"I'd be a doormat"

The fear under all of this is that if you stop, you'll have no views. You'll agree with everything. You'll be the partner who says "whatever you think" and means it, and that's not a person you want to be or a person anyone wants to live with.

I'd separate the fact from you. Dropping the plumber's day isn't dropping yourself. It's dropping a date. You still know the plumber came on Tuesday. You still have your memory, your judgement, your competence. What you've declined to do is spend an evening proving it, and declining to spend an evening on a small thing isn't a personality change. It's a decision about the evening.

The doormat fear imagines that there's a single dial for firmness, and that turning it down for the plumber turns it down for everything. There isn't. There's a choice at each disagreement, and the choice can go differently depending on what's at stake. Overall and McNulty's review is the guide. Direct opposition is right when the problem is serious and can change. It's wrong when the problem is minor or can't. A person who applies that is firm about the mortgage and easy about the plumber, and that's not a doormat. That's someone whose firmness has been reserved for things that need it, and whose partner has learned that when they do dig in, it's because it matters.

There's a version of the fear that's about the other person taking advantage. If you drop the small ones, they'll push on the big ones. In my experience the reverse happens. A partner who's spent years in the spiral, braced for every fact to become a campaign, relaxes when the campaigns stop, and a relaxed partner is more willing to hear a firm no when it comes, because it's rare and it's not part of a pattern. Chapter 22 is about the things that matter and how to hold them. The holding is easier for a person who's stopped fighting over dates, not harder.

The doormat is the person with no views. You'll have exactly as many views as before. You'll just have stopped charging admission to hear them.