The most unhappy circumstance of all is, when each party is always laying up fuel for dissension, and gathering together a magazine of provocations to exasperate each other with when they are out of humor.

Some households run on stored grievance. Each side keeps a private record, adding to it quietly, and neither raises anything at the time because the item is more useful kept than spent. Then the next ordinary argument arrives and out comes the whole stock, three years deep, and the actual disagreement never gets discussed at all.

Watch for the moment you file something away rather than saying it. That is the decision point, and it takes ten seconds to reverse. Raise it small and now, in a sentence, or genuinely let it go, because the only bad option is the one where you keep it for later.