Have you ever been in a situation where you just didn’t feel ready to make up with your partner after an argument? Here are some all-too-common mistakes I’ve seen many couples make, and some tips you can incorporate instead.
About the Authors
Tina and Michael LeBlanc have been happily married since 2003, are parents to two teenage boys, and have over 20 years of combined experience as Licensed Counselling Therapists. Being experts in the Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) model and using it to help couples in their work, Tina and Michael drew from the EFT model to create a list of 10 Habits of Happy Couples. In this series of articles, they take you on a comprehensive walk through the 10 Habits, and with each, they give you an overview followed by specific tips you and your partner can use in your daily life.
I’m writing today with an important topic for ALL couples: Preparing for ‘making-up’ ☺
Maybe you can relate to this story…
A couple of weeks ago, my husband (Michael) and I got into a pretty heated argument over something I can’t even remember now, to be honest.
(This is a good sign by the way… If you don’t remember, it probably means there’s nothing hanging in resentment from it. We ‘made-up’ properly in the end :)!
Shortly after this ‘fight’, he came to me ready to make amends and reconnect, which he is usually pretty good at initiating.
Unfortunately I WASN’T READY to ‘kiss-and-make-up’’. I honestly was still mad at him!
Has that ever happened to you? I can’t be the only one that has a hard time coming down from anger right…
Anger is not a feeling that I like to feel and it takes some work on my part to be able to calm enough to have the important REPAIR conversation with Michael after an argument.
So what did I do? I told him just what I was feeling… that I was still too angry and needed to work on calming down first. Which is what I did.
This is so important to be able to do this folks.
A common mistake that couples make is to enter the ‘make-up’ conversation while they are still too emotionally worked up!
It doesn’t work! It will likely just escalate you back into what you were fighting for in the first place.
This ended up being the topic of last week’s Live Q&A session we hold monthly for the couples who took relationship trainings from us. And it turns out it was very needed!
Here are some lessons you need to know about repair:
LESSON 1: ANY argument, no matter how small, needs to be addressed. If ignored, resentment builds because one partner (or both) will feel dismissed, hurt and will feel unimportant.
So there is no such thing as ‘kissing and making-up’ without ACKNOWLEDGING the feelings that were underneath the argument.
Sometimes the conversation is a quick 20 seconds if it’s a small misunderstanding, but other times it needs to be a complete process of hearing each other out, acknowledging the pain that was caused and offering healing through discussing how to prevent this in the future.
LESSON 2: It’s your responsibility to find ways to CALM and ground before you engage in further conversations around repair and ‘making-up’.
We could write a whole blog on this topic (and we probably will at some point! Lol!), but basically use whatever technique helps you ground yourself back into your love for your partner.
This means that you need to have an outlet for the anger (usually physical or creative), to then make room for positive affirmations that will make you WANT to engage in a conversation with your partner again.
Saying things to yourself like: ‘this is ok, we are just stressed’; ‘it’s only an argument, we will be ok’; ‘we can figure this out once we try again when we are calm’; ‘we love each other too much to let this argument ruin things’.
LESSON 3: Calming down is not enough… You need to PREPARE for a productive conversation.
How do you do that? Again the content for a full blog post! I need to write down all these blog ideas ☺
But seriously…
Preparing means that you have to tune into yourself and what happened in the argument. You need to ask yourself these questions BEFORE you go in for the conversation:
Can you see here how important this preparation is?
TRUE repair happens when BOTH of you go in ready to take ownership of your part and aren’t going into the conversation in defense mode, ready to convince your partner of how much they hurt you…
If you need help learning how to do this get our Digital Training for couples: Taking Charge of Your Relationship.
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