MILFORD, OH — A local couple entered the sixth hour of a thermostat negotiation Tuesday evening, with both parties maintaining that they are “honestly fine with whatever” and that the other person “should just pick.”

Dana Kowalczyk-Reyes, 34, and Marcus Reyes, 36, have been at an impasse since 4:15 p.m., when Marcus noticed the house “felt a little warm” and Dana noticed it “felt fine, but whatever you want.” The thermostat currently reads 71 degrees. Neither has touched it.

“I just want him to be comfortable,” said Dana, wearing a sweater over a long-sleeved shirt over a second sweater. “If he’s hot, we can lower it. I’m not cold. I’m a little cold. But I’m fine.”

Marcus, who was visibly sweating, said he would gladly raise it if Dana wanted. “She’s never really said she’s cold,” he said, fanning himself with a utility bill. “So I assume she’s great. I’m great too. I’m perfect.”

Around hour three, the couple agreed the matter was “not a big deal” and that they should “just drop it.” They then did not drop it. At hour four, each separately walked past the thermostat and reached toward it before withdrawing, a maneuver neighbors described as “agonizing to watch through the window.”

By hour five, the couple called in Gerald Pemberton-Oyelaran, a senior conciliation officer with the Heating and Cooling Reconciliation Board’s Midwest Domestic Setpoint Division. Pemberton-Oyelaran arrived with a laminated chart and a small digital thermometer, which he placed on the coffee table and asked everyone to stop looking at.

“In my nineteen years of resolving one-degree disputes, the pattern is always the same,” he said. “Both parties are lying about being flexible, and both are lying about being fine. Frankly, the flexibility is the problem. If one of them would just say ‘I’m cold’ in a clear, ugly voice, we’d be done by dinner.”

“We’ve had couples reach seventy-two out of sheer exhaustion, only for one of them to quietly go put on a hoodie and say nothing. That’s not a resolution. That’s a hostage situation with insulation.”

Pemberton-Oyelaran said the Board has seen a 40 percent rise in such cases since the introduction of smart thermostats, which he said “give both people a phone app and therefore twice the opportunity to secretly change it back.”

Dr. Priya Venkataraghavan, a research fellow in Passive-Accommodation Studies at the Lakeshore Institute for Unspoken Domestic Preferences, said the Kowalczyk-Reyes standoff is textbook. “Each partner is competing to be the more easygoing one,” she said. “It’s the only contest in which both contestants are trying to lose, and yet there is no winner.”

At press time, the mediator had proposed a compromise of 70.5 degrees, a figure the thermostat does not support. Both parties accepted it immediately, said they were “totally happy,” and then resumed standing in the hallway.

Reached for comment, the couple’s dog, who has been lying on the cold kitchen tile since noon, declined to share a preference but said it would be “fine with whatever.”