Troubled relationships tend to feature certain traits that you shouldn’t live with and personal issues you or your partner would be wise to change IF you want to make your love last. In “Talk to Me,” I proactively discuss what to say when “relationship reg flags” are popping up on your ship of love. No one wants those problems to deep-six your love in Davey Jones’ locker.

If seven or more of these “relationship red flags” are flying in your partnership or marriage…DON’T DELAY…get on the calendar of a communications psychologist TODAY.

1. Critical feedback is reacted to as criticism. A partner becomes defensive, and claims you are attacking him/her, when you are simply telling the truth and communicating your concerns honestly and openly.

2. An “I can’t talk to you!” atmosphere. Missed communication is rampant, and you feel exasperated, helpless and frustrated when you try to talk to your partner…but can’t.

3. Not a happy camper. You frequently feel down and blue. There is an avoidance of positive change and growth as a couple, and distractions such as hobbies, sleep, overwork, friends and family displace talking and sharing.

Has your relationship partner rattled your cage (and serenity) lately with a high-anxiety panic attack disguised as an anger attack? You may cringe at the memory, but chances are your reactive partner has high-anxiety states that spill over over into your personal world…looking much like crazy, angry outbursts or unfair fights.

Psychologically, emotions can layer on top of each other in this situation: Anxiety is often dressed up or disguised on the talk stage as rough and tough…gruff anger. Moreover, anxiety-derived negative words of anger are like sticks and stones that can break relational bones…so you had better duck when anxiety flies.

Hope is here: I often recommend a single talk transaction that can calm down an angry co-communicator pretty effectively. The CommTool or transaction to say calmly in the face of an anger-panic attack person is: “I need you to know I’m feeling anxious…scared…not safe…RIGHT NOW.”

How to know when a RELATIONSHIP PANIC ATTACK is under way:

1. Yelling. Yelling is a form of verbal bashing. Your partner may talk exceptionally loudly, give you “the guilt look,” bring up the past, screech about the unfairness of it all, say inappropriate things (like obscenities) or suffer from “giveupitis” or quitting.

2. Loss of control. Your partner will be red-faced, speech will be pressured, interrupting is common. “S/he acts like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

What do you say when you’re ending a relationship and want to be honest about it? The importance of “completing the circle” of a relationship by saying “good-bye” is brought home by our next contributor.

We all do it. At some point in our lives, we say good-bye. But the one thing we don’t all do is say why.

Everybody ends a relationship in one way or another, but most generally we don’t tell the other person in the relationship why we are ending it. I think we should. I do most of the time. I may not just flat out tell you in exact words why, but I usually tell you.

Good grief, Charlie Brown, is there such a thing…grief that is good for the heart and soul? Loss, saying goodbye and asking why? are very touchy emotional subjects for most of us. But there are good parts to grief, or as I like to say: “Out of the ashes of grief comes new growth!”

I’m serious. Just any low-cost tissue won’t do in my psychotherapy office. Tears are pretty precious…they are an indication of springtime rains that are loosening up old clods of dry grief dirt. Tears signal change, joy, longing, bittersweet memories, mood swings, feeling down, dispiritedness. Mr. or Mrs. Positive we ain’t when a lightning bolt of grief strikes down our status quo and sense of control.