CONFLICT

When my daughter was born, I was determined to be a breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, cloth diapering, hippie mama. Nine months later, the only thing that'd stuck was the cloth diapers. I had just started my daughter on formula, she had been in the sling exactly five times and never once slept in her fancy little co-sleeper, which I returned to the store. And yes, I felt like a failure.

If the ugly, fattening effects of greasy fast food aren't enough to keep you away, consider this: In addition to its unhealthy side effects, eating junk can hurt your relationship.

Do you argue over money? Will Money Ruin Your Relationship? [EXPERT] Are you fighting over sex? Do you have different ideas about how much time you should spend together and apart? Do you squabble over extended family and friends? Is one of you daring and reckless, while the other wants to play things safe? Does one of you want to be right all the time? Does one of you want to always be in control? Do you disagree about the fun activities in your life?

Remember the day you gazed into the eyes of your prospective partner and truly grasped that their excitement about you matched your fascination with them? You saw your idealized self reflected back to you in their soft smiling eyes. You were hooked like a fish attracted to a shiny new lure that caters to its most vulnerable characteristics.

Congratulations! You have taken the first step toward choosing to have an entirely different relationship with your mother.

Studies have been performed that suggest fatty meals could make fighting with your partner super-stressful. The Ohio State University is attempting to prove that foods rich in saturated fat will increase stress hormones and thusly affect our emotional responses. Shape Magazine has a few great tips on how not to let eating lead to fighting (unless, of course, it's a sexy food fight). I'd suggest being very complimentary of each others' cooking as a start.

Save breakup talk for when you truly want to end a relationship, not as a rhetorical weapon. Otherwise, you risk your match taking you up on the offer and leaving you crying over steak for one.

(To see the accompanying video, click here.) Often, the same quirks, reactions and behaviors that create problems between you and the female members of your famiy wouldn't be a problem if they was someone else's family. If your best friend's mom or sister did the same thing, you'd probably let it go, gloss over it and focus on what you like about her. The same techniques will work with your own sisters and mom.

Although Hollywood has taught us that it's the couples who split and then reunite later in life who have "true love," researcher Amber Vennum from Kansas State University says otherwise. According to Vennum, "second chance romances" aren't what they're cracked up to be and should be left in the past.

Yes, arguments happen and no, they aren't always pretty. And, thanks to the differences in the way our brains are wired, men and women handle them differently. Luckily our friends at Tokii polled their users to give us some helpful tips on working through conflict in a relationship.

Stop nagging your man. Really. The Wall Street Journal recently claimed that nagging — which the WSJ defines as "the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed" — is the biggest marriage killer and likely to lead to divorce. Yikes!

To put it simply: Sometimes men know they're doing something wrong (and they're just too lazy to do the right thing) and sometimes, they don't know. But as a woman, it's hard to tell the difference. Here are 7 times he probably didn't realize he was pissing you off.

Taking a break is one of the most challenging, frustrating, and saddening parts of a relationship. No one wants to feel as though their relationship has failed or that they themselves have somehow failed. But sometimes, a break is necessary. Not only is it necessary, sometimes, it's a good thing.

Does this sound like your family? You are a Type A personality. You’re driven, intense and focused primarily on your career. You tend to look at yourself as having to be perfect, are impatient with co-workers and subordinates who are slower than you or who don’t share your passion about their work and careers.

With every New Year there comes a chance for a do-over, or at the very least the opportunity to do things different than we have in the past. Basically, to improve not only our lives and ourselves, but also how we live our life, too. Tokii's DiscoveryGames collected the responses of participants to see exactly who's sticking to the resolutions and what those resolutions just happen to be.

Is this relationship Healthy? What is a healthy relationship? It’s a good question I think. One I intend to explore over the next few weeks in this post. I say explore not answer, because although I know what the ingredients are for a healthy relationship I also know that in order for YOU to know what is healthy for you it takes some investigation. During the next few weeks as we explore this together I invite you to write me with your own insights into what makes a healthy relationship or your particular questions on the subject.