Rupture and Repair: Why What Happens After Conflict Matters Most

What if the most important moment in a conflict isn’t when someone gets hurt — but whether repair happens afterward?

In this episode, I explore why conflict itself doesn’t determine the health of a relationship.  What matters most is what happens after the rupture. While many focus on frequency or intensity, a more meaningful measure is how quickly partners repair and reconnect.

Drawing from my work with couples and my relationship with my husband Ben, I share how our relationship shifted over time. We once experienced frequent conflict with long periods of disconnection. What changed everything wasn’t eliminating conflict — it was learning to repair more consistently.

Building on last week’s conversation about intention and impact, this episode explores what happens when those don’t align and why repair is essential when hurt occurs, even unintentionally. Through real-life examples, I highlight how disconnection happens and how repair restores safety and connection.

Through an Imago and nervous system-informed lens, we also explore the difference between conflict and rupture. Conflict is inevitable. Rupture occurs when connection no longer feels safe.

Repair is not about blame, being right or wrong, or even changing behavior. The goal is to restore relational safety which helps both partners feel seen, understood, and safe enough to reconnect.

We also begin to unpack why repair can feel so difficult. When the nervous system is activated, partners may move into defensiveness, shutdown, blame, or avoidance, making repair feel unsafe. Rather than a lack of care, this often reflects protection.

At its core, this episode invites a shift: from avoiding conflict to using it as a pathway for growth, connection, and deeper understanding when repair is possible.

In this episode, we explore:

 • Why conflict is inevitable
 • The difference between conflict and rupture
 • Why rupture happens when connection feels unsafe
 • How repair, not the absence of conflict, defines relationship health
 • How delayed repair leads to accumulated hurt
 • What changes when repair becomes quicker and more consistent
 • How intention and impact connect to the need for repair
 • Why repair restores safety, not blame
 • How nervous system responses interfere with repair
 • The role of accountability as a cue of safety
 • Why defensiveness often reflects protection
 • How Imago Dialogue supports repair and reconnection
 • Why repair can begin in the middle of conflict
 • What becomes possible when partners prioritize connection over being right

This episode is part of an ongoing series on rupture and repair. In the next episode, we’ll explore practical ways to repair and what gets in the way when it matters most.

If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat! 

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Transcript

Why Hurt Is Inevitable

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. Healthy, meaningful relationships are not built on the idea that partners will never hurt each other. Any two partners who spend any length of time together will inevitably eventually have some misunderstandings or hurts, even if they're not intentional. What actually shapes the health of a relationship is not the presence of hurt itself, but actually what happens after the hurt occurs. Today we're gonna talk about rupture, repair, and why moments after a conflict may matter much more than the conflict itself. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. About four episodes ago, I began introducing the Imago Intentional Dialogue, which is a communication tool that truly helped transform my relationship with my husband Ben. And in the third episode of what was an introductory trilogy to the Imago Dialogue process, my husband Ben and I did an on-air live demonstration of a complete Imago intentional dialogue. And after that episode, it became clear to me that I wanted to talk about the idea of rupture and repair. And in the last episode, I talked about what I consider to be a very important concept in thinking about rupture and repair in relationship, which is the idea of intention and impact. And how sometimes what someone intends to do may not be a match for the impact that they intended to have or a match to the impact that their partner experienced, which basically means that oftentimes in a relationship, someone doesn't mean to hurt their partner, but yet their partner ends up feeling hurt or scared or frustrated or annoyed or any number of feelings. And as a part of understanding the difference between intention and impact, it's also really important to know that when the intention doesn't match the impact, when your partner ends up hurt, even if you didn't mean to, it's so vital to understand and know what the repair process looks like. And that's what I'll be talking about today and in the next episode as well. What I want to focus on today is the idea that conflict in a relationship might not be such a big problem. But what can be a problem and is also actually the solution is what happens after a conflict. I can tell you from my experience of many years working with people in relationship and couples in my office, as well as my own experience in relationship with my husband. Many people often think that the number of conflicts or the frequency of conflicts in a relationship indicate the health of a relationship or even the intensity of the conflicts. A couple who has explosive fights might consider themselves less healthy than a couple who has smaller, less intense arguments. However, that's not necessarily true at all. What is a far better measure of the health of a relationship is actually how quickly partners are able to make repair after a conflict occurs. Now, I will share in my own relationship with Ben, which is nearing 22 years, for a huge portion of our lives, I would say that our frequency of conflict was extraordinarily high. Our intensity of conflict, I would say, varied. I don't describe us and did not experience us as a couple that was regularly explosive, although we certainly have had moments of explosiveness in our relationship, but the frequency was extremely high. And I used to think that that was the problem, that we had so many frequent conflicts. But what I came to realize over time is that in truth, it wasn't necessarily the frequency of the conflicts, but it was actually how quickly we repaired. And many years ago, we often would not repair for weeks and even months on end. Part of that, I think, is because there were so many conflicts happening that one thing would happen and we wouldn't have enough time to settle down to even make a repair before another conflict happened. And so the hurts would accrue for both of us pretty quickly in a relatively short period of time. But over all of these years, we've shifted so significantly. And I would not say that we're a high conflict couple anymore, but I do still think that we probably have a moderate to sometimes high level of conflict, depending on how well rested we are or how stressful life is going or those kinds of things. But the length of time it takes for us to repair has decreased significantly. And as a matter of fact, for a lot of our conflict, the amount of time it takes to begin a repair might just take a second or two. Like in the middle of a conflict, one of us will say, Hey, wait a second. Uh, this isn't going the way we want it to go. Now that doesn't always happen, but it happens very frequently, I think at this point, I'd have to ask Ben what his opinion is on this or his experience. But for me, I would say we really don't ever go longer than a day at this point without trying to initiate a repair. Sometimes it might take another couple of days before a repair can happen if we want to have a dialogue and we might need to schedule that or something. That has been an enormous shift over the course of our relationship. And it's such an important and meaningful one. And I do think that the fact that we repair more frequently and more quickly has also certainly contributed to less conflicts. But like I said, we both still have conflicts. Ben and I do not in any way have a conflict-free relationship, nor is that really a realistic goal for any couple. Because, again, as I said in the intro, any two people, whether it's intimate romantic partners or friends or colleagues or anything, if you spend enough time together, misunderstandings and hurts are inevitable. And in Imago, we say conflicts are growth trying to happen. So every conflict is actually an opportunity to be able to figure out what the needs are underneath and the ways that you can stretch into being even more of your full self, which is a concept I talk about frequently on the podcast and is truly woven through many of my episodes. Before diving further into today's episode about rupture and repair, I just want to do a little bit of a recap over the real life situations that I had with Ben and then also a situation that was between my son and my daughter that we talked about in the last couple of episodes, just in case you haven't listened to those episodes, so you can follow along and understand, because I'll reference those as I talk about the rupture and repair process. In the last episode about intention and impact, I started off talking about an experience that happened at our breakfast table where my 14-year-old son scooted behind his sister's chair. My daughter is six, and he accidentally pushed the chair in and she ended up hurting her leg because she hit it against the table. And she got upset, and my son said, I didn't mean to, which was reasonable and true. He didn't actually mean to hurt her. And when he said that, it gave me pause because that's a very familiar phrase for me. I've heard Ben say it to me many, many times over our life. And in truth, those words land in my nervous system as a definite cue of danger because I have a lot of frustration in the past of feeling like Ben wasn't connecting the impact he was having on me to his intention. So if he didn't mean to, and yet I still felt hurt, I often experience a big disconnect in many, many of our conflicts in the past. And next, just to share a summary of the experience that Ben and I dialogued about a couple of episodes ago, we had some conflict around me feeling like we needed to record our joint episode on a particular day. And things started to escalate between the two of us because of a lot of different factors that were going on. And he made the decision to leave and go to the office, which it was a work day and he was working from home, but he decided that it made more sense to leave and let things kind of cool down and also go and do his work in a place that wasn't so stressful. And in the process of him leaving, I experienced a deep hurt and felt quite alone because I had felt like he abandoned me by leaving and not recording the podcast with me or not leaving room in the plan for the day to be able to record with me. Meanwhile, for on his side, I had made a comment to him about him not prioritizing the podcast. And that had made him feel very alone and very unseen, given the incredible amount of work he has done on this podcast for the past year. So clearly his effort had communicated the fact that he does, in fact, prioritize the podcast. And that conflict was actually deeply hurtful for both of us, even though neither of us meant to hurt the other. We just weren't communicating in the best way possible. But in that moment, we also both were rather dysregulated. And therefore, the way we communicated was coming from a place of dysregulation. And it wasn't the most relational and it wasn't the most connecting. And that sometimes happens. And like I said before, Ben and I are not a low conflict couple. We just handle our conflicts much, much better at this point. And that's really why I'm sharing these episodes about rupture and repair, because rupture and conflict are usually experienced as uncomfortable, to say the least. Maybe even more than that. A lot of people are scared of conflict and tend to avoid conflict and try to do anything they can so conflict doesn't happen. And other people, unintentionally or intentionally, maybe creating conflict because they're trying to get things resolved and the way they're going about it isn't very helpful. And then there's all the other host of interactions that can happen where conflicts arise between two intimate partners. But the rupture is not the real problem. Again, rupture and conflict are inevitable. Repair is actually what keeps a relationship strong and what helps you measure the health of a relationship. So this idea that conflict is inevitable is so important to really understand because conflict can be so incredibly uncomfortable and what it does to relationships and how it affects the space between two people. And again, this could be any relationship. As I said, I'll reference the relationship between siblings, between my son and my daughter, as well as my own relationship with Ben, my husband. But any two people in any situation come with a variety of unique experiences that shape their perspective. They have their own history and their own nervous systems and their own experiences and expectations. They have their own hurts, they have their own needs. And all of these things contribute to the fact that conflict is something that just can't really be avoided in life. Or at the very least, conflict cannot be completely avoided all the time and still allow for people to have a healthy relationship because that in some way, in some capacity, would mean that people are not showing up with all of their true selves because it's just really not statistically possible for two people to agree on every single thing in every single moment all the time. Just not possible. In thinking about conflict and rupture, it's really important to note that they're not necessarily the same thing. Conflict is inevitable and it can happen probably for most of us many, many times a day in many different situations with many different people that we come in contact with. It just means that there's something that we're bumping up against that doesn't really work for us, that we might see differently, or we might experience it as a frustration or annoyance or a difference of opinion or just a difference in general. We want one thing and somebody else wants something different. That can be a conflict. And thinking of something as easy as I feel like pizza tonight and Ben feels like steak. If you bump up into a conflict and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, like I still feel connected to you. I don't feel threatened by this situation. I don't feel like I have to run hide attack. You might just deal with a conflict, like, oh yeah, it's no big deal. Okay, like I'll have steak tonight. Uh, that's fine. The moment that rupture occurs is actually when the connection is broken or the experience of connection is broken. And it's foundational in Imago theory, supported by quantum physics, we are all connected energetically all the time. And so we actually can't have ruptured connection because everything everywhere is connected all the time. But it's actually our experience. Connection feels like it's ruptured. If it feels like connection is not safe and you have to protect yourself, you have to do something about it, whether that's fight and attack, insult, fix, or run or get away or hide. That's the difference between conflict and rupture. So conflicts do not have to become rupture, but conflicts that threaten connection or the experience of connection is what creates a rupture. And when a rupture happens, a repair is needed. And repair can be really difficult for some people because they don't necessarily know how to repair or even what they're actually repairing. Because when people hear the word repair, many make the jump from the idea of repair to the idea of apology, which is often very closely related to the ideas of accepting fault or blame or being right or wrong, or needing to fix or change a behavior, even if they quote unquote didn't mean to hurt anybody to begin with, and they don't think that they possibly could change a behavior or that the behavior needs to be changed at all. And so if you think about repair and apology or that right or wrongness, that very black or white experience, then there could be what might be described as a resistance to repair and an avoidance of repair. And I will talk more about in the next episode some of the things that can get in the way of truly meaningful repairs. The real goal of repair is not to do any of those things that I mentioned. It's not to accept full fault or blame, to name who was right or wrong in a particular conflict or argument. And there is not necessarily always a behavior change associated with a genuine repair, although there certainly could be. The goal of repair is something so much deeper, and that is to restore the experience of connection. It is to restore relational safety. Repair allows both partners to feel safe enough to reconnect. And this is particularly important because when the nervous system is not feeling safe enough and the cues of danger that one person is experiencing outweigh the cues of safety that they may be experiencing in any given moment, the nervous system sends messages to the brain. And in order for survival, we go into a self-protective mode. And when we're in survival, growth doesn't happen. And this is really important because a lot of the time there can be friction around repair or apology or that idea of right or wrong and blame and fault when it comes to conflicts and arguments in intimate partner relationships. And when we start to move into that blame and fault space, those are usually cues of danger that are experienced by one or both partners. And that could be something that you might be blaming yourself for or saying that it's, oh, it's all my fault. And that creates an internal cue of danger that you're sending to yourself or your partner could be blaming you, or you could be blaming your partner. And those would probably land as external cues of danger from one partner to the other. And the partner who's experiencing these attacks of fault and blame often may end up feeling ashamed and criticized and judged, which tends to perpetuate the cycle of feeling further attacked and more cues of danger, which elicits a greater need for self-protective offensiveness. And these cycles can go on and on and on, making repair really challenging. And it can also start to make someone push back against making a repair or taking responsibility or perhaps saying, I'm sorry, which we'll touch on in the next episode a bit more, because they're trying to protect themselves. It's not necessarily that they don't care about their hurt or the impact. For example, with my son, it was a pretty gentle situation that day. But when my daughter got upset and my son was like, I didn't mean to, it wasn't a very dysregulated moment, but there was this hint of defense, right? Like I didn't mean to, is likely defensive because it's saying, Hey, don't attack me. I'm not to blame. Right. And again, in that particular situation, it was very, very slight dysregulation and things didn't get out of hand. We ended up having a family discussion around it. But in all of the years that Ben and I have had conflicts and where he said he didn't mean to, that was often his way of defending himself because he felt like I was criticizing, blaming, or shaming, or attacking him, which I also didn't mean to do. However, that's also another discrepancy between my intention and the impact that I was having on him. So you can start to see how this dance of dysregulation occurs and how multiple ruptures of connection can start to happen. And people might even resist making repair because going towards that can feel unsafe. And then you might end up getting partners who are attacking one another by insult or by trying to fix things or tell somebody what they did wrong or what they could do better, which I certainly have done many times myself, or one or both partners may experience shutdown or withdrawal or hopelessness. Why bother? Nothing ever gets resolved anyway. And eventually couples can even break up because of this inability to repair. And when that's happening, and one or both partners are really experiencing a survival response, they are just trying to survive through the conflict. They're just trying to get away from it, get through it in whatever way they know how, or whatever way, usually that has worked before in some capacity. This is often connected to our childhood experience, but it might not be as effective in our adult partner relationships. And it doesn't allow us to get to the place where we can restore and repair connection. So knowing that blame and fault can really perpetuate the disconnection and the conflict and the rupture cycles, it's very important then to know what you move towards because many people have a strong sense of wanting to blame their partner or wanting to find fault in a situation, who was right, who was wrong, or what part of what I did was right and what part of what I did was wrong. And to be honest, I tend to not use words like right or wrong or good and bad in describing conflict because they're generally not accurate and they're not usually helpful. But I do use words like accountability and responsibility because those are really important. And in the situation with Ben and I, when he ended up leaving the house that day and we were able to dialogue about that experience, we both had such an incredible sense of accountability and responsibility. There was a moment in the dialogue that we had, you can go back and listen to the episode if you want to, where Ben said that when I had said to him in our conflict that I didn't think he was prioritizing the podcast, it landed for him as a gut punch that it was so painful to hear that when he's given so much of his time and energy and effort to our podcast for over a year that it felt physically painful to him to hear that I didn't think he was prioritizing it. And the second he said that, I had such heaviness in my chest. I was like, oh my goodness, like it felt like my heart was breaking for him because instantly it made sense to me that that would land as hurtful. When I said it to him, I didn't mean to. It was not my intention to hurt him. And so I wasn't seeing it through that lens in the moment of the actual conflict. But as soon as he told me that, I immediately was able to take accountability and responsibility and think, oh my gosh, of course that would land as hurtful to him. And I was able to also share when it was my turn to send in the dialogue. In this particular dialogue, I had already sent first. He already had a better understanding of what was happening for me. And so he did understand that I didn't mean that as hurtful to him, but it didn't change the impact. But me being able to be accountable and say to him, yes, of course it makes sense that you felt that way when I said that because you've given all this time and effort over a year. You obviously prioritize the podcast. And that happens in the validation step of the dialogue process. That was part of our repair. Me being able to validate his experience because I was able to tie what I did to how it landed for him and say, yeah, that makes sense. That's how you felt. And this is a vital part of the repair process. And I will talk about more practical steps of repair in the next episode as well. So if you want to know, well, great, how do I do this? Just stay tuned and listen to next week. But it's important to know that accountability and responsibility can be huge cues of safety in relationship. And safety is something that is co-created. And so when both partners are able to take responsibility and accountability for their impact on the other, even if it didn't match their intention, even if they didn't mean to hurt the other, it starts to create this incredible shift where safety is restored and connection is possible again. And just to reiterate, I've talked about this in the last episode and I will talk about it, I'm sure, again, in the next episode. But when it comes to repair, impact is truly what matters the most. And only the person impacted can say if they felt hurt or scared or alone or whatever they felt. It doesn't matter if the other partner says, I didn't mean to, or that's not what I meant. And I said this last time, it doesn't mean that intention doesn't matter at all. But if somebody is impacted and they experienced a rupture to connection where they felt like they had to protect themselves, then there needs to be a repair process so that both partners can reconnect. And we will talk more about all of that next time. Repair is such an important topic because as I said earlier in the episode, conflict is inevitable. And some conflicts will lead to ruptures. It's just a part of being in relationship. So it doesn't really matter so much if conflict and rupture are happening. They're going to happen eventually. But the important question is what happens after the rupture. So again, tune in next time to hear more about the repair process. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments because I want to thank you for showing up today. And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey. In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown. And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride. And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one. Any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at Trish.sanders.lcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.