For Children, Voices In The Middle provides support through divorce and separation, including advice on child inclusive mediation ( www.voicesinthemiddle.com)

And what rich opportunities there are! The people we live with thoughtfully foster our personal development daily, filling our favourite mug with WD40, piling washing in a mouldering heap to “dry” and turning the sink into an immersive art installation called something like “Teabag Butterknife Pan Soak IX”. Harrison writes that she has heard every variant of washing-up fight, and I believe it: dishwasher Tetris topped my unscientific survey of common fight topics by miles – we’re all exercised by fork prongs and pre-rinsing. And we offer support and solidarity to parents over at the Facebook community I run, The Village – A Parenting Community for Humans ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/visforvillage) 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: FALSE Even for an experienced therapist like Joanna Harrison, it’s often not clear whether a couple are going to make it through. “Individuals have different thresholds for what they can deal with in a relationship,” she says. “There are no absolutes, no moment where it has to be all over.” You need to have lots in common And what happens to all of those messy feelings? Of course they need somewhere to go, and it is usual for there to be some conflict in the first year or two post-separation. Finding places to express this away from your ex and your children is not only helpful but also essential for you, and for children too, whether that is to friends, other family members, online support groups or a therapist.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 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. 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). My experience of working with these tensions (tensions also familiar to me from my own relationship and those of my friends) inspired my recent book Five Arguments All Couples (Need To) Have And Why The Washing Up Matters in which I suggest that rather than thinking arguments are to be avoided at all costs, some arguments can offer the relationship the potential to grow, because they flag up issues that need attention.

TRUE and FALSE What’s most interesting about cheating, says Real, isn’t why someone does it – that’s obvious (it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it’s a thrill). No: the interesting thing is why someone doesn’t do it. “Cheating is always selfish: it’s always about overriding what you should do. So if you’ve learned from it and moved on, then no, you won’t necessarily be a cheater again. But your partner might never feel 100% assured you won’t do it again. It’s important to understand that.” Marriage is just a piece of paper But even the most ordinary arguments often mask feelings of greater significance. “Our deeper fears and frustrations, and the things we may find it difficult to express openly with each other can often express themselves in the domestic world,” writes Harrison. A row can be about the washing up, and also serve as part of an ongoing negotiation of the whole relationship. TRUE You can be playful with someone, says Real, “but if you look into their eyes, there’s a difference between the shades being down – ‘shop closed’ – and the signal ‘come hither’. And if you’re using the sexual energy between you and someone else to feel excited, that’s like a mini-affair.” The rule is this, says Real: if your partner could hear you, and the way you’re speaking would upset them, it’s not OK. People can’t changeTRUE It’s tempting to hope a child who shares your genes, who you created together, will bond you and keep your relationship going. But, says Abse, relationship satisfaction goes down in the early weeks, months and years after the arrival of a baby. “Having a baby changes everything – you can’t underestimate that. You lose freedom, you lose autonomy, you lose intimacy. It’s a really challenging time for a couple.” You can have a good sex life for ever 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.” 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 Even if you haven’t been able to agree on parenting decisions before now, this is the time to become as much of a team as you can. I spoke to Joanna Harrison – divorce lawyer turned couples counsellor and author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have – about how to develop a good co-parenting relationship after separation. She told me: “It is all about building up trust, which the separation itself may have weakened, but which is required more than ever when children are between two households.” 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 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: On the surface, many of the rows dramatised in the book might seem petty – they’re about moving house, working hours or different approaches to parenting – but they are all typical of the disputes Harrison encounters in her work. And petty squabbles are important – not for nothing is the book subtitled And Why the Washing-Up Matters. “Couples need to argue to sort of define themselves a bit,” says Harrison. “I’m still arguing with my husband about the washing up.”You might desperately want things to feel settled, but there are lots of new things to put in place. So slow down. It’ll take time (one to two years) for things to feel more resolved so allow yourself space for that. 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. 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 you approach your arguments as, ‘This is where I’m going to prove that I’m right, and I’m going to win this argument,’ you will just keep having them again and again,” she says. “And that’s no fun for anyone, particularly not your kids.” In my experience these arguments are never fully resolved; life brings opportunities to rehash them (Photo: StefaNikolic/ Getty)

Most fights are horrible, but these entry-level spats, if you will, feel manageable. Buoyed by Harrison’s encouragement, I currently have five of my own, in various stages of their life cycle, on the go. I’m not sure what deeper truths they express, but they are: For couples who may be alarmed to hear there are five brand new arguments they need to add to their rotation, there is good news. “They’ve already had all of them, I’m sure,” says Harrison. “That’s what I wanted people to see, because I felt like I had this perspective – that I was having them, my friends were having them, and my clients were having them.” There was, she realised, very little therapeutic advice available about this landscape of low-level daily conflict, “which is just normal, because you live with someone, and you’re different from them”. FALSE So often, says Terrence Real, family therapist and author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, rows happen because one or both partners have been drinking, or they’re not feeling good, or it’s late and you’re both tired. “What I say is: you’re not going to resolve anything tonight. Go to bed, and the next morning have a cup of tea together and talk it through.” All relationships are about the cycle of closeness, disruption and return to closeness. “Our culture worships the harmony phase, but a good relationship thrives on surviving the mess. The work of intimacy is the collision of imperfections, and how we manage those.” It’s wrong to flirt with other people FALSE If politics matters deeply to you then yes, says Bose, you need to be aligned. But if it doesn’t, voting for different political parties probably won’t unseat your relationship to any extent. “Much more important is sharing the same values: what’s important to you, what you truly believe matters. If you don’t agree on values, it seeps into your everyday life and can affect your relationship at a very deep level.” Relationship problems always come down to money or sex

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. Obviously, this argument isn’t about whether or not I will go to the party (I will). It’s not even about who is right (I am right). It’s clearly about the resentment that builds around the chore of organising a social life on behalf of someone who is both graceless and ungrateful. Treat arguments not as something you need to win but as an opportunity to learn something important – it’s often in the debrief after an argument that you can learn what the issue with the washing up was really all about.