Sorrow and Bliss

by Meg Mason

The only one-day thing Hamish could find was a group workshop. In the conflict resolution module, the facilitator shared that sometimes, in the middle of an argument, he or his partner might say something along the lines of, ‘Hey, let’s have a time out! Let’s go and get burgers!’ He said that it worked

in almost every instance, especially in conjunction with sticking to I statements, and asked if there were any questions. Ingrid raised her hand and, without waiting, asked if say, a husband was constantly getting his wife pregnant – with boys – and provided as much help with them as someone with a secret second family, and the best me-time the wife had had in the last fourteen months was during an MRI, but the husband’s main worry was how much Botox his wife was having, not that she was so desperately exhausted and unhappy she fantasised all the time about being sent for another MRI, and they were always fighting, would the burger thing work then?