If we are being completely honest here, most of us are not as patient with our partners as we would like to be. We are more patient with our slow computers than our partners. Instead of letting our impatience blow off, we understand that we need to take it to the IT person to fix it, or change the network provider altogether if not to buy a signal booster to help curb the problem.

However, we don’t practise that sort of understanding with our partners. We easily get irritated, annoyed, frustrated and agitated with each other, perhaps much quicker than we do with strangers, colleagues, friends and acquaintances – anyone we don’t live with. And our impatience with one another seems justified in the moment, at least, in the eyes of the partner exercising impatience...