The decision

You've got the argument and the method. What's left is to decide, and I'd like the decision to fit in one sentence.

Before I argue to be right, I ask whether it's true and whether it matters, and unless both, I drop it out loud.

Three parts.

The first is the pause. The second before the phone comes out, in which the two questions get asked, silently, of yourself.

The second is the drop. One of the four sentences, flat and warm, and then the subject changed. No announcement, no edge, no "see" when the check comes in.

The third is the exception. When both questions come back yes, a real conversation, direct and kind, one thing, at a chosen time. Not a skirmish and not a surrender.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three.

When I feel the urge to correct a fact my partner has stated, I'll ask myself whether it matters before I say anything.

When I've decided it doesn't matter, I'll say "you might be right" and ask them something about their day.

When I've checked a fact later and I was right, I'll say nothing about it.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The first week, the urge to correct will arrive as often as ever, and the questions will arrive a beat behind it, and you'll drop about half. The drops will feel like losing, and the evenings after them will feel better than the evenings after the wins, and you'll notice the difference by the weekend. In the second week your partner will say something wrong and wait for the calendar and it won't come, and you'll see the wait on their face. By a month the questions will be arriving before the urge, and you'll have had one real disagreement about something that mattered, at a chosen time, and it'll have gone better than the ones about the plumber ever did. The score will stop being kept, on both sides, because there'll be nothing to add to it. And your partner will start telling you things again, small things, what their mother said, a route they tried, because the telling has stopped being a risk.