You’re losing sleep again.

Why does he always do this?!

You use TV to distract yourself. But dammit you’re mad. You can’t resist any longer. You call him and another argument ensues.

It just keeps happening: relationship drama.

All the usual questions flood your mind: Is this normal? Do all my friends fight like this? Why do we always fall into these stupid conflicts?

So allow me to share my essential, top 5 tips to avoiding drama with a guy you’re dating. These won’t all be easy to hear, but they’ll change your relationships forever.

Here goes:

1. Stop dating the wrong guys

If you don’t do this one, all hope is lost from the start.

Seriously. Let’s get one thing out of the way: If you’re with the wrong person, you will never avoid drama. So your #1 goal in finding love should always be to make good choices.

If you have the right guy, 80% of your problems will be taken care of. It’s that serious.

This means you should avoid:

• Men who don’t respect you
• Men who try to control your life
• Men who are crazy jealous
• Men who try to make YOU jealous
• Men who are incapable of saying “sorry”

If you see these red flags, this relationship WILL BE MESSY. Consider yourself warned. So do yourself the biggest favour of all: choose a guy who values and supports you from the start.

2. Learn what actually matters to you

Everyone will have parts of them that annoy you. There’s no magic pill for avoiding disagreements. The challenge of a relationship is deciding which of these are worth worrying about, and which aren’t.

For example:

Are you going to get angry if he calls and asks to re-schedule plans (assuming he doesn’t do it at the last minute)? Is it worth a 3-day fight about who goes to whose house for the holidays when you could just compromise and swap next year? Is it necessary to create conflict over where you’re going to meet for dinner later?

What defines a great relationship in the long-term isn’t the absence of disagreement, but what you choose to disagree about.

Look at your friends who always seem to have relationship drama. Chances are they fight over pointless, petty, and ridiculous things that don’t really matter.

When you learn to let little things go, you learn to appreciate your partner and can enjoy a drama free relationship.

3. Recover quickly

When you have an argument, don’t dwell.

Couples who are the worst at this manage to turn an hour long problem into a 3-day stand off, full of silent treatment, aggressive insults, and cold behaviour until someone finally gets sick of it and caves in.

If you want to change your relationships, learn how to forgive quickly. Sit down, and say the following: “When you do X, it makes me feel Y…”

Then you can talk out the problem, work on a solution and crucially, say sorry.

Lower your recovery time, lower your drama.

4. Respond with action

When you have “crisis moments”, or even just an argument about who washes up the dishes, what will really make the difference next time is taking the right action.

Once you’ve taken on board what your partner needs, make a new choice. Do the thoughtful thing that will make them smile, make that act of kindness, send that text to show you care.

It’s the small things that make the big difference, plus they prove to someone you’re really working on improving after things go wrong so that they don’t happen again.

And finally…

5. Don’t include all your friends

Or Facebook. Or Instagram.

Yes, it’s tempting to use your vent to the world and the people you know when you’re angry with your partner. But when you involve the outside world in your relationship, your problems only multiply (and you have to clean up the mess after you make up).

Bottom line: If it’s not relevant to anyone else, or unless you really need some counsel and support from a close friend or relative, keep other people out of your private business.

Everyone has opinions, and you’ll soon start to notice your friends will create more drama by throwing in their two cents (or worse, by getting involved in the situation directly).

See if you can resolve it together with your partner before you ask other people to jump in and you’ll find it much easier to avoid too much drama in your relationship.