Ar­gu­ments oc­cur even in good re­la­tion­ships. Find out how to have a healthy ar­gu­ment with your part­ner by learn­ing these handy tips.

If I had mas­tered the art of ar­gu­ing a cou­ple years ago, I think many of my re­la­tion­ships (even with friends and fam­i­ly) would be in a dif­fer­ent place right now. I am over­ly emo­tion­al and it seems that the old­er I get, the more I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Many of us are like this, as soon as a con­fronta­tion oc­curs we get de­fen­sive and ei­ther turn in­to a Tas­man­ian dev­il, break­down in­to a pud­dle of sad­ness or we do not re­act at all. None of these re­ac­tions bring the best re­sults or so­lu­tions to the re­al prob­lems. Ar­gu­ments are in­evitable and the soon­er you learn to han­dle con­flict in the cor­rect way, the hap­pi­er your re­la­tion­ship will be­come.

Ar­gu­ments bring about pain, re­sent­ment and dis­cord in every house­hold and let’s face it, some of us Tri­nis hold a very pas­sion­ate na­ture or (for lack of a bet­ter term) we tend to have a “hot mouth”. That mouth of ours can get us in trou­ble at times, en­cour­ag­ing us to of­ten say things we don’t mean in the heat of an ar­gu­ment. We call names and even use ob­scene lan­guage to get our points across. What do we re­al­ly ex­pect to gain from that sort of be­hav­iour? If you call the love of your life, every bad name in the book when an­gered, how can you even face that per­son af­ter? Love is sup­posed to be kind, so, the pat­tern of think­ing it is ac­cept­able to de­grade your part­ner just be­cause you are ar­gu­ing, must stop as soon as pos­si­ble. You can­not take back what is felt af­ter hurt­ful words are said, so do not re­sort to name call­ing, la­belling and the con­stant throw­ing back of past bad ex­pe­ri­ences. So, how can we move for­ward to have health­i­er dis­cus­sions and re­solve ar­gu­ments?

Take a 10-minute time­out.

Say, “I love you and I just need 10 min­utes to calm down,” es­pe­cial­ly if the con­flict is be­gin­ning to get hot and low blows are be­ing made. Take that time to think and al­low you and your part­ner to calm down. Tru­ly think about the is­sue at hand and how it can be ef­fec­tive­ly re­solved. Some may al­so de­cide to take a walk or a gym work­out to help their frame of mind - that is ac­cept­able once the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues and is not ig­nored for a long pe­ri­od of time.

Learn how to make re­quests in­stead of com­plaints.

Some­times, the prob­lem and the rea­son you aren’t re­ceiv­ing the de­sired re­sults is not what you are ask­ing for, but how you are ask­ing for it. Be care­ful with your tone and in­stead of spew­ing or­ders at your part­ner, make sug­ges­tions in a lov­ing voice. For in­stance, “You nev­er do the dish­es, I swear you are the worst!” can be turned in­to, “ Hey babe, can you help do the dish­es to­day? I would re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it.” Words make a huge dif­fer­ence if used cor­rect­ly. Some­times you need to sell the hon­ey if you want to gain the sweet­ness.

If the same ar­gu­ment is oc­cur­ring over small mat­ters then you need to root out the big­ger prob­lem.

Why does your part­ner bick­er at the same time every day or why do they al­ways have a prob­lem with a cer­tain per­son in your life? Maybe they need time to un­wind af­ter work and you are ex­cit­ed to talk their ears off...noth­ing 15 min­utes of qui­et time can’t fix. As for the per­son they seem to dis­like, have a con­ver­sa­tion sim­ply lis­ten­ing to their thoughts and con­cerns. Cou­ples should have din­ner at least once a week or set aside a small amount of alone time to talk about life.

Learn how to say sor­ry!

I know this is hard but trust me, com­pas­sion is con­ta­gious. Be­ing “wrong and strong” on­ly makes your part­ner hold feel­ings of frus­tra­tion and hate to­wards you. Grow up and learn to be ac­count­able for your wrongs, apol­o­gise and en­sure it is heart­felt. Do not give a piti­ful apol­o­gy that ap­pears to be mean­ing­less and forced. Even if the per­son is wrong and you may have said some­thing hurt­ful dur­ing the ar­gu­ment, be the big­ger per­son and apol­o­gise for say­ing the hurt­ful com­ments. Maybe that will change the tone and mood and they will fol­low suit by ad­mit­ting their wrongs. Lead by ex­am­ple if you want to open the door to change.

Feel­ings and emo­tions are a tricky thing to con­trol when ar­gu­ments oc­cur but with time, pa­tience and prac­tice, on­ly im­prove­ments should be on the hori­zon. Love and re­spect your part­ner even on tough days. don’t al­low an­gry words to taint hap­py hearts.