We've all been there. Angry at our husbands of boyfriends for not helping around the house; seething because he's watching TV while we're staring down a sink of dirty dishes. Maybe dishes aren't the problem in your house. Perhaps your trigger device is the pile of dirty socks, underwear and pants strewn on the floor. Or it could be the age-old divider of the sexes, the raised toilet seat. After all, isn't that a flagrant way of showing that he has no regard for your feelings and he doesn't appreciate you? Because that's what all these household annoyances really mean, don't they? Not exactly. And that's why so many couples find themselves decimating their relationships over mundane issues.

Auriela McCarthy, relationship expert and author of the new book, "The Power of the Possible: A Book of Hope and Inspiration" has eye-opening insights about human behavior. The book features stories of hope, inspiration and transcendence--of hitting bottom and transforming into a different person on the way back up--shedding the past and the pain. "People become invested in their past, using it as a club to beat themselves up with or to excuse their reprehensible behavior; or simply because they don't believe they can ever be emotionally free from the pain that their past has caused them," says McCarthy. "Time doesn't heal all wounds, but love can."

McCarthy writes about relationships and crises in life that strike a universal cord. A child who always gets in trouble and the mother who always saves him. A woman who can't deal with her fiance's lack of tidiness. Another who struggles to get over her divorce. In those stories, she has the uncanny ability to pierce through the quagmire of emotional clutter, pinpoint the underlying causes for our behavior and teach us to heal our hearts--cutting to the core of life-altering 'a-ha' moment and revealing how it happened.

McCarthy speaks to our desires to be understood and to be right; then eloquently teaches us how those driving forces destroy our relationships. She says the problem is we attach emotional significance to offending behavior. For example, if your husband hates washing dishes, it doesn't reflect his feelings about you. But if you're like most of us, you interpret his disdain for dishwashing as a lack of concern for your feelings. According to McCarthy, that's a perfect time to bring the four principles of synergy into your relationship. To have synergy, the following four things must be present:

1. Everyone does his part while taking responsibility for the whole.

2. Everyone does what he likes to do.

3. Everyone does what he does well.

4. Each person puts the relationship first.

"I believe the fourth principle is the most important one--putting the relationship first," says McCarthy. "If your relationship is the number one priority, then you can negotiate the smaller details like housework and distinguish between critically important issues and trivial concerns. And these four principles can be applied to any type of relationships- with family, friends, and in business."

"The Power of the Possible" points out other life-changing ideas that can help us avoid common pitfalls. For example, how many of us are guilty of trying to change someone because we know what's best? We talk until we're blue in the face trying to convince the other person that she must change for her own good. McCarthy says in those instances, we need to change ourselves-not the other person. "Nothing changes until you do," says McCarthy. "People change when they want to change. The more we insist, the more they resist. As long as we insist on changing someone we keep them from changing of their own free will. Let go of your demands and it is up to them. By not insisting--we have set them free and we've set our selves free too."

Author's Bio: 

Rachel Friedman is a staff writer for the LA Independent Journal.