We argue better than we used to

We don’t argue less than we used to. I want to say that clearly, because the version where the long-married couple achieves serenity is not our version and I don’t believe it’s most people’s.

We argue better. Shorter. Kinder, mostly. And almost always about the thing we’re actually upset about, which took us roughly fifteen years to learn how to do.

What changed

• We stopped fighting after ten p.m. Nothing said in our house after ten p.m. has ever been true or useful. We table it. It keeps.
• We got better at the second sentence. The first sentence out of my mouth is usually about the dishwasher. The second sentence, if I make myself get there, is usually about feeling alone in the running of this house.
• We stopped keeping score out loud. The scoreboard still exists, I’m not a liar. It just doesn’t get read aloud during a disagreement anymore.
• We apologize faster and worse. A clumsy apology twenty minutes later beats a perfect one the next afternoon.

The dishwasher has never once been about the dishwasher.

The other thing — and this one only came with age — is that we both know, now, in a way we didn’t at twenty-eight, that neither of us is leaving. That sounds like it would lower the stakes and make us lazier. It did the opposite. It made the arguments smaller, because they’re no longer secretly referendums on the whole marriage.

We had one on Sunday. It lasted eleven minutes, it was about a calendar, and he brought me tea afterward without saying anything about it. That’s where we are, years in. I’ll take it.