Disagreeing Well
Repair matters more than avoiding the rupture
Every couple ruptures. The reliable difference is what happens in the hour afterwards, and repair turns out to be a learnable…
Nakul Vaish
Contributing writer, Fresh Marriage
Nakul writes about conflict and the arguments couples keep having.
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11 articles
In-Laws & Families
Festivals and holidays: the alternating-year rule and why it breaks
Two families, the same dates, and a calendar that cannot satisfy both. Why the obvious solution fails in practice, and what couples…
In-Laws & Families
When one family visits constantly and the other barely does
Nobody planned the imbalance and both of you feel it. Where the asymmetry comes from, what it quietly costs, and how to correct it…
In-Laws & Families
My family is just like that is doing real work in an argument
The phrase closes a conversation while appearing to explain something. What it usually means, when it is fair, and what to say…
In-Laws & Families
Arranged and love marriages start with different information, not different odds
The two routes front-load different knowledge and defer different discoveries. What each one tends to know early, what it tends to…
Disagreeing Well
We never fight is not the achievement it sounds like
An absence of conflict can mean two people who agree, or two people who have stopped raising things. The second is far more common…
Disagreeing Well
The pursue-and-withdraw cycle explains more arguments than either person does
One of you moves towards the conflict and one moves away, and each movement makes the other worse. The loop is common…
Disagreeing Well
Scorekeeping turns a marriage into an audit
Once you start counting, you cannot stop, and the numbers are always wrong. Why mental ledgers form, why they favour their keeper…
Disagreeing Well
Taking a fight to a friend or a parent has a cost you pay later
You feel better and your marriage is worse. What happens to the listener's picture of your spouse, and how couples decide what…
Disagreeing Well
The eleven o'clock argument: timing decides the outcome
The same disagreement at ten in the morning and at eleven at night produces two different marriages. Why late-night conflict goes…
Disagreeing Well
Threatening to leave changes the marriage even when you do not mean it
Said once in temper, remembered for years. What the threat does to the foundation both people are standing on, and what to say…