Only one of you, the children, the in-laws, money, the quiet one, since the baby, and when it's more than a row

The method assumes two people at a kitchen table on a calm day. Here are the cases where it needs adjusting.

Only one of you will read this. The naming in chapter 20 and the two sentences in chapter 21 are better done together, but one person can do most of it. Name the row for yourself. Work out which worry you're in, and take a fair guess at which one your partner is in, using chapter 12. Then, at the next instance, say the name anyway, "I think this is our on-my-own row again", answer the costume, say your one sentence, and leave the record shut, on your side only. You can't shut theirs. What you'll find is that an instance where one person won't open the record is much shorter than one where both do, and that after a few of them your partner will start to hear the name as something other than a trick. Don't hand them the book mid-instance. Hand it over on a calm day, or don't hand it over at all and just do your half.

The children. When the costume is the children, who does bedtime, whose rule about screens, one of you being too soft and the other too hard, the underneath is usually the same two worries with higher stakes, and the instance is more likely to happen in front of them. Cummings' finding from chapter 16 is the guide. The short version, with the name said and the costume answered and the two of you in the same room afterwards, is on the secure list. Fighting the fresh case about the children in front of the children is on the other one. If you can, agree the costume answer away from them, and let them see the ending.

The in-laws. The in-law row has a particular feature, which is that one of you is also defending your family, so the blamed worry gets doubled. Name it as the in-law row, not as anything about the family. Answer the costume as dates and nights. And keep the sentence about the underneath about the two of you, "I feel on my own with the arrangements", not about the mother-in-law, because the moment it's about her, it's a different row with a third person in it who isn't in the room.

Money. Papp's couples had more trouble with money rows than any other kind, and more attempts at solving them, and they stayed unsolved. If money is your costume, be especially firm about separating the costume from the row. The money question, the budget, who spends what, is real and needs a calm-day conversation with numbers in it, and the earlier books Open the envelope and Put the card away cover different parts of that. The row underneath, left to it or blamed, is not a money question, and no budget will settle it. Handle them separately or you'll handle neither.

The quiet one. If your partner is the quiet one and you're worried the method just gives them a shorter route to silence, notice that the method asks them for one sentence, and that one sentence is more than the fresh case ever got. If you're the quiet one, your sentence is the thing to practise, because it's the thing you've been leaving out. "I felt got at" is not agreement and not surrender. It's the position you've been holding silently, said once, out loud, and it changes what your partner hears your silence as.

Since the baby. Doss's couples showed a lasting drop after a first birth, and the method needs three adjustments in that period. The calm day for chapters 20 and 21 will be a calm twenty minutes, and it'll need arranging. The costumes will nearly all be about who's more tired, and that one has no answer, so the costume answer is "we're both wrecked" and the underneath gets the sentences. And the record will be tempting, because there's so much new material in it, and shutting it matters more than ever. If either of you has been low most of the day for a fortnight or more since the birth, the NHS says that's a GP conversation, and the NHS talking therapies service takes self-referrals for postnatal depression, and the row is not the thing to work on first.

When it's more than a row. This book is for two people of good will who have a difference. If your instances come with contempt, if one of you is frightened of the other, if one of you controls the money or the phone or who the other sees, or if one of you can't leave the room or the house, that isn't a recurring row and the method doesn't apply. The NHS domestic abuse page says to call 999 in an emergency and to tell someone, including your GP. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, is on 0808 2000 247, free, day and night. The Respect Men's Advice Line is on 0808 8010 327. Galop, on 0800 999 5428, is for LGBT+ people. And if you've been trying the method in good faith and your partner uses the name against you, or the instances are getting worse rather than shorter, McNulty's finding is worth knowing. In seventy-two new marriages, being forgiving kept people satisfied when their partner rarely behaved badly, and went with steeper declines when their partner behaved badly often. Handling an instance well is for a partner who's also trying. If they aren't, counselling from chapter 17 is the next step, and it's not the last one.