Every time you say “you always” or “you never” in a fight, you’ve already lost the facts.

Absolutes are a sign you have switched from describing to accusing. Nobody always does anything, so the other person now has an easy and accurate defence, and the thing that actually upset you gets lost while you argue about the exception. You wanted to be heard and instead you handed over a technicality.

Trade the pattern for the instance. Say what happened on Tuesday and how it landed, in one or two sentences, with no history attached. The fight gets much smaller when there is only one event in the room.