Five Arguments All Couples (Need To) Have: And Why the Washing-Up Matters

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TRUE and FALSE What’s most interesting about cheating, says Real, isn’t why someone does it – that’s obvious (it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it’s a thrill). No: the interesting thing is why someone doesn’t do it. “Cheating is always selfish: it’s always about overriding what you should do. So if you’ve learned from it and moved on, then no, you won’t necessarily be a cheater again. But your partner might never feel 100% assured you won’t do it again. It’s important to understand that.” Marriage is just a piece of paper Don’t underestimate the power of saying sorry. Sorry can be broader than “I was wrong”; it can also be used powerfully to say: “I’m sorry I made you feel like that.” My experience of working with these tensions (tensions also familiar to me from my own relationship and those of my friends) inspired my recent book Five Arguments All Couples (Need To) Have And Why The Washing Up Matters in which I suggest that rather than thinking arguments are to be avoided at all costs, some arguments can offer the relationship the potential to grow, because they flag up issues that need attention. For 30 years my wife and I have been arguing about the bins. The argument is not about whose job it is to put out the bins – it’s mine. It’s about how I always need to be reminded to do my job, and how inappropriately resentful I become at having been reminded. I invariably cite this allegation as proof that I remain a tragically misunderstood figure, and then go on to handle the bins roughly. Every Tuesday, at 10pm.

Remember to comment on the good things – it flags up what works for you. If you like it when your partner takes the bins out, tell them! The little things add up. FALSE If politics matters deeply to you then yes, says Bose, you need to be aligned. But if it doesn’t, voting for different political parties probably won’t unseat your relationship to any extent. “Much more important is sharing the same values: what’s important to you, what you truly believe matters. If you don’t agree on values, it seeps into your everyday life and can affect your relationship at a very deep level.” Relationship problems always come down to money or sex Perfect for a trivia night or a long trip, #TrainTeasers will both test your knowledge of this country`s rail system and enlighten you on the most colourful aspects of its long history. Meet trunk murderers, trainspotters, haters of railways, railway writers, Ministers for Transport good and bad, railway cats, dogs and a railway penguin. This is NOT a book for number-crunching nerds. Many of the answers are guessable by the intelligent reader. It is a quiz, yes, but also a cavalcade of historical incident and colour relating to a system that was the making of modern Britain. You might desperately want things to feel settled, but there are lots of new things to put in place. So slow down. It’ll take time (one to two years) for things to feel more resolved so allow yourself space for that.If you’re not married, you might imagine that it would be difficult to repeat such an argument, in virtually the same form, on a regular basis over a period of years. You imagine wrong. It’s easy. Most fights are horrible, but these entry-level spats, if you will, feel manageable. Buoyed by Harrison’s encouragement, I currently have five of my own, in various stages of their life cycle, on the go. I’m not sure what deeper truths they express, but they are: On the surface, many of the rows dramatised in the book might seem petty – they’re about moving house, working hours or different approaches to parenting – but they are all typical of the disputes Harrison encounters in her work. And petty squabbles are important – not for nothing is the book subtitled And Why the Washing-Up Matters. “Couples need to argue to sort of define themselves a bit,” says Harrison. “I’m still arguing with my husband about the washing up.”

If your partner is telling you that you never listen to them it’s likely you’re going to hear the same complaint from them again and again. This indicates that couples need to adjust the way they communicate. This can improve the likelihood of getting through to each other. Having repairing conversations after an argument where you look at the argument from the outside and saying something like “what do you think made you feel so strongly about that?” can ensure that the important feelings have space to be heard.Some of these arguments, Harrison says, have a “playfulness”; they become more about expressing our individuality than the apparent subject. I can see how that might be, when you’ve lived with someone so long that your mind meld is total and you can look at a passing cat, both be reminded of the same minor incident in 2003, and then by some circuitous thought process say out loud, simultaneously: “We need more plasters.” We exert our independent existences by disagreeing about the correct place to store ketchup (the bin). But even the most ordinary arguments often mask feelings of greater significance. “Our deeper fears and frustrations, and the things we may find it difficult to express openly with each other can often express themselves in the domestic world,” writes Harrison. A row can be about the washing up, and also serve as part of an ongoing negotiation of the whole relationship. TRUE “For most people, a satisfying sexual relationship is an important part of a good relationship,” says Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic therapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from Couple Therapy. “While sex may not be the most important thing, it’s certainly an indicator of chemistry, and it matters – especially at the start. Also, if you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?” Your partner should know what you feel/need In my experience these arguments are never fully resolved; life brings opportunities to rehash them (Photo: StefaNikolic/ Getty)

One parent, who is co-parenting at a distance after leaving an abusive partner, can have the final word: “In a nutshell, it’s been both the worst and the best thing that has ever happened to me. I wouldn’t change it for the world and am such a better parent for it.” Resources for separated parents Ogden Nash, the American poet, writes that incompatibility between husbands and wives is the “spice of life”. This incompatibility is also my trade. In my work over 20 years first as a divorce lawyer and then as a couple therapist I’ve heard many arguments – everything from how to do the washing up to conflicts about money and differences of opinion on parenting. And what happens to all of those messy feelings? Of course they need somewhere to go, and it is usual for there to be some conflict in the first year or two post-separation. Finding places to express this away from your ex and your children is not only helpful but also essential for you, and for children too, whether that is to friends, other family members, online support groups or a therapist. For Children, Voices In The Middle provides support through divorce and separation, including advice on child inclusive mediation ( www.voicesinthemiddle.com) FALSE So often, says Terrence Real, family therapist and author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, rows happen because one or both partners have been drinking, or they’re not feeling good, or it’s late and you’re both tired. “What I say is: you’re not going to resolve anything tonight. Go to bed, and the next morning have a cup of tea together and talk it through.” All relationships are about the cycle of closeness, disruption and return to closeness. “Our culture worships the harmony phase, but a good relationship thrives on surviving the mess. The work of intimacy is the collision of imperfections, and how we manage those.” It’s wrong to flirt with other peopleThe Five Arguments are in fact five broad categories of argument, on the following themes: how we communicate; how we deal with our families; how we deal with chores; how we manage distance; and how we feel about each other’s bodies. Throughout the book we are introduced to couples – Sarah and Tomas, Ryan and Josh, Evie and Ashley – having the sort of deeply familiar arguments that always seem to end this way: Even though you are no longer in a couple relationship, you are still modelling a relationship to your children. Matthew Fray says: “What is best for children is modelling healthy treatment of others to help them develop good relationships themselves”

For couples who may be alarmed to hear there are five brand new arguments they need to add to their rotation, there is good news. “They’ve already had all of them, I’m sure,” says Harrison. “That’s what I wanted people to see, because I felt like I had this perspective – that I was having them, my friends were having them, and my clients were having them.” There was, she realised, very little therapeutic advice available about this landscape of low-level daily conflict, “which is just normal, because you live with someone, and you’re different from them”.While we can be so fearful about the impact of separation on children, it is parental conflict that causes the most damage rather than separation itself. In fact, for children where there has been high conflict previously, separation can feel like a relief. TRUE If an argument escalates to violence or one partner feeling unsafe, that’s wrong, and you need expert help. But as you learn the landscape of your partner, says Harrison, arguments show you’re working each other out. “You’re finding out what your partner is passionate about, and sharing that. So these disagreements are full of useful information about what matters to each of you. If couples stop talking about what they care about, and sometimes arguing about it, they can start to feel disconnected.” The ‘one’ is out there somewhere My wife and I have had all these arguments and more – arguments about why things have been left where they have been left, arguments about togetherness and space, about decisions taken without consultation, or plans insufficiently diarised. Even if you haven’t been able to agree on parenting decisions before now, this is the time to become as much of a team as you can. I spoke to Joanna Harrison – divorce lawyer turned couples counsellor and author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have – about how to develop a good co-parenting relationship after separation. She told me: “It is all about building up trust, which the separation itself may have weakened, but which is required more than ever when children are between two households.”