Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life
John is reading the newspaper. Mary gets up, walks out of the living room to make a phone call and the door slams because she shuts it carelessly.
What's up with her now? John wonders.
And what does she mean by getting into a temper when all he's doing is reading the newspaper?
He decides to go for a walk and read his paper in the park where he doesn't have to put up with her carry-on.
As he leaves the house, he slams the door.
Mary is startled when John stalks out of the house, slamming the front door.
Probably sneaked off to the pub again, she thinks angrily.
And on it goes: John comes home to no dinner, he gets mad and orders a two-foot pizza to be delivered. Mary takes this as an insult. John throws the pizza in the bin, spends the night on the sofa, retrieves the pizza at 2 a.m. Three days of silence ensue and the following week, they're off to the marriage counsellor.
What's going on?
John will tell the counsellor Mary gets into a mood over nothing, slams doors because she resents him relaxing, begrudges him an hour in the pub - which, by the way, he didn't go to, so there - and is so unreasonable she made him sleep on the sofa for ordering a pizza.
Mary will say John is the moody one, goes out for hours without having the manners to tell her, doesn't bother letting her know if he'll be home for dinner, orders pizzas instead, as if he was still single, and would rather sleep on the sofa than with her.
What's happening is that they are going around in circles and this is important to understand when conflict arises in a relationship.
Each person will say they got mad because the other person did something to annoy them. But that's not how it works.
What really happens is that you, if you don't mind me using you as an example, get miffed at something your Significant Other (hereinafter referred to as the SO) has done or that you think they have done.
You then react to SO in a way that gets that person miffed.
The SO reacts in a way that gets you mad. Then you react in a way that gets the SO mad and so on.
It's not like someone shooting an arrow and hitting a target. It's like a circle. It's like a prison too: everybody in there says they're innocent.
John is innocent and Mary is innocent. But each in their innocence got the other person really mad at them. That is why trying to identify the bad guy is often a complete waste of time when sorting out relationship conflicts.
How do you break up this circle of rising conflict so you don't have to spend the night on the sofa?
Essentially, you have to become good at noticing how you respond when your SO annoys you or you think your SO is annoying you.
Realise that your response will affect the SO's feelings just as the SO's real or imagined action has affected your feelings.
This is especially important to remember when you are the innocent, injured party because, as you don't need me to tell you, you are that innocent, injured party roughly 100 per cent of the time.
With this awareness, you can choose to make a response which doesn't worsen the situation or which at least will enable you to find out what's really going on without fighting over it like a pair of oul' SO and SOs.
Avoiding the circles
When you are annoyed at something another person has said or done, remember that the way you express your feelings can, in itself, make the conflict worse. This is because the other person reacts to your response and not to what they themselves originally did or said.
Failure to recognise this simple fact can lead to sharply escalating conflicts in close relationships.
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.