The No. 1 relationship hack: 'Turning toward'

You can respond in one of three ways:

1 - By turning toward - Acknowledging them and engaging with their attempt to connect: "Oh yeah? What's it about?"

2 - By turning away - Actively ignoring or just not noticing their attempt to connect: You keep typing the email you're working on while staring at your screen.

3 - By turning against - Irritably or angrily shutting down their attempt to connect: "Can't you see I'm trying to work?"

"By one view, like that of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, the willingness to be “scrupulously truthful” in such moments is the core of friendship. All humans have blind spots; none of us is immune to poor decision making. A true friend, by MacIntyre’s account, is one who cares enough about our welfare to help liberate us from those illusions. “Friendships survive and flourish only if each friend can rely on the other’s truthfulness,” he once said. Another view, by contrast, holds that it is precisely our willingness to keep our mouth shut in the face of a friend’s error that allows any of our friendships to survive. “Almost always, such human relationships rest on the fact that a certain few things are never said, indeed that they are never touched upon; and once these pebbles are set rolling, the friendship follows after, and falls apart,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote."

1st version of marriage was war, 2nd version of marriage was truce, and 3rd version of marriage was unity