When relationships go sour

           "The Unmaker" painting by Ryan Ulrich

There comes a time in every relationship when discord erupts. It doesn't matter how much you're in love, how compatible you are, or how harmonious the relationship is... at some time you are going to experience the strain of disagreement, the sting of criticism, the disappointment of not measuring up to your partner's expectations, or perhaps he will not measure up to yours.

Face it. Human nature dictates that we are moody, broody, snooty individuals at times. There's no getting around it, we're going to have a bad day once in a while, and when we do, our first impulse is to lash out at those closest to us. We figure if we can unload on someone else, it will relieve our burden and we can carry on.

Unfortunately, we have this tendency to "react" when things don't sit right with us. If your partner remarks about your sloppiness, because someone at work told him to clean up his act that day, you're probably not going to welcome his attempt of passing the comment on to you. What usually follows is a defensive retort, which could well fuel the flame of discord.

Getting along with each other requires compassion, respect, sympathy and discernment, but mostly patience. Too often we fly off the handle at some unnecessary remark or an assumption we had no right assuming in the first place. We then want to blame the other person for being a jerk because we feel let down. This can boil into a huge bonfire of adversity.

If you're lucky, you'll recognize that you or your mate were just tired and ornery, and you'll find some way to smooth things over before they get out of hand. Humor has a way of fixing these unpleasantries. Put yourself in the other person's place and try to understand how they are feeling. A little tolerance goes a long way in keeping a relationship from going sour.

But let it get out of hand... watch out!

Betsy Sansby has come up with a four-step strategy for handling conflicts without hurting your relationship. Betsy Sansby (MS, LMFT) is a licensed marriage and family therapist with more than 20 years experience counseling individuals, couples and families.  She is the creator of an ingenious communication tool for couples called: The Ouchkit: A First-Aid Kit for Your Relationship. Clients describe it as “marriage counseling in a box.” She and her husband have written seven instructional books on hand-drumming and percussion, including their latest book for kids, titled Slap Happy.

Basically, she says that brain researchers have found that when people are scared, hurt, or angry, they cannot physiologically think straight. Stress hormones flood the body and cause the rational part of the brain to shut down. Then the irrational part takes over. Angry people can’t talk to each other. Instead they rant and rave -- or go work on their trucks or some other action to avoid confronting the problem.

What Betsy Sansby calls the S.T.O.P. Strategy helps calm you down when you're upset, so you can gain perspective and reconnect from a better place. The best way to use it, she says, is to practice the four steps often, and to start using the strategy during a low-level conflict. That way, when things get really hot, you'll already know how to use it.

Here are Betsy's four steps, taken from her Web site:

1. STOP! As soon as you notice yourself getting uncomfortable with the way your conversation is going, STOP! Then say: "I need a time out." This tells your partner you need a break, without blaming her (him) for your discomfort.

2. TIME OUT. Time out means physically separating from each other in order to stop the hurt. It means each of you going away for a short time (30-60 minutes) and coming back after both of you have calmed down and have completed Step 3: OWN YOUR PART.

· Brain researchers have found that once the heart is beating 95 bpm or above, the thinking brain (neocortex) shuts down and the emotional brain (amygdala) takes over. This means it does no good to keep arguing when you’re both upset, because the reasonable part of your brain is no longer listening.

· John Gottman’s research on marital satisfaction found that couples who disengage when things start heating up, and try again after both people are calmer, stay together and report greater satisfaction in their relationships.

3. OWN YOUR PART. This means taking responsibility for your part in creating the problem. It means calming yourself down, analyzing your behavior, and redirecting your energy away from attacking or defending. Most people believe they’ve won if they’ve gotten their spouse to do things their way. Don’t mistake submission for devotion, or obedience for love, says Betsy. Every act of overt muscling by one partner leads to two equally powerful acts of covert defiance by the other!

4. PEACE OFFERING! Assuming you’ve done all three previous steps, you should be ready to come back together and talk. Each of you should take a turn sharing what you learned about yourself from your time away. This means owning your part, apologizing to your partner for the hurt you may have caused, and making a peace offering. A peace offering can be as simple as a hug or a kiss, or it can be a promise or an agreement to do something differently.

When both of you have completed this step, chances are you’ll be feeling lots better. You can read Betsy Sansby's advice column “Ask Betsy” at: www.theouchkit.com.

In my experience communication has always been the key to resolving conflicts, especially in my relationships. I was married to my twin flame for seven years. We were together for 19 years. Just because we were soul mates and had out-of-this-world sex, and knew each others' hearts, doesn't mean there weren't moments when we lashed out at one another. There were times when I thought the world was going to end because he was angry at me about something, or our disagreements were so intense, I went temporarily out of my mind trying to prove my point.

Despite the intensity of our disagreements, we could at least maintain communication. The worst thing you can do is refuse to talk to one another. There were times I didn't want to talk about it. I would rather have slunk off into some dark cave and rotted there for the rest of my life... but he was the wiser of us and always coerced me into bringing the problem to the surface.

Sometimes worse things were said because of it, but at least we got everything out in the open. And once that happened, it seemed everything got put back into perspective rather quickly.

Two people can make it work, even when they are different in many ways. My husand and I were 18 years apart. We came from different parts of the country, different generations, different backgrounds. Yet our differences also enriched us greatly when we came together. We shared life experiences. We were able to express our feelings and emotions, and we discovered our identities through one another.

The happiest of marriages is not the one in which there is no conflict, for how can you grow in such a state of mediocrity? It is important to live, to love, to learn together. Without conflict, how can you be tested? Through resolving conflicts we pass the tests and earn the privilege to graduate and move on.

If you are in a relationship that you feel is truly going sour, and you want back its sweetness, it might help to apply a few of the rules in the Law of Attraction. Our thoughts are very powerful tools. What we think about results in what we manifest.

If you are dwelling on the difficulty of your relationship and going into fear about losing your loved one, get rid of that thought! Through Law of Attraction, the Universe will give you what it thinks you want. You may not want your relationship to end, but if that is what you are thinking about and unable to focus on anything else, by golly that's what you're going to get.

Sit down with a pad of paper and start writing out all the things you appreciate about the other person. At the top of the page, write your heading: "I appreciate these things about... (So and So)." Then list them. Everything that comes into your mind. You might say, "She's a good mother," or "I like the way she always remembers to kiss me goodbye before she goes to work." Things like that. Gratitude is one of the important rules in Law of Attraction. That and feeling joyful when you focus your thoughts on your desired outcome, whether it is a material thing, losing weight, or a position you want to hold, or a relationship.

Visualizing it the way you want it to be, with sincere feelings of joy and excitement, will bring it to you. It has to. It's the Law.