Some time ago I read a great arti­cle (on Cos­mopoli­tan nonethe­less) about Pick­ing Your Bat­tles. It’s a prac­ti­cal guide that has helped me a lot. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, whether you should bring up an issue boils down to six or seven questions:

• Does the issue hap­pen often?
• Is there a larger issue con­tribut­ing to this one?
• Does the offense seem out of the ordinary?
• Are your expec­ta­tions too high?
• Is it abu­sive? E.g. lying, betrayal, or con­trol­ling behavior.
• Is bring­ing it up going to be productive?
• Are you ready to deal with the con­se­quences of bring­ing it up?

Addi­tion­ally, there are sev­eral hot-button issues, namely, trust, finances, sex, child-rearing, and rel­a­tives. If it’s not one of these issues it may not be big enough to tackle.

One thing the arti­cle doesn’t men­tion is actu­ally bring­ing the issue up. Of course this would take a post of its own to flesh out with any jus­tice, but I thought it would be use­ful to throw in my two cents any­way. If you do decide to bring it up con­sider the circumstances:

• Have you thought it over?
• Is it late at night or early in the morning?
• Are you or the other per­son tired, hun­gry, or intoxicated?
• Are you or the other per­son at work or oth­er­wise distracted?
• Are you hav­ing a great time? Would it be worth interrupting?

If you answer “no” to any of those ques­tions you should prob­a­bly wait until a more appro­pri­ate time to dis­cuss the issue at hand.