Any time people from around the world gather together, the risk of certain diseases goes up. With the World Cup underway, health experts are on alert for infectious diseases.

Here are some tips from infectious-disease and public-health experts about what to worry about, what not to worry about, and how to best protect yourself.

Hantavirus and Ebola have been in the headlines. How worried should I be if I’m attending a match?

The risk of getting infected with either virus remains low for the general U.S. public for several reasons. First, both viruses are transmitted by direct contact with an infected person (or rodent, in the case of hantavirus). In the U.S., cases of hantavirus are generally reported in the Pacific Northwest, but some Americans were recently exposed during a cruise that originated in Argentina, where the virus is more common. Those exposed passengers were evacuated to a special biocontainment facility in Nebraska where they were monitored for any signs of disease, and many passengers have been discharged after remaining symptom-free for a period of time.

Ebola is transmitted from certain animal species like bats and primates, and while the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda is concerning, health officials there are exit-screening people leaving those countries in hopes of keeping the virus contained. The U.S. also recently imposed additional restrictions for anyone arriving in the country from the DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan.

The DRC’s World Cup team is training in Houston and changed its training schedule, according to Politico, in part due to U.S. entry restrictions for travelers from the country. The team had planned on convening in the capital city of Kinshasa before flying to the U.S., but the players, who were already out of the country for a match, flew directly to Europe instead. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is working with team officials to ensure safe training procedures are in place for the players, officials told Politico.

For fans from the DRC traveling to the U.S., those who already received visas will have to spend the 21 days before arriving in the U.S. outside of the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan, according to current U.S. entry restrictions. Those without visas may not be issued one since the U.S. embassy in the DRC has temporarily suspended issuing visas.

What is the biggest infectious disease risk at World Cup matches?

Health experts say the more realistic worry is about respiratory diseases like the cold, flu, RSV, and COVID. These spread readily through the air—via coughs and sneezes—especially in crowded conditions. Many stadiums are outdoors, which helps cut down on transmission, but being in tight quarters next to someone who is sick could make you sick as well.

“Right now, it’s cold and flu season in the southern hemisphere,” says Dr. Daniel Egan, an infectious-disease physician at Orlando Health. “World Cup matches are a unique scenario of mixing people coming from that area with people up north. Respiratory illnesses are honestly the biggest spreading-possibility illness now.”

How can I protect myself from getting sick?

It's advice you've heard since childhood, but doctors say the best defense against germs is washing your hands. Traditional soap and water work on a number of levels, from the physical removal and destruction of microbes on your hands to cleaning away any dirt and grime.

Finding a sink is the best option, but if one isn’t convenient, then hand sanitizer is a good substitute, says Egan. But, he says, “If you compare them head to head, then soap and water beats out hand sanitizer every single time.”

Beyond washing your hands, it’s also helpful to be aware of what your hands are touching. “In any big crowd, it’s a challenge to think of all the different areas that people touch,” says Egan. “Guard rails, handrails, countertops—a lot of people are touching these areas, and that’s how diseases spread.” Viruses like norovirus and stomach bugs that cause gastrointestinal distress are usually spread via contaminated surfaces.

The best way to protect yourself from these germs is to also wash your hands—both before and after you use the restroom. That way, any microbes you may pick up from touching surfaces won’t be spread while you undress or use the bathroom. “People have no idea of the surfaces they touch before they go to the bathroom,” says Egan.

Are health officials tracking the World Cup for diseases?

Health officials are turning to a relatively new way of monitoring microbes that proved useful during COVID: through wastewater.

Scientists have developed ultra-sensitive ways to pick up traces of viruses like influenza, COVID, RSV, and more. They use a technology that amplifies tiny signals of pathogenic genes to determine whether certain diseases are rising in a sampled area.

Verily Health, an offshoot of Google X, began monitoring wastewater for infectious diseases during COVID in 2020, and now works with the CDC and others to provide up-to-date information on disease trends picked up in wastewater. For the World Cup, Georgetown University and MedStar Health created the Health Security Operations Center, the first non-government public-health emergency center to monitor for infectious diseases. Verily is contributing to the information the operations center is tracking to stay on top of infectious disease trends, by looking for about 30 infectious diseases in wastewater, including in cities where World Cup teams are training. (They are not currently looking for Ebola, but they can if it becomes necessary.) The wastewater monitoring “is public-health response on steroids,” says Dr. Vindell Washington, chief physician executive of Verily. When samples from local wastewater plants come in, they take about three days to fully analyze, he says, compared to the several weeks it might take for people to develop symptoms, get tested, and wait for the results.

He says Verily will analyze the data and post them on a website to help people make more informed decisions about infectious-disease risk. Someone with COPD or asthma, for example, could check the dashboard for respiratory illnesses in the area of the game.

Doctors can also take advantage of the information to spot trends in a patient's area. Knowing that RSV cases are rising nearby, for example, may raise their suspicion for that virus, which could help guide testing and treatment.

It’s part of the effort to empower people with better, real-time information that can have a direct impact in improving their health. “This World Cup is a step forward—we have people coming from around the world, and the disease environment could change relatively quickly,” says Washington. “We need a signal today, and not six weeks from today.”

Some years ago, Helen Keyes was pushing her way through a World Cup crowd with her soccer-loving brother and father. “What is it about this sport or this event that you like?” she remembers asking them. “Is it the sport itself? Is it being around the other people? The sense of togetherness?” They were stumped, and replied that they’d never thought about it. “I thought, I'd really like to think about it,” remembers Keyes, who is a cognitive psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University in England. 

Keyes is one of many psychologists who view the World Cup, which is held every four years, as part of the quest to answer this question: What do people get out of watching sports? And the important follow-up: Does being a sports fan come with any benefits for health? 

Research by Keyes and others has revealed that watching sports of all kinds, both in-person and on a screen, can have positive impacts on well-being. And even when your team loses—as they are practically guaranteed to do at some point—fans still get something out of the social act of following a team.

Is going to a sports game good for you?

Using data from a survey of more than 7,000 people in the U.K., Keyes and her colleagues set out in 2023 to see whether attending a live sporting event in the last year changed people’s self-reported anxiety, loneliness, and sense that life was worth living, among other measures. They also looked at links between these factors and demographic data, such as whether people were employed, their health status, and their gender. The games didn’t have to be high-priced events with professional players; local matches between amateurs counted, too. 

What they found was that attending a live match significantly boosted some measures of well-being. “Attending a live sporting event was associated with a greater sense that your life is worthwhile,” Keyes says. Life satisfaction went up, and loneliness diminished. They found that attending a live event had an even greater impact on people’s sense that life was worth living than whether they had a job or not.

A 2020 study by another group found that watching sports on TV also positively affected life satisfaction and well-being, but it did not reduce loneliness the way being there in person does, says Keyes. 

This suggests that getting people to attend sports events might be a good way for governments to help improve mental well being, Keyes speculated. (Other methods her research has explored include supporting crafters and encouraging volunteering.) “We are trying to find what's the best benefit we could get to improve public health and well-being in a way that's enjoyable for people,” she says.

Does being a sports fan improve well-being?

Anyone who has felt the incredible highs and lows of following a sports match might wonder: Is this a net benefit? "They know going in that there's a 50% chance that when they are finished consuming this product, they are going to be cranky,” says Daniel Wann, a social psychologist at Murray State University in Kentucky who has studied sports fandom for decades. The question has inspired a lot of psychological research, including on the phenomena of CORFing and BIRGing: acronyms for “cutting off reflected failure,” or distancing oneself from a team when they lose, and “basking in reflected glory” when they win.

But overall, sports fandom seems to be a win for mental health. People find ways to restructure and frame their understanding of a game where their team loses. “I don’t know how you can be a sports fan and not be resilient,” Wann says. And in general, the psychological benefits of following a team are substantial. “Individuals that are really involved in a sports team, they have higher self-esteem, they have lower levels of loneliness and alienation, and they have a higher sense of social connectivity,” he says. “Fandom has the capability to help individuals meet basic psychological needs, like the need to belong.” At the same time, sports fandom allows people to set themselves apart from the group, giving themselves a unique identity within the community. You might be the sports fan who follows both football and archery, for example, or someone who specializes in following a particular group of players. Individuation is a basic psychological need, too.

The regular cycles of sports also provide a kind of structure to fans’ lives. Someone might remember where they were during the last World Cup, or they might be planning their Super Bowl parties a full year ahead of time. These rituals are comforting, says Wann, and give people something to look forward to.

As the World Cup gets under way, fans around the world will congregate not only at stadiums, but in places where they can cheer on teams together. “I'm sure there are a lot of psychologists in that crowd,” Keyes says, “asking all of those fans what's making this special for them, about being with each other.” 

For most people, an unreturned text is a minor frustration—a sign that a friend or partner is busy and will respond eventually. For someone living with borderline personality disorder (BPD), that same silence can feel like evidence that something is terribly wrong.

“Your perceptions are off, and as a result of that you read signals in ways that are incorrect,” says Rebbie Ratner, who has BPD and directed the documentary Borderline, along with running the YouTube channel BorderlinerNotes. “And based on those incorrect reads, you react.”

That reaction might be a furious message—Why aren’t you texting me back? It’s so rude that you don’t think about me enough to respond—or a less-obvious freeze-out: pulling away, keeping score, deciding not to respond the next time the other person reaches out. “Not only am I not going to answer, I’m going to make them pay next time,” Ratner says, describing the pattern she lived inside for years. That might mean “sending zingers their way to try to wound them because they've wounded me.”

It’s the kind of pattern that gets misread constantly—written off as manipulation, drama, or someone being “too much.” Over time, it can wreck the very thing the person is trying to protect. “Do it enough, and you blow your relationships,” Ratner says. “You blow your ability to build connections. You get lonely. You lose your ties to people.”

BPD affects an estimated 2.4% of people globally. The condition is marked by intense emotional swings, a chronic feeling of emptiness, and a deep fear of abandonment. It's also one of the most misunderstood diagnoses in mental health—often confused with bipolar disorder, dismissed as a character flaw, or thought of as untreatable. 

None of that is accurate. We asked experts and people with BPD to break down the most common myths about the condition—and what they wish more people understood.

Myth: People with BPD lack empathy

If anything, the opposite tends to be true. People with borderline personality disorder often feel other people’s emotions so deeply that those feelings become indistinguishable from their own.

“They are deep, deep feelers,” says Lauren Hunter, a psychotherapist in New York who treats BPD and whose father has the condition. “If somebody shared a devastating scenario, they would almost take on those feelings.”

That sensitivity may help explain why so many people with BPD are drawn to caregiving roles. “I see so many people in helping professions who have BPD,” says Sara Rose Masland, an associate professor of psychological science at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., who specializes in BPD. “Nurses, vets, vet techs—professions where they're trying to help others.”

Part of why this myth persists, Masland says, is that the hardest moments are the most visible ones. Someone in the grip of intense emotion might lash out or say something cutting, and that can be mistaken for not caring. “It’s not coming from a place of actually trying to hurt anyone else,” she says. “It’s coming from this place of dysregulation.”

Myth: People with BPD are manipulative or attention-seeking

The phrase “attention-seeking” gets thrown around constantly in discussions about borderline personality disorder—but experts say it obscures what’s actually happening.

“Something that may seem like attention-seeking might actually be help-seeking,” says Priscilla María Gutiérrez, a mental-health advocate in Sarasota, Fla., who was diagnosed with BPD in 2018. “Safety-seeking. Connection-seeking. Relief-from-pain seeking.”

Behaviors that look dramatic from the outside—late-night texts, over-the-top exits, even self-harm—are often attempts to manage emotions that feel intolerable. “Self-harm actually has a function for that person to decrease that painful emotional intensity,” Masland says. The person might be trying to stop someone from leaving, distract themselves from overwhelming panic, or make their pain visible enough that someone finally responds.

The cycles Ratner fell into with romantic partners—lashing out, then apologizing, then resenting herself for apologizing—often looked, from the outside, like calculated efforts to manipulate. “I don’t think that’s what was going on,” she says. “It was much more about doing behaviors to assist in regulating and managing my feelings.”

Myth: Everyone with BPD acts the same

The cultural image of borderline personality disorder—loud, volatile, Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted—captures only one possible presentation of a much more varied condition. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a person needs to meet at least five of nine criteria to receive a diagnosis, which means there are hundreds of possible symptom combinations. The criteria include frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, having unstable relationships, identity disturbance, impulsive behavior, chronic feelings of emptiness, intense anger, emotional instability, paranoia or dissociation under stress, and recurrent suicidal behavior or self-harm.

“Not everyone is going to have the same five out of nine,” Gutiérrez says. Her own presentation was what some clinicians informally call “quiet BPD”—the volatility turned inward rather than outward. “My outbursts were kind of rare but very intense,” she says. “A lot of it was internal. I took it out on myself.” She has never attempted suicide, she notes, though suicidal ideation and self-harm are common among people with the condition.

That variation is part of why the diagnosis is often missed. Someone whose symptoms don’t match the popular image—throwing things during arguments, screaming at partners, storming out of rooms—may go years without anyone recognizing what they’re experiencing. “From different people that I’ve met,” Gutiérrez says, “none of us are the same.”

Myth: BPD is just another name for bipolar disorder

The two conditions get confused all the time—partly because of the similar acronyms, and partly because both involve intense mood shifts. But they’re fundamentally different, and the distinction matters because the treatments aren’t the same.

“Bipolar disorder is a disorder of mood regulation, and borderline personality disorder is a disorder of personality,” Hunter says. People with bipolar disorder cycle through extended periods of mania and depression, often accompanied by grandiosity or elevated self-esteem during manic phases. People with BPD, by contrast, often struggle with a persistent sense of emptiness and low self-worth, she says. And their emotional swings are more likely to be set off by something that happens—a perceived rejection, a fight, an unanswered text—than by an internal mood cycle. 

Myth: BPD is always caused by childhood trauma

Trauma is a major risk factor for BPD; many people with the condition have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. But it doesn’t apply to everyone, and assuming it does can create problems of its own. 

“This is not necessarily a trauma disorder,” Masland says. What’s more consistent, she explains, is a pattern of chronic emotional invalidation—growing up in an environment where big feelings were dismissed, minimized, or punished rather than helped. “You can imagine a child who has baseline high emotional intensity,” she says, “and the parent is not equipped to help with that emotional intensity. They may do things that are well-meaning, but still invalidate the child.”

The messages aren't always intentionally cruel. Sometimes they sound like attempts to calm a child down: It's not a big deal. Don't make such a fuss. But over time, they teach kids that their emotions aren’t legitimate, Masland says, and as a result, they never develop the tools to manage what they’re feeling.

That nuance also matters for how families approach treatment. If clinicians assume abuse where there wasn't any, it can derail recovery and falsely indict parents who were trying their best. “Symptoms make sense even without a significant trauma,” Masland says. “Even that well-meaning chronic invalidation can create these kinds of problems.”

Myth: People with BPD can’t have healthy relationships

Relationships can be especially challenging for people with BPD; the fear of abandonment runs so deep that even small ruptures can feel catastrophic. But the idea that healthy connection is off the table is wrong.

“These are people who deeply care about relationships,” Masland says. “That fear of abandonment comes from a place of really caring about interpersonal connections.” With the right treatment, she adds, many people with BPD build meaningful relationships—and developing the skills to maintain them is often a central piece of recovery.

Gutiérrez, who has done years of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT, the most effective treatment for the disorder), says she had to work hard at the relationship skills most people absorb in childhood. “We feel things deeply, and so it’s not that we’re incapable of loving or learning boundaries or learning how to regulate our emotions,” she says. “It’s just that we didn’t really have that foundation growing up. But we’re more than capable of growing and learning and healing.”

Myth: BPD only affects women

About 75% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are women, but research suggests the condition actually affects men and women at roughly the same rates.

“When we look at good epidemiological studies, it actually turns out that the prevalence is equal for men and women,” Masland says. “It’s just that men are not getting the diagnosis.” Men, she explains, are less likely to seek treatment in the first place—and when they do, clinicians often default to other diagnoses because the cultural image of BPD is so heavily gendered. Pete Davidson and former NFL player Brandon Marshall are two of the few male public figures who have spoken openly about having the condition.

Myth: BPD can’t be treated

DBT is the gold-standard treatment for borderline personality disorder. The approach was developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan (who has publicly disclosed her own BPD diagnosis). It’s intensive—typically at least 24 weeks—but the results are striking. Research has found that after a year of DBT, the majority of patients no longer meet the criteria for a BPD diagnosis.

At its core, DBT teaches skills that many people with BPD never had the chance to learn. It’s “a whole curriculum of distress tolerance, of coping skills, of how to talk to people—just really foundational human skills,” says Gutiérrez, who began DBT shortly after her diagnosis. Combined with medication and ongoing therapy, she says, the work has been transformative. “I would describe my BPD as in remission. If a psychiatrist were to analyze me, I wouldn’t meet the criteria.”

The behavioral symptoms—like self-harm, impulsivity, and extreme mood swings—tend to improve first, Masland says. More internal symptoms, like chronic emptiness and an unstable sense of self, take longer to shift. “It can take ongoing work for years, because this is a really severe mental illness,” she says. “But there are people who make really fantastic recoveries from BPD. It’s definitely treatable.”

Ratner especially appreciates learning how to question her initial reactions. “One of the core capacities that’s brought forth when one gets treatment is learning how to cast doubt into your perceptions,” she says. The unreturned text she once read as rejection? Now she can pause to consider other possibilities—her friend was busy, didn’t see the message as urgent, or simply didn’t get to it yet.

And she refuses to let stigma slow her recovery down. “It is really not my business what other people think about [BPD] or me,” she says. “I will be damned if I am to be distracted by their opinion of it to the extent that it in any way impacts my efforts at recovery.”

The secret to everlasting love and happiness might be fighting—but only if you do it the right way. Most people don’t, couples therapists say.

The trouble is that almost no one is ever taught how to fight in a healthy way, leaving many of us to improvise difficult conversations. If the way you and your partner argue feels like a script you can't escape, though, experts say it isn't a life sentence—it's a set of habits, and habits can change.

Learning to fight well is "like a new muscle," says Linda Engelman, a licensed marriage and family therapist in San Ramon, Calif. It’s awkward and uncomfortable at first, but more natural every time you use it. "You're just rewiring the circuit,” she says. Here are 15 rules therapists use to help couples fight more fairly. 

Schedule the fight

Most blowups happen when one person is already activated and the other gets caught off guard and slips into defense mode—which means no one is actually listening. Putting a hard conversation on the calendar removes the ambush. It doesn't need to be formal, says Ilana Grines, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles: "Tonight after the kids are in bed, can we talk?" is plenty. 

"It's one of the most unromantic things, just like scheduling sex," she says, "but it works incredibly well." The message it sends: “I respect this conversation enough to give it a real shot, and not just come into it hot.”

Check the conditions before you start

The body has an enormous impact on how you handle conflict, so before you wade in, make sure you're both in shape for it. "Adding conflict on top of hunger, exhaustion, hormonal shifts—you're basically asking to be running on empty and having the worst fight of your life," Grines says. Many of the most vicious arguments happen late at night simply because everyone is depleted, which is a reflection of capacity, not of the relationship.

Take stock of your partner's state, too. Jenny Mahlum, a couples therapist in Manhattan, suggests asking how wide their window is that day, on a scale of 1 to 10, borrowing from psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel's "window of tolerance." An 8 means there's room to get into something difficult; a 3 means even a small thing might land hard. If their window is narrow, the best move is to delay, not abandon, she says; agree on a better time rather than forcing a conversation neither of you can do well.

Set the ground rules before you need them

Therapists call this meta-communication: communicating about how you communicate. Tina Shrader, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oak Park, Ill., recommends agreeing in advance on what's off-limits when things get heated. No name-calling, no cursing, no belittling or dismissing each other's feelings ("you always feel that way" or "why would you take it that way?") is a good place to start. The more specific these rules are to your relationship, the better, she says.

Give yourselves a designated spot

Pick one place to have hard conversations—ideally somewhere you don't otherwise spend much time, so it carries no baggage. Mahlum calls it a "talking spot" (inspired, she says, by Winnie the Pooh’s "thoughtful spot"). Over time, settling into that spot becomes its own signal that you're there to work something out.

Another option is to switch up the location occasionally. If you always fight in the bedroom with the door shut, Shrader says, try the kitchen instead. Changing one element of the pattern often shows couples they're "actually not stuck" and can do things differently.

Slow down

Most couples fight at "rapid ping-pong velocity," Engelman says—volleying so fast that neither person is really listening. The speed comes from anxiety, and assuming you won't be heard, so you talk over each other and race to make your point. The first step is simply noticing it: Is your heart pounding? Is your face hot? Then say it out loud: "Hang on, I hear myself, and I want to slow down." Lowering your pace and softening your voice keeps the conversation from spiraling.

Be a detective, not a lawyer

Couples tend to fight like they're in a courtroom, building a case to prove who's right. It works far better to behave like detectives on the same team, trying to solve the same mystery, Mahlum says. That approach uses curiosity, which is usually the first thing couples abandon mid-fight. Instead of accusing, ask: "Help me understand what was going on for you." "Help me walk through how you made that decision." It signals that you're trying to understand your partner, not judge them. As Grines puts it, "Curiosity leads to intimacy,” and it can change the entire temperature of a fight.

Speak in parts

Try saying "part of me feels angry" instead of "I'm angry." It sounds like a tiny change, Mahlum says, but it softens the standoff, because one feeling rarely tells the whole story. You might be angry and hurt and shut down—and still love your partner and want to figure it out. This strategy slows things down and reminds you both that there's more in the room than anger: "Part of me is feeling this way, and part of me also wants to work this out with you,” she says.

Remember, it's never about the fork

The perpetually unfolded laundry, the never-replaced toilet-paper roll, the forks loaded into the dishwasher the wrong way—these might set off the fight, but they're rarely what it's actually about. As Engelman puts it, "It was never about the fork."

Therapists encourage couples to look past the fight’s trigger and ask what deeper hurt is underneath. A month's worth of arguments can often be traced back to the same core fear: You don't trust me. You don't think I know what I'm doing. You don't value what's important to me. Once you identify that larger theme, the conversation tends to shift. Recurring conflicts are often a "dance" both partners participate in, Shrader says. The goal isn't to keep arguing about the fork—it's to understand the pattern that keeps bringing you back to it. 

Make physical contact

Many people instinctively pull away during conflict, but Grines says couples who can hold hands while disagreeing tend to recover faster. The point isn't romance in the moment—it's co-regulation. Holding hands, sitting close together, or resting a hand on your partner's arm can signal to both of your nervous systems that no one is actually in danger. "It's OK to say: This person is still my safe place, even when it's difficult," Grines says.

Try sitting back to back

There's a reason why it’s easier to have difficult conversations in the car or on a walk: When you don’t have to make direct eye contact, the stakes feel lower, and you're less likely to tailor your words to every flicker of your partner's reaction. Mahlum sometimes has couples sit back to back—ideally still touching, so they don't feel disconnected—and take turns talking. Simply doing something unexpected can defuse tension, she says, while the setup makes it easier for people to say what they actually mean.

Use a fill-in-the-blank template

When people don't know how to start, Shrader hands them a script: "When you [did a specific behavior], it made me feel [a feeling], and I reacted with [a behavior]." It can feel a little robotic, she says—in a good way. The power is that it pairs what happened with how it felt. For example: "When you shut the cabinet door like that, it made me feel scared." That makes it easier for the other person to focus on the feeling being expressed, rather than jumping to their own defense. “Putting it in that framework allows for the response we want, which is to feel heard,” Shrader says.

Agree on a code word

When you're upset, it's hard to find the right words—and even harder to hear them. That's why Shrader suggests agreeing in advance on a nonverbal cue or a silly buzzword, like "banana split," that means: let's take a break. Decide ahead of time when you'll come back to the conversation, whether that's in 30 minutes or a couple of hours. The important part, she says, is actually returning to it. A timeout only works if both people know it's a pause, not a way out.

Listen until they actually feel heard

Here’s a trick to make sure everyone is really listening: One person talks, the other paraphrases what they heard, and the speaker confirms or clarifies it before you switch. It can feel painfully slow, but that's the point. People often fixate on one sentence and miss everything else, Mahlum says. "The sooner you both feel understood, the sooner the conversation can actually go somewhere." 

Keep in mind that validation isn't the same as agreement. "’Agree’ is a dirty word in my office," Shrader says. "I don't have to agree with that to offer you validation, for you to feel seen and heard."

Swap your go-to move for something braver

Under stress, most people default to one of two patterns, Engelman says: pursuing (getting louder, more critical) or withdrawing (shutting down, leaving the room). You can't easily stop getting triggered—but you can choose a different response. 

It’s better to say what's happening inside of you instead of criticizing, stonewalling, or walking away. Someone who tends to withdraw might say, "I'm overwhelmed and my brain is shutting down—can I take 10 minutes and come back?" A pursuer might say, "My heart is racing, but I do want to hear you." It's a circuit you rewire with practice, not a switch you flip.

End on the same team

You can't always resolve everything before sleep, Grines says, and you don't have to. What matters most is reminding each other that you're not enemies. You can always say some version of: "I love you. I'm still upset, and we can figure this out tomorrow," she suggests. The goal isn't to pretend everything's fine. It's to leave the conversation knowing you're still working toward the same thing: a close, connected relationship.