Summary
Helpful tools for overcoming disconnection, arguments, and a lack of emotional safety in your relationship
Lesson notes
When rupture hasn’t been repaired, it creates disconnection. This makes it harder for love and eros to flow, and connected sex is much harder to achieve.
Often, arguments are not just about what you are arguing about – they are about the underlying emotional tension in the relationship. Typically this relates to not feeling seen or loved by our partner, that our boundaries have somehow been crossed or that our needs have not been met by the other person.
Rupture is greatly intensified when one or both of us feel unsafe and our defenses come online (typically fight, flight, fawn, or freeze). The work of reducing rupture and creating repair is building safety in each of your nervous systems so that you can listen more clearly to one another without your defenses coming online. When we don’t feel safe, our capacity for empathy greatly decreases and it becomes all about “ME”.
Work to understand what makes you feel unsafe in your body and in your relationship so that you can address it head-on. This creates that space for deeper listening and understand of the other person’s needs and boundaries, and giving us the deeper capacity to support us in processing emotional tension rather than being overtaken by it.
Your breath is your #1 tool for creating calm and safety in your body, and for processing emotions. Talk to your partner about how you can introduce regulation into challenging conversations and moments – make a plan ahead of time so you can intercept rupture before it blows up.
The better you get at taking ownership of what we did to create the hurt and addressing what both you and your partner need, the more effective repair will be. You can learn to do this in a supportive way with the framework of non-violent communication - check out the links below for more on how to do this.
A powerful phrase to use together:
“Here’s what I experienced in that moment. Can you share what that was like for you?”
This helps you understand what you each heard and felt in a moment of rupture, as you each might have had a totally different experience. Knowing what it was like for the other person helps give you a deeper sense of empathy and understanding about why they reacted or responded the way they did.
Similarly, you can use the tool of active listening – paraphrase what you hear them say, in their own words, and ask if that’s what they meant. This helps ensure you are on the same page and not misinterpreting one another.
Ultimately, the goal of repair is to create safety so that you can each express your needs and be heard in them, then help each other meet them.
Discussion Questions
Questions to write, reflect on, and discuss together:
- In what ways do I create or intensity rupture in my relationship? What can I take responsibility or ownership for?
- Are there old ruptures in my relationship that feel unresolved? Are there things from the past that keep coming up, or that we haven’t healed?
- Are there needs or boundaries that I wish my partner would better meet me in?
- How well do I listen to my partner in arguments and repair conversations? How could I improve? (Ask her)