Articles
The method, in the open.
Each piece takes one published study, says plainly what the researchers did and found, and then says where that study runs out. The limits are on the page with the finding, not below it.
Find your fight
Sorted by what it is about.
23 published so far. The same eight subjects the coach asks about in a first session. Start with yours, or read the last group, which is about the shape of an argument rather than its subject.
Money
The argument that starts about a number and ends somewhere else entirely.
What predicts strain8 min readWhat Money Arguments Actually Predict
A study of 4,574 couples found money was the disagreement topic most associated with later divorce. Then it found the whole effect ran through something a couple can actually change.
Family Relations2012
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Inside the argument7 min readWhat Money Fights Are Actually Like
One hundred couples logged every argument at home for a fortnight. Money came fifth. It was also the one that ran longest, mattered most and settled least.
Family Relations2009
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Chores, and who does more
Rarely about the dishes. Usually about whether one of you is keeping score alone.
Conflict patterns8 min readWhy One of You Pushes and the Other Goes Quiet
Thirty-one couples had two arguments in a single afternoon. Changing whose issue was on the table changed who did the pushing.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1990
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Repair moves7 min readThe Conversation That Feels Like It Failed
Sixty-one couples were filmed trying to change each other, then followed for a year. The approaches that felt least successful were the ones that changed something.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2009
Read it →- What predicts strain9 min read
Who Does More, and Who Gets Believed
About a thousand Swedish couples were asked separately who did the housework, then followed into the national register. Agreeing the split was uneven did not end relationships. Disagreeing about it did.
Sociology2018
Read it → - Inside the argument8 min read
What Feeling Appreciated Changes
Across three samples and 476 couples, an unequal split of the housework stopped predicting relationship satisfaction among people who felt appreciated. The obvious objection to that is in the paper too.
Psychological Science2022
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Intimacy
The hardest one to raise, and the one most often raised badly.
Desire over time8 min readDo Couples Have to Match in Desire?
366 couples, analysed with a method that separates matching from level. Matching added nothing. What tracked satisfaction was how much desire there was.
Social Psychological and Personality Science2021
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What you believe about sex8 min readIs Good Sex Something You Find or Something You Build?
Six studies and 1,896 people separated two beliefs about where sexual satisfaction comes from. One of them only caused trouble when something had already gone wrong.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2017
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Affection and touch7 min readDoes Affectionate Touch Help Everyone?
Researchers registered a prediction that touch would do less for people who keep their distance. Across three studies it did just as much. What differed was how much of it there was.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin2021
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Desire over time8 min readDoes Being Listened To Create Desire?
Three studies asked whether an ordinary intimacy-building behaviour could produce wanting. One of them assigned it rather than measuring it, which is the reason to take the set seriously.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2016
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Parenting
Two people who agree on the child and not on the method.
Also worth reading here: Does Taking a Break During a Fight Actually Help?, What Couples Actually Fight About.
In-laws and family
Where loyalty to the person you married meets loyalty to the people who raised you.
- What predicts strain9 min read
The In-Law Finding Everyone Quotes
Husbands close to their in-laws divorce less, wives close to theirs divorce more. Half of that is in the paper. The other half is not, and the half that is did not survive a second look at the same couples.
Family Relations2013
Read it → - Stress from outside8 min read
When You Start Looking After a Parent
Two studies of middle-aged couples went looking for the point where helping an ageing parent starts costing the marriage. The amount of help was not it.
Journal of Marriage and Family2017
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Also worth reading here: Why One of You Pushes and the Other Goes Quiet, The First Three Minutes of an Argument, What Couples Actually Fight About.
Time together
The slow kind of trouble, where nothing is wrong and nothing is happening.
Stress from outside7 min readHow a Hard Day Gets Into the Evening
165 newlyweds kept a diary for a fortnight. On the days that were harder than their own average they were sharper with each other, and the cause was not the relationship.
Journal of Family Psychology2012
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Turning towardDraft3 min readTurning Toward: The Small Moves That Decide a Relationship
Most of what holds two people together is not the big conversations. It is the hundred small invitations a week, and whether anyone answers them.
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Turning toward6 min readThe Twenty Seconds After Your Partner’s Good News
Seventy-nine couples were filmed telling each other about good things and bad things. What the listener did with the good news mattered more.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2006
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Trust
What breaks quickly and comes back on a much slower schedule.
After a betrayal8 min readAfter an Affair: What Five Years Showed
Nineteen couples who had been through an affair were followed for five years after therapy. Half divorced. The ones who stayed were indistinguishable from couples who never had one.
Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice2014
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Forgiveness and repair9 min readWhat Forgiving Someone Actually Changes
A randomised trial across five countries gave 4,598 people a forgiveness workbook, and it moved what it was aimed at. No relationship outcome was measured — not in that trial, and not in the 54 studies pooled before it.
BMJ Public Health2024
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What predicts strain9 min readDoes Checking Up on Your Partner Online Do Damage?
322 people were followed across three years. Jealousy predicted checking a year later, and checking predicted nothing at all — which is still not permission to go through somebody's phone.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy2025
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What predicts strain10 min readWhat Trust Is Actually Built On
In 185 married couples the strongest correlate of trusting a partner was reliability, measured with questions as plain as whether the person is always on time. A larger 2025 study then argues trust is not accumulated at all.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2011
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Also worth reading here: What Couples Actually Fight About.
Any fight, whatever it is about
Research about the shape of an argument rather than its subject. These apply to all of the above.
Conflict patternsDraft3 min readThe Four Patterns That Predict a Fight Going Nowhere
Four moves show up again and again in conversations that end badly. Learning to spot them mid-sentence is most of the work.
Read it →
Repair movesDraft3 min readRepair Moves: What Couples Do the Morning After
Every couple fights. The ones who last are not the ones who fight less — they are the ones who know how to come back.
Read it →
Cooldowns7 min readThe Writing Exercise That Stopped a Two-Year Decline
One hundred and twenty couples were followed for two years. Half of them spent twenty-one minutes writing about their arguments from the outside. That was the whole intervention.
Psychological Science2013
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Conflict patterns8 min readThe First Three Minutes of an Argument
How a disagreement opens carries most of the information about where it ends up. The famous prediction percentage attached to that finding is the part to be careful with.
Family Process1999
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Cooldowns9 min readDoes Taking a Break During a Fight Actually Help?
The advice to take a twenty-minute break is everywhere. We went looking for the study behind it, and this is what we found instead.
Behavior Therapy2011
Read it →- What predicts strain14 min read
What Couples Actually Fight About
We went looking for a ranked answer and found that almost nobody publishes one. This is what the evidence supports, category by category, with a confidence label on every line and an appendix of the numbers that do not survive checking.
Read it →
Also worth reading here: What Money Fights Are Actually Like, How a Hard Day Gets Into the Evening, Turning Toward: The Small Moves That Decide a Relationship, Why One of You Pushes and the Other Goes Quiet, The Twenty Seconds After Your Partner’s Good News, Is Good Sex Something You Find or Something You Build?, What Forgiving Someone Actually Changes, Does Checking Up on Your Partner Online Do Damage?, Who Does More, and Who Gets Believed.
Every study named in these pieces was checked against the publisher record before it went in. The wider evidence base, including the paper that argues against our whole premise, is laid out on the science page.
Costs where you live
What couples counselling actually costs, country by country.
One guide per country: what a private session really costs, what your insurance will and will not pay for, which free and subsidised services exist and how to reach them, and where we fit — including the cases where the honest answer is that we do not. Every price carries a source and the month we checked it.
Country guide16 min readCouples Counselling in Australia: What It Costs, and Why Medicare Will Not Help
A private couples hour runs $130 to $250 and Medicare rebates none of it — the Better Access plan explicitly excludes couple therapy. Here is every Australian option priced on one axis, including the subsidised ones, and an honest account of where a $24.99 coaching subscription does and does not belong.
AustraliaPrices checked August 2026
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Country guide15 min readCouples Counselling in Canada: What It Costs, and Why Medicare Will Not Pay
A session runs CA$155 to CA$300 and no provincial health plan covers a cent of it — the Canada Health Act insures physicians, and a psychologist is not one. Here is every Canadian option priced on one axis, including the sliding-scale clinics that start at $10.
CanadaPrices checked August 2026
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Country guide16 min readCouples Counselling in Hong Kong: What It Costs, from HK$400 to HK$4,000
The same hour of couples work costs ten times more at one end of this city than the other, nothing reimburses any of it, and the public system does not treat relationships at all. Here is every Hong Kong option priced on one axis — including the free one most people have never heard of.
Hong KongPrices checked August 2026
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Country guide15 min readCouples Counselling in Malaysia: What It Costs, and Why the Government Option Wins
Malaysia's national family board charges RM5 a session with a registered counsellor. That is the whole answer for most readers, and it is a tenth of what we cost. Here is every Malaysian option priced honestly — plus what the Syariah process actually does, which is not what you have read.
MalaysiaPrices checked August 2026
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Country guide14 min readCouples Counselling in New Zealand: What It Costs, and Why No One Will Fund It
The country's national relationship-counselling service closed in 2015 and nothing replaced it. A private session runs NZ$161 to NZ$300, no professional body publishes a fee, and every publicly funded door — ACC, Work and Income, the Family Court — is scoped to something other than a couple.
New ZealandPrices checked August 2026
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Country guide15 min readCouples Counselling in Singapore: What It Costs, and What You Can Get Free
A private hour runs S$200 to S$285 with GST, MediSave will not touch it, and the best-funded option in the country is free without a means test. Here is every Singapore option priced on one axis, and an honest account of where a US$24.99 coaching subscription does and does not belong.
SingaporePrices checked August 2026
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Country guide16 min readCouples Counseling in the United States: What It Costs, and What You Can Get Free
A private session runs $105 to $250 and your insurance almost certainly will not pay for it. Here is every American option priced on one axis — including the free ones — and an honest account of where a $24.99 coaching subscription does and does not belong.
United StatesPrices checked August 2026
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More countries are being written. We are not publishing guides for the UK, Ireland or the EU: our product handles the kind of personal detail those rules treat as special-category data, and we have not built what serving those markets lawfully would require. Publishing a guide for a country we cannot serve properly would be marketing rather than help.
Why this is public
“Read all of it first if you want. It won’t spoil anything we do.”
— Elena, your coach
Everything the method draws on is written up here, including where it stops.
When you’re ready
When you’ve read enough, try a session.
Your first session is free: about fifteen minutes, on your own, no card.