But times have changed. Children’s inner voices and emotional lives are being respected and even nurtured. Mothers are in some ways becoming friends with their children. And the relationship is a two-way street with mothers disclosing more and more to their kids, especially their daughters, about their own internal worlds. All this begs a few questions. Like, where should the boundaries be between mothers and daughters? When is close, too close? Are kids (even adult kids) ever ready to hear about parents’ personal problems?

First of all, when children are young, they really need a parent more than another friend. Parents provide boundaries and protection. Disclosing adult problems to small children can give them anxiety. On-the-other hand, children are tiny sponges that soak up their parents’ emotional moods, so trying to hide your feelings is like trying to hide a steak from a canine. Being emotionally open and disclosing the source of your sadness or anxiety in limited, simple terms is the  healthy way to go. Assuring children that your emotional state is not their fault and that you are solely responsible for finding a solution is the way to stay a protective parent even when you are distressed.

But mothers and older daughters are an interesting coupling. Unlike fathers, who are slightly less likely to become emotionally fused with their sons, mothers and daughters sometimes thrive on emotional closeness. All very well and good if the family system is one where personal boundaries are taught and respected. In my opinion there are two kinds of intimate relationships that are not growth enhancing — one that is two independent where people live like polite roommates and tread gently around any topic that might risk intimacy, and the other I call “fusion” where people are so close they can’t remember whose problem is whose. As daughters get older, one of these two scenarios often gets enlivened in her relationship with her mother.

The harder task is to practice interdependence, where each mother and daughter may lean on each other from time to time, but also know when to step back and let the other solve their own problems. Being close to your mother is a wonderful gift. Being dominated by your mother is another matter.

Part of the journey from childhood to adulthood is a process called individuation where one examines the values of their family and peers, chooses which to retain and which to discard, and then looks toward the world at large for other like-minded beliefs, to eventually shape themselves as an individual. This process can’t happen if the only choice mothers give their daughters is to conform to family values. Bottom line: Can mothers and daughters be friends? Certainly, if they are allowed to disagree and suffer no emotional blackmail as a result.

I entered the therapist’s office apologizing for my tears. I assured her that I was normally quite a together woman was completely surprised by this mess of black mascara. She was kind, empathetic, and made me promise to stop apologizing for myself. (Sigh. It’s a Canadian cultural tradition so I still do it sometimes.) I expected, like most people, to have a couple quick sessions and be dry-eyed and beaming within a few weeks. Little did I know that I was actually embarking on a tender journey toward the center of my earth. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was an identity crisis, some delayed grieving for the deaths of my parents, and yes, some pre-pardem depression. In the end I was so fascinated by the process that I spent seven years in therapy and a partially overlapping six years in graduate school studying psychology. Clearly I had found my bag and myself, and along the way I learned a few myths and methods of therapy that the common person may not know. So, here’s a starter list of things you may not know about therapy if you’ve never been there.

Stigma Belongs to You, Not Society At Large

Like many newbies, I was cautious early on about who I shared my news of therapy with. I still carried some crazy idea that therapy was for crazy people. In fact, psychiatric hospitals are for crazy people. The rest of us live with a pleura of annoying habits and feelings that sometimes run counter to society’s definition of “normal.” The rest of us can really use an observing eye to help us make sense of some of the painful lessons we learned and the thoughts in our head that stop us from being the best person we can be. When I finally started sharing my experiences of therapy with others I found out that nearly everyone, especially the most successful people I knew, had been or were continually in therapy. I felt behind the times.

The Range of Therapists Can Be Daunting

Most people choose a therapist based on a referral, having no knowledge about their psychological orientation or their education of licensure. To break it down, therapists can range from drug-prescribing medical doctors called psychiatrists, to clinical psychologists with a Ph.D., to marriage and family therapists, to social workers, to religious counselors, drug and alcohol counselors, to life coaches. Some are liscensed. Some are being supervised by someone with a license. Others are unlicensed lay people. But all have a capacity for care and are doing what they do because they have a lot of empathy. Many have recovered from some major emotional wounds themselves so they have personal insight into what you may be going through. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask a therapist about his or her credentials and treatment plan. But also know this. No matter the level of education or liscensure, it is the therapeutic relationship itself that heals. It is the consistent timing of sessions and consistent care giving that becomes the catalyst for growth.

Boundaries Protect YOU

At the beginning of therapy new patients are often taken aback by the abrupt way that a therapist may end a session at exactly 50 minutes or not disclose personal details about their own life. Or charge you even when you don’t show up. Or not extend the length of a session when you are stuck in traffic. Or, not take friends of yours on as patients. This is called the therapeutic frame and it is designed to keep you safe. Imagine the hurt if a therapist had time to bleed a session into 60 minutes one week but not the week you are in the most pain? Or, imagine your feelings of jealousy if your therapist seemed to be more helpful to a close friend of yours. Therapists may rigidly stick to the 50  minute hour or insist on a set weekly appointment because your brain responds to consistency of care. And because in the safety of that weekly 50 frame you have the complete freedom to vent and use it to your advantage knowing that the therapist will never inject their needs into your time.

Therapy Can Feel Like a Love Relationship

Imagine having a person entirely focussed on you, all eyes and ears during weekly sessions for months on end. Imagine that they have compassion and empathy and truly understand what you are going through. Now imagine that this kind of attention and safety brings forth emotional communication that you’ve never even been able to express to your real-world intimates. Yes, therapy can feel like love, because it is a kind of love. But it is a non-sexual love (and shouldn’t ever be!) and it is a false love in the sense that you never have to deal with your lover’s problems. Given the set up, it is perfectly natural to have deep feelings of love for your therapist, but in the psychological process these feelings will eventually transfer as you learn to love yourself and others. At no time should a therapeutic relationship become a dual relationship with real-world connections. A dual relationship has too much potential to injure a patient.

I’ll end this blog with a story I heard recently about Carl Jung. Jung was one of Freud’s disciples who broke off to form his own theory of personality. (I hope this story is true because I love it.) Supposedly Jung was once asked why would anyone ever want to enter therapy. Why would they want to put themselves through the psychic pain of revisiting all the hurts of their childhood or retelling of their worst nightmares. Jung seemed surprised by the question and responded with, “Well, you certainly shouldn’t, if you don’t HAVE to!”

(P.S.: I have opened a new private practice in Los Angeles and am taking clients who I do not know in the real world.)

I entered the therapist’s office apologizing for my tears. I assured her that I was normally quite a together woman was completely surprised by this mess of black mascara. She was kind, empathetic, and made me promise to stop apologizing for myself. (Sigh. It’s a Canadian cultural tradition so I still do it sometimes.) I expected, like most people, to have a couple quick sessions and be dry-eyed and beaming within a few weeks. Little did I know that I was actually embarking on a tender journey toward the center of my earth. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was an identity crisis, some delayed grieving for the deaths of my parents, and yes, some pre-pardem depression. In the end I was so fascinated by the process that I spent seven years in therapy and a partially overlapping six years in graduate school studying psychology. Clearly I had found my bag and myself, and along the way I learned a few myths and methods of therapy that the common person may not know. So, here’s a starter list of things you may not know about therapy if you’ve never been there.

Stigma Belongs to You, Not Society At Large

Like many newbies, I was cautious early on about who I shared my news of therapy with. I still carried some crazy idea that therapy was for crazy people. In fact, psychiatric hospitals are for crazy people. The rest of us live with a pleura of annoying habits and feelings that sometimes run counter to society’s definition of “normal.” The rest of us can really use an observing eye to help us make sense of some of the painful lessons we learned and the thoughts in our head that stop us from being the best person we can be. When I finally started sharing my experiences of therapy with others I found out that nearly everyone, especially the most successful people I knew, had been or were continually in therapy. I felt behind the times.

The Range of Therapists Can Be Daunting

Most people choose a therapist based on a referral, having no knowledge about their psychological orientation or their education of licensure. To break it down, therapists can range from drug-prescribing medical doctors called psychiatrists, to clinical psychologists with a Ph.D., to marriage and family therapists, to social workers, to religious counselors, drug and alcohol counselors, to life coaches. Some are liscensed. Some are being supervised by someone with a license. Others are unlicensed lay people. But all have a capacity for care and are doing what they do because they have a lot of empathy. Many have recovered from some major emotional wounds themselves so they have personal insight into what you may be going through. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask a therapist about his or her credentials and treatment plan. But also know this. No matter the level of education or liscensure, it is the therapeutic relationship itself that heals. It is the consistent timing of sessions and consistent care giving that becomes the catalyst for growth.

Boundaries Protect YOU

At the beginning of therapy new patients are often taken aback by the abrupt way that a therapist may end a session at exactly 50 minutes or not disclose personal details about their own life. Or charge you even when you don’t show up. Or not extend the length of a session when you are stuck in traffic. Or, not take friends of yours on as patients. This is called the therapeutic frame and it is designed to keep you safe. Imagine the hurt if a therapist had time to bleed a session into 60 minutes one week but not the week you are in the most pain? Or, imagine your feelings of jealousy if your therapist seemed to be more helpful to a close friend of yours. Therapists may rigidly stick to the 50  minute hour or insist on a set weekly appointment because your brain responds to consistency of care. And because in the safety of that weekly 50 frame you have the complete freedom to vent and use it to your advantage knowing that the therapist will never inject their needs into your time.

Therapy Can Feel Like a Love Relationship

Imagine having a person entirely focussed on you, all eyes and ears during weekly sessions for months on end. Imagine that they have compassion and empathy and truly understand what you are going through. Now imagine that this kind of attention and safety brings forth emotional communication that you’ve never even been able to express to your real-world intimates. Yes, therapy can feel like love, because it is a kind of love. But it is a non-sexual love (and shouldn’t ever be!) and it is a false love in the sense that you never have to deal with your lover’s problems. Given the set up, it is perfectly natural to have deep feelings of love for your therapist, but in the psychological process these feelings will eventually transfer as you learn to love yourself and others. At no time should a therapeutic relationship become a dual relationship with real-world connections. A dual relationship has too much potential to injure a patient.

I’ll end this blog with a story I heard recently about Carl Jung. Jung was one of Freud’s disciples who broke off to form his own theory of personality. (I hope this story is true because I love it.) Supposedly Jung was once asked why would anyone ever want to enter therapy. Why would they want to put themselves through the psychic pain of revisiting all the hurts of their childhood or retelling of their worst nightmares. Jung seemed surprised by the question and responded with, “Well, you certainly shouldn’t, if you don’t HAVE to!”

(P.S.: I have opened a new private practice in Los Angeles and am taking clients who I do not know in the real world.)

I have seen Joran van der Sloot the suspect in the Natalee Holloway murder tell three separate stories about what happened in Aruba five years ago. In my opinion the only word of sordid truth he ever uttered was in Dutch when he referred to sweet Natalee as a “bitch.” The truth is that this young man has extreme anger toward women.

Lying to authorities to save your hide is one kind of deceit but what about the average person who lies to their closest intimates? Just last night, while sipping at a neighborhood wine bar, I heard three stories about men who lie to obtain sex, ego stroking, or even a woman’s trust. And as a woman (not a doctor, now) I have to say, what’s up with that?

In one story, my best friend’s longtime, on-again-off-again boyfriend was found to have fathered three children during the same years they whispered secrets between the sheets. Except he forgot to tell her that one secret — that his sperm, his time and his resources were going another direction.

In another story, a neighbor of mine was reeling from heartbreak after a broken engagement to an NFL football player (Read: He can afford bobbles.) In her loss and misery she thought she might console herself with a little recession era recycling so she marched her three carrot diamond ring to a jeweler, only to discover that a man she had once deeply trusted had given her a three carrot cubic zirconia.

While we continued to muse in disgust about how some men can feign intimacy and trustworthiness so well, the name of one of my old paramours came up. He’s been used as an example of a bad-boy in both my books (The Boyfriend Test and The Girlfriend Test) because this guy is the ultimate player. Over the course of our seventeen year “friendship” he has uttered the “L” word to me but he has also used my heart, my body and my money for his personal gain. He’s good, trust me. I have been out of his mesmerizing clutches for a few years now. Whew! But just a few weeks back I say him hiking with yet another beauty and shook my head to see that he’s still lying and juggling even at the age of, my God, could he be 53 by now? Anyway, my wine partners informed me that he had recently married his assistant. I laughed out loud, saying there is no way his marriage would have slowed down his appetite for frequent new sexual conquests. They assured me he is behaving as a loyal married man.

So I texted him a little “hello.”

And he quickly texted back. What he wrote were words that no married man should ever write to an old flame. My heart broke for his wife.

In the book, “101 Lies Men Tell Women, and Why Women Believe Them,” Dr. Dory Hollander claims that the root of all romantic lying is that women seek emotional connection and men mostly seek sex. The number one lie she sites? “I Love You.”

The saddest thing about my three stories of betrayal and the hundreds of stories in Dr. Hollander’s books is that so often we blame women for believing the lies. I was shocked to see the firestorm of criticism of Rielle Hunter, the mother of former presidential candidate John Edwards‘ fifth child. Somehow the media saw fit to place the bulk of the blame on her as a home wrecker. As the target of many, many lies issued from a male mouth, I can promise you that Mr. Edwards lied through his teeth to poor Miss. Hunter. First of all this slick rick wasn’t even playing in his own intellectual sandbox so getting her to believe his fabrications was probably a cake walk. I can just imagine his best promise to her, “Honey, you’re the one I love. My marriage is a sham to get me through this presidential campaign. Once I am president we can raise our baby in the White House.”  Trust me. His story ran along those lines.

The blame should never be on the recipient of a lie. Gullible people are innocent. Yes, I’ve removed the gender now, because some women lie as well as most men. But the culprit is the liar and his/her the lack of moral reasoning and inability to have compassion for others. The blame lies only with the deceitful person, not the one who trusted. What do you think?

The study was authored by Dr. Sara Algoe and is published in this month’s issue of “Personal Relationships.” In it, sixty-five couples were studied who were in ongoing, satisfying, and committed relationships. The researchers followed the day-to-day fluctuations in relationship satisfaction and connection for each partner and found that little, everyday, ups and downs in relationship quality were reliably marked by one person’s feelings of gratitude. The positive effects on the relationship were noticed even the day after feeling the gratitude was expressed. This study supports the idea that that even everyday gratitude serves an important relationship maintenance mechanism.

But the authors warn that expressing “indebtedness,” a need to repay the kind action, did not have the same affect. I’m wondering if an expression of “I owe you one” implies a scoring system where equal contribution is the expected outcome. Kindness has the most value if it involves a sponteneous sacrifice by the giver, not an I.O.U.

When I think of this concept, I am reminded of the relationship I have with one of my closest girlfriends. Over the course of our twenty year friendship money has changed hands in a very fluid way with an unspoken rule: Whoever is flush picks up the check. And should either my girlfriend and I utter the phrase, “I owe you one” it is quickly responded to with, “No you don’t. It all comes out in the laundry.”  Thus, our friendship is given the booster shot of gratitude far more often than any calculation of debts.

So, gratitude is the way to go. According to the author of the study, “Gratitude triggers a cascade of responses within the person who feels it in that very moment, changing the way the person views the generous benefactor, as well as motivations toward the benefactor. This is especially true when a person shows that they care about the partner’s needs and preferences.”

First of all, what is a healthy love connection? I would say it is a relationship built on trust, honesty, and intellectual commitment. And it usually gets ignited by sexual passion.

The internet is certainly a great place to find sexual passion, since it takes barely a visual whiff or the promise of excitement and/or love, to trigger a sexy juice flow in most people. After all, arousal and orgasm are the sole domain of the individual psyches. We each have an individual pattern of arousal that is triggered by sight, smell, voice, and touch, all related to some early-life events that stimulated us. For instance, years ago I remember, one man examining my manicure closely on a first date. Months later, he shared a distinct memory that in middle school he had had a spontaneous erection at the exact moment that a teacher with a pretty french manicure placed a hand on his desk to emphasize a point during her lecture. In fear of being discovered, he stared at her hand while experiencing a confusing arousal. Even at the age of 35, this man was checking dates for pretty french manicures because the two events had now joined in his mind. While his story is a concrete example with a linear connection to his sexuality, most of us have a Picasso style of arousal, made up of bits and pieces of our memories. And online lovers are a great place to project those patterns, because no one is there in person to dispute the our fantasies.

But there lies the problem with Cyber Love. It is a dance with ourselves. It is a perfect place to imagine the perfect mate. Now, one nice thing about digital communication is that people who are a bit timid about revealing their most secret intimacies in person or via phone, find IM’s. Text, and Emails a safer place. On face value that is true, especially for men, who often have trouble verbalizing feelings. But the danger is two-fold. Text is also a boundary-free world where lovers often disclose too much too soon, before real trust is established. And that can set the relationship up for a pressured first-meeting. I mean, how terrifying to have so much emotional intimacy before one has even walked hand-in-hand with someone. The other serious danger with typed intimacies is that they become a document that can live forever, and what was once an innocent flirtatious remark can be used as a weapon later on.

So my big advice to would-be cyber lovers is to move to telephone chat long before too many secrets have leaked out onto your keyboard. Then when you feel safe, meet in public with friends around. If your relationship continues to grow, use text as an enhancement not as the primary communication. Love and intimacy must grow with eye contact, vocal tone, pheromones, and touch.

I have three stories to tell that illustrate how technology is affecting the way we date, mate, and relate.  Story number one comes from the wisdom of a middle school girl, with one entire school semester of dating experience under her belt and a lifetime of tech training. She reminded me that the game of love has a whole new high-tech playing field. I was having dinner in a California Pizza Kitchen with three twelve-year-old girls and I received a text from a 47-year-old guy I’d been dating for about six weeks.

“Oooh” sang my own daughter in an age-old schoolgirl taunt “Is that from your boyfriend?”

I responded with a defensive girlish quip that I perfected twenty-five years ago, “He’s NOT my boyfriend!”

Her friend immediately took meaning from my response and followed firmly with, “Oh, then you only text.” As if to imply that a texting relationship is indeed a kind of relationship but not one that deserves the title of boyfriend.

Then I confused her. “No, we talk too. But only via cell. I haven’t given him my home number yet. And we have dinner dates,” I said.

I watched her eyes widen as her tech savvy mind tried to make sense of what I was saying. “Well, is he your Facebook friend?”

“No.” I said, “We’re not ready for that.”

“Does he follow you on Twitter?”

“Nope.”

Then she gave me a look that read, “How can you sit at the same lunch table with someone who isn’t even online with you?”

It was then that I realized that today, the level of two people’s tech infiltration indicates a level of intimacy and indeed, commitment.

Story number two is a bummer for one almost-bride and reminds us that technology affords few people privacy. This one from a friend. A guy finally gets up the nerve to ask his longtime girlfriend to marry him. Just weeks before the wedding, he finds her tagged in an old photo on Facebook. The photo was innocently posted by a not-so-brainy gal pal as part of a party album and shows the future bride loopy and draped across the lap of an ex-boyfriend. The album is dated and when the groom does the math (Boys are so good at math, aren’t they?) he discovers that this sexy party shot was snapped just weeks before his marriage proposal. Because of this, he calls off the wedding.

Story number three comes from one of my blog readers. A New York City real estate agent is out on a date with a lovely woman who works in television marketing. She is 35, comes from a family that never divorced, loves her sister’s kids to death, and is seriously ready to have a family. The problem is this: The guy she is sitting at the dinner table with has an online love in Dubai, a real world college sweetheart in Chicago whom he keeps in touch via text and email and visits about once a month, and a line-up of local dates waiting in the wings on Match.com. How can he ever hear the call of true love over the din created by so many opportunities for love? And they all exist because of technology.

The Problem

In this high-tech age, our culture and circumstance run interference against that course of evolution. That is, to attach long enough to breed and nurture offspring who can form their own healthy bonds and attachments. Today, healthy attachments are threatened by a permissive society, a sexualized media, too much opportunity that creates “Love ADD”, all fueled by technology.

Technology was designed to keep us connected but it has morphed into a monster that has millions of people keeping in touch, yet touching nothing tender. Take Twitter as a prime example. The text-based megaphone to your contact list limits your feelings to 140 characters or less (including spaces.) Unless you are Ernest Hemmingway, it is impossible to communicate anything of substance with such brevity. Text may be instant, but it is far from intimate. It is a communication void of body language, eye contact, vocal tone, and pheromones. Imagine your favorite band without the drummer or the vocalist and you’ll understand how inferior text communication is. Even longer messages sent via Facebook, MySpace, or traditional Email, may be filled with more words, but can be seriously lacking in emotional content, especially if one is not a very good writer. So much is lost in this kind of communication.

The Answer

Believe it or not, I’m not down on tech. Technology, if used correctly can be a strategic way to find and keep love. It can be used for its original purpose, to keep people connected. To help lovers express what they may be shy to say out loud, to help families schedule tech-free time to relate, and even to help heal the wounds of a relationship rupture. But the key is the knowledge of how to use technology to grow and keep love, and how avoid its hazards. We need a set of tech rules for love and I’m open to hearing your ideas for how to use these new tools to find and keep a mate.

And the answer is simple. There are few women in America who do not long to hear such words of contrition and kindness from a man, and Tiger is as likely a surrogate for healing as anyone. At some point in their lives most women have been deeply injured by some man’s selfishness whether it was infidelity, or violence, or stingy child support. And here is a man finally doing the right thing. My own waterworks started with his tribute to his wife, Elin, using words like, grace and poise to describe her. There are a couple men in my past who would do well by me if they could form any similar words.

And I hope men listened closely too. This is the kind of role model so many men need. On who stops the buck at his desk and takes full responsibility for his actions. Through Tiger, men can hear first-hand how infidelity is not only a betrayal of trust but an action that reverberates through many relationships. Is one (or sixteen) moments of sexual pleasure really worth the destruction of so much? I truly hope that men who claim to have trouble controlling themselves can learn something from Tiger’s blown-up version of their story.

Because the tides of relationship rules are changing. It used to be that women provided all the sexual boundaries in our culture. Women had far to much to lose by entering into a sexual relationship with a man who might abandon them, impregnate them, contaminate them or disgrace them. Not today. Thanks to feminism, women own their own orgasm and a box of Trojans. They are off to the races. And, as families fall apart — 40% of American babies are born out of wedlock and the rest are vulnerable to a 50% divorce rate — some men are stepping up to create their own sexual boundaries, if only to keep safe their genetic line. I spoke with one such man yesterday, Mark Verge, a happily married guy whose book, “Access to the Boys Club” preaches techniques for fidelity for couples. Mark’s message includes tips for wives to help keep their man satisfied.

For women’s behavior is as much part of our culture-wide problem of unhealthy relationships. I’ve said it before, but let me reiterate: How can we blame our husbands for getting wet on their way home from work, when IT’S RAINING WHORES? The shameless Tiger mistresses who have sought their fifteen minutes by kissing and telling on national television need a serious reality check. Or they need to become mothers so they can sympathize with Elin. Both women and men need to get some control on their sexual energy when families are at stake.

Finally, I want to close by applauding the unsung heros in our culture. Men and women who have been making the sacrifices associated with long-term monogamy because it is the right thing to do — for your partner and for your children. We will all be beneficiaries of your dedication when your kids don’t end up on the public coffers or spreading HIV to us. Thanks for making a commitment to love and family.

As for Tiger, he summed it all up with Elin’s admonishment to him: “The real apology will not come in words. It will come in behavior.” We’re watching, Tiger. You’re off to a good start toward healing. And to some of my ex-lotharios: I’m waiting by the phone.

Learning how to have healthy conflict is crucial to having emotional intimacy. But what exactly is healthy conflict?

Well, for starters, fighting fair means using words that identify your feelings rather than blame and point fingers. Easier said than done. Even though psychotherapists stress that we should focus on our feelings rather than level accusations, even the most educated of us resort to blaming sentences that begin with the word “YOU!” That alone doesn’t indicate a “bad fight” unless it is also followed by vicious name calling. Name calling is a bad sign. It indicates that one partner has temporarily forgotten the other’s identity and has substituted it by a skewed stereotype. It’s hard to drop those evil caricatures once our minds have created them. If you see him as a loser and tell him over and over, you are also rewiring your brain to believe this is true. One other thing to consider is the amount of voice time alloted each arguer. If the yelling is terribly lop-sided and one partner gets more air time, then something else is going on. Either intimidation by the loud mouth, or an emotional retreat by the other. Both things are not fighting fair.

As injurious as a fight can be, the biggest determinant of whether it is a “good fight” is the way repair is made afterward. There are many unique ways that couples come back into relationship after a fight. Notes left by the morning coffee pot, flowers at the office, and my favorite — off-the-charts make-up sex. But the important thing to remember is that love and respect can return.

Dangerous aftermaths include icy treatment for days on end. Little jabs thrown into unrelated conversations. Passive aggressive, retaliatory behavior. And worst of all, a fight that morphs into other fights that get flooded with material from old injuries. “Remember the time you…..”

The best way to learn to have “good fights” is to establish ground rules before any fighting begins. Men love rules of the game. It reminds them of sports and makes fighting a healthy challenge rather than a confusing battle with a scary, invisible opponent. Some ground rules might include, no name calling, no stonewalling, no fighting in front of the kids, no going to bed mad, and most importantly, scheduled make-up time the next day. It is also important to understand that each person has their own fighting style that must be respected. A man who walks out the door for brisk walk during an argument may not be rejecting you, he may be protecting you from a shift from words to action. Some people need a time-out to regroup and think during a fight. The time to talk about fighting styles, of course, is when you are not fighting.

Studies on couples conflict style show that the two most important ingredients to healthy fighting are empathy and humor. When you are feeling unheard, disrespected, or on the losing end of a power struggle, try as hard as you can to put yourself in your partner’s schools. Imagine you are on the other side of the dynamic battling with the likes of YOU. Best of all, is to find comedy in your tragedy. If you can muster the brain power, step outside your fight and imagine you are a fly on the wall. Reframe your dialogue as a script from a Saturday Night Live skit or a prime-time sit-com. Now look how silly you sound!

The most important ingredient during an conflict is the knowledge that love can return and that spirited negotiation is all part of building intimacy. When I once commented to my favorite bickering couple that I notice that there is love behind their arguments, the husband winked at me and said, “Not love. Sport.” Even in conflict there can be a bond and a secret agreement to respect each other.

Learning how to have healthy conflict is crucial to having emotional intimacy. But what exactly is healthy conflict?

Well, for starters, fighting fair means using words that identify your feelings rather than blame and point fingers. Easier said than done. Even though psychotherapists stress that we should focus on our feelings rather than level accusations, even the most educated of us resort to blaming sentences that begin with the word “YOU!” That alone doesn’t indicate a “bad fight” unless it is also followed by vicious name calling. Name calling is a bad sign. It indicates that one partner has temporarily forgotten the other’s identity and has substituted it by a skewed stereotype. It’s hard to drop those evil caricatures once our minds have created them. If you see him as a loser and tell him over and over, you are also rewiring your brain to believe this is true. One other thing to consider is the amount of voice time alloted each arguer. If the yelling is terribly lop-sided and one partner gets more air time, then something else is going on. Either intimidation by the loud mouth, or an emotional retreat by the other. Both things are not fighting fair.

As injurious as a fight can be, the biggest determinant of whether it is a “good fight” is the way repair is made afterward. There are many unique ways that couples come back into relationship after a fight. Notes left by the morning coffee pot, flowers at the office, and my favorite — off-the-charts make-up sex. But the important thing to remember is that love and respect can return.

Dangerous aftermaths include icy treatment for days on end. Little jabs thrown into unrelated conversations. Passive aggressive, retaliatory behavior. And worst of all, a fight that morphs into other fights that get flooded with material from old injuries. “Remember the time you…..”

The best way to learn to have “good fights” is to establish ground rules before any fighting begins. Men love rules of the game. It reminds them of sports and makes fighting a healthy challenge rather than a confusing battle with a scary, invisible opponent. Some ground rules might include, no name calling, no stonewalling, no fighting in front of the kids, no going to bed mad, and most importantly, scheduled make-up time the next day. It is also important to understand that each person has their own fighting style that must be respected. A man who walks out the door for brisk walk during an argument may not be rejecting you, he may be protecting you from a shift from words to action. Some people need a time-out to regroup and think during a fight. The time to talk about fighting styles, of course, is when you are not fighting.

Studies on couples conflict style show that the two most important ingredients to healthy fighting are empathy and humor. When you are feeling unheard, disrespected, or on the losing end of a power struggle, try as hard as you can to put yourself in your partner’s schools. Imagine you are on the other side of the dynamic battling with the likes of YOU. Best of all, is to find comedy in your tragedy. If you can muster the brain power, step outside your fight and imagine you are a fly on the wall. Reframe your dialogue as a script from a Saturday Night Live skit or a prime-time sit-com. Now look how silly you sound!

The most important ingredient during an conflict is the knowledge that love can return and that spirited negotiation is all part of building intimacy. When I once commented to my favorite bickering couple that I notice that there is love behind their arguments, the husband winked at me and said, “Not love. Sport.” Even in conflict there can be a bond and a secret agreement to respect each other.