What. When. How.

What often occurs in relationships are disagreements. Arguments. Some trivial, some more serious. But inevitably they happen, and you must have the proper tools to deal with them.

When discord happens, it could be over words said, actions that threaten the health of the relationship, or most commonly a misunderstanding or miscommunication that takes a small flame of upset and fans it to full-blown anger and all-out war.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced something, felt we had the right tools, and attempted to employ them to solve a problem. Maybe they helped. Maybe they didn’t. But I can surely say in my experience there have been times I was totally confused about what the disagreement was about, how we even got to that juncture. I attempted to solve it logically and defuse the situation, only to make it worse — possibly because of my own ignorance of the issue, or something I didn’t see in myself or the other person.

“How do we solve these problems, Mega?” you ask. The answer is I don’t know. I can’t solve every problem, and in a relationship I surely cannot solve them all on my own.

What I think is important to start with is good communication on all sides. Honesty and openness without judgment or finger pointing. But most importantly — and many people forget this — when you are in a relationship, whether friendship, romantic, or professional, and you have a disagreement, remember that it is you and the other person against the problem, not you against each other.

Give it some thought.