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My boyfriend, Momus, and I have a pretty darn good relationship. However, we also have three failed marriages between us, so we're not naive to the potential pitfalls. Thus, we expend every effort to ensure that our current relationship does not fall into disarray. Generally this is pretty easy. We agree on most things, work pretty easily alongside each other, and generally pick up the slack for each other's weak spots.

However, into every relationship a little friction will come. When you spend practically 24/7 alongside another person (we work, live and play together), sand will sometimes fall into the gears. And, despite being generally reasonable people, we also can both get a bit irrational when steamed and resort to, shall we say, less than ideal methods of communication.

Momus tends to perseverate during arguments, and can become focused on making sure that I understand exactly what I have done wrong - using 57 barely nuanced critiques to make his point. This generally makes me want to scream, "Can I just opt for the water boarding, if you'll shut up?!" I, on the other hand, cut and run to avoid the conflict. Sometimes in mid-sentence I will flee upstairs, sometimes I grab my car keys and head for the nearest state line, and sometimes I just yell "Stop Talking!" As you might imagine, none of this goes over well.

As it so happens, my boyfriend and I were both trained as clinical psychologists long before we met. I abandoned that career path after deciding that people give me panic attacks, and Momus did the same once he realized how little patience he had for people talking about their problems at length. So really neither of us was what you'd call an ideal candidate for therapist of the year. But this training at least gave both of us solid technical tools for easing over life's rough spots. Not so you could tell on any given Wednesday, or when in the middle of the Great President's Day Blowup of 2013. However, we finally think that we have figured out the trick to better living through pop psychology: The Summit (TM).

I have to give Momus the credit here, as he is the one who first suggested The Summit. The idea is that we spend an hour or so every weekend reviewing the week, talking about any troubles that arose, and coming up with ways to avoid future friction. The genius of the idea (and the part that makes it work) is that during the week any gripe that doesn't need to be dealt with urgently is "saved for The Summit." So, if Momus thinks that I maybe should keep my comments about his food intake to myself, or if I have a quibble with his inability to put down the iPhone when we're watching The Honorouble Woman, we save it to talk about at The Summit. We do not, under any circumstances, get in a big fight at that moment. Even though I just want to watch my damn show without seeing that little cell phone light pop on 47 times an hour, it really is not important enough to get into when we are both tired and perhaps not the most receptive to hearing "feedback."

So we wait.

The secret sauce is really all about giving ourselves permission to air our grievances (because if you don't, that volcano is eventually going to blow), but at the same time having the self-control to wait a couple of days to discuss them. By then we are no longer actively irritated by the actual event and are less likely to over-react due to the exhaustion of the day, work stress, or (and I admit it, this happens) crazy-lady hormones.

Often by the time we get to The Summit we realize that what bothered us at the time was just a momentary reaction, and not something the other person even needs to correct. Momus likes to quote one of his favorite existential philosophers, Mellencamp, in this regard: "Nothing matters and what if it did?" Sometimes those things that seem so critical at the moment fade in importance with a little time and perspective.

When there are real issues getting under our skin, The Summit helps us bring our good respectful psychologist language to bear. OK, sure, sarcasm is never completely absent our exchanges, but it is mostly restricted to the benign, funny form. We are also more likely to be able to accept our own mistakes at The Summit and move toward a plan to correct whatever is scraping against the other's well-being.

Sometimes when we reflect on the fact that we actually do The Summit, we roll our eyes and feel very touchy-feely woo woo about it all. The Taylor-Burton conflict style probably suits our natural selves better: it's a dysfunctional comfort zone. But we've both done those relationships and we're tired of them. We just want to get through our work day, be good to our kids, and find ways to have fun together. Bickering about stupid stuff is a huge waste of our remaining years, and can be a relationship bomb of epic proportions.

We've been summitting (we even created the verb form) for about six months now, and it has been amazingly productive. The Summit has grown from a simple place to smooth down rough spots to a weekly check-in on our various self-driven goals (you know, of the eat better, exercise more variety) and aspirations for the future. It is a time that we actually both look forward to, and we have found that it will often roll on long beyond the hour that we have set aside for it.

And during the week, whenever the temperature starts to rise, you will hear one of us say to ourselves, "Save it for The Summit!"

And miraculously we do.

- Cassandra Delusion

Cassandra is in her mid-40s with a daughter in college and an 11-year-old son. She has somehow found herself working as a data analyst despite her love of words and deep mistrust of all things numeric (and an inability to add multi-digit numbers with any degree of accuracy). Former delusions led her to attain a degree in clinical psychology, take classes in library science, start a greeting card company and explore co-housing, despite the fact that others typically irritate her. She shares a blog, www.TheNextDelusion.com , with her partner-in-crime, Momus.