Why do I pick fights with my husband? Because I want a happy marriage

Couples who argue ‘effectively’ are 10 times more likely to have a happy relationship. Photograph: PeopleImages/Getty Images/iStockphoto, posed by models

I want to get better at arguing. Not the bitter, exhausting kind that happens online, and not the kind that occurs when you put two French people in a room and within 90 seconds one of them is quoting Montaigne and the other has countered with Immanuel Kant, even though they are talking about, say, low-energy lightbulbs (about which neither of them previously had an opinion).

I’m interested in the domestic. I have never mastered the short, sharp spat, which can apparently be quite therapeutic. I wouldn’t know. After an early phase of massive, horrible fights, my motto for decades has been: “Why say something when you could let it fester, explode at the worst possible time, be horrified and grovellingly row back until the next time?”