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Phil and Maude’s Friday Feature: Dr. Susan Heitler

We occasionally publish a Friday Feature on peace and relationship workers. Today we're pleased to feature Dr. Susan Heitler, whose views on relationships are as radical as ours, and we believe truly offer helpful information on a different approach to relationships without conflict. She writes:

Marriage fights, that is, arguing at any level of intensity, reflect a breakdown in partnership. It means you have switched to a stance of being opponents, arguing for yourself and against your partner. Fighting is adversarial dialogue; the goal is to win, not to build mutual understanding.

A zero-fighting policy makes couples far happier. That doesn’t imply that differences should be swept under the rug. To the contrary, no-fighting policies need to be combined with solid collaborative win-win dialogue skills.

The notion of “fair fighting” suggests a model that is an upgrade over going to war with truly abusive fighting. Fair fighting however still is not an ideal worthy of aspiring to. It’s just a lesser evil. Fighting of any type involves standing against your partner. Wrong idea.

Marriage works best when you both aim to stand together, united against the problems, not pitted against each other.

Visit our post to read more about Dr. Heitler and explore her work.

Spreading peace one relationship at a time
Phil and Maude

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