The goal of “The Good Fight,” a book and an app by Les and Leslie Parrott, who co-founded the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University, is teaching couples to fight fair and gain awareness about how they relate to each other when they are most angry, distressed and likely to say something hurtful.
So what’s on the app? Games that aim to subtly increase your chances of conflict resolution. For instance, there’s the Pride-O-Meter. Sounds frightening right? It should. This tool will help you access your level of pride at any moment. The goal is to allow you to get an objective view of how arrogant, um … prideful, you are so that you can “cultivate more humility, making a good fight far more likely.”
Twenty-eight different applets teach couples how to dismantle fights, whether the argument is about money, sex or chores and the app even inspires you construct heartfelt apologies.
In “Getting to Win-Win” couples play a game that can only be won if they work together. The old joke is often true in domestic disputes, “The man who can smile when things are going badly has just thought of someone to blame it on.” The book and the app explain that this is very tempting but that blame only exacerbates a conflict, the co-authors reason. However, “admitting weakness, any mistake, we think, makes us vulnerable to rejection. And it does … That’s why a good fight isn’t for cowards.”