Good advice in general.

This part jumped out at me:

5. Don't counter-criticize. There is a time to bring up your own grievances, but that time is not when your partner has taken the initiative to voice her complaints.

I wish someone had told my ex-husband that! Any time I was bothered by something he said or did, and I told him, the conversation didn't last two minutes before I would end up either defending or (usually) apologizing for everything *I* ever said or did. Of course, I know now that this was a deliberate tactic on his part, so I would come away from it thinking I was the defective one in the relationship, and he was wonderful, and shouldn't I be thankful he puts up with me?

On the other hand, I have a lot more trouble dealing with criticism when it is "fair" rather than "unfair." The same ex-husband used to tell me often that he was not in fact criticizing me, because he defined "criticism" as an undeserved negative evaluation, whereas according to him I deserved his negative evaluations of me. In other words, supposedly it isn't criticism if it's the truth, so here is all the evidence I can hit you with to convince you that you really are dirt.

The result is, if someone is criticizing me unfairly, I can easily pin it on that person and see it as their issue, but if they are right, then I have a tendency to beat myself up for it.