For 30 years my wife and I have been arguing about the bins. The argument is not about whose job it is to put out the bins – it’s mine. It’s about how I always need to be reminded to do my job, and how inappropriately resentful I become at having been reminded. I invariably cite this allegation as proof that I remain a tragically misunderstood figure, and then go on to handle the bins roughly. Every Tuesday, at 10pm. FALSE The important thing isn’t whether you share a bed – it’s talking about why if you don’t, says Harrison. “Whether it’s down to snoring or young kids, sleeping in separate beds reduces the intimate time you get together. So you need to discuss how you can compensate.” Make love on the sofa in the evening when the kids have gone to sleep. If snoring has driven you to separate rooms, at least have your morning tea in bed together. Never go to bed on an argument Be aware that your way of doing things may be very different from your partner’s, even on the small stuff. An open mind helps, rather than an idea that one of you is right. See arguments about each other’s family as a joint problem, not something that your partner has to deal with on their own. Both people’s feelings are important, even if hard to hear. Relationship partners who consistently validate emotional experiences in conversation, and who consistently consider the individual needs and wants of their partner, are people who earn and retain trust, and who have long-lasting, fun, happy, intimate, and fully connected healthy relationships.” Most long-term relationship failure is not the result of people of poor character doing a bunch of obviously abhorrent things to their partners. The much more common - and much less publicised - condition is that people fail to recognise how the so-called ‘little things’ in relationships add up over time, and often communicate one of two ideas.

I see a bit of that in the therapy,” says Harrison, “when people take the time to learn about how to have that conversation.” Is it essentially about learning from one’s mistakes, instead of repeating them? Separation brings with it so many complexities, from the practical to the deeply emotional. There are resources and groups to help you navigate this time, including: Bread goes in, not on, the bread bin. I have basically lost this. The bread bin is now a mere bread display unit (much as the biscuit tin is now just a hiding place for stuff I’m keeping to myself).

The Five Arguments are in fact five broad categories of argument, on the following themes: how we communicate; how we deal with our families; how we deal with chores; how we manage distance; and how we feel about each other’s bodies. Throughout the book we are introduced to couples – Sarah and Tomas, Ryan and Josh, Evie and Ashley – having the sort of deeply familiar arguments that always seem to end this way: Before she trained as a couples therapist, Harrison was a divorce lawyer, which sounds like a pretty sharp career swerve. “I was obviously drawn to work with relationships,” she says. “I think I realised that I was in the wrong forum, because I was just much more interested in the relationship stuff. Often people get into the legal forum to deal with their relationship stuff, but it isn’t necessarily a very helpful way of dealing with it. I started training as a couples therapist thinking it would make me a better divorce lawyer, but it made me realise I didn’t want to do that.”

Ogden Nash, the American poet, writes that incompatibility between husbands and wives is the “spice of life”. This incompatibility is also my trade. In my work over 20 years first as a divorce lawyer and then as a couple therapist I’ve heard many arguments – everything from how to do the washing up to conflicts about money and differences of opinion on parenting.TRUE “For most people, a satisfying sexual relationship is an important part of a good relationship,” says Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic therapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from Couple Therapy. “While sex may not be the most important thing, it’s certainly an indicator of chemistry, and it matters – especially at the start. Also, if you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?” Your partner should know what you feel/need If your partner is telling you that you never listen to them it’s likely you’re going to hear the same complaint from them again and again. This indicates that couples need to adjust the way they communicate. This can improve the likelihood of getting through to each other. Having repairing conversations after an argument where you look at the argument from the outside and saying something like “what do you think made you feel so strongly about that?” can ensure that the important feelings have space to be heard. The division of labour within a relationship – the cleaning, the cooking, the daily grind of parenting – gives rise to endless arguments, partly because it’s a disputed space where the obligation to negotiate never ends – we’re talking, after all, about the jobs no one wants to do. You think you and your partner argue about this stuff too much, but chances are you’re not arguing about it enough, or at least not in the right way. “I do think it’s the area where resentment most obviously builds up,” says Harrison. “It’s the boil that needs bursting at times. I just think people get really pissed off and resentful about feeling they’re doing too much.” Our relationship partners MUST be able to trust that they can tell us when something is wrong or when something hurts,” says Matthew. “And that we will seek to understand and cooperate in repairing whatever is wrong for them, if they’re ever going to be able to trust us and feel safe within the relationship. TRUE and FALSE You should usually confess, but not always, says Abse. “If we’re talking about a one-night stand on a business trip, maybe it’s OK, and better not to share it with your partner. But if you’ve had a longer-term relationship with someone else and you never reveal it to your partner, you’re avoiding something. It’s going to leave you in a sad place because you’ll have lost that sense that you and your partner share your deepest feelings.” You have to agree on politics

While we can be so fearful about the impact of separation on children, it is parental conflict that causes the most damage rather than separation itself. In fact, for children where there has been high conflict previously, separation can feel like a relief. TRUE If an argument escalates to violence or one partner feeling unsafe, that’s wrong, and you need expert help. But as you learn the landscape of your partner, says Harrison, arguments show you’re working each other out. “You’re finding out what your partner is passionate about, and sharing that. So these disagreements are full of useful information about what matters to each of you. If couples stop talking about what they care about, and sometimes arguing about it, they can start to feel disconnected.” The ‘one’ is out there somewhere Some of these arguments, Harrison says, have a “playfulness”; they become more about expressing our individuality than the apparent subject. I can see how that might be, when you’ve lived with someone so long that your mind meld is total and you can look at a passing cat, both be reminded of the same minor incident in 2003, and then by some circuitous thought process say out loud, simultaneously: “We need more plasters.” We exert our independent existences by disagreeing about the correct place to store ketchup (the bin).One parent, who is co-parenting at a distance after leaving an abusive partner, can have the final word: “In a nutshell, it’s been both the worst and the best thing that has ever happened to me. I wouldn’t change it for the world and am such a better parent for it.” Resources for separated parents What happens when we bring a child into our dance? Either we ensure that our children get a steady rhythm, or they get pulled in a tug-of-war between us. Perhaps they become our dance partner, and their other parent is excluded from the dance. Or perhaps they have to learn complicated steps to keep up with us. This can be confusing, and leave them preoccupied with the dance rather than the crucial work of childhood – that of play, and dreaming, and building a sense of themselves in the world. You have actually got to find a way to deal with the domestic side of things, just rubbing along together,” says Harrison. “Then there’s a deeper level – it’s quite an easy stage for any difficult feelings to play out on.” This is undoubtedly true, as I often realise once I’m alone with the bins. Then I am free to explore what proportion of my resentment is about how undervalued I feel generally – I’m only really here to do the bins, I think – and how much of it is just about the bins. So to up my effectiveness, I have been reading The Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have by therapist Joanna Harrison. Harrison identifies categories of surface argument (“you never listen”, “your mother drives me crazy”, “you haven’t taken the bin out”, “stop looking at your phone”, “we never have sex”) through which we express deeper, fundamental issues around sharing a physical and emotional space with someone. Approached with curiosity and compassion, they can provide “rich opportunities to learn about each other and develop”.