ASK FELIX

Relationship advice for people who love each other but occasionally want to throw the other person’s shoes into the garden.

Introducing Felix, Cutler’s resident relationship guru. Felix believes relationships are less about finding the perfect person and more about learning how not to behave like a complete lunatic once you’ve found someone you rather like.

His philosophy is simple: stop trying to win, work out what you actually want, and remember that the person irritating you over breakfast is supposedly the person you chose above all available humans.

This month, Felix tackles arguments.

“Felix, we keep having the same argument. How do we stop?”

First, congratulations. You have discovered the recurring argument, one of the great traditions of long-term relationships. Some couples have Sunday lunch. Some have tennis. You apparently have The Argument.

The mistake is thinking you are arguing about the thing you are arguing about.

You’re probably not.

You think you’re arguing because he didn’t empty the dishwasher. He thinks you’re arguing because you “always make such a big deal about things.” Ten minutes later someone has mentioned Christmas 2023 and nobody can remember why they’re standing in the kitchen.

The dishwasher is rarely the dishwasher.

Ask yourself what it actually means to you. Perhaps you aren’t angry that your partner didn’t do something. You’re angry because you feel taken for granted. Perhaps they aren’t angry that you criticised them. They’re reacting because they feel they can never get anything right.

Now we have something useful to work with.

“Why can’t you ever empty the dishwasher?” is an accusation. “I’m getting overwhelmed and I need more help” is information. One creates a barrister. The other creates a partner.

“But what if I’m actually right?”

You probably are.

Unfortunately, so are they.

Two people can experience exactly the same event and come away with completely different stories about what happened. You remember calmly explaining your feelings. They remember being ambushed while trying to make toast.

Your memory is not CCTV. It is a slightly biased documentary filmmaker.

If your objective is to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that your partner behaved badly at 7.42pm last Thursday, you may win the case. Congratulations. Your prize is sleeping beside someone who now dislikes you.

Instead, decide what outcome you actually want. Do you want an apology? More affection? Help? Reassurance? A change in behaviour? To feel understood?

Ask for that.

Humans have an extraordinary habit of wanting affection and requesting it by becoming hostile.

“My partner shuts down when we argue.”

Stop chasing them around the house.

When one person wants to resolve everything immediately and the other needs space, you get the romantic equivalent of a police pursuit.

One follows. One retreats. The following person thinks, Why won’t you communicate with me? The retreating person thinks, Why is this lunatic following me upstairs?

Neither is necessarily wrong. They simply deal with stress differently.

But “I need space” cannot mean disappearing for three days and communicating exclusively through cupboard doors. Agree on when you’re coming back to the conversation. “I need half an hour. Let’s talk after dinner.”

Wonderful. One person gets breathing room and the other knows they haven’t been abandoned in emotional Siberia.

“How do I get my partner to change?”

You don’t.

Annoying, isn’t it?

You can influence a relationship enormously, but attempting to remodel another adult generally produces resistance. People particularly dislike being improved by someone who has just given them a detailed presentation on their shortcomings.

Look instead at the pattern between you.

If you change your part of the pattern, the pattern itself has to change. Try warmth where you normally use criticism. Ask clearly instead of hinting. Say thank you for the thing they did do rather than conducting an annual performance review of everything they didn’t.

This isn’t surrender. It’s strategy.

“We’ve lost the spark.”

The spark has probably not died. It has been buried beneath laundry, work, phones, logistics, bills and asking whether anybody remembered to buy bin bags.

Desire does not always flourish in an atmosphere resembling a regional operations meeting.

Stop discussing the relationship for an evening and go and have one.

Do something slightly different. Dress properly. Go somewhere you haven’t been. Have a drink at a bar instead of automatically collapsing onto the sofa. Flirt with the person you already have.

And stop waiting to feel differently before behaving differently.

We tend to imagine emotion comes first: I feel loving, therefore I behave lovingly. But quite often it works the other way around. You behave with affection, warmth and generosity and, rather inconveniently, you begin to feel more affectionate, warm and generous.

Kiss them when they come through the door. Touch them when you walk past. Say something nice that isn’t followed by a request.

See what happens.

“What’s the biggest mistake couples make?”

Keeping score.

I cooked. You didn’t call. I apologised last time. You had Saturday out. I got up with the baby. You forgot my mother’s birthday.

Before long you are operating a small and extremely inefficient emotional accountancy firm.

Fairness matters, obviously. One person should not carry an entire relationship while the other wanders about congratulating themselves for occasionally buying milk. But a good relationship is rarely perfectly 50/50 on any particular Tuesday.

Sometimes it is 80/20. Sometimes you are the 20. Sometimes one of you is grieving, exhausted, frightened, building something, losing something or simply having a dreadful month.

What matters is whether, over time, both of you are willing to carry the other when required.

That is a much better deal.

FELIX’S RULE FOR THE MONTH

Before your next argument, ask yourself:

Do I want to be right, or do I want this to get better?

Occasionally the answer will be “right,” which is perfectly understandable, particularly if the dispute concerns directions.

For everything else, choose better.

The best relationships aren’t the ones where nobody gets angry, nobody becomes unreasonable and everybody communicates in perfectly calibrated therapeutic language. Frankly, those people sound exhausting.

The good ones are the relationships where two imperfect people get it wrong, catch themselves, repair it, laugh eventually and keep learning how to love the particular lunatic they chose.

Felix has loved, lost, reconciled and once ended a relationship over a badly planned weekend in Florence. He is therefore considered qualified.