The decision

You've got the argument and the method. What's left is to decide, and the two of you decide it together, on a Sunday, in one sentence.

After ten, we don't settle arguments. Either of us can call a truce, we name a time tomorrow, and we go to bed cross if we have to.

Three parts.

The first is the truce. Agreed in advance. Callable by either. The sentence with the three things in it. No last word.

The second is the resume time. Named, with a length, at a table, with a note by the kettle. Kept like a hospital appointment.

The third is the night. Same bed, phones down, twenty minutes to stand down, "we're not finished and that's fine", and sleep.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three, together.

When a disagreement is still going at half past ten, one of us will say "I care about this too much to do it tired, eight o'clock", and both of us will stop.

When we've called a truce, the person who called it will write one line about what it was about and leave it by the kettle.

When it's the resume time, whoever's there first will say "shall we?" and we'll have ten minutes at the table.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The first truce will be resisted, and the person resisting will be the one who most needed it, and they'll be at the table at eight surprised at how small the row has got. The first night cross will be a bad night's sleep for both of you, and still a better one than the sofa. The first resume time will be awkward and short and will end with one of you saying "I don't even know why I was so cross", which is the reprocessing from chapter 4 speaking. By the third truce, the sentence will come out on its own at half past ten, from whichever of you notices the circuit first, and the other will say "fine, eight", and go up, and both of you will sleep. By a month, the rows after ten will have got shorter, not because you've stopped disagreeing but because both of you know the hour's wrong and the morning's coming, and a fair number of the rows will turn out, at eight, to have been about being tired, which is the one row the morning always wins.