There is a widespread opinion that the well-mannered person never raises his or her voice at anyone, always conducts themselves exceptionally calm, nicely and politely. In other words a well-mannered person should be just like a dollar bill - please everyone.

Patience and self-control have become deeply rooted in our society as the main characteristics of good manners. But from the standpoint of psychology, such ethics teach a person not to face the problems but to put up with them instead. This is of course wrong. First of all, it leads to the problems not really being solved, unless these problems just disappear with time, and second of all, the individuality of the person actually gets destroyed under the influence of all the accumulated unexpressed negative emotions.

Besides, self-control is hypocritical, since we feel one thing, say another thing, and do something completely different. At the same time, the negative emotions having accumulated to the critical point may lead to an uncontrollable outburst. And we can all agree that we would rather not wait for that to happen. So what should we do?

The easiest route is to take control over our aggression, behave sincerely, and in all difficult situations to speak openly about how you truly feel, for example: "This situation makes me mad", "I should confess that this makes me furious", "This makes me extremely angry", "This is unpleasant to me", "I feel pressured" and so on. This sets a good beginning to allow the person you are communicating with to have a chance to pay proper attention to the strength of your emotions and make their contribution to the solving of the problem. The important thing to remember is that your words should not express aggression towards the person, in other words the phrase should not contain the word 'you', for example: "You make me mad" or "How can you not understand that this makes me angry". Such accusing words will definitely wound the other person and your conversation risks rising to a whole new level of insulting each other. In the worst case scenario, the partner will just take offense and withdraw into themselves, which can come to the surface later at the most inconvenient moment.

There are of course certain limitations in using this technique depending on what type of personality your partner has.

For selfish people other people's emotions are not a cause for their own thoughts and actions, in other words they do not comprehend the considerate approach to the relationship. Perhaps they are only oriented to the language of force, meaning if you do not shout, blackmail, intrigue, or intimidate, the selfish people will simply not understand that you are extremely upset with them.

If you know that you are an aggressive person by nature, who is used to strongly expressing all of your emotions, but you do not want to harm people around you then you can warn everyone beforehand that sometimes you express your temper in an impulsive way. But you should take into account that there may be people around you with a timid personality, who overall cannot handle any form of strong expression of emotions. You should think about what is the best way to express your discontent to them: it might be enough to express your concern, request, or insistent recommendation.

It may be that you possess power over the person you are talking to, for example, you are a parent and a child completely depends on you, or a husband who is the provider for the a family, or a boss whose employees' well-being depends on. In this case you should assume that people depending on you may feel difficulties expressing their opinions to you. In order to see and manage problems in proper time, draw the child, spouse, or employees out to an open discussion rather than a fighting match. Reconcile your positions on the issues at hand in a calm situation.

Do not sit and wait until the conflict leads to the state of uncontrollable explosion. If you feel a burst of uncontrollable rage coming on, go ahead and seclude yourself, rip a bunch of newspapers or break some cheap dishes bought beforehand specifically for an occasion like this (just be careful not to cut yourself). And when it blows over, think about what exactly you are so unhappy about and how you can solve the problem. Overall if you are extremely hot-tempered, maybe you are just surrounded by bad people and you should change your environment, and perhaps you yourself are decidedly displeased with something in your life, then you should change yourself and your life overall.

In life everyone faces an aggression directed at us. So how should we handle it? Do not take the anger of people around you to heart, treat it as a guide to action to clear up the problems related to the anger. The person may not be mad at you personally, but be upset with a problem in regards to your relationship, or it could be a situation that you just happen to be a part of and perhaps an easy/only/first target. Usually anger is a sign that the person has already exhausted all other options to solve the problem, but has not achieved any results.

A brawl is an extreme way of solving the problem usually used as a last resort. If a problem does not get solved in a fight, then people either break up or stay with each other and gain pleasure from mutual hysterics, for which both partners should be fairly aggressive.

If your partner has an impulsive manner of expressing any information, do not try to change them, concentrate on the content of the communication and not the emotions. It can look pretty amusing from the outside. For example, a husband says to his wife: "How many times can I tell you not to throw the laundry on the dinner table!!!" And she replies: "Thank you, honey, for caring so much about the house being tidy…" Beware though that this will only work if you really are planning on improving, otherwise your calm answer can be considered as a cynical rudeness. And instead of getting upset with your girlfriend's hypocritical compassion: "What happened? You don't look so good today!" you can simply respond with: "Thank you, dear, for being so attentive to me!" And afterwards think whether you need such "caring" girlfriends.

It is also important to express your complete understanding of the other person's feelings and then switch the conversation into a constructive direction, for example: "Yes, I can see that you are really mad about this… but let's think about how we can solve this problem". And if you think that the aggressive behavior of your partner notably harms you as an individual, then start looking for a new partner.

With your new set of fighting tools in your tool bag, you can now turn those destructive fights into fights that actually bring a positive outcome.