repair

Dear Reader,

Someone in session last week told me her husband had apologized for something months ago. "So why does it still feel unresolved?" she asked. I told her what I tell a lot of people. The apology had happened, but the repair hadn't happened yet.

An apology can be offered from across a room, or in a text, or even quietly to yourself. It ends with the words said. Repair is what happens after, when you return to the place where something cracked and begin the slow work of mending it.

In his decades of research with couples, John Gottman found that the ability to repair after conflict was one of the strongest predictors of whether a relationship would last. He called these small reaching-back moves "repair attempts." All relationships have conflict. What seems to change the outcome is what comes after.

Repair is often slower than we want. It’s asking, "Are we okay?" and being willing to hear that you're not.  We hope one good conversation will put things back together. Sometimes one is enough. More often it takes a series of small returns. You bring something up gently when you'd rather move on. You remember a detail they mentioned weeks ago and let them see that you remembered. The work happens in places small enough that you could miss them. Those are the places where trust actually comes back.

If something between you and someone you love is still cracked even after the apology happened, that doesn't mean it's broken for good. They might just be waiting for the repair work that comes next.

Yours in the journey,

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