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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
31 practicesTheme · Staying regulated in conflict
How long you have
When · After a row
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.
If you take a break from a fight, name when you will come back, and come back.
Give me twenty minutes, I am not leaving this. Then return, calmer, as promised.
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…
After a fight has cooled, revisit it once without blame, each saying how it felt.
Not who was right. How it felt for me, how it felt for you, and what we each needed.
On the fight you keep having, stop trying to win it and ask what it means to them underneath.
What are you hoping for, or afraid of, in this. Then only listen for the dream beneath.
Before you argue your side, say their side back so well that they feel understood.
Summarize what they mean until they say yes, that is it. Then, and only then, your turn.
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…