actually arguing about each other. Instead, you are working to heal childhood wounds.

Seeing the little boy in him and the little girl in you brings a completely new perspective about what is really going on in in the subtext of your arguments.

If you were able to go back in time and see your partner as a little boy, you would find an infinite amount of compassion for everything he went through.

When your partner is triggered, imagine him as that little boy who is hurt or scared. He is using the best strategy he has for coping with the current situation. When you see him this way, it becomes easy to see his behavior for what it is – an old pattern – and from this perspective you do not take his behavior personally.

Triggering events put you into a fight/flight/freeze response. Literally your big, beautiful, conscious mind goes offline, and the reptilian, animal brain takes over. You are no longer resourceful, intelligent human beings capable of solving problems. Instead, you are animals trying to protect yourselves and need to feel safe.

The same idea is true for you when you are triggered. Seeing yourself as the little girl who is doing the best she can with limited resources opens you up to compassion for yourself, which then will allow you to reconnect with your partner.

5. Use “I” Language, Not “You” Language When Communicating Your Feelings

One of the easiest ways to trigger a defensive response from someone is to say “You make me so angry!” (Or replace anger with whatever emotion you usually are triggered into.)

The truth is you are the one who is in control of your emotional life. No one can make you feel anything. It’s not like he’s holding a gun to your head and saying, “Feel angry or I’ll shoot!”

Your emotional responses are yours. Own them, especially when you are sharing them with your partner.

Sharing with your partner in this way, “I feel angry when I imagine that someone is trying to control me,” allows you to take responsibility for your own emotions and for the history of your wounds. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter who the other person is, this is your habitual response when you feel that someone is attempting to control you.

Communicating in this way allows your partner to hear you rather than hearing your feelings as an attack. Stop fighting with your partner by owning your emotional responses and taking responsibility for your reactions.

6. Clean Up Your Emotional Messes Before They Become Too Big Of A Problem To Talk About Easily

One of the least useful sayings in our culture about conflict in relationships is the phrase, “Pick your battles.”

First off, you are not in a war with your partner so any disagreement is not a battle to be fought, or a war to be won.

Also, when you hold onto something because you think it’s not a big deal and you don’t want to seem like a difficult person, your emotions can build up inside until you cannot contain them anymore.

Holding onto little things and letting them build up over time sets the stage for you to finally erupt like a volcano. It doesn’t feel good to you, and both you and your partner are covered in lava and feeling burned.

Develop a practice of keeping the sink clean in your relationship. Don’t let the dirty dishes of your little hurts or frustrations build up into something that is unmanageable. You don’t want to leave landmines throughout your relationship that can cause the whole foundation to blow up.

Instead, make the effort to clean as you go. This allows you to remain connected to each other and to avoid blowups that are out of proportion to the current mishap.

7. Stop Fighting With Your Partner And Start Fighting For The Relationship

The power struggle is like a tug-of-war between the two of you. When one of you is “right” that means the other one is “wrong.” No one wants to be wrong – you expend a lot of energy fighting off being wrong in every part of your life. Stop fighting with your partner by refusing to make each other right or wrong.

Instead of the ego struggle of who is right or who is wrong, develop an “us against the world” mentality. This means that you fight for the relationship, not for your way, or his way.

Contrary to popular belief, compromise breeds resentment and ultimately kills passion in a relationship. No one wants to give up things they want and/or need in order to meet in the middle. It creates a lose-lose situation.

Instead, look for a win-win in order to resolve conflict. This will require more effort and creativity, and we can assure you it is well worth it in the long run!

Practicing these 7 tools will allow you to stop fighting with your partner so you can rekindle the Romance Stage sharing the deep connection and love that grows over time. This skill set will serve you to view conflict as a doorway to a deeper connection.

Most people are conflict avoidant, so through these practices, you’ll have plenty of chances to heal your childhood wounds by being seen, heard, and understood. This is the magic of emotional intimacy that is only possible when you’ve stood by one another through the years together.

Are you stuck in a fight cycle with your partner and looking for help breaking the pattern? Download our special report, The 5 Stages of Relationship. You’ll the single most powerful choice you can make to break out of a power struggle in a relationship.