Seven conversations that move things.

Almost no couple is fighting about the thing they are fighting about. This one finds the real subject, which is usually a single sentence long and has never been said out loud.

You both arrived with instructions written by other people. Naming them stops you reading your partner’s ordinary behaviour as a verdict on you.

Specific, recent, and answerable. This is the question that tends to make people cry, and it is the fastest route back to warmth.

Every long relationship has a list of quiet surrenders. Most are small and reversible, if anyone says them out loud.

The hardest one, so it sits here rather than first. By now you have enough goodwill in the account to spend some.

People need wildly different things after a rupture: space, contact, an apology, a plan. Most couples have never once asked.

You end forwards, not backwards. Couples who can describe a shared future recover from conflict measurably faster than couples who cannot.