"It's just banter, we enjoy it"

Some couples argue for fun. The bickering is a form of play, both of them know it, and the evening after is the same as the evening before. If that's you, this chapter is short, and the book may not be for you.

The test is the one I've mentioned twice, and here it is properly. Look at the hour after the argument. If it's the same as the hour before, with the same warmth and the same ease and nobody on their phone in another room, the argument was banter, and keep it. It's a way of being close that some people have, and it's not for me to say otherwise.

If the hour after is different, it wasn't banter, however it felt at the time. One of you enjoyed it and one of you didn't, and the one who didn't has learned to perform enjoyment because the alternative is a second argument about the first. The score is being kept, and it's being kept by the person who says "whatever".

There's a way to find out which you've got, and it's to ask, once, outside an argument, on a good day. "Do you actually enjoy it when we go at each other about that sort of thing, or do you just put up with it?" Ask it kindly and mean it, and then listen to the answer and not to what you'd like the answer to be. If they say they enjoy it, believe them and carry on. If they pause, the pause is the answer, and the rest of this book applies.

The couples for whom it's genuinely play tend to have one feature in common, in my observation. Nobody wins. The banter goes back and forth and ends in a laugh and the fact is never established, because establishing it was never the point. If your arguments end with a calendar, they're not that. They end with a winner, and a game with a winner every time isn't a game.