Word: fightingly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...WARM UP. The partner who feels a fight coming on should ask himself, "Am I merely annoyed or really angry? Do I have real evidence? Am I ready to follow up with a specific demand for change in the status quo? What am I willing to compromise...
...REQUEST A TIME AND PLACE with a phrase such as, "Hey, I've got a bone to pick with you." This avoids "Pearl Harbor" surprise attacks and makes the fight voluntary. To enforce persistence, Bach says, boats are ideal; they make it hard for either combatant to escape...
...FIGHT PROMPTLY. This avoids "gunny-sacking"-that is, collecting grievances that "make a dreadful mess when the sack finally bursts" into a broadside "kitchen-sink fight," where everything but the household plumbing is thrown in as a weapon...
...techniques wears away, he and Wyden say, as couples master the art of intimate battle. "Our system is not a sport like boxing," the authors write. "It is more like a cooperative skill, such as dancing." But they warn that "with acquaintances, clients or 'dates,' a bad fight can be final." And although the technique is rooted in the footnotes of wide scholarship, Bach himself admits that some responsible critics worry that the method is too superficial and only skims the surface of deeper problems...
...reply, Bach says that follow-up studies of the couples he has "fight-trained" show 85% of them "living much more satisfying (if perhaps noisier) lives than before." Some 200 other therapists have come to watch and learn what they can from the Bachian brouhaha approach to honest marriage. Eventually, Bach asks buoyantly, why not teach fight training on television...