Worksheet
About 21 minutes · On your own
The Doorway
Write about your own recurring argument as a neutral third party who wants the best for both of you — the writing exercise from the two-year trial, in worksheet form.
What this is for
Before you start
This is the closest thing on the shelf to a tested intervention, and we want to be exact about what it is. In a trial, 120 couples wrote for seven minutes, three times over a year, about a recent disagreement from the point of view of a neutral third party who wanted the best for everyone. That was the entire intervention — twenty-one minutes across twelve months — and the couples who did it did not show the decline in marital quality that the control couples showed. This worksheet is those three prompts, with a place to write.
On your own, quietly, about a disagreement that has already happened. Set a timer for seven minutes per prompt and write without stopping to make it good. Then put it away. The trial's schedule was roughly every four months, not weekly — this is deliberately not a habit.
The research behind it
What the evidence actually says.
One hundred and twenty couples, randomly assigned, followed for two years. The couples who did the writing task three times in the second year held their marital quality steady; the couples who did not showed the ordinary decline. The effect ran through reduced conflict-related distress rather than through fewer or milder arguments — the couples did not fight less, they were less wrecked by the fighting. It is a small, well-conducted trial of a very cheap thing.
Where it runs out
One trial, 120 couples, one research group, and a two-year window. It has not been replicated at scale, the couples were already married and not in crisis, and the effect was on self-reported marital quality rather than on anything observed. We are giving you the actual prompts rather than a version we improved, because the prompts are the part that was tested — but a worksheet on a website is not a trial, and nobody has tested this delivery of it.
Our write-ups of these papers:
- The Writing Exercise That Stopped a Two-Year DeclineOur full read of the trial, including what it did not find and where the evidence stops.
- Does Taking a Break During a Fight Actually Help?The neighbouring question, and a case study in what happens when advice outruns its evidence.
The paper
Finkel, E. J., Slotter, E. B., Luchies, L. B., Walton, G. M., & Gross, J. J. (2013). A brief intervention to promote conflict reappraisal preserves marital quality over time. Psychological Science, 24(8), 1595–1601.
doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474938The trial itself: the three prompts, the two-year trajectory, and the distress mechanism.
Checked against the publisher record before this piece went up. If a number here cannot be traced to the paper above, it should not be here.
The The Doorway worksheet
The worksheet
Nothing filled in yet
Everything you type stays in this browser, on this device. It is not sent to us, and we could not read it if we wanted to.
One more thought, if you want it
Elena can read what you have written and add a short note at the end. This is the only thing on this page that sends anything anywhere.
Fill in a few answers first — there is nothing to read yet.
Take it with you
Printing gives you the whole worksheet on paper, with your answers in it — or with ruled lines to fill in by hand if you have not typed anything. Your browser’s print dialogue will offer “Save as PDF”.
Want us to write when the session for two opens?
We’ll send one email then, and nothing else. To be exact about what this does and does not do: it does not email you your answers — those stay on this device and we never receive them — and the worksheet itself lives at this address, so a bookmark or a printout is the way to keep it.
Twenty-one minutes, three times a year.
That is genuinely the dose that was tested, and it is worth resisting the urge to improve on it by doing it weekly. Put a note in your calendar for four months from now, and let it be a small, occasional thing. The trial did not find that thinking about your marriage constantly helps.
Questions
What people ask about this one.
- Are these the actual prompts from the study?
- They are the study's three prompts, lightly reworded for a person reading them on a screen rather than a participant in a lab, and in the same order. We have not added a fourth or improved the wording, because the wording is what was tested.
- Does my partner have to do it too?
- In the trial both partners did it. Whether one person doing it alone produces the same effect has not been tested, so we cannot tell you it does. It will not do any harm, and it is a reasonable thing to do on your own.
- Do I really have to write for seven minutes?
- Use the timer. The writing gets interesting somewhere around minute four, after the tidy version has run out — which is roughly the point of a timed writing task, and why the trial used one.
- How often should I do it?
- About every four months. The tested schedule was three times across a year, which is where the twenty-one minutes comes from. More often has not been shown to be better, and there is a real risk that turning it into a weekly habit turns it into rumination.
- What if things are worse than a disagreement?
- Then this is the wrong tool. It was tested on married couples who were not in crisis, and it is not designed for a relationship where someone is frightened or where something serious has just come out. Those situations deserve a person, not a worksheet.
When you want the other half
Do this one live, with Elena.
Your first session is free — about fifteen minutes, on your own, no card and no account. Bring what you just wrote, or bring the bit you got stuck on.
Also on the shelf
Two more that go with this one.
- Worksheet
The First Draft
Write the opening sentence before you have to say it — the one that names the thing without putting your partner on trial.
Open it → - Planner
The Repair Do-Over
Take one fight that went wrong and plan the way back into it — where it turned, what you would say now, and when you are going to say it.
Open it →
Would rather take a reading first? The time-together check-in is 12 questions, about 3 minutes, free and with no signup.