Everybody in a relationship has moments of feeling frustrated, aggravated, or angry at their partner. While this is common, unleashing emotions towards our partners is not a healthy behavior, and repeated arguments can be corrosive for a relationship.

When you feel angry at your partner, here are some ways to calm yourself before it gets out of hand:

Over the years, there’s become increasing awareness about how movies impact the expectations people have for their relationships. While our real life experiences as children set the stage psychologically (subconsciously) for future relationships, movies have a way of portraying and reinforcing society’s “standards” for what a relationship “should” look like. Unfortunately, movies generally paint a picture of relationships that is viewed as consciously ideal and is mostly unrealistic, leaving people frustrated that they’re not in a relationship like the ones they see on the big screen.

Here are some differences between relationships in the movies, and real life relationships:

Stress is rarely something experienced as enjoyable, even if some people thrive on it. Unfortunately, stress is nearly inevitable, especially in today’s world. What people often don’t realize is that we have all the resources we need to be able to reduce stress. The challenge is to learn how to identify and use these resources.

Before being able to implement stress reduction techniques, we have to be able to recognize signs of stress. Some symptoms are more obvious than others. The more specifically we can understand our triggers — for example, not just knowing that work causes stress, but knowing what specifically in our work causes stress — the more we can do to prepare for stress, and ultimately reduce or prevent it altogether.