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Your marriage
What keeps a marriage well is not the big gestures. It is knowing each other, turning towards each other in ordinary moments, staying regulated when it gets hot, and repairing quickly when it goes wrong. Most of the practices here take under five minutes.
Narrowed down
16 practicesHow long you have
Approach · Core
Before you walk away, say when you are coming back.
Before you walk away from an argument today, name a time. "I need twenty minutes. I'll come find you at eight." Then go, and be back at eight. The…
Your body knows before you do. Learn its first signal.
Today, catch the first physical sign that you are escalating. Jaw tightening, chest heat, your voice getting faster. Not the third sign. The first.…
If you are standing and angry, sit down.
A physical change of position interrupts an escalating state more reliably than deciding to calm down. If you are standing when the argument…
Let one provocation pass entirely today.
Something will invite a response today: a tone, a comment, a look. Let one of them go completely. Not swallowed resentfully. Just not picked up.
Give up the last word once today.
You will notice the moment: the reply that would settle it, that you are entitled to. Let that one go. Not because you are wrong, but because being…
Have one phrase ready for the moment rage arrives.
Decide now what you will say to yourself when it rises, not what you will say to them. One short phrase, chosen in advance, used every time.…
Notice the story you are telling yourself about why they did that, and hold it loosely.
The first explanation that arrives is rarely the whole truth, and often the least generous one.
Name the softer feeling underneath the anger.
Before you speak, ask what you were afraid of, not what you were angry about. Usually it is something like: they are giving up on me, or I do not…
Take the full twenty minutes. Five is not enough.
Physiological recovery from flooding takes longer than it feels like it should. If you come back after five minutes you are still carrying it. Take…
Write about your last argument as a stranger who wants you both to do well.
Take twenty minutes. Describe your most recent argument from the point of view of a neutral third party who wants the best for both of you. Do not…
Raise the complaint without the words always or never.
One specific moment can be repaired; a sweeping verdict on their character cannot.
Make one repair attempt in the middle of a disagreement: a softer word, a small joke, a hand.
The couples who last are not those who never fight, but those who reach for each other mid-fight.
Accept their repair attempt even while you are still a little angry.
Letting a small peace offering land, before you feel finished, is its own kind of strength.
Take the word if out of your apology.
An apology with if in it quietly takes itself back; without it, the apology is whole.
Let go of one old grievance about something they have already changed.
Holding a debt they have already paid keeps the wound open to no one's good.
Apologise for what landed, not for what you meant.
If you owe an apology today, leave out the word "if" and leave out your intentions. Name what you actually did and what it cost them. "I dismissed…