After the Fight

Book excerpt: What do partners do after a fight? If they're like most people, they apologize: "I'm sorry. I had a bad day and I took it out on you." Or, they wake up the next morning and pretend that nothing happened, hoping their partner will do the same. In neither case do they talk about the fight. They're too afraid that doing so will simply rekindle it--and they're right; it probably would. But since they don't talk about the fight, nothing ever really gets resolved. Daniel B. Wile, author of Couples Therapy and After the Honeymoon, devotes this entire book to an analysis of a single night in the life of a couple, Marie and Paul. By tapping into their self-talk (their ongoing conversations with themselves), he discovers what starts, escalates, and rekindles fights--and also, what potentially allows for a useful conversation about a fight. Wile reveals the half-thoughts and half-feelings that generally go unnoticed: the anxious flashes; depressive waves; two-second, self-directed diatribes; and two-second mental divorces.