Four Ways a Fight Goes Wrong (and What Each One Costs)

Pick your usual one

Nobody fights badly on purpose. We fall into a default, usually the one that kept the peace in whatever household we grew up in. Four common ones:

1. Shutting down. You go quiet to stop it escalating. The fight ends; the issue doesn't.
2. Scorekeeping. You bring in March to win an argument in October. Now there are two fights.
3. Mind-reading. 'You should have known' feels obvious to you and bewildering to them.
4. Fixing too fast. They wanted to be heard; you offered a spreadsheet.

The cost is usually delayed

Each one works in the moment. That's why it sticks. The bill arrives later, as a pile of small things nobody mentioned until they all came out at once over something trivial.

One thing to try

Name the pattern out loud, without accusation: 'I'm about to go quiet — give me ten minutes and I'll come back.' That single sentence is most of what the Repair dimension is actually measuring. The communication quiz shows which of the four is your default, so you only have to work on one.