What we have been making an attempt to do on this e-book is give individuals permission, actually, and say hey, it’s completely regular to voice your feelings. It’s good to voice your feelings. And it’s okay to voice your anger, so long as you’re not utilizing the 4 Horsemen—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—to take action. Folks fail to make a distinction between anger expressed in a wholesome method and in an unhealthy method, however it makes an enormous distinction emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and bodily.

Within the e-book, you say it’s a delusion that “a battle is an issue to be solved.” I believe this could shock lots of people—are you able to clarify why it’s helpful for us to rethink the aim of battle, and what the tip results of one ought to be?

JULIE: Right here’s the story: Folks have totally different brains. What a shocker. And there’s this delusion that you just’re presupposed to marry any individual or be dedicated to any individual who’s a clone of you. You are presupposed to have the identical pursuits, the identical passions, the identical fears, the identical perception methods and ethics. Effectively, it’s so fallacious. We’ve totally different experiences. Even when we come from an identical cultures, we nonetheless are very, very totally different in our personal historical past. What meaning is that we type totally different personalities and totally different preferences that we run up towards in any relationship.

So what occurs with conflicts which are based mostly on life-style desire variations? Effectively, they simply hold developing over and over and over, like we talked about earlier than. You possibly can’t flip any individual right into a clone of you, and sometimes these perpetual issues may solely be solved by marrying your clone. And even then it’s not going to work, since you’ll be bored out of your thoughts.

We present in our analysis that 69% of issues {couples} battle with are perpetual, and the one approach to take care of them is to discover ways to settle for these variations. You possibly can’t actually resolve or change them. You don’t have to like the variations, however settle for them, discover ways to dialogue about them, and possibly even snort at them. After they come up, compromise round them and provide you with a brief resolution moderately than getting gridlocked on it and combating to attempt to have issues your method when it runs counter to who your associate is as a human being. That’s the story of that.

Can—or ought to—you ever attempt to change components of who your associate is at their core?

JOHN: I believe that’s a elementary facet of battle—the variations between two individuals truly wind up enriching the connection.

JULIE: I additionally assume that individuals do change. There are specific ways in which John and I’ve actually labored exhausting to alter in an effort to be kinder to at least one one other. I am a neat freak, and suffice it to say, John isn’t. He—poor sweetheart—has needed to put up with my saying, “Clear that up!” a good quantity. It used to take possibly six instances to ask him to wash one thing up. Now we’re all the way down to about three—yay! I am studying learn how to be rather more affected person and to know that, no, that is not going to be his precedence. He’s going to need to go observe violin. And I do not blame him. However he has tried exhausting to accommodate my want for tidiness as a result of he is aware of I flip right into a roaring lioness if issues aren’t tidy. So he has modified, no query about it.

JOHN: And you’ve got too.

JULIE: I’ve modified too, to be extra affected person, to be extra accepting—settle for popcorn on the sofa.

JOHN: That is our newest battle.

JULIE: Oh, man. You simply should snort at it. However each individuals can change. You’re by no means going to be clones, however you’ll be able to no less than attempt to be a bit of bit extra of what your associate wants. And that goes again to the sport principle.

My last query—have you ever seen any of the TikTok movies which have gone viral about bidding?

JULIE: We did a TikTok piece that our fabulous new employees individual, Nicole, put on the market on social media, which was responding to the fowl check. They have been actually enjoyable. So, turning towards is extremely necessary, as that basically humorous, heat, fantastic girl instructed.

This interview has been edited and condensed for size and readability.