Repair: The Skill That Saves Relationships
69% of all conflicts in intimate relationships are unresolvable.
This is because they are not issues of right and wrong, but matters of perspective — more like Democrat/Republican, chocolate/vanilla, or country/rock and roll. As passionate as people get about those things, they are not issues of right and wrong. They are preferences and matters of opinion. And this is true of the vast majority of issues in your relationship.
So if you think getting along better is mainly about learning to solve more of your problems, you're almost surely mistaken. Even couples who communicate best will resolve only around 30% of their disagreements.
What's needed isn't primarily problem-solving skill. It's the ability to recognize when you've hurt your partner — or when conflict is starting to flare — and reach out with something that moves the relationship through it with some measure of grace.
The Stone Skipping Across the Water
A stone skipping across the water will hit the surface here and there and either sink to the cold, dark bottom of the lake, or launch back into the open air and keep flying. Like that stone, your relationship will occasionally encounter moments of difficulty where it could descend into nasty, murky conflict — or launch back up into the freedom of connection and companionship. It all depends on you.
Efforts to recognize conflict or hurt starting to flare up and turn things around are called repair attempts. Here's what one looks like in practice.
What a Repair Attempt Actually Looks Like
Her: I'm so tired.
Him: Why? The house doesn't look like you've been working super hard today.
[He notices the look she shoots at him.]
Him: [Makes a stupid face and looks at the floor.] I'm a total idiot.
(Repair attempt made — an effort to launch the stone back into the air.)
Her: I don't know. Maybe not a TOTAL idiot. I'm hungry, wanna grab dinner?
(Repair attempt received.)
End of conversation.
It could also go this way:
Her: I'm so tired.
Him: Why? The house doesn't look like you've been working super hard today.
Her: What? Did I just hear you say, "I know baby, you've probably had a really hard day today, let me rub your back for a few minutes"?
(Repair attempt made.)
Him: Close. What I said was that you've had a hard day and I'd be happy to give you a massage because you work so hard and it's the least I can do.
(Repair attempt received.)
Her: [Lying down on the bed, face down, getting comfortable.] That's what I thought you said.
Does this sound unrealistic? It's what couples who manage conflict well actually do. Instead of being touchy, oversensitive, and defensive — quick to make an argument out of anything — they do the exact opposite. They look for opportunities to head off potential conflicts. They find ways to inject lightness, warmth, sincerity, vulnerability, humor, or positivity into the very places where negativity and hurt are flaring up, containing it in the first example and perhaps even neutralizing it in the second.
What Distinguishes Happy Couples From Unhappy Ones
This is what separates satisfied couples from dissatisfied ones. Not frequency of fights. Not the intensity of disagreements. Happy couples don't necessarily fight less or less intensely than unhappy couples — they just know how to keep from getting bogged down in negative emotion. They have learned, when their relationship slams into the water, how to make it fly again.
If your relationship suffers from constant conflict, or from long stretches of icy silence in attempts to avoid conflict, you and your partner need to learn the skill of making and receiving repair attempts. The good news is that it can be learned — and it changes things faster than almost anything else I work on with couples.
Think back to your last argument. Was there a moment when one of you reached for something lighter — a joke, an admission, a touch? What happened when they did?
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