We don't row very often, but if we do we both make a conscious effort to focus on the issue in hand and not ancient, unrelated grievances. But we agree earlier issues raised are fair game if the latest cause of conflict is evidence of a pattern.
E.g. we rowed last week because DH forgot to give me a very important message. It just went clean out of his head. This isn't typical behaviour and he's got a lot on at the minute so while it was infuriating and meant an important deadline for something got missed, it was a brief blow-up about that issue alone, a profuse apology offered and accepted and back to normal.
If we row about him leaving his clothes on the chaise longue in our bedroom (which he regards as a halfway house between clean and dirty clothes and drives me to despair) then it's fair game to talk about a pattern of 'Fran will put it away' type behaviour because by the time I've spotted the clothes on the chaise longue, I've fumed about shoes not put away in the shoe caddy, post left unopened or letters dealt with but empty envelopes left on the kitchen worktops but not binned. That usually merits a sorry and a promise to change- and it does for a while but he will always be an untidy merchant
Conversely, I infuriate him if I use his car and leave the petrol guage on 'fumes' (instant apology) or if I take too much on and don't look after myself as well as I should, which means I don't eat very well, get too thin and inevitably go down with something due to depressed immunity. We've had the odd row about that in the past and I've come to see that it's partly concern on his part and partly because if I spread myself too thinly, it means extra work for him when he can't always afford the time.
We've been together a long, long time and rows in the past probably weren't as maturely handled, but we've never been sulkers, we've never walked out of a room mid-conversation and we've never had a tendency to sweat the small stuff, so we've known that if one has come to the other with a grievance, it's important and needs sorting. We both get angry about others interrupting us, so we try really hard not to do it to eachother.
One other golden rule in our house is that if a conflict arises, there is quiet and no phones, TVs, music etc. are allowed to compete with or interrupt the conversation. I often think that the general 'loudness' in people's homes ramps up the conflict.