KissMeGoodnight eLearning Series:
How To Tell A Great Relationship
From A Totally Unhealthy One

Lowdown on Long Lasting Love

Now it’s time to take a look at the lowdown on how to handle long lasting love. Here are some pointers on how to deal with some of the top issues that when mishandled, can separate the men from the boys, as they say, or rather the successful couples from the less-successful ones.

Conflict Management - The key here is to realize that most couples do not solve every issue. In fact, reports show that couples don’t solve most of their problems. So if you think your girlfriends or buddies are winning more frequent battles than you, forget about it. It’s not happening.

Next realize that statistics still reflect about a 50 percent survival rate for married couples long-term. (I.E. the other half divorce). And for those who do make it, it’s not so much about whether or not they “love” each other more than the divorced people did. It’s generally more about that fact that they developed better communication skills and learned to understand each other better. And developed and learning - -these are action verbs.

As you develop and learn your own job skills for advancement, so can you and should you do the same for relationship advancement. There is no shame in reaching out and improving in this area. Tips for developing better communication skills and learning to understand your mate better; i.e. improve conflict management, are as follows:

1. Take turns speaking and listening to each other. As a speaker, speak only for yourself and keep your comments brief. The stop and invite the listener to sum up what you said (to make sure he or she understood).

2. Then allow the other person to take over and follow the same format.

3. Share back and forth in this same manner, jotting down conflict management notes as needed for following up later and establishing new boundaries in your relationship.

Some tips for handling conflict resolutions are:

A. Start with the person presenting his or her complaint in a general format, without blame. For example, instead of saying, “You keep leaving dirty dishes out on the counter all night,” say “I don’t like it when dirty dishes are left out on the counter. During my college days, that attracted cockroaches.”

B. Encourage each other to come to an agreement in a calm, friendly manner. Negotiate. Give and take. Maybe the dishes from late night snacks don’t have to be washed with soap and hot water, but can simply be rinsed off instead and stacked in the sink’s dishpan or strainer, for instance.

C. If negativity starts, stop it ASAP. In the above example, maybe the mate wants all sinks clear and free for emptying coffee cups and other snack and breakfast dishes. So this person starts swearing, calling the other person a lazy idiot or something…STOP.

D. Calm things back down. Use hand signals like coaches do in sports, if necessary. Men can often relate to this. Do a “time out” mode. And take a breather or break for a few minutes.

E. Then go back to where things were fine, just before step “C.” Inject some humor and try to resolve the conflict again. Maybe joke about how you pay much more for your residence now and don’t have cockroach problems. And that OK, one sink can be left clear, the other will hold a strainer of rinsed-off items. Any dirty ones can be placed / stacked on one side of the strainer; rinsed items on the other. Done deal!

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