There are two approaches to stopping the arguments: the First Aid approach which is what you do when you know you're about to launch into one; and the long-term healing approach which deals with the underlying cause of the arguments. Ultimately when you get free of the arguments you and your partner will be much closer to each other and you'll be on a path to healing..

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It may seem a bit strange but sometimes being right can be counter-productive.

In western culture we put a lot of value on being right. Getting the answer right at school right through to being sure that you’ve got the right idea or the right view in everything from nutrition to politics.

And yet being right isn’t always the best place to be – or rather insisting on being right isn't always so clever.

It helps to have the right information when you’re sitting an exam. But it’s not always so helpful in a relationship.

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Did you know that January 7th is the peak day for post-Christmas break-ups?

I can’t tell you why that is. Maybe it’s that people wait to find out whether things will get better when they go back to work, and then realise that they didn’t.

Or perhaps it’s the time they spent trying to put things right and failing. And then gave up.

But think about it – when something fails to work, we know that it wasn’t the best way to solve the problem. That’s feedback.

I hope you’re not one of those who spent the holiday thinking about breaking up with their partner, but if you are I’d like to offer you something that should help.

The biggest trap we fall into is thinking that it’s not my fault, it’s his (or hers or theirs). And wishing they would change.

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Today is the Winter Solstice and this year I want to do something different for the Solstice; shake things up a bit.

Every year, around New Year, I write about how I don’t agree with New Year's resolutions. So this year I want to suggest thinking about a Solstice resolution or a Christmas resolution – or a holiday resolution?

Did you know that every January there are many couples who come out of the holidays having decided that it’s time to separate or divorce?

But how do we go into the holidays? Expecting that we’ll fall out with our mate and even that it’ll end up in divorce? Isn’t that just setting ourselves up for a self-fulfilling prophecy?

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Someone I know recently suggested that it’s not fair that people who went to boarding school should be given their own syndrome. After all it’s mostly privileged people who came from wealthy families and have done pretty well for themselves. And such people can afford privately-funded therapy.

Yes it’s true that many of us came from wealthy families (I didn’t), but no it’s not true that it’s a privilege.

Where’s the privilege in being deprived of the love and care of your parents for 40+ weeks of the year? And the feeling that you have been abandoned in this place where no-one knows what love and care even mean?

Where’s the privilege in being held captive in a space where you can’t escape the bullies? Or worse still the abuse.

But still why boarding school syndrome?

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For many of us who went to boarding school, we lived for the end of term and then for the very last day. And the day we left, we put it all behind us. Or so we thought.

But the impact of a difficult time at boarding school can last for decades. It left me with anxiety, depression, an overwhelming fear of abandonment, a need to prove that I’m right and to be in control almost all the time, and a series of broken relationships.

For other people, particularly men, the impact is often a profound emotional shutdown, an inability to express their feelings and real difficulties with intimacy.

This is what has come to be known as boarding school syndrome.

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If there's anything which winds me up it’s people talking about being broken (or worse still telling other people that they’re broken).

I’m talking about trauma of the psychological kind. There is this notion we have that we can be broken by trauma. But really it’s not true. The body may be broken, but the true self cannot be.

If you’re reading this, you’re not broken. Even if you’re hurting.

I prefer the metaphor of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by joining the pieces with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The philosophy of kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise.

So where is the gold in trauma? As in the practice of kintsugi, the gold is found in the repair process.

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A loving, healthy relationship is the best place to heal from our trauma. When we feel loved, safe and cherished, we can do the work of facing our biggest fears, and our feelings of anger, guilt and shame. And we can start to change the patterns of behaviour that may have been causing difficulties in our relationships in the past.

The deepest emotional healing work is done within relationships, where two heart-connected people see emotional triggers as clues, rather than judgments or feelings towards each other. A big part of this is the willingness to move from 'you make me so angry when you...' to 'I feel really angry when you...' This is about owning your emotions, rather than blaming them on your other half (or other people).

It is also much easier to be vulnerable, when you feel safe with your partner. That safety and a willingness to be vulnerable creates an opportunity to explore thoughts and feelings we might have buried in the past.

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This week, November 13th-19th is National Self-Care Week in the UK, and the theme this year is mind and body.

It kind of made me laugh when I saw that, because here we are in 2023 and we are still separating the mind from the body. We can think of them as separate for convenience. But let’s starting behaving as if they’re not separate.

But what does this mean in practice? Well let’s take yoga as an example. I do a 15-25 minute yoga practice most mornings. I know that when I do my yoga, my joints loosen up, my back feels better and my mental health benefits.

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I was on my customary lunchtime walk today, watching the autumn leaves blow down from the trees. It reminded me of a book we had when my girls were small, all about a girl who catches a falling leaf which turns out to have magical properties.

I came across a magic golden leaf back in 2017. It didn’t turn mud-pies into cakes or old curtains into velvet robes, but it totally transformed my life. What I’m talking about is the philosophy or model of the mind known as the 3 Principles.

This particular magic golden leaf has given me leverage to change so much of my own experience:

• I stopped seeing myself as a victim of my circumstances and got into the driver’s seat of my life

• I began to view the trauma of my adolescence as the source of many of my strengths

• I am in a happy and fulfilling relationship because I’ve understood that the only person I can change is myself

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For many of us who went to boarding school, there is a gap in development. While we may have benefited from an excellent academic education, our emotional ‘education’ was neglected.

One of the foundations of a relationship is the expression of our needs and feelings and the ability to respond to the needs of our partner. This is vital to the health of the relationship and intimacy within it. But it’s often an area in which former boarders have great difficulty, since one of the places which is neglected totally within a boarding education is that of emotional literacy.

And because we leave school without even a basic level of emotional literacy, we can’t understand why things go wrong in our relationships.

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If so listen to these words from couples therapist, Terry Real.

“There is no redeeming value in harshness. There’s nothing harshness does that loving firmness doesn’t do better.”

If you speak harshly to yourself, I understand. It’s a habit I am still in the process of changing in myself.

I know now that my harsh inner voice – my inner critic if you like – is something I created in response to what I experienced as a child.

I was the eldest child and I’m like many other women I know who were the eldest child. We were the responsible ones, the ones who comforted younger siblings and sometimes our parents, and we often acted as mediators or go-betweens when there was conflict.

This role which is so often adopted by the eldest child, is sometimes known as the Hero Child, and it’s not confined to women.

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What fears or behaviour patterns have you brought with you from childhood?

Like tiny rodents, small things from childhood can create quite a lot of havoc in adulthood.

I’ve been noticing recently that I have a fear of being found out – or perhaps more accurately a fear of being accused of something I didn’t do.

I was talking about it with my supervisor and she asked me “when do you think you first experienced this?”

When I thought about it, it seemed like it started when I was about 11 or 12. It was during the first two to three years at boarding school. It might have happened before then, but it wouldn’t have had such an impact then, because I felt relatively safe.

At school though, we didn’t feel safe.

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We can all talk about the things we don’t like in relationships: being shouted at, ignored, taken for granted, talked down to, being bossed about, and that’s just scratching the surface.

But what do we actually want? And how can we create a relationship in which we do get what we want?

How do we create the conditions for love, respect, acceptance, tenderness, intimacy and great sex?

In The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, Bell Hooks speaks to how patriarchy fails men as well as women. She talks about how masculinity is distorted by patriarchy and the hidden injuries suffered by men in a world in which domination is the only game in town.

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1. Freeze: Some people are caught like a rabbit in the headlights, uncertain what to do and afraid to act. 
2. Some run backwards and forwards (metaphorically or literally), again not knowing what's best to do.
3. Others retreat, putting their plans on hold and hiding themselves away. 
4. And then there are those who trust their intuition and take action, knowing that they can change direction if they need to.