While conflict and fighting are natural part of relationships they can be categorised into two general types, the good fight and the bad or dysfunctional fight. The former is one which ends in greater understanding, negotiated compromise and a realistic resolution. The latter is one that is engaged with continually without resolution as each partner feels wounded by the other’s rejecting cruel behaviour. Maggie Scarf in “Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage” descr

“If you can’t regulate your own emotional temperature, you’ll regulate everyone around you to keep yourself comfortable.” ― David Schnarch This has the effect in relationships of enrolling your partner(s) in a stifling, contracted and stale relationship as the mandate is not the relationship but the need to control one persons emotional equilibrium. Unfortunately the more your partner is conscripted to soothe your emotions and provide the reflected sense of self your need, th