Repaired
GuidesStart free

Repairing after a fight with your partner

For one specific fight you both want to move past, without reopening the whole relationship.

A man and a woman sitting at opposite ends of a sofa, not looking at each other

Why this is hard

After a fight with a partner, the next conversation often starts before either of you is calm, and each person spends it defending instead of listening. The original issue gets buried under how the argument went.

How Repaired helps

  1. You each write your side privately: what happened, how you felt, what you needed, and what you had expected.
  2. Neither of you reads the other’s side until you have written your own. Then you read theirs and write back what you heard and your own part in it.
  3. You each write one message to the other. A tone check points out wording that tends to escalate. Neither message is read until both are sent.
  4. You agree on what each of you will do differently, choose when to check in (weekly, every two weeks, or monthly), and pick a pause phrase for next time.
Start a repair, free

What the research says

“A full 69 percent of all marital conflicts never go away.”
The Gottman Institute, citing Dr. John Gottman’s research in The Relationship Cure. The Gottman Institute: Five Relationship Myths
“If your heart rate exceeds 100 beats per minute, you won’t be able to hear what your spouse is trying to tell you no matter how hard you try.”
Dr. John Gottman, who adds that recovering takes twenty minutes or more. The Gottman Institute: Physiological Self-Soothing

When something else fits better

If the conflict involves abuse, threats, or one person controlling the other, a structured exchange is the wrong tool. Repaired shows safety resources before a repair starts. Couples therapy is the better fit for long patterns you want a professional to help with.

Questions

Do we have to be in the same room?
No. Each of you works through your side on your own time, on your own device.
What if my partner reads my side and gets defensive?
By default they cannot read your side until they have written their own, so the first thing each of you does is say your piece, not react to the other.

Where to go next