A love letter to the dying art of arguing in the car

I checked my rearview mirror, indicated, and swung around roundabout number seven of infinity as we circled Milton Keyes, my question hanging in the air: “Do you still want to be with me?”

We were on a cross-country road trip to Cambridge, the car filled with our weekend-getaway bags and a week’s worth of pent-up frustration. The night before, we’d had screaming row, both goading the other to just “do you what you want” and end it. And now we were midway through a 90-mile drive, working out whether we had a future after all.

The weird thing was, we had been locked in the car for an hour already, tackling hard and hurtful questions that we’d spent months avoiding. But neither of us had raised our voices. In fact, as I switched lanes to head towards Bedford, I was realising how much I loved him.

I’m a high-conflict individual. Where other couples will smugly purport that “we never argue,” from my experience, if you’re not fighting, it’s because at least one of you is bottling up resentment that will bubble over at some point, just when you least expect it.

The challenge has always been how to air frustrations without the atmosphere becoming toxic. This Cambridge trip came after a season of shouting matches, where we would tear each other to pieces across our living room, pausing only when we were both breathless and fuming, then go to bed on the pretence that we’d made up.

Yet here we were, tackling a “relationship extinction level” conversation calmly and with compassion. And not for the first time, I silently thanked my parents for the most useful piece of advice they had inadvertently given me: if you ever need to discuss something difficult, go for a drive.

It may sound flippant, but angry and awkward conversations are inexplicably rendered so much easier in a car. For a start, you can’t look at each other. It’s miraculous how much embarrassment can be averted by eliminating eye contact, while accusations that might seem venomous spat face-to-face lose their bite when spoken forwards into the windscreen.

Second, one of you is driving, which inevitably slows the pace of an escalating row. The sporadic pauses while the driver concentrates to overtake or make a turning act as a natural brake on the altercation getting too heated.

Finally, you are stuck together until you reach your destination, with no disruptions. While this might at first lead to feeling trapped, knowing neither of you can storm off is liberating. There are no doors to slam, only the open road ahead to contemplate. With no time pressure, you can choose your words with care, while your partner has a chance to fully absorb what you’re saying before they respond.

I learned the art of the on-road argument subliminally through parents, not because they fought each other in the car (with the exception of inevitable backseat-seat driving bickering and spats over parking), but because that was where they chose to address challenging issues with me. Concerns over how stressed I was at school, reservations about someone I was seeing, sad news about family members—all were discussed seat-belted and side by side.

Of course, for urbanite millennials, driving is going out of fashion. Young people, we are told, are “killing the car” with our climate concerns and enthusiasm for the subscription economy. Less than two thirds of 25-year-olds hold a driving licence, compared to around 95 per cent of 54-year olds. Why invest hours learning to drive and splurge on costly insurance when there’s Uber to fall back on?

Whether this is a financial decision that will change with age or a longer-term trend for environmentally sustainable transport, whereas my parents’ generation saw driving as a coming-of-age symbol of freedom, mine tends to view it less affectionately. Smartphones and social media are our vehicles to adventure, our means of staying constantly connected.

And cleaner air and better public transport are definitely causes we should champion. But I wonder whether we are accidentally losing something valuable as we shun driving. You can’t argue constructively via text on a screen—it is both too high-paced and too permanent, with the wrong words carelessly thrown into a void to be overanalysed and picked apart for perpetuity. Nor can you confront points of tension on a crowded train or in the back of someone else’s car, knowing the driver is all ears.

It’s easy to say the answer is not to fight at all, but every relationship will hit crisis point at some stage. And when that happens, you need a safe space for a type of brakes-off, radical honesty. If a therapist’s couch isn’t an option, the metal walls of a car can be the next best thing.

He waited until I stopped at the next set of traffic lights to answer me. “Yes, if you still want to be with me.” And by the time we’d made it to Cambridge, together, we’d figured out how.