You already know that excellent marriages include conflict. Couples who are happily married have developed conflict management strategies that allow them to voice their concerns, deal with them, and then move past these.

• It is normal to have tensions (often called relational dialectics) which include the need for autonomy/connection, openness/closedness, and predictability/novelty. For more information about dialectics, consult Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery's work, http://www.usm.maine.edu/com/dialectic/

Successfully married couples are able to accept that conflict is a natural part of their relationship and to use it to enhance the relationship. Further, happily married couples engage in a perceptual trick called, "positive distortion." While acknowledging that one's partner has flaws, these failings are minimized while the partner's strengths are maximized and celebrated. This ability to focus upon the positive allows couples to maintain greater harmony and appreciation for the relationship.

John Gottman, Ph.D., asserts that after listening to a couple interact in his Love Lab for as little as five minutes, he can predict whether that marriage will succeed or fail with 91 percent accuracy. (See Gottman and Nan Silver's book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Crown Publishers, New York, 1999.) What are the predictors? Gottman identifies telltale signs:

• Harsh Startup where we see negative and accusatory messages being exchanged;
• Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling;
• Flooding is a feeling of being so overwhelmed by the other negative communication that you feel defenseless;
• Physiological Changes including increased heart rate, sweating, and crying. Gottman further asserts, "It's a biological fact: Men are more easily overwhelmed by marital conflict than are their wives."
• Failed Repair Attempts further ensure that conflicts will not be resolved. Those couples who are emotionally intelligent and can "get over it" are more likely to manage their conflicts successfully;
• Bad Memories distort our perceptions of the health of a relationship. Static evaluations like, "You've always been inconsiderate" or generalizations like, "You'll never learn" further debilitate the relationship.

To learn more about Gottman's work, go to http://gottman.com