When I was younger, my arguing repertoire consisted of pulling my baby sisters’ hair and to run as fast as my 8 year old chicken legs would carry me.

Aaah! If only I could get away with that behaviour now. Boyfriend: “Babe! How could you have spent our grocery money on shoes!!” Me: *pulls his hair*, yells “weh weh weh” and bolts…

You can be in a relationship for months without having to argue. But… it’s such a smorgasbord of informative titbits, a little feast all about what sort of person your partner is. When couples tell me they never argue, I get suspicious. I actually find it completely unbelievable. They probably live in different houses, I tell myself. (I believe in having at least one quality argument in the bathroom every morning… “Good God man! Do you rrrreally need to use my R520 hair treatment on your receding hairline?!”)

You could be conducting a perfectly perfect relationship for yonks until you have an argument and everything goes for a ball of chalk.

What one person thinks is intolerable cruelty in a relationship could be an average Sunday afternoon for their partner.

Ultimately, the actual mechanics of your arguing may be the very nail in the coffin.

Out and about recently, I bumped into an ex. I introduced him to my girlf, and after we walked away, she said “oh but he seems so lovely! What happened?”… Hmm, what happened, you ask? Oh, he’s sexy, chivalrous, successful, funny… oh, and every time we argued, he’d ignore me for at least 3 days. The first time we argued, it was about who would win the football. Arms folded, he gave me the silent treatment for a whole 90 minutes, then said “see ya later” (my team won) and stormed off in a huff, and phoned me 3 days later, pretending nothing had happened. Needless to say, it didn’t last very long.

My one girlf dated a man for years who, if they were arguing, would disappear for the weekend and arrive back home on a Monday morning in time for a shower, hungover to all high heaven. That is, until she did it to him.

From my experience, you get several Combat Techniques… My personal favourite to witness is those couples who don’t care who’s watching and who’ll have it out any-old-where. Standing in the dairy isle at Pick ‘n Pay with people around, no matter. “How DARE you! I saw you looking at the cashier’s bosom! HOW DARRRRRRE YOU, FRANK?!!!!!”. Ah, good times. I’ve experienced a few Combatists… a boy who would slam doors and rev motorbikes, then send flowers the next day, a boy who would cry every time we argued, a boy who’d sulk for days, and a boy who’d walk away mid-argument and sleep upstairs.

How am *I* in an argument? See, this is one flipping magical thing about hindsight in singledom. I definitely should think before I speak. And I’ve learnt that something quite befuddling happens to a man when you start a sentence with “Harold, we need to have a chat” – their brains immmmmmediately shrink and go “does.not.compute”. So, I resolve from here on in: when in the prickly seconds before an argument I’m going to do something crazy. I’m going to do what Cosmo said: “Walk a mile in his shoes”.

Awesome. That way I’m far away from the bugger, and he’s barefoot.