UK Sex Coach, Sex Coaching

1. Give Up Point Scoring

There are few things more guaranteed to inflame a disagreement than trying to score points over your partner. I mean such things as adding up and comparing time spent with the children, number of evenings out, division of chores, amount of time spent with friends and time away from the children. These are things that need to be explicitly agreed and negotiated at the time and not brought up later to fuel your sense of injustice.

2. Respect Confidentiality

If you constantly seek out support and reassurance from other people after having an argument, then you are taking unfair measures to cling on to the balance of power in your relationship. If you then bring other people's supportive interpretations into an argument, you are just going to annoy your partner and place them well and truly on the defensive. Keep some things personal and don't bring in the opinions of others as back-up.

3. Explain, don't attack

Remember that you bear some responsibility for everything that you are angry about. Learn to explain how you feel without attacking your partner for what they did or did not do. Maybe they did not realise that you wanted them to do, be or feel a certain way? Most of the time we are far less clear about what we want and what isn't working well for us than we need to be.

4. Listen without interrupting

Let your partner have his or her say without you rushing in to deny or criticise what they are saying. We all need to have our feelings respected and validated.

5. Detach yourself from personal criticism from your partner

One of the most effective ways to do this is to think about your partner's family and relationship history and try to understand what makes them behave as they do. When someone attacks you for what you have or have not done, they are talking about their own failings and revealing what they themselves have difficulty with. Although it can seem like the most personal thing in the world, when someone lashes out at you for something, calls you names or fails to understand what you are trying to say, they are doing so because they are currently unable or unwilling to act any other way. They are simply doing what they have learnt to do in an argument. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not you, it's them!

6. Let them cry if they want to

People's reactions to tears are a major reason that seemingly innocuous disagreements turn into very damaging arguments as much as the original content of the disagreement. For some people, crying is a way of expressing feelings. For others, it is a sign of potential total meltdown. If crying makes you uncomfortable and you feel useless, the best thing you can do is to try and offer comfort and not be offended if it is not wanted. The worst thing you can possibly do is to tell someone not to cry, or tell them that they are crying over nothing and are silly for being upset. Seriously, never say that to anyone during an argument.

7. Do not issue an ultimatum

This rarely does anything other than undermine the security and potential positive future of a relationship. Why it fails is because you are in effect trying to force someone to change to meet some criteria you have developed about what your relationship should be like. If you can't change your need for them to be, act or feel a certain way then you will never be happy in any relationship. You will never meet someone who is exactly as you would wish them to be. You cannot force change onto a relationship. You can only do your best to allow what you what to happen to develop over time and be willing for this to be modified by what your partner wants as well.

8. Do not pretend that you know more about your partner's 'real' intentions than they do

This is infuriating and I bet we've all done it. Your partner says something in a particular way that you dislike and you then become convinced this must be because of some other, unspoken reason. You said X but really you meant Y. You only said that to me because really you are worried about work/my ex-boyfriend, your ex-girlfriend - that sort of thing. The inference is that you don't know what you think or feel but I do. It will drive your partner mad. Even if you do believe that they are saying and doing things because of some other reason, they need to come to see this themselves and they certainly won't do so because you tell them to.

So, there you are. I have done - and continue to do - all of these things, so I don't think it's a question of always being able to be mature, reasonable and generous. I do think that if you value your partner and the life that you have together, it is worth aiming to be stronger in the face of your righteousness and more willing to face up your own responsibility for letting the situations that we are unhappy with develop and persist over time.