"It always happens at the same time, so there's nothing we can do"

You could set a clock by it. It's Sunday evening, or the night before a visit, or the second glass of wine, or bath time, or the drive home from their parents'. You both know the row is coming, and the knowing makes it feel like weather. This is one of the things Johnson and Roloff found went with believing a row was unresolvable, being able to predict when it would happen. The predictability itself seems to make it feel hopeless.

I'd turn that over. A row you can predict is a row you can see coming, and a row you can see coming is the easiest kind to handle differently, because you're not ambushed. Most of the reason an instance goes the way it goes is that it starts before either of you has decided anything. The dishwasher is seen, the sentence is said, and you're four minutes in before there's been a thought. If you know it's Sunday at seven, you can have the thought at six.

That's not the same as avoiding it. Couples try that, and what it produces is a row about avoiding the row. The bath-time instance doesn't stop happening because you've arranged never to be in the bathroom together. It moves to bedtime. What predictability gives you isn't a way of dodging the instance. It's the chance to say the name, from chapter 20, before the costume's on, which takes the instance from four minutes of drift to one sentence.

There's a plain reason the same times come up, and it's worth saying because it takes some of the weather out of it. The one row is about the underneath, and the underneath surfaces when you're both tired, or one of you is about to be judged by their family, or the week has run out of patience. Sunday at seven is when the underneath is nearest the surface. That's not fate. It's the fixture list, and knowing the fixture list is the beginning of being ready for the match rather than surprised by it every week.