Agree what it's about

Once the row has a name and each of you has said which worry you carry, there's one more conversation to have, and it's short. You agree what the row is about. Not who's right, not what should change, not whose worry is more justified. Just what it is.

Two sentences, one each. The form is "when this happens, I feel this". "When the kitchen's left and I'm the one who notices, I feel like I'm on my own here." "When I'm told about the kitchen the moment I sit down, I feel like nothing I do counts." Each of you says yours. The other one doesn't answer it. They don't say "but you're not on your own" or "but I don't mean that". They say "all right", or they say it back, "so when I go on about the kitchen, you feel like you can't do anything right", and the other says "yes". That's the whole exchange.

Agreed, not adjudicated. The point of the two sentences is that they're both true at once, and that neither cancels the other. You feel left to it. They feel blamed. The row is what happens when those two worries meet over a dishwasher. Agreeing that is different from agreeing whose fault it is, and you'll feel the pull to adjudicate, to establish that yours is the real underneath and theirs is a reaction to it. Don't. Both are the underneath. The earlier book They can't read your mind has a good deal on saying what you feel in one sentence without dressing it up, and You were waiting to talk has the pause before you answer, and both apply here.

Say what you already know. Johnson and Roloff's follow-up study found that two things went with believing a serial argument could be resolved. Confirming the relationship during the argument, small signs that you're still on the same side, and, between arguments, comparing your relationship favourably rather than dwelling on the row. The second sentence of this conversation can be one of those. "We've been having this for six years and we're still here" is a sentence worth saying out loud, because it's true and because the row makes you forget it.

Write it down, once. The name and the two sentences, on a card or in a note on one of your phones. Not to be consulted mid-instance, but because a row that's been written down in two sentences is smaller than a row that lives in the record, and because in a month you'll want to check that the name you're saying still means what it meant.

That's the second conversation, and it's the last long one you need. From here the row is handled, not discussed.