Repair in Relationships: How to Do It (and Why It Can Feel So Hard)

Is saying “I’m sorry” difficult for you or for your partner?

In this episode, we look at why that can be true, even when you care deeply about your relationship and what repair actually requires.

Building on the last two episodes about intention, impact, rupture, and repair, we move more directly into the experience of repair itself. Because while many people understand that repair is important, far fewer understand what they are actually repairing or why it can feel so hard to get there.

Through both personal and professional examples, I explore how moments of disconnection can quickly turn into cycles of defensiveness, blame, shutdown, or avoidance. These responses are often misunderstood as lack of care, when in reality they are nervous system strategies designed to protect.

Through an Imago and nervous system-informed lens, we look at what repair is truly about. Repair is not about proving who is right or wrong, taking full blame, or even immediately changing behavior. The deeper goal of repair is to restore relational safety, to help both partners feel seen, understood, and safe enough to reconnect.

This episode also explores how easily repair becomes tangled with apology, fault, and blame, plus why that creates resistance. When repair feels like losing, being “wrong,” or being judged, it becomes much harder to move toward, even when connection is what we most want.

At its core, this episode is an invitation to understand repair differently, not as a performance or a box to check by saying “sorry,” but as a relational process of restoring safety and connection between two nervous systems.

In this episode, we explore:

• What repair actually means in relationships
•  Why repair is not the same as apology, blame, or being right
•  What we are really repairing when connection feels broken
•  Why repair can feel so difficult, even when we care
• A simple structure for repair (acknowledging impact, offering support, and moving forward)
•  Why acknowledging impact is the foundation of meaningful repair
•  How phrases like “I’m sorry” can help, or hinder, depending on state and intention
• How nervous system activation leads to defensiveness, shutdown, or avoidance
• Why protective responses are often misunderstood as lack of care
• Common ways repair gets blocked, including defensiveness and fear of blame
• Why repair is a two-person process, not a one-sided responsibility
• Practical ways to begin repair, including “redos,” modeling, and reconnecting behaviors
•  How Imago Dialogue supports deeper, more complete repair
• Why repair is about restoring connection, not fixing the problem
• What makes repair feel safe enough to move toward

This episode is part of an ongoing series on rupture and repair. Here, we begin to move from understanding repair to practicing it, exploring what it can look like and how to take a first step, even when it feels hard. 

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

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Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. What happens after a moment of rupture, conflict, argument, or disconnection may very well matter more than the moment itself. In relationship, rupture is inevitable, but it is the repair that may very well determine whether we grow closer together or if we drift further apart. And while many of us care deeply about our partners, what we're repairing and how to repair is not always so clear. For that reason, today we're going to take a look at what repair looks like and why it can sometimes feel so incredibly difficult, even when we're trying so hard to get it quote unquote right. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. In the last episode, I talked about rupture, the moment when the experience of connection can feel broken. I talked about the concept that rupture is absolutely inevitable. When it comes to two different people in any kind of relationship, certainly an intimate partner relationship, but it could be parent, child, or other family member, friend, coworker, neighbor, etc., eventually there's going to be some sort of conflict that emerges. And not all conflicts become rupture, but when a conflict is experienced in a way that creates an emotional threat, that creates an experience of not feeling safe enough for one or both people involved, it could become a rupture because the relationship itself doesn't feel like it's a safe place to be. And so there's some sort of defense or self-protection that comes up. And that is when repair is necessary. And this is such an incredibly important concept because it's not really the number or frequency or intensity of conflicts or ruptures that occur in a relationship that really end up being the best measure for the health of a relationship. It's actually the speed at which partners are able to repair. But knowing that repair is important or helpful in a relationship is not necessarily the same thing as knowing what repair means and how to do it. So today I'm going to cover some concrete repair skills, along with what can sometimes get in the way and what I think is a very important concept that repair is a two-person job. And of course, I'll be focusing on intimate partner relationship repair. But the concepts I'll be covering today certainly can be generalized to other types of relationships. And when it comes to intimate partner relationships, I truly believe that most of us care deeply about our partner and we don't want to hurt them. And certainly, if we do, we want to make repair. But this can be a sensitive and challenging topic for many of us, myself included. And we may still struggle with this practice that is so incredibly important and vital for healthy, lasting relationships. I talked about this a bit in the last episode about the idea of what repair is not and yet what it is often considered to be when you think about repair. First of all, when people think about repair, they often think about something like an apology or saying I'm sorry. And that can elicit an experience of deciding who is right or wrong, or accepting full blame or fault. It might even elicit a feeling of being controlled by one's partner because it seems like an apology means you have to change something in your behavior. And maybe it even comes with the pressure of needing to change it right now. And all of those experiences can really contribute to people not wanting to make repair because it's a very unpleasant experience. And a lot of that feels very one-sided and very black or white, either or. So either I'm the one that's right or I'm the one that's wrong. And people don't want to be the one that's wrong. And that can cause a resistance to repair. But the goal of repair is actually not really to do any of those things, but rather to restore the experience of connection for both partners. Essentially, it means that we want both partners to be able to feel safe enough to move towards one another and be in connection again or to feel safe enough to experience that connection again. This is about creating relational safety because without relational safety, our nervous system is likely to go into a self-protective state, which makes a lot of sense because if the relationship doesn't feel safe enough to be in, then protecting yourself ends up being a biological imperative. And the problem with this, besides that, it doesn't make for a very good or healthy or enjoyable relationship, and it also gets in the way of repairing relationship and restoring closeness and connection, it also is not possible to learn and grow when we're in a survival or protective state. And we want to be able to use the conflicts in relationship for us to be able to grow through, not just for us, but for our partner and for the relationship itself, because we want things to improve and we need relational safety for us to be able to problem solve, learn and grow and stretch into new behaviors and new ways of showing up in our relationships. Now, when I think of repair, I think of what I taught my kids as they were growing up. And I believe a repair has at least three different parts. When teaching my kids about what an apology or a repair looked like, I would tell them that the first step is to acknowledge that the other person is hurt or upset or is having some type of hard feeling. And then the second step is to check if they can help in some way. And the third step often involves thinking about how they can do things differently next time, so as not to repeat the same hurtful behavior in the future. So simply it might sound something like, I see that you're hurt. Is there anything I can do to help make it better? And I'm going to think about what I can do differently next time. And as you hear in that, an official I'm sorry may not even be required in a genuine, meaningful repair. It's certainly possible and it's certainly allowed, but it's in my opinion, not necessarily a requirement, although it can be very important in certain cases and for certain people that might be very important for them. And the receiver of the repair has to feel like it's a helpful repair for them. And so sometimes an I'm sorry, certainly may be an important step in the repair process. But what is most important, at least to me, about thinking about this repair structure is that it does not involve shame. It simply requires truly, genuinely acknowledging your impact. I talked about shame a bit before in the last episode, but shame is really problematic because it is likely to trigger that survival self-protective cycle because shame is a terrible feeling to experience. And if someone feels ashamed of their behavior, they are very likely to protect against that feeling in some way, which could be fighting and saying that they're right or that they didn't do anything wrong, or it could be being avoidant or withdrawn or some other type of self-protective behavior. And again, that doesn't lead towards restoration of the connection. It leads towards creating often more rupture. So for me, the simplest way to think about repair is to think repair begins with acknowledging impact. And again, as I talked about in the last couple of episodes, impact really is what matters the most when we think about relational rupture. So if someone experiences a relational rupture and they say they feel hurt or alone or dismissed or unseen or misunderstood or whatever they might feel, then a rupture has in fact happened, even if the other partner did not intend to create that feeling or did not intend to create that experience for the other partner. Now, again, as I mentioned in the previous couple of episodes, intention does play a part. And sharing one's intention of what you meant when you said that thing or did that thing or didn't say or didn't do that thing can sometimes be helpful. And if the partner who experienced the hurtful or negative impact, the rupture, understands their partner's actual intention, it may very well end up softening their hurt a little bit. And it could certainly support the repair process. But that idea that I talked about a couple of episodes ago, if someone didn't mean to create a hurt, it doesn't mean that there was an impact or that a repair isn't necessary. And this is certainly a place where the Imago intentional dialogue is incredibly helpful and valuable because both partners will get to talk about what their experience was, what their intentions were, as well as how what their partner did or didn't do landed for them. And it really helps develop a clear understanding of what the experience was for each person, but it doesn't negate the impact that one partner has on another. Again, it can sometimes soften it, but it doesn't necessarily erase the impact at all because the impact still happened, even if the intention of the exchange wasn't to harm. And their dialogue process also really helps somebody understand how something landed. And in the dialogue that Ben and I did a few episodes ago, it was very clear to me, and I talked about this before, that when he shared that when I had said something to him that it landed like a gut punch, he felt a visceral experience of hurt inside of his body. I immediately understood clearly my impact on him. And I certainly did not mean to harm him in that way. And in the moment when it happened, I wasn't thinking of my impact on him. I was thinking of his impact on me, which of course is often the case. What I said to him, I didn't mean to hurt him and I didn't realize how painful it would be for him to receive. But when he shared that in the dialogue process, it made complete sense to me. And I was very easily able to take accountability and offer a repair that was very genuine because I really felt heartbroken that I had unintentionally sent him a message that created so much pain for him. And we were able to make a beautiful repair. And again, you can go back and listen to that dialogue process if you're interested in hearing more about it. I also want to touch on something that I did talk about in the last couple of episodes, that I made the statement that the apology, I'm sorry you feel that way, can actually be meaningful and genuine part of a repair. I think that that phrase, I'm sorry you feel that way, can sometimes be received very negatively. And a lot of people say that is not an acceptable apology. And certainly there are instances when that might be true. But the way I see it is that that statement can truly reflect someone's understanding of impact and they can really see that what they did landed as a hurt for someone. And so saying, I'm sorry that you feel that way can be very genuine if it means I can see that what I did hurt you and I care about that. That's important to me. And I understand the connection between my behavior and how you're feeling right now. However, if someone is saying, I'm sorry that you feel that way, and what they really mean is I don't agree with your reaction and I want this to stop. So I'm just saying sorry, then that's not really a repair that would probably be experienced as dismissive and is likely to create further rupture. So it's certainly understandable, but I do think that sometimes that can be almost like a starter repair or a starter apology for some people. If it's hard for them to apologize, it might actually feel safer for someone who can say, okay, I understand I did something that hurt my partner and I'm really sorry they felt that way. That was not my intention. You can start to hear some defensiveness in there if it's more heavily weighted on it wasn't my intention, that's their problem kind of experience. But if you're like, wow, I'm deeply sorry that you feel that way, then it can be truly connected to your own understanding of your impact and it may very well land as a helpful repair. So I think that it's not so much about your words in that particular situation. I think it really is about the state of your nervous system. And if you're feeling safe enough and you're feeling open to offer that kind of repair, then that can come across as something that can be reconnecting. And if your nervous system is in a defensive, self-protective state, then likely that will land as not a very helpful repair for your partner. And the truth is, nervous systems will absolutely know the difference because our nervous systems are always in communication. And the state of our nervous system and our partner's nervous system during a repair is going to inform how the repair feels for both partners and if it's helpful in moving safely towards reconnection. Now I've touched on this already, and just to really clearly spell it out here, that many things can get in the way of repair. And I would say, as a blanket statement, that what gets in the way of repair for people is defensiveness and feeling like someone needs to protect themselves. This has to do with the things I've mentioned before and in previous episodes of not wanting to feel like you've done something wrong or accept all the blame, feeling shamed or criticized, or something that often comes up is the fear that if you take your responsibility in the situation, your partner may say, thanks for taking responsibility, and then not take their own responsibility or not be accountable themselves. And all of these things really can fall under that umbrella of self-protective defensive behaviors. And they're incredibly understandable why we do that, because if repair is something where we experience shame or we think something's wrong with us, then of course we're probably going to try to move away from that experience, which makes sense. So it's really key for both partners and being able to create that environment where repair is possible and that people can show up vulnerably and take accountability and responsibility for their actions in a way that creates more connection and growth and perhaps stretching into even new behaviors or new ways of showing up in relationship that are healthier and really work better for both partners. And I've heard so many times, and I certainly have experienced many times my own relationship with Ben when repairs go into that shame space and one or both partners start attacking the other or explaining or blaming or justifying their behavior, shutting down or withdrawing, that kind of thing. And at that point, our nervous systems are just trying to survive. That's what it means to be in this survival, self-protective, defensive place. We're getting so many cues of danger from all the shame and blame and criticism and all of that, and feeling like we've done something wrong or there's something wrong with us as a human being that we try to push all of that away and we don't want to experience that. And in that process, we're often pushing our partner away as well. While I'm on the topic of defensiveness, I also want to share another way that defensiveness may show up in the repair process. And that is when someone might be in the place where they're demanding an apology. So they're telling their partner something like, You have to apologize, you have to say you're sorry, you owe me an apology, they communicate in some way that a repair can't be made or they can't move forward without hearing I'm sorry or getting an apology or some version of that. And the reason I want to include this here is because this again is a nervous system dance. When somebody is in the place when they're demanding their partner apologize, it is likely an indicator that their nervous system is in that sympathetic fight or flight mode. And there is a reason for this. And probably there is a vulnerable and soft, painful space underneath the demand. And when that underlying hurt, which is so sensitive and tender, feels intolerable, the message that gets communicated from the nervous system to the brain is probably something like the only thing that'll make me feel better is if I hear and I'm sorry. And that is totally understandable to think that it may or may not be totally accurate. But in reality, if someone's nervous system is in a sympathetic state and they are demanding an apology from their partner, the communication that's happening between those nervous systems in that moment is likely to elicit a defensive reaction in the partner. So what I mean by that is even if you're wanting relief and you want to feel better, and so you think that the only way to do that is to get an apology. And so you're telling your partner that they must apologize to you, that is probably going to land and be recognized as a cue of danger for your partner. And then your partner's nervous system, recognizing that as a threat, is most likely to either fight back and then it becomes this argument. Again, the idea of the same defensiveness, the justification, the explaining that I didn't do anything wrong. It's your fault, whatever might come up in that fight response. Or they might walk out of the room or storm out of the room or leave the house, that kind of thing, go for a drive. They might even break up with you, or they might go into a shutdown collapse and withdraw, not respond, or they might mumble out and I'm sorry, but then you might not feel like that that's authentic. And again, more escalation, more defensiveness, more self-protection. So I want you to think about defensiveness on both sides of a possible repair process and to think that if we're feeling defensive, we're defending against something. There's something tender underneath. Probably for both partners, relational repair becomes the absolute goal because that's really the only way that both partners can feel safe enough to move towards reconnecting. And so it might be easy for you to recognize defensiveness in your partner, and it may or may not be as easy to recognize defensiveness in yourself. And again, to really think about it that one or both partners may be acting in a way to protect themselves, but that act may be getting in the way of a real genuine repair that can help both partners feel safe and connected again. And just to share one frequently occurring pattern that Ben and I have had, or at least my experience of the pattern and what has made apologies hard for me, is that I have very much felt like there have been times when I came to Ben with a deeper understanding of my role in a particular situation and offered what I thought was a helpful repair, sort of in the way that I outlined before with my kids, like, hey, I see that I've hurt you and I'd like to help make this better and I really want to do this differently. See my responsibility and my role here. And Ben's response has been appreciative, like, thank you for that. Uh, that means a lot. And then that sometimes felt like a period hard stop after that, which means that he didn't reflect on his own behavior necessarily, or at least I didn't experience or see that self-reflection piece. Maybe it was happening internally for him, but it wasn't always getting conveyed to me. And as a result, there were definitely times when I thought in my head, I'm not going to apologize for this because I don't want to take all the blame myself or get in the way of his process of understanding what his part in this was or what his role in this was. And in truth, that just didn't help things move forward. That didn't help things reconnect. Now it totally made sense why I was experiencing the cues of danger that I was experiencing. And it makes sense why I felt that defensiveness and that need to self-protect. Our nervous systems are not ever wrong, so to speak. The cues of danger and what we're experiencing and the cues of safety, they're real, they're sensory experiences. But how we interpret things is connected to many, many, many things, including our previous experiences and our childhood experiences. And so things might be sort of like mismarked as cues of danger, or we might miss cues of safety. This is a huge concept, actually. Our brain is not really designed to look for cues of safety. Our brain is wired for survival. So we're designed to look for cues of danger. And so when our nervous system experiences this, it's not like we're doing anything wrong at all. Our nervous system is just working the way nervous systems work, and then they send a message up to the brain, and then our brain does exactly what brains do, which is to make an interpretation, and then we react based on that interpretation. The problem here is that the interpretation our brain makes a lot of the time is that our partner has done something wrong, or they don't care, or they never apologize, or the relationship doesn't mean anything, or for myself, that I told myself a story that Ben didn't see his part in a situation or that he didn't do his own work, or I was the one who always had to do my own work and it was an unbalanced relationship, which certainly part of that might have been true at certain times. But when I pulled back and started working really against Ben and feeling defensive against him, it didn't create the space where we could talk about any of this. And it certainly didn't create a sense of relational safety for him, where he actually could step forward and think about his own behavior. And now, fast forward many years, Ben is absolutely and really always has been willing to look at his role in things. That's one of the top things that's kept us together because we both look at ourselves and we both are trying to grow and be the best people that we can be as individuals. And that's something that is important to both of us. That hasn't always happened in our lives, but the reason it hasn't happened is not because of lack of desire on either one of our parts. It's happened because there was rupture and we felt unsafe and we couldn't go into those vulnerable places. So the importance of repair is so significant because it does allow that softness and that vulnerability to start to emerge, to be able to create the environment where connection and accountability and growth is possible, is exactly why this is such a valuable measure in the health of a relationship. And on that idea, and I mentioned this before, but that experience that I had of repair feeling one-sided, it is so important to know that repair is a two-person job or more if there's more people in the relationship or more people involved in the particular hurt. And that doesn't mean that there's equal blame or each person has to say, I'm sorry. That's not what it means when I say that repair involves at least two people. It means that both people are necessary to restore connection in any relationship because both people have to get what they need in order to feel safe enough to move towards one another again. And what each person needs in a situation might be very different. There very well might be some situations where one person is like, that didn't bother me at all. I don't have any hurts about this. That can be linked to someone saying, I don't know why I have to apologize, nothing happened, I didn't do anything wrong, it was no big deal. And that can be very invalidating to a person who might feel hurt. And so if that can shift towards, okay, I can see how I had impact, again, starting with understanding impact. And the other person, once they feel validated in their own experience of feeling hurt, might be able to explore that hurt and say, Oh, actually, I can see that what you did here actually had to do with this other thing. And my hurt comes from a deeper, older place. And if you listen to the dialogue that Ben and I had, we touch on this idea, the hurt that we both experienced. We both ended up feeling alone and unimportant to the other person. And that absolutely connects back to our childhood experience. So it made sense why those were cues of danger for both of us in the conflict that we had. And like I said, if you want to hear more about it, you're welcome to go back and listen to our full demo of the Imago intentional dialogue. And we will continue to do demos of the intentional dialogue so that you can really hear how this process works and what repair looks like without always necessarily having an I'm sorry included. It's also important for both people to have a willingness to reconnect. If there is so much fear about reconnecting into the relationship, then vulnerability, intimacy, closeness is going to be very hard to come by. And certainly Ben and I have been in that situation. It's hard to really put a number on, but for a huge amount of our lives and our relationship of almost 22 years at this point, we both experienced relationship with each other, but in general, as unsafe. We didn't feel safe to move towards relationship. It actually felt scary for both of us to feel that at one point we had safety with each other and thinking, like, no, that can't be real. I know for me, I have an old story that's been running for a long time that I'm not deserving of happiness or good relationships, that I'm incapable of that stuff and undeserving of that. And so the experience that I had with Ben of like, oh, this actually feels like a safe, wonderful, loving relationship I want to be in, when that felt like it was broken or that experience of connection felt ruptured to me, it fell back into my old stories of like, oh, well, this is what I deserve, or this is all I can have. I'm not deserving of more, I'm not capable of more. And that also fueled. More rupture, internal accused of danger for myself and the stories I was telling myself. And that also worked against being able to move back towards relationship. And Ben had his own experience of that on his side. And so not only was it our relationship didn't always feel safe and we weren't always willing to move back towards each other, we also had all of this history that we each brought with us, where it was like, I don't think I want to go back there. Being in relationship is too dangerous and too scary and the risks for harm are too great. And so there's a lot here, and this is not so simple. But I think if you connect with ideas and you start to think, hmm, what does feel accessible to me? What can I do a little bit differently? What is that stretch into taking some accountability without shame? Where can I do something a little bit differently than I've done before? Then you start to have a process and eventually in time, and certainly this has been true for Ben and I, relationships starts to feel like a much safer place and you have more experiences of, oh yes, this is a relationship that feels safe and is safe enough to move towards, even when I feel hurt, because I know that when I come back towards this person and I know this with Ben, if I can get myself back into a regulated state enough to move towards Ben, I have had the experience so many times that I actually will get repair and I will get connection and I will get empathy and I will get understanding and I can give all of that to him as well. And the more we've had that experience, the easier it has been, quite honestly, and of course it makes sense to repair and move towards one another in the middle of a conflict or shortly after a conflict or rupture occurs. So Amago does offer some very helpful practical ideas for repair in addition to what I'm talking about today. And the first is to ask for a redo. And that could either be like you say or do something and you see your partner's face and you're like, ooh, I didn't mean for it to land like that, or you catch yourself and you hear yourself saying something like, ooh, that didn't come out the way I meant. And then you go, hold on, can I redo that? And then you can actually just resay what you just said so that you can present it in a way that more matches your intention. This would be what we consider being conscious in a Mago, making a choice about your behavior. So what you do or say lands with the impact you actually intend for it to have. This is, of course, a wonderful area of growth. With that said, we cannot be conscious and know exactly how everything we do or say is going to land for our partner. You don't need to predict these things. Rupture and conflict is still inevitable. It's going to happen in relationships, but you can see a reduction in conflict and rupture if you think more about what you're saying. And as you get to understand what lands as hurtful for your partner, and as they understand what lands as hurtful for you, then you actually can start to have more and more conscious choices in your behavior and you have experiences more of the time where what you're wanting is a match for what you're doing. You can also model for how you want something to have been said. So this is sort of similar to a redo, but it's really for the person who is hurt who might say, Hey, the language that you use there landed for me in some sort of way. Maybe it's something that my mom says or my dad says or something like that, or just kind of rubs my nervous system the wrong way. Can you try saying this instead? And if the partner's open to it and it's aligned with what their intention was and what they really wanted to communicate, then modeling that in a way that doesn't feel hurtful for you can be really helpful. And that can actually be very useful for your partner to know. Oh, okay, that's how I can say that or do that in a way that lands better for you. I think that that's a valuable thing to know about your partner, how you can communicate in a way that feels good for both of you. You can certainly offer a reconnecting behavior. This is something that might include an apology. It could be a hug, it could be a card, it could be flowers, something like that, something that just says, hey, I'm trying to reach out to let you know that I want to reconnect and repair. And of course, you can always ask for an Imago dialogue. That is an incredibly useful tool. And as I mentioned before, the whole process and structure of the Imago dialogue allows both people to feel heard and feel understood, allows them to be validated in their experience, even when their experiences are completely different. And even if the impact and intention on both sides are not a match, the dialogue allows the space where all of that can be held and not judged or shamed or criticized, but actually that both partners can have a deeper understanding of themselves and of one another, which, in my opinion, that's a win-win all around. So the dialogue is a very helpful repair option. Certainly, it can be an option that takes more time than the other things that I mentioned, but the value of a dialogue is profound. In my experience, both professionally and personally, a truly deep repair that can lead to significant changes for both partners and how they show up, how they behave, how they interact, can really be supported by that process. And I will also add here that if you think of a scale like zero to 10, as far as like a conflict or rupture, people often want to talk about level eight, nine, 10 kind of ruptures in a dialogue, which totally makes sense. But often, number one, those can be very dysregulating and you might not be able to quote unquote get through a complete dialogue right off the bat. It might take some time. But also, if you address things through dialogue that are actually like two, three, four, five level conflicts or ruptures, and you can stay regulated and connected through the dialogue process, they often connect to much deeper unmet needs than you might realize. And the repairs that can come out of the smaller conflict or ruptures can be absolutely huge. So don't think that you only can use dialogue for big things. It can be really worth your time, energy, and effort if you do dialogue about things that might seem like smaller challenges, especially in what I mentioned before, where one person's like, that was no big deal. Having a dialogue about those kind of experiences where you can understand why one person feels like something is no big deal and the other person felt deeply hurt is incredibly valuable and can really help both partners have a much more clear understanding of both intention and impact from both people involved, which again can really lead towards a much deeper and meaningful repair process. So, just to review what could be considered a simple repair structure if you're just getting started with trying to think about repair in a new way and what that could look like or sound like in your relationship. So a repair process might sound something like, I can see that what just happened hurt you or upset you, and I care about how what I do impacts you. And I'd like to slow down so we can figure this out together and find a way to reconnect. Are you open to that? And as you get more information and as it feels genuine and authentically true for you, you can ask questions like, is there anything I can do to help you with this? I can see my part in this, and I'd like to think about how to do this differently next time. And remember, the goal here is not perfection, it's truly just about what you can do to begin taking a movement towards reconnecting. So remember that rupture is absolutely inevitable. But as we say in Imago, conflict is growth trying to happen. So if you can shift your thinking or work with your partner perhaps to help them understand this shift as well, then there is such treasure to be found underneath rupture and conflict. And it's not a shameful experience that you might have done or said something that landed as an ouch, as we say in a mogo as well, or a hurt for your partner. It's a part of just being in relationship. And we don't have to feel bad about that. Uh, you certainly can say, like, oh, I feel bad that that hurt, that kind of thing. You might think to yourself, oh, I feel bad that I hurt my partner in this way. That's not what I ever wanted. But if that's how you feel, then that doesn't need to be attached to shame. It can be like, oh wow, I don't want to hurt my partner in that way. So let me restore connection with them and make a repair, which is a much more helpful next step rather than beating yourself up. Cause again, shame will tend to get people stuck into that self-protective defensiveness cycle. And so beating yourself up actually does not help the repair process at all. Because when you get lost in that cycle, you're not really moving towards connection either. You're often moving more towards isolation. And repair truly is about putting the value on reconnecting. And it is not about blame or winning or being the one who's right or figuring out how to fix everything right away. And as I said earlier, this is not a goal of perfection, especially early on in the process when you're figuring out what repair looks like and feels like for you and your partner and what really works. It could be a messy process and it doesn't always go smoothly. It could be clunky and weird, and sometimes another little rupture might emerge through even the process, and then you might feel like, oh my gosh, I tried to repair and it still didn't work. It's hopeless, or I'm a complete failure. Take a breath in those moments and know that you're trying and that it's okay to try again when you're ready. Because as I said earlier, having conflict is not what makes a relationship unhealthy. Conflict is necessary. It helps us understand what our needs are and where we need to grow. So if you're having an experience where your intention doesn't match your impact, or if you see that perhaps your partner's intention doesn't match their impact, or you don't know what their intention is, but you felt the impact, then there's this beautiful opportunity for repair. And so slowing it down, what happened here? What got hurt? How can we work on this together? How can we both get what we need to feel safe enough to reconnect? Those are the questions that you can be asking yourself and each other that will truly begin in time with practice to lead to a much more helpful outcome. And in closing, rupture alone is usually not what is the most damaging for a relationship. However, the impact of unrepaired ruptures, particularly when they accrue over time, can truly be what harms relationships the most. 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.