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But, as is often the case, it turns out that fighting with your partner wasn't the part that was good for you. What was healthy was "expressing anger constructively." The research showed that feeling anger but not expressing it is bad for you and is even associated with a shortened life span.

So it's not the fighting that's healthy; it's the expression of anger.

At one point in our culture's history, there was a dominant belief that authenticity and a "free spirit" required that you "tell it like it is," with full license to say anything you wanted in any way that made you feel good, the more direct and blunt the better. Courtesy and sensitivity, consideration and empathy were considered marks of inauthenticity. Fortunately, our culture outgrew, for the most part, this rather adolescent and self-indulgent attitude.


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