Bailey Snyder and her husband have been together for 10 years, married for five, have one child, are expecting their second, and agree on religion, child rearing, finances, and politics.

But they do have one battleground: their two-bedroom Arlington condo.

“Decorating leaves us in tears,’’ said Snyder, who works in development for the Jimmy Fund. “My husband once accused me of being emotionally abusive at an IKEA.’’

No one keeps statistics on furniture-induced breakups, but therapists and decorators know it to be true: Choosing a rug — or a backsplash or a sectional — can make soul mates wonder what they ever saw in each other.

“We went 10 rounds over a wolf poster,’’ said Lauren Beckham Falcone, an on-air personality with WROR’s Loren & Wally Morning Show, recalling her then-new groom’s “art.’’

“Half of the wolf’s head was obscured by a tree, so there was just this one eye looking at you,’’ she said.

Falcone banished the picture, and not just because the animal’s gaze was unsettling. “Nothing says you’ve lost power like a wolf poster in the living room.’’

Nearly 18 years later, the couple is approaching a renovation — but as a team. “We want to transform our dining room into a bar,’’ Falcone said. “We were, like, ‘Do you like to drink?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do I? Yes.’ Our decorating discussions have never been more harmonious.’’

As most lovers know, there’s nothing nicer than a meeting of the minds, be it over a bar or a faucet for the guest bath. But sometimes specialized tactics are needed.

Susan Mallery, a bestselling romance writer, advises what might be called the “be still my heaving bosom’’ maneuver.

It involves, she said, simultaneously remembering that “the person you love is more important than any rug, sofa, or throw pillow,’’ while also working to cloud your beloved’s mind with sweet talk.

Mallery, the author of the forthcoming “The Friends We Keep,’’ suggests introducing a desired item something like this: “I bought this lamp because it reminded me of our time in Paris.’’ But, she added: “Be sure it really does remind you of your time in Paris.’’

You’d think that the abundance of home-decorating TV shows and design apps would make things easier, but designer Blair Hamaty says couples are having more trouble making decisions.

For starters, there’s so much choice now that even a single person has trouble figuring out what he or she likes.

And societal changes that have seen men increasingly entering the domestic realm — as involved dads — has empowered them to voice opinions on countertops.

“Years ago the man just let the wife make the decision,’’ said Hamaty, CEO of Setting the Space, a Plymouth-based staging and design company.

In West Roxbury, Janet Albert is a minimalist married to Jonas Bromberg, a maximalist. They make it work — joyfully — but even so, on a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s, Albert was unprepared for her husband’s suggestion that they solve the problem of not being able to agree on a set of dining room chairs by buying eight unmatched ones.

“I almost lost consciousness,’’ she said. “We had to leave the store.’’

Comedy writers regularly play decorating differences for laughs. If you want to feel better about your testy conversations, Google “wagon wheel coffee table fight’’ from the film “When Harry Met Sally,’’ or “Tina Fey takes her boyfriend shopping at IKEA.’’

On the “30 Rock’’ episode, Fey and her boyfriend are heading into the store when an older couple exits fighting.

“You know what? I like myself. I have good taste in drapes,’’ the woman says angrily. “I wish I died in Iwo Jima and never met you,’’ the man replies.

Real-life decorating disputes are not always so funny — but they are one of the better relationship problems to have, said Kyle Marie Carney, a clinical social worker at the Mount Auburn Counseling Center in Cambridge.

“It’s more optimistic than dealing with the aftermath of infidelity or job loss,’’ she said. “The couple is trying to come together and envision a better future.’’

(Never mind that the pursuit of that better future might split them up.)

Discussing decorating differences is a good way to work on “underlying issues relating to power and control and decision-making,’’ Carney said.

“Say you have a wife who feels unheard. You would work with the husband about why this is important to her. She may talk about how growing up, she didn’t have much of a voice.’’

But some decorating fights are borne not from a lack of empathy, or disagreement over jade as an accent color, but over one partner’s extreme collecting habits.

Meet Phillip Beltz, the partner of a man with thousands of antique trains and hundreds of Le Creuset pots. For decades, nothing could stem incoming purchases, said Beltz, a social worker by training.

“Compromise was hard for him,’’ he said of his partner.

But last year, the unyielding math of square footage achieved what talk could not. The couple moved from a four-bedroom house, with a barn, in Long Island to East Boston, where they’re renting a two-bedroom place.

“I don’t have to worry about trying to control things anymore,’’ Beltz said. “We have 1,400 square feet. It’s being controlled.’’

Beth Teitell can be reached at bteitell@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @bethteitell.