10 years of living together. The marriage is bursting at the seams. It was visible to the naked eye: frequent verbal jabs, but more painful, quarrels over trifles, resentments, delays at work.

The turning point was the quarrel on your daughter's birthday: forgetting about the temporary truce, so as not to upset the baby on her special day, you disrupted the holiday with a new quarrel over cutting a cake. A minor detail, screams, a crying child and apologies to the parents of other children invited to a bitter celebration and the child's resentment for many days.

The need for a specialist has become more acute than ever.

A family psychologist in couples therapy, where many tears were shed and resentments hidden for years were expressed, gave advice to increase spending time together, to “fall in love” with a partner again, to rekindle the extinguished spark. The words sounded so simple. In fact, it was difficult to coordinate schedules and even more so to want to spend time with a partner who was a source of stress. Have you come to a compromise: you decided to go shopping to find mugs to replace those that were broken in the heat of one of the scandals.

Neither of them seemed particularly eager. While you were trying to squeeze out enthusiasm and involve a once-loved one in a small matter, he stood a little apart, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and occasionally made sarcastic remarks about the disgust of seemingly cute things.

“Maybe these? Look how cute they are. Three more, just for the whole family? Or these, they're big, the way you like them. It's just the thing for working on a computer,” you didn't give up, ignoring all the offensive banter, so as not to start a quarrel, you approached the choice differently. Based on his preferences.

“I don't give up on these mugs. Can you just leave me alone for a moment?" man's shout plunged the store into complete silence, dozens of pairs of eyes stared at you, intrigued by the sudden scene.