Arguments

An average couple will have between thirty and fifty significant arguments a year – and yet we’re seldom taught very much about why they happen and how they could grow a little less intense. This is a guide to arguments in love: it teaches us why they might occur, what their symptoms are, how we could learn some wiser ways of communicating and how we would ideally patch up after a fight.

Focusing on twenty common arguments – including sex, money, in-laws and the state of the bathroom – we recognise our own antics whilst learning how to skirt certain conflicts going forward. The tragedy of every sorry argument is that it is constructed around a horrific mismatch between the message we so badly want to send and the manner in which we are able to deliver it. A bad argument is a failed endeavour to communicate; this is a definitive guide to how we might argue better.