Often, people ask me: "Helena, how come we never see you fight with your 'Darling Husband Jimmy'?" ( That's how I refer to him all the time...)

I would like to share our secret with you:

1) We both believe that we are very blessed that we have each other. (My parents were called the 'Love Birdies' until my Mom passed away 12 years ago.) Being raised in this loving environment showed me that we don't have to "grow up" when we get older. We still can hold hands, we still can flirt. We don't have to be embaressed to show our feelings.

2) We don't let little things (socks laying around, cap missing on the tooth paste, etc...) get to us.

3) The magic phrase. People who know us, know how crazy we are about our Jack Russel Mix Puppy "Roxy Spanky Nyman". We are so crazy about her that we made up a silly song about her. The ending of the song is: "And she's little, and she's tiny, and she has a fuzzy "heiny"...

We both giggle each time when we sing this song!

So, we agreed that if we should ever have a disagreement, we would use this phrase of the song to interrupt the disagreement. The one that first realizes that we got off track, gives the "T" sign for "Time-out" and starts with the first part of the phrase. The other will then complete the phrase of the song with the second part. Trust me, that works!

We start to giggle, and the disagreement is over!

How many times did you have loud words with your partner? It usually starts with little things until it escalates. Suddenly, there are hurting words, and one thing leads to another. Unfortunately, you can't take these spoken words back. You may regret what you have said. You hurt your partner. And the sad thing is that your partner will remember what you said.

Don't let it get that far! Sit together today and create your phrase that you will use in 'case of emergency'.

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