Almost all of us wake up each of the 365 days a year, 366 in leap years, and decide to be who we were yesterday. And who we were the day before that, and the week before that, and probably the year before that.

No conversation = far less understanding. And in my experience as a divorce lawyer, a reluctance or fear or ickiness about having such a conversation makes consideration of an affair easier, because

When you talk to your partner, who exactly are you talking to? Who you think he is? Who you want him to be? Who she thinks she is? Who she wants to be?

To win an argument, regardless of the time, preparation, and passion I’ve invested in it, is much harder when the person receiving it is disinclined to respond favorably—or, worse, bristles at what I’m saying regardless of the merits. I try to aim my message at whoever the hearer thinks they are or aspire to be—or, in pop psychology–speak, the

This always seemed nonsensical to me: Why, of all the people on the planet, would the person you married be the one you always have to be singularly critical of? Why hold the person with whom you signed a lifetime commitment to such a specific and unreasonably high standard? How come we’re encouraged to give our friends a break and understand that

Often the master of the universe was a shitty husband and/or father, as those roles became collateral damage of the prestigious breadwinner.

Make the holes you dig shallow, because the deep ones are hard to climb out of.

“Frame,” by the way, is not a euphemism for “manipulate.” It’s not “spin,” or dishonesty. It means accessing another way to look at things—hopefully, a constructive, aspirational way.

When is the last time you and your spouse discussed what it specifically means to be “happy” and how you each define that term? When was the last time you discussed, in specific terms, what a “satisfying” sex life is for each of you? These should be conversations you look forward to! They’re about being happy and about fucking, for fuck’s sake!