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Our brains, as amazing as they are, sometimes don't do us favors when it comes to how they "think" about our partner's actions and words. Our default is to attribute negative intentions to them--or at the very least to view them with suspicion. This is because the brain prioritizes survival, moving us away from pain and hardship that it thinks is a threat. We survived by assuming that others were a threat before concluding we were safe around them. How funny it is that while trying to protect us, our brain can sometimes make our lives more difficult!

This is not the intention, of course, but rather the result of how we make sense of things that don't make sense on the surface. This is why a well-lived life is an intentionally lived life. As we all know, some pleasurable activities are harmful, while some painful activities are good for us. We have to use our rational brain to convince ourselves to do hard things that are actually good for us, or avoid pleasurable things that can be bad for us.

This is usually not too difficult, unless the hard thing we are trying to convince ourselves to do is responding to an upset partner! When this happens, it is not very useful to "listen" to what the brain is telling you, especially if that message is one of the following:

-Run away/withdraw
-Attack back
-Defend yourself
-Shut down

So what should we do?

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