The next time

You've finished the book, and at some point in the next few days you're going to be angry. I'd like you to be ready for that, so here are three things to do before it happens. Together they take about fifteen minutes.

Settle on your exit line and say it aloud once, so it won't be new in your mouth when you need it. "I'm getting too angry to do this well. I'm going to take twenty minutes and then I'll come back."

Tell the person who most often sees your temper what the line means and that you'll keep the promise in it. You may find this conversation harder than you expect, and it may go better than you expect. You don't have to make a speech or a grand promise. "I'm trying something. When I say this, I'm not walking out on you. I'm making sure I come back able to listen."

Pick the one condition from chapter 7 that accounts for most of your bad evenings, and make one dull arrangement to deal with it. It might be a snack at four, five minutes in the car before you go inside, or a rule about not raising serious subjects after ten.

Then wait for the next time. When it comes, you'll feel the heat rise and hear the thought that this one is different. Use the line and go. Twenty minutes later, check two things. See whether the point is still true, and see how it feels to go back into the room as someone who can make it.

I expect the first time will be clumsy. You may leave late and go back too early, and you may say the thing less well than you'd hoped. It will still go differently from the evening in chapter 1. The house won't go silent, you won't have a sentence to regret, and you won't have an evening to rebuild. There'll be a complaint, made by someone who plainly meant it, and another person who could actually hear it. That's what your anger was after all along.