So I was reading an article recently about how couples deal with conflict and I thought it was really interesting. It said in the statistics that 2/3 of couples that claim to have a happy marriage both have a similar understanding of how to deal with conflict. Once I read that, I thought: "Wow. that makes perfect sense. If one person in a relationship yells and screams and the other is quite but holds grudges that would definately make things more complicated." I honestly think it is all about communication. I mean if two people are willing to listen to each others arguements and focus on the actual problem they will be able to work things out. I have an experience that has to do with this. I definately learned something new from it. This last weekend I went to dinner with my boyfriend and our mutual friends, who are married. While we were at dinner the wife and I were having a deep conversation. My boyfriend was not contributing at all and when he would make a comment, he was always joking. This frustrated me that he wasn't taking our conversation seriously. But my problem was that instead of telling him that I just pretended like he was too stupid to understand. This embarrassed him in front of our friends and caused some conflict between us. I remembered what I had read in the article, so once we got into the car after dinner, I appologized sincerely and explained to him my feelings about the situation and he was able to explain his. The interesting thing is that there was something else about the dinner that bothered him more than that and I would have never known had we not communicated about it. Communication really has helped the relationship I have with my boyfriend and without it, there would be a lot of built up unneccesary anger. What a blessing it is to be able to express ourselves freely and still stay in a calm respectful place.