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Shikha Sharma
My husband and I had an argument last month that ended on a Tuesday evening.
The argument itself had lasted approximately four hours, which is longer than our arguments usually last, and had covered several topics of which only one was the actual topic. We had said things. Not terrible things. But the kind of things that have edges and that you do not forget immediately. By 9pm we had run out of argument and the argument was over but the thing was not yet resolved.
What followed was the gap.
The gap is the period between the argument ending and the relationship resuming. During the gap, both people know the argument is technically finished but neither person has yet performed the action that converts the finished argument into a normal conversation. The action is the first normal thing one of you says. The apology, or the question, or the small piece of information offered in a normal voice, that signals that we are back.
The gap after this particular argument lasted until Wednesday morning. Sixteen hours. We slept in the same bed. We were in the same flat. We were not fighting. We were not talking. We were in the gap.
I lay there on Tuesday night thinking about the gap and about who was going to close it and why it was taking this long and whether I should be the one to close it.
I did not close it on Tuesday night.
We were sitting at the kitchen table on Wednesday morning. Chai between us, Sunfeast Marie Light on the plate because that is just the default state of our kitchen table in the morning, and my husband said have you seen my keys. Not an apology. Not a resumption of the argument. A neutral piece of information that required a response. I said they were on the hook by the door. He said thank you.
That was the closing of the gap. The keys. The hook by the door. The thank you.
We were back.
The Rules of the Gap
The gap has rules that neither of us has stated but both of us follow with remarkable consistency.
The first rule is that whoever is less wrong closes the gap. Not the person who is more wrong, which is the intuitive answer. The person who is less wrong. The more-wrong person closes the argument by running out of argument. The less-wrong person closes the gap by saying the first normal thing.
This is not a principle I decided on. It is a pattern I observed across multiple arguments and multiple gaps. The less-wrong person always moves first. Not because they are conceding. Because they are the person with less to process. The more-wrong person is still sitting with the thing they know and have not yet found a way to address. The less-wrong person has processed it and is ready to resume.
My friend Priya described the same dynamic in her marriage. She said she and her husband have an unspoken agreement that whoever feels better first makes tea. The tea is not an apology. The tea is the first normal thing. The normal thing restores the texture of the relationship and the texture is what the apology needs to happen inside.
She said the apology, when it comes, always comes after the tea. Never before. The tea creates the conditions for the apology. She has made a lot of tea.
The Performance of Normal
The first normal thing is a performance in the specific sense that it requires effort to produce.
After an argument, normal does not come naturally. The argument has created a pressure in the air of the flat and the pressure makes everything slightly effortful. The keys question required my husband to decide to ask a normal question and to ask it in a normal voice and to receive a normal answer and to say thank you in a normal way. This is four normal actions performed while the pressure was still present.
I watched him do this and I understood that the keys question was not about the keys. The keys question was him deciding that the gap was long enough and that normal was available and that he was going to perform normal until normal became actual.
My friend Kabir's wife closes gaps differently. She makes a joke. Not a joke about the argument. A completely unrelated joke. Something she saw or thought of that she knows he will find funny. The joke has nothing to do with what happened. The joke is just funny. He laughs. The laugh is the first normal thing. The gap closes.
Kabir said the first time she did this he was surprised. He had been waiting for the apology or the discussion or the resolution. The joke arrived instead and he laughed and the laugh felt so normal after the not-normal of the gap that he said something and she said something and they were back.
He said he now looks forward to the joke. Not the argument. The joke.
Who Apologies
The apology, when it comes, does not always come from the person who was more wrong.
Sometimes it comes from the person who is quicker. The person who can say sorry before the other person has finished processing what sorry needs to mean. The quick apology is genuine but it is also tactical. It closes the gap before the gap has fully been felt.
My husband is the quicker one. In most arguments he apologises before I have decided whether I want him to apologise or whether I want him to understand something first. The apology arrives and I have to decide whether to receive it as a full apology or to say yes but I need you to also understand the thing.
I usually say yes but I need you to also understand the thing.
He usually does understand the thing, or says he does, which is not always the same but is close enough for the argument to close.
Sometimes the apology comes from both of us simultaneously and we both start saying sorry at the same moment and then we both stop and then we both say it again and then one of us laughs and the laugh is the end of the argument and the beginning of normal.
The simultaneous sorry is my favourite. It means neither of us was waiting for the other. Both of us decided at the same moment that the gap was over.
The gap is always over eventually.
The keys are on the hook by the door.
