Preparing for a conversation you are dreading — the basics, done properly, when you are too tired to try hard

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Most of the usual advice misses the point. What follows is the version that survives contact with a real week.

Too tired to try hard is exactly the right amount of tired for this.

If you only do one thing from this page, do the first point below. It is first because it removes the most friction for the least effort.

Decide in advance what you will do if it goes badly. Having an exit plan makes it less likely you will need one.

Pick a time when neither of you is hungry, tired or about to leave. Timing prevents more bad conversations than phrasing does.

Do four slow breaths before you start. Not to calm down — to give yourself a beginning.

Write the first two sentences you will say. Not a script for the whole thing — just the opening, because that is where people freeze.

Decide what you want to happen, not just what you want to say. Those are different, and the second one often gets in the way of the first.

Plan one question you genuinely want answered. It turns a speech into a conversation.

For the opening, sometimes. Beyond that, reading a script usually makes people sound less like themselves.

Let them. Being upset is not the same as the conversation failing. Pausing for a minute is allowed.

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