Agreement
About 20 minutes · Together
Two Circles
Sort the things you keep going round on into the ones that are actually negotiable and the ones that are a difference to live around.
What this is for
Before you start
Some of what a couple argues about can be settled. Some of it is two people being different from each other, and no amount of good-faith negotiation will make one of you the other one. Treating the second kind like the first is exhausting, and it is where a great many long-running fights actually live. This sorter puts everything on the table and asks you to say, out loud and together, which is which.
When you have a handful of arguments that keep coming back in slightly different clothes, and you have started to feel like you are failing at them. Do it together, with an hour that is not the end of a hard day. It is the one tool on this shelf that does not really work alone.
The research behind it
What the evidence actually says.
The strongest evidence here is for acceptance being a real approach rather than a resignation. In a trial of 134 seriously and chronically distressed married couples, an acceptance-based form of structured couples work performed comparably to the traditional problem-solving form, with roughly seven in ten couples reliably improved or recovered by the end; five years on, about half of each group remained clinically improved. Separately, a fifteen-day home diary study of 100 couples found that money disagreements recurred more, were rated more important, and ended unresolved more often — even though the wives in it made more problem-solving attempts in exactly those conflicts. Trying harder to solve something is not always what makes it better.
Where it runs out
You may have seen a figure claiming that a specific majority of couples' problems are permanently unsolvable. We went looking for the study behind it and could not find one: every trail leads back to a trade book and a training programme rather than to a journal article with a method section, so the number does not appear on this page. The idea that some differences are durable is well supported. The percentage is not, and we would rather hand you the idea without it. Note too that the trial above compared two active approaches with no untreated control, so it establishes that acceptance-based work helps — not that acceptance beats problem-solving.
Our write-ups of these papers:
- What Money Fights Are Actually LikeThe diary study, in full: the fights that recur, matter more, and resolve less.
- Why One of You Pushes and the Other Goes QuietWhat a fight looks like when one person is trying to solve it and the other is trying to survive it.
The papers
Christensen, A., Atkins, D. C., Berns, S., Wheeler, J., Baucom, D. H., & Simpson, L. E. (2004). Traditional versus integrative behavioral couple therapy for significantly and chronically distressed married couples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(2), 176–191.
doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.72.2.176134 chronically distressed couples, and acceptance as a tested approach rather than folk advice.
Christensen, A., Atkins, D. C., Baucom, B., & Yi, J. (2010). Marital status and satisfaction five years following a randomized clinical trial comparing traditional versus integrative behavioral couple therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 225–235.
doi.org/10.1037/a0018132The five-year follow-up on the same 134 couples.
Papp, L. M., Cummings, E. M., & Goeke-Morey, M. C. (2009). For Richer, for Poorer: Money as a Topic of Marital Conflict in the Home. Family Relations, 58(1), 91–103.
Open access · PMC3230928748 real conflicts logged at home: the ones that recur and stay unresolved despite more problem-solving.
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 Two Circles 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 the two of 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.
Calling something perpetual is not giving up on it.
It is the opposite: it takes the thing off the list of evidence that you are failing, and puts it on the list of things you know about each other. Most of the couples who do this well are not more compatible than everyone else. They have just stopped re-litigating four things a year and started managing them.
Questions
What people ask about this one.
- What if we can’t agree which circle something goes in?
- That is the most useful result the sorter produces. Usually one of you thinks it is negotiable because you have never actually negotiated it, and the other has decided it is permanent because three attempts failed. Leave it unsorted, and spend ten minutes on what a real attempt would look like.
- Is a “difference to live around” permanent?
- Not necessarily. People change, and circumstances do more of the changing than people do. It is a description of where things stand now, and it is worth redoing this once a year rather than treating today's sort as a verdict.
- Isn’t there a statistic about most problems being unsolvable?
- There is a widely quoted percentage, and we could not find a peer-reviewed source for it — it traces back to a trade book and a training programme rather than to a study with a method section. So we have left it out. The underlying idea is well supported; the number is not.
- My partner won’t sit down and do this.
- Then do not do it at them. Fill in the first list on your own, notice which ones you have privately already filed as permanent, and take one of those to a session instead. A sorter completed by one person and presented to the other is a verdict, not an agreement.
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 mental-load check-in is 12 questions, about 3 minutes, free and with no signup.