polite

Both of you managed to be more or less polite, more or less restrained, more or less grown up.

We may call it anxious attachment, but this is too polite a term for what should, based on the behaviour it inspires on the ground, really be called angry attachment.

Part of the difficulty lies as ever in each party recognising the legitimacy of their pain and their right to make a polite, well articulated fuss about so-called ‘small things.’