"Once we've named it, we'll have to fix it"

There's a fear that goes with naming, which is that a named row becomes a project. If you both agree that this is the on-my-own row, then surely the next step is to sort out the on-my-own-ness, which means a plan, and a chart on the fridge, and a review in a month, and the row has become a piece of work that will fail like the others.

Nickola Overall and James McNulty, reviewing when it helps to push directly for change in a relationship, drew a line that I find useful here. Direct opposition, meaning saying plainly that something has to change and pressing for it, helps when the problem is serious and the partner can actually change it. When the problem is minor, or the partner can't change it, direct opposition does harm, and a softer approach does better. Not everything in a relationship is a problem to be fixed, and treating the unfixable as fixable is one of the ways couples wear each other out.

So the step after naming isn't fixing. It's sorting. Take the one row and separate what's in it. Some of it can change, and is worth a direct request. The dishwasher can be emptied by whoever's up first, and if that's agreed on a calm day it'll mostly happen. The phone can go in a drawer at dinner. Some of it can't change, because it's the two of you. One of you will always want the kitchen clear before sitting down, and the other will always want to sit down first, and that will be true in twenty years. That part isn't a project. It's a difference, and the acceptance-based therapy in chapter 5 exists because differences are livable when they stop being fought.

I'd also say the naming does most of the work on its own, before any fixing. What wears you down, from chapter 4, is the sense that the row is unresolvable and ought to be resolved. Naming it and sorting it takes away the "ought to be resolved" half. The row is still there. It's just no longer a failure, and a row that isn't a failure is a much smaller thing at half past eight.

Fix what can be fixed, with a plain request on a calm day. Leave the rest named and unfixed, and handle the instances. That's the whole of what the name commits you to.