If both partners have the ability to ‘make up’ after a fight, their relationship has one of the essential skills for success.  The following guidelines will help when you want to make up in an adult way, rather that leave it to the inner selves:.

1. Stay there - don’t run out and don’t go silent. Distancing is just a sign that one or both of you are not ready or don’t want to make up yet.

2. Use the ‘time out’ approach rather than distancing or withdrawing. Whoever asks for ‘time out’ gets it but only for a short time (ten to twenty minutes) with a firm undertaking that both of you will get together at the end of that period.

3. Try to send at least one signal that your love is stronger than your pain. If this is not possible at that time, don’t put too much effort into trying to make up just now. It’s better to take ‘time out’ while you work on the ‘love signal’ you want to send.

4. Be realistic about the ‘problem’ or ‘facts’ you are fighting about. Could they be based on less than accurate perceptions? Remind yourself that, during a fight, the inner selves are not able to provide reliable data (nor are they good at recalling at all accurately what happened previously). Let that information go, there is no point trying to sort it out or expecting the selves to get it right for you.

5. Balance reality - Accept your share of the responsibility for what happened.

6. Make amends rather than defends. Don’t score points or try to win by arguing from a rational position. Making up is about fixing what went wrong, not beating the other person.

7. Avoid saying ‘sorry’ until after you have made up. If you each concentrate on identifying the pain and vulnerability you are feeling and nurturing yourself through it, you will then have the time and love after that to start nurturing the other person.

Negative bonding is one of the most common problems in all relationships including families, with people at work or in community groups. Chart one of your own fights between you and another person, to see how closely it fits the ‘negative bonding’ pattern. As you work through to the inevitably painful end* (see point 3 below), keep in mind these critically important rules:

1. Analysing the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of the exchange will put you straight back into judgement and binary thinking and that will put you both straight back into the bonding pattern. Concentrate only on creating awareness of what happened.

2. Going into adult awareness (owning and feeling your own pain and vulnerability) and dealing with it yourself is the only known way to get out of a negative bonding pattern.

3. *No human being in the history of civilisation has ever found a way to stop a negative bonding pattern by using logic or reason.

4. Staying in the pattern and struggling to make it get better is like struggling in quicksand. Getting out of the pattern by going into awareness is the only way to halt it. Name it as you do so. ‘I was in a negative bonding pattern.’

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