Here is a romantic recommendation that will save you a great deal of heartache, and which you will in all likelihood not apply.
Ninety per cent of the arguments between couples would be resolved if, in the middle of the argument, one of them spontaneously embraced the other and said: understand that with all this anger, I love you enormously.
But we will presumably carry on quarrelling and scoring points. That is how important our stupid rightness is to us.
Listen, people.
You are not obliged to obey the feeling that is shouting loudest. That does not mean it is right.
And here is why the embrace works, so that it does not sound like sentiment.
Almost every argument between two people who love each other is running on two levels at once. On the surface there is a dispute about a fact or a task. Underneath there is a question, which nobody states: are we all right? The surface dispute is generally unresolvable in the moment and, in the great majority of cases, was never very important. The question underneath is the one producing the heat.
An embrace answers the underlying question directly, which is why it can end an argument that no amount of further discussion would have ended. It does not concede the point. It simply removes the reason the point felt urgent.
And perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am.
Perhaps people on this planet will come to understand that guarding our dignity and our standing at all costs is the very act of protection that leaves us in the most dangerous position of all. The most exposed.