Cheating heart or not?

[Grey Acumen]

I think they actually missed the mark a bit here. It's much like saying that your temperature goes up when you have the flu. The only thing is, you can't just boil the problem down to "your body temperature is too high" or else the obvious solution would be to try to take cold showers and put icepacks all over your body to lower that.

The appreciation issue is only a symptom of what the real problem is: communication, or rather, the lack of it. You can't just expect to be appreciated when you really aren't doing anything or giving any appreciation in return, and no one can really appreciate anyone when they don't know what the other person is going through.
Now, if both sides are actually doing their best to contribute to the relationship, then just TELLING the other person what the heck you're going through and what your perceptions are and listening to the other person's side as well go a long way towards keeping that appreciation at the level it should be.
This isn't always the case; sometimes one side or both simply aren't contributing to the relationship at all, what is there to appreciate then? At this point, communication STILL is the issue, because when it really comes down to it, these people never should have gotten married to begin with, and a little bit more communication could have made at least one side able to see this fact. Even after the fact, you can still say "hey, get your ass in gear, relationships don't work this way, etc"

For some reason, it seems to have become a perception of other people seems to be that a sign of a good relationship is that the couple never argues. In reality, it's the exact opposite; those couple who don't argue are in the most danger, because ultimately arguments are just another form of communication, and also a clear sign that the relationship itself is something worth holding onto even when something is seen as not being right about it.
It should be noted, however, that an arguing couple is entirely different from a fighting couple. voices can be raised to screaming and curses can be hurled at full speed while still not being a fight, provided that the issue over which the argument started is still what these screams and curses are being directed at. Arguing is ultimately the attempt to resolve what is seen as a very significant conflict, though sometimes it is merely a conflict that exists within perception. More heated and intense arguments often corelate directly to how important the relationship is to the two people involved.
There is a clear point at which "arguing" degenerates to "fighting"; Physical blows, personal attacks, continuing the argument even after you know you're wrong, or using threats or bargaining to "win" the argument. What this boils down to is that the focus of the argument has shifted from trying to solve the problem, up to which point the partner is being viewed as an ally. Instead the focus has shifted to "winning" where upon the partner is now being treated as an enemy.