I think the biggest obstacle to this is if you have a nice house. Your sims will have too many positive moodlets (Happy) to actually be made angry.
Here's how I got past that:
1) Get Charisma level 4 or higher. (This unlocks "smooth apology" which seems to appear more consistently than "apologise")
2) Take your sims outside, where there are no nice things and wait for any positive moodlets to wear off.
3) Have the spouse make your sim angry (should be easy with a couple of "mean" interactions).
4) Have your sim retaliate so both sims are angry. (not sure if both sims need to be angry, but I did this when I succeeded so it's here for info).
5) Use the "smooth apology" social (it was in the context menu for me so I'm not exactly sure where it was).
6) Make your sims play nice again to repair their once perfect relationship.
I hated doing this to my sims, but that's how it's done.