With Yom Kippur upon us, now is a good time to restore your relationships.

A friend of mine fixed me up with an Israeli woman, who I will call Yael. Yael and I were really good friends for a long time.

As is my normal operating procedure, I eventually got her pretty upset with me.

My favorite show is the Dog Whisperer. One of Cesar Milan's favorite things to say is dogs live in the now. They can let go of whatever happened to them in the past. People not so much.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the high holy days of the Jewish year, a time of reflection and atonement.

Yom Kippur is a gift. We fast and afflict our souls to atone for our spiritual deficiencies, so we can let go of the past and live fully.

But Yom Kippur does not work for our conflicts with other people. These we have to work out with them.

If you have meaningful relationships with people, you are going to get upset with one another at times. That is healthy. What is unhealthy, is not resolving your situation.

In my family we fight. My sister and dad were fighting one time and my sister tried to run out of the room crying. My dad would not let her go and told her, "Come back here and fight like a man."

Years later, when my sister complained to my mother, my mother told her, "You have to fight with your husband. You cannot have a happy marriage if you keep things inside."

My girlfriend at the time when Yael got upset, had recently broken up with me. We had also been friends for a long time. She completely refused to talk with me, to this day, even though I was her best friend for a decade.

You cannot resolve anything if a person will not talk with you.

I did what I could to make peace with Yael. Yael responded, "We have been friends for a long time and I don't want there to be problems between us." What a refreshing difference.

Now Yael is happily married with two kids and I had something to do with that. See, all because she made up with me, and because that is how she is.

From the synagogue to dancing, as Thomas Jefferson says, people are going to get into trouble with one another. That does not have to be a problem, if you take the opportunity to get out of trouble.

By Andrew Weitzen, Bronze Inc. (c) 2010

Andrew Weitzen is the author of Partnership Dancing™, How to Communicate Every Step in Every Social Dance Unambiguously.