It was Tuesday, not Wednesday

You're at dinner and your partner says the plumber came on Wednesday. He came on Tuesday. You know he came on Tuesday, because you took the morning off, and you say so. They say no, it was Wednesday, because they remember it was the day after the recycling. You say the recycling is Monday. They say it was Tuesday that week because of the bank holiday. You get your phone out. You find the calendar. It says Tuesday. You show them. They look at it and say "well, whatever, it doesn't matter", and go back to their plate, and the rest of dinner happens in a slightly different temperature, and you've won.

Or it's the route to their parents', and you say the motorway and they say the back road, and forty minutes later you're on the motorway in traffic and they haven't said anything and don't need to. Or it's what their mother said at Christmas, which you both heard and remember differently, and you're each certain, and the certainty is the whole of the evidence. Or it's the recipe, or the thermostat, or whether you'd already told them about Saturday.

These are invented, but I'd guess you've had three of them this month. Notice what they have in common. In each case there's a fact, or something shaped like one. In each case you're sure. In each case the being sure turns into a campaign, with evidence and escalation and a finish, and the finish is a concession from the other person, or a silence that does the job of one. And in each case what you have at the end is the fact, confirmed, and an evening with a chill in it.

Some words. I'll call the disputed thing the fact, whether it's a date or a memory or a plan or a preference dressed as one. Getting the other person to give in I'll call the win, and their giving in, the concession. I'll call the way disagreements escalate the spiral, which is a researcher's word I'll credit in chapter 4. The neutral observer's view of the argument, the one neither of you is taking, I'll call the third seat. The two questions this book turns on are Is it true? and Does it matter?, and the act of stopping without conceding I'll call dropping it, or dropping it out loud when you say so. The running tally that nobody admits to keeping I'll call the score. The person who stops arguing without agreeing I'll say is withdrawing, which is also a researcher's term. And the evening is what's lost.

Before you go on, do one thing. For a fortnight, keep a list. Every time you argue with the person you live with about a fact, write down what the fact was, who won, and what the next hour was like. Not why you were right. What it was about, and how the evening went. Most people who do this find the list longer than expected, the facts smaller, and the column for the evening the same word over and over.