LEVEL 7 / Master · Communication
The Art of Repair
How to end an argument before it ends the evening, and what to do about the toast.
Case file
At 7:40 Nick and Paula began to disagree about whether he had told his cousin they would come to dinner on Saturday or had only said “probably.” By nine it had spread to the garage, his mother’s birthday and a remark from April.
Then Nick left the room. Paula heard the toaster.
He came back with a plate and set it down at her elbow. Two slices, cut on a diagonal that started with confidence and lost its way. Butter in the middle only. One corner black. He said, “I made you toast,” and backed out.
Paula had two good points left, one of them excellent. She looked at the plate for some time. Then she picked up the larger half. It was, she said later, the worst toast she had ever accepted.
LESSON 1 · FREE PREVIEW
Everybody argues. Time the recovery
Two adults who share a bathroom, a budget and a cousin’s dinner invitation will disagree. The College has never enrolled a couple who did not argue. It has enrolled several who said they did not, and they turned out to be having the same argument in complete silence, since the spring.
So the number of arguments tells you very little. The figure worth watching is recovery time: how long it takes the two of you to get from the sharpest sentence back to passing the salt in a normal voice. A disagreement about a wet towel that is over in twelve minutes is in better health than a politeness about a wet towel that is entering its third day.
Couples who last are quick menders. They are no better at being right, and they do not avoid the subject. They have learned to stop an argument from growing, which arguments do if left unattended. Nick and Paula’s began with one Saturday and by nine o’clock contained a garage.
One note before going on. This course is about arguments between two people who are not afraid of each other. If you are afraid of your partner, that is a different matter. It belongs with a doctor or a domestic abuse service, and not with anything on this page.
For everyone else, mending is a skill with a few teachable moves, and you already know some. You have almost certainly, at some point, ended a fight by asking whether anybody wanted pasta.
LESSON 2 · FREE PREVIEW
What to do instead of your next point
LESSON 3 · FREE PREVIEW
Take the toast
The Registrar rulesNobody makes good toast in the middle of an argument. A peace offering does not need to be well made, only taken.
LESSON 4 · FREE PREVIEW
Forgiveness is not a storage unit
LESSON 5 · FREE PREVIEW
Call the tuner before the fire department
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