You have been carrying something since March. It was not big enough to make a scene about at the time, and it has not faded, and now the length of time you have held it has become its own problem — raising it makes you look like a person who keeps files.
So most people do one of two things. They keep waiting for a good moment, which never comes because there is no good moment to raise a five-month-old grievance. Or they deploy it during an unrelated argument, where it lands as an ambush and gets dismissed on procedure: why are we talking about March. Both routes end with the thing still in the bag, slightly heavier.
Sue Johnson's term for the ones that do not fade is attachment injury — a moment where you needed your partner to show up and they did not, which then quietly reorganises how much you risk with them. Ordinary annoyances decay on their own. These do not, and the reason they keep their edge is that they were never about the logistics. You are not still angry about the airport. You are still holding what it meant that you were left there.
Raising it works better when you say the delay out loud as part of the opening. 'This is going to sound like ancient history and I've been sitting on it since March' does two useful things: it heads off the procedural objection, and it tells your partner the size of the thing more honestly than the incident itself will. Then name what it meant rather than relitigating what happened, because the facts of March are gone and disputable, and the meaning is neither. Nobody can tell you that you did not feel abandoned in a car park.
Name the oldest thing you are still carrying — just to yourself first. If it still has heat, book a time this week and open with how long you have had it.
