One of my pet hates is sulking and sulkers. This didn’t, however, stop me from sulking, as Phil will attest. But he was a terrible sulker before we both educated ourselves.

Sulkers want you to know that you have upset them, but they don’t have the self-confidence to tell you exactly what it is that you have done wrong. They expect you to just know! So now you’re supposed to be able to read their mind.

Well, the chances are, if your partner is sulking, you won’t know what it is you have done because all the things you said to them made perfect sense in your head, and seemed perfectly fair at the time.

So how do we put a stop to sulking?

We can ensure we don’t sulk ourselves, by being honest with our partner and having confidence to tell them when we are upset and why (without blaming though, remember!)

To stop your partner sulking is really quite easy. You don’t ask them or tell them to stop sulking. You do something much more clever.

As soon as you discover they are sulking, you must sincerely ask; “Have I done something to upset you?”

If they say “Yes” and explain what – great! But quite often they will lie and say “No” if they still don’t feel confident enough to tackle the problem.

In which case you must say “Oh, that’s OK then. I just thought I’d upset you because your breathing (or whatever) sounded like you were angry”.

If they still don’t want to tackle the problem, in most cases, they will feel they have to stop sulking, as they would now appear to be a liar if they continued. Your honesty and courtesy might even persuade them to be honest with you in return. Result!

But if they still continue sulking, don’t give them eye contact at all, and only give short, polite responses to them. Don’t ignore them completely, because then you are being as silly as they are. Remain civilized but make it clear you don’t tolerate them sulking.

To ensure you don’t appear too ignorant, you must busy yourself with something totally unrelated. Unless they are not very bright, they will know that you are doing this deliberately. But in fairness, you did give them the opportunity to sort things out; they can’t blame you for not tolerating sulking after being so reasonable.

If you use this tactic and avoid a conversation without being honest with them first, however, they will get angry and start slamming doors because they will think you have not noticed they are sulking! This will just make things worse. You must be upfront first.

Sulking is very childish behavior, and is the result of being emotionally immature. I guarantee you won’t need to do the above exercise more than twice for the message to sink in. Once you behave in a mature and reasonable way in response to sulking, your partner will stop being The Incredible Sulk!

If you liked this tip, we have plenty more in our free Stop That Breakup 7 Day Course – just sign up over on the right or clickHere.

In order to stop a breakup and have a successful relationship, you both need to be able to communicate effectively, but the chances are, one of you has the upper hand regarding communication.

It is reported that more women can interpret non-verbal cues better than men can, but I know lots of men who can do this very well too. All human beings have micro-expressions for example, which are facial expressions they hold for a fraction of a second before they are aware of what their face is doing.

Perhaps, for example, you bump into someone you don’t like, but you obviously don’t want the person to know you you are horrified to see them, so you smile and pleasantly ask how they are. But for a split second, when they first caught your attention, you looked slightly horrified before immediately changing your expression to a smile. Even though you smiled, if the person is good at picking up non-verbal cues, they will have noticed.

It is these micro-expressions that tell people the likelihood of us lying and our true feelings despite what we are actually saying. They are quite universal and even body language experts often cannot hide these micro-expressions, but there are often charicteristics that are unique to each individual, that only people who know them will be able to interpret.

Nervous laughter at the end of a sentence can also give away that we are not feeling comfortable, and in a lot of literature on non-verbal communication, this behavior is often indicative of lying, but that advice is very unreliable because many people develop this as a nervous habit, whether they lie or not.

In addition, when we try to decypher what our partner is really communicating, if we are slightly paranoid, we may be reading just a bit too much into their behavior.

So no matter how good we normally are at perceiving people’s behavior, in order to prevent distrust and further conflict, there is only one way to find out exactly what is going on in our partner’s head.

What we really need to do is talk to each other. And when we suspect our partner is keeping something from us, rather than become accusatory, ask ourselves why this would be. If for example it is to save from hurting our feelings, then provide a disclaimer to that scenario immediately, by saying something like “You can tell me honestly – I won’t be offended”.

Make direct communication a healthy habit in your relationship. Just make sure you do it in a way that does not make your partner think you are nagging them. If you listen and regularly act upon their requests, they will have faith that talking to you openly is a good thing.

Best of luck.

One amazingly powerful way to stop a breakup is when you focus all your energy on something other than your relationship, and your partner lives through it with you. When was the last time you were really challenged? I don’t mean in a discussion or argument, but in a real adventure or upheaval in your life.

Perhaps it was a sporting event that you had to put all your physical and mental energy into. How about training for running a marathon? Because it is something constructive, your partner would have to be incredibly selfish if they did not support you in something like this.

Perhaps you suffered in some way, and fought to get out of a bad situation. I will never look at adversity as bad luck ever again. Why? Because something happened to us that we thought was one of the cruelest blows of bad luck imaginable. We never would have believed we could survive it and even one day be thankful that it had happened. But we did.

When adversity hits, don’t crumble under the pressure. Think of it as your turn to be tested and an opportunity to prove you can come through it. If you and your partner go through the bad times together and support each other, your bond will grow stronger than ever, because you will learn things about yourselves and each other that you never imagined were possible.

Too many couples are in danger of breaking up because they simply do not get enough sleep. Tired people have less patience, snap more easily and are less able to be reasonable during discussions.

But lack of sleep is also ruining what should be one of the most enjoyable activities a couple can share; sex.

It’s a bad idea to always only have sex at the end of a hard days work, yet that’s what is going on with millions of couples. We often go to bed too late, and you know how it is, when you are really tired – it is impossible to get in the mood when you are so tired.

You both need to make the effort to get enough sleep all the time, otherwise here’s what will happen:

If the woman is tired, she’ll go to bed and not be in the mood for sex, so it doesn’t happen, and the man is obviously not happy.

Or the man will be too tired, but he’s still in the mood, so sex will happen, but it’ll be the absolute basics, without foreplay, so the woman is not happy.

So many think that this sort of stuff is not important. But if it happens too often, both partners will resent the other, and also when sex does happen, it will be unfulfilling and a chore. Never let sex become a chore! That’s awful, and can easily lead to infidelity.

So make sure you get enough sleep, so that you’ll not only enjoy sex more, but you’ll enjoy everything more!

Is it sometimes okay to tell a lie?

If you need to stop a breakup ASAP, you really need to dump the negative vibes even sooner.

Are you the sort of person who says phrases like “knowing my luck” or “that’s typical!” or “as usual” in a sarcastic or despairing tone when conversing with your partner?

In the same way that people would rather be right than be happy (see theBeing Right post), we often have our default setting on the negative. It’s such an ingrained habit of ours to complain, we are totally unaware of how our behavior comes across to other people.

Even little remarks like that add to the mountain of negative comments we make a hundred times a day, and even others will not necessarily know what it is that puts them off us, but put them off us it does!

There is a reason for everything. So instead of just responding to stuff with a defensive knee-jerk reaction, ask yourself what the underlying reason could be.

Rather than look for the negative in life, your partner or whatever, discover the reason and accept it, or deal with it in a positive way.

If you oppose something, do so positively. Check out the difference between the following statements that could be spoken in any relationship:

“You see? This is the thing about you – you always do this! Every time I try to suggest something, you always have to ruin it by saying it’s a bad idea!”

or

“I understand what you mean honey, maybe it isn’t a practical suggestion for this week, but would you consider it for sometime over the next few weeks? If we do it, and you hate it, you can choose the next thing we do. How about that?”

The second response is not only non-accusatory, it is giving your partner a choice. Once they have a choice, they will feel more involved and be more open to your suggestions in future. Even if they don’t like your idea, they are much more likely to reason with you fairly about it.

So break up with the negative vibes, and not your partner!

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Sometimes human beings would rather be right, than be happy.

Without even knowing we are doing it, we are searching for the opportunity to say “See? I told you so!” or “You wouldn’t listen to me, would you?”

We are viewing the whole relationship as if it were a battlefield. We are working against each other, when we should be on the same side.

The other day, I asked Phil if he would help me with some gardening. My back was hurting and Phil had told me he would do it, and that I should do some writing, but it was a lovely day and I really wanted to clear the overgrown weeds that made up our mini jungle over the last couple of months.

Before our “shake-up” as I call it, Phil (or I, in the same position) would have sulked(!) and pointed out that it was inevitable I would hurt my back, and said one or both of those statements above.

But this time he just hugged me, rubbed my shoulders and took over the gardening without another word.

It was pointed out to us during our therapy that we often argue just for the sake of arguing, and that we need to recognize how to prevent arguments, even the little (seemingly harmless) trivial ones. No matter how tempting it is to point out to your partner that they are wrong and you are right, assess whether it will have a peaceful outcome. It rarely does!

I have to say Phil has remembered all this stuff a lot better than I have. I notice tons of these subtle differences all the time. Quite often when he could easily point out how I’m wrong and he’s right, he doesn’t bother. When it’s the other way round, I find myself starting to say something, then stopping myself mid-sentence, and Phil will wink at me knowingly!

We have both now been trained to ask ourselves “What will the outcome of my actions (or words) be?”

It’s a lot easier to settle for being happy than being right. So swallow your pride and give it a try!