You’re about to do something most people are never taught how to do.

Conflict isn’t expensive because people disagree. It’s expensive because of how long it stays unresolved, and how it gets handled when it finally is.

That last number is the one worth sitting with. Twelve years after a separation, the families who worked it out between them were three times more likely to still have both parents in the room. The agreements they reached were much the same as everyone else’s. What differed was how they got there.

The five moves below are the ones that make that difference. They’re the same five whether this is about $3,000, your sister, or your marriage. Nobody teaches them. They take four minutes to learn and you’ll use them for the rest of your life.

When we’re hurt, we describe the person. It’s the honest thing to do, because character is what it feels like from the inside. But nobody can respond to a description of who they are. They can only defend against it.

Facts give the other person somewhere to stand. So before anything else, write down what actually happened: when, how much, what was said. Watch what this does to the dispute. It won’t feel less important. It will start to feel solvable.

Here’s the test professionals use. State the other person’s position so well that if they read it, they’d say: yes. That’s it. That’s what I think.

Not the version that’s easy to knock down. The real one, with its best reasons attached.

Almost nobody gets this right the first time, and that is the finding. The distance between what you think they think and what they actually think is where this conflict has been living the whole time.

This one is counterintuitive and the research is unusually clear. Negotiators told to work out what the other side was thinking and wanting did better, for themselves and for both sides at once. Negotiators told to focus on what the other side was feeling did worse than people given no instruction at all.

Feelings matter enormously, and there’s a place for them in this process. But when you’re looking for a way through, the question that opens things up is: what do they actually need here, underneath what they’re demanding?

“I want the money” is a position. “I need to know I’m not being taken for a fool” is an interest. Two positions collide. Two interests often don’t.

In a well-known experiment, people read identical case files and then said what a fair settlement would be. Those assigned to one side and those assigned to the other came out far apart, from exactly the same facts. Not lying. Reading honestly, and seeing different things.

Being warned about this doesn’t fix it. Only one thing does: writing down the weaknesses in your own case.

So, what’s the strongest thing they could say about you that you’d struggle to answer? You don’t have to agree with it. You only have to be able to say it out loud. People who can do this reach agreements. People who can’t, mostly don’t.

Almost every dispute about money contains a second, silent dispute about which rule applies. Split it evenly? Split it by what each person put in? Weight it toward whoever needs it more?

All three are defensible. People reliably pick the one that favours them, and just as reliably don’t notice they’ve done it.

Settle the rule first and the number follows without anyone having to lose an argument to get there. Argue the number first and you’ll spend a fortnight defending a figure you chose in ten seconds.

It doesn’t ask you to forgive anything, or to decide they were right, or to want less than you want. It asks for something smaller and harder than that: describe their side accurately, and your own honestly.

Most conflicts that stay stuck aren’t stuck on the facts. They’re stuck because two people are each certain they already understand the other.

You’re about to find out whether you do.