How to Repair a Relationship After It’s Been Damaged
Relationship repair is one of the top things I do with couples in my NYC-based sex and relationship coaching practice. But they usually don’t realize that’s what they’re in for when they first reach out to me! A lot of couples reach out because they’ve lost their sexual connection and are looking to get it back. What they don’t realize is that resentment in their romantic relationship is likely one of the main causes of their low sexual desire.
When I tell them that resentment is likely contributing to their relationship difficulties, many of them don’t believe me at first. They say things like, “Oh, we don’t have resentment. We never argue”. But the truth is that every time you have a disagreement or experience emotional pain in your relationship and brush it under the rug instead of repairing it, you’re building resentment. And if you never argue, you’re even more likely to be stuffing down unexpressed emotions, which are a huge source of resentment. Resentment is built over time in every romantic relationship. It’s just a hazard of being with someone for a long period of time. It doesn’t mean you’re in a broken relationship. It doesn’t mean your relationship is toxic or that you shouldn’t be together. It just means that you’re normal, and that society never taught you how to repair a relationship in a way that really works.
Beginning to chip away at built-up resentment through relationship repair is one of my first steps when working with couples who’ve lost their sexual desire. The truth is that repairing a relationship after a rupture (or decades of consecutive ruptures) is possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Relationship repair requires honesty, patience, and conscious effort from both partners. Healing is a process. It’s not a one-and-done conversation or a single apology that repairs a broken relationship. Rather, healing unfolds over time through making consistent choices that rebuild trust and emotional safety. This article explores some key ideas and practices that help couples move from disconnection to reconnection while staying grounded in empathy, emotional intelligence, and self-accountability.
Understanding What “Repair” Really Means
Repair isn’t about pretending the damage never happened or rushing to “get back to normal”. It’s not about blaming or shaming or deciding who was right and who was wrong. It’s not about promising not to do the thing that hurt your partner ever again (because you probably will). And it’s certainly not about apologizing.
I repeat: repair is not about apologizing.
Repair is actually about active listening and sharing vulnerably with your partner, which creates emotional intimacy. It’s about understanding how you’ve hurt each other and how that affects you and the other person emotionally. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions, understanding why you do them, and explaining vulnerably why you do them. It’s about being able to see and take self-accountability for what about yourself makes it challenging to be in relationship with you. And it’s about deciding how to reconnect and best move forward together.
Repair requires emotional maturity: the ability and willingness to take responsibility for your own actions, empathize with your partner’s emotional pain, and show up consistently as you both heal.
Recognizing When a Relationship Is in Need of Repair
Everyone experiences relationship issues from time to time. But when emotional pain lingers, communication shuts down, or trust erodes, deeper repair work is needed. If you’re experiencing emotional distance, frequent misunderstandings, defensiveness, or avoidance in your romantic relationship, it’s time to address your relationship difficulties head-on. I know it seems easier to just keep the peace and hope it will all go away, but I can assure you that it won’t. Instead, you’ll just continue to pile on resentment until you get to the point where you don’t even want to touch each other or look at each other.
By naming the distance you’re feeling between you, you’re opening the door to relationship repair and emotional healing. You’re sending the message to your partner that you’re not ready to give up yet. You’re opening space for honesty instead of denial. And the sooner you start to open the discussion, the sooner you’ll be able to start rebuilding trust and moving forward.
Rebuilding Trust Through Consistency
Rebuilding trust is about the little things. It’s not about performing one grand gesture that magically makes everything right. Rather, trust is rebuilt slowly through reliability, follow-through, and a felt sense of emotional safety. Rebuilding trust is about keeping your word, showing up when you say you will, and being transparent about your intentions. When your partner begins to see that your actions align with your words, those positive feelings of emotional safety can return, and reconnection becomes possible.
However, I want to reiterate the importance of not making empty promises to your partner, as this erodes trust even more, rather than rebuilding it. If you promise your partner that you’ll never be late to a date ever again, and then inevitably you are, the emotional pain this causes them will be amplified because you promised. You’re much better off taking self-accountability for why you’re always late and explaining to your partner that this makes it challenging to be in a romantic relationship with you. You can take responsibility for your hurtful habits and acknowledge the emotional pain it causes your partner without making empty promises to never do it again.
When your partner knows they can trust you to be honest about your flaws and take responsibility for them, they can begin to accept the things that are challenging about you rather than trying to change them. When partners can begin to have empathy for the parts of their partner that aren’t perfect, this creates emotional intimacy, which in turn creates emotional safety. And when human relationships are grounded in emotional safety, trust is soon to follow.
The Role of Honest Communication
Communication during repair should focus less on who’s right and more on how each partner feels emotionally. I know it’s extremely tempting to try to get your partner to understand why you did the thing. You really want to justify your decisions and make them see that you were in the right. We all loooove being right (am I right??). Myself included. But I’ve seen countless couples in my office get bogged down in the logistics and facts of what happened, and it gets them nowhere. Moreover, it keeps you in your brain and out of your heart. When you’re focused on the facts rather than the feelings, you’re driving a larger wedge between you rather than focusing on getting closer.
When having a repair conversation, it’s really important to avoid blaming and shaming the other person. This just creates defensiveness and blocks the healing process. Instead, focus on staying in the present moment, sharing your emotional pain vulnerably, and using “I” statements. While your partner is sharing vulnerably, you can practice active listening. This doesn’t mean just parroting back exactly what they said. It’s about letting them know how you’re hearing and understanding their feelings and asking if you’re getting it right.
It can be extremely challenging to listen to someone tell you how your actions hurt them, but please make a conscious effort to stay open and curious rather than getting reactive or defensive. Remember that intimacy is the prize, and you’re making huge strides in rebuilding trust and emotional intimacy by making your partner feel seen and heard in their emotions.
Self-Reflection and Taking Responsibility
Taking responsibility for the things that make you a challenging person to be with is a huge piece of the repair process. In order to reach that level self-accountability, you need to make a conscious effort to go within and examine all parts of yourself. Start by identifying and reflecting upon the patterns you easily fall into in human relationships, and the ways you may withdraw, criticize, or shut down emotionally. These are just protective strategies that your inner child adopted long ago in order to keep you safe. Emotional intelligence is about being able to identify these protective patterns and see these inner child parts with love and empathy. Being able to share these tender inner child parts with your partner is a huge step towards deep emotional intimacy and relationship repair.
Owning your (and your inner child’s) part in the relationship dynamic shows emotional self-accountability. It encourages your partner to take responsibility for their part in your relationship issues too. Remember that taking responsibility is not about blaming yourself, your partner, or your inner child. It’s an act of love and integrity that helps keep the repair process grounded and balanced.
When taking responsibility for your protective patterns, keep it generic yet true. Point to something that is generally challenging about being in relationship with you. This should be a pattern you play out regularly that’s related to what your partner is upset about. Let’s say you’re having a repair conversation about how your partner gets hurt and fears abandonment when you don’t text back quickly enough. Here’s an example of how you could take responsibility from a vulnerable place in that situation:
“I really hear how me not texting back quickly enough would be scary for you, and that you may be afraid that I’m leaving you. That makes a lot of sense. When I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of autonomy. I know one thing that’s hard about me in relationships is that I often feel like my freedom is being encroached upon. So I’ll often opt for doing things in my own time so that I feel like I’m preserving my freedom and not being rushed.”
As you can see, you’re not apologizing or promising never to do it again. You’re also not getting defensive or pulling out your phone to prove that one time when you texted back right away. Instead, you’re sharing vulnerably about your own challenges and your past, while also validating the other person’s feelings.
Practicing Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
Feeling empathy means sharing in someone else’s emotional pain. It’s different than sympathy. Sympathy is the sentiment of, “I’m really sorry you’re going through that”. There’s a level of distance with sympathy, where you’re feeling for someone rather than with them. Empathy is feeling the pain along with someone. It’s making a conscious effort to step into their shoes and see if you can feel how they feel.
Being able to actually embody empathy requires a great deal of emotional intelligence and presence. It can also be quite uncomfortable. But when your partner feels empathy from you, they will feel less alone in their emotional pain. Empathizing with someone is a great way to bridge any distance you may be feeling between you. It’s the energy of, “Hey, I’m not just watching you feel things from a distance. I’m in the trenches with you, and you’re not alone”. It makes a massive difference in cultivating emotional safety in human relationships.
Feeling empathy for your partner’s emotional pain also allows you to sit with them without getting defensive or trying to fix it. Having the emotional intelligence to hold space for your partner when they’re having big feelings rather than rushing to fix it is a massive step towards repair. Emotional intelligence also allows you to pause before reacting, regulate your own emotions, and stay grounded in empathy even when conversations get emotionally challenging.
Seeking Support When Needed
Sometimes all the patterns at play between two people become too complex to navigate alone. Couples therapy or couples coaching can help identify blind spots, communication barriers, and unhealed emotional pain. An intimacy coach or family therapist provides a neutral, supportive space to practice new ways of relating and to learn how to rebuild trust from a place of respect, not resentment.
As a certified Somatica® sex and relationship coach, the techniques I use with my clients draw from evidence-based repair frameworks such as Somatica Institute’s 9 Steps to Successful Relationship Repair.
While I adapt these ideas in my own coaching practice, every repair process with every couple is unique. It can be extremely helpful for your unique relationship to have an expert guiding you through a repair process tailored to your specific emotional needs, inner child wounds, and relationship goals. If you’re interested in exploring my personalized relationship repair process, book a free call to experience how it works in real time.
Choosing to Move Forward – Together or Apart
Not every repair process leads back to the same relationship, and that’s okay. Sometimes healing means redefining what your partnership looks like, or recognizing when letting go is the healthiest option. Whether you end up staying together or parting ways, you can take solace in knowing that you showed up to the repair process with honesty, empathy, and respect for yourself and your partner. If things don’t work out in the long run, you can rest easy knowing that you did everything you could.
Making a Conscious Effort to Improve Your Relationship
Repairing a damaged relationship is less about perfection and more about presence. It’s about two people choosing to meet each other in the truth of what’s happened, and still deciding to care, listen, and grow together. Every small act of repair is proof that connection can be rebuilt when both hearts remain open. Healing takes time, and sometimes it begins with asking for professional help. If you’re ready to rebuild your connection and move forward together, book a free call to discuss relationship coaching today!
