Tearing & Repairing Your Relationship Quilt

I like to think of a relationship between two people, whether it’s friends, romantic, family, colleagues starting out as a big, plain piece of fabric. And as the relationship between the two people goes along, there are inevitably emotional injuries that occur — someone activates a trigger, someone lashes out or someone disregards the other’s feelings. There are so many versions of these ‘hurtful moments.’ The way I imagine the emotional injury is that the person who causes the pain, rips the fabric — it may be a small rip or a large tear depending on what happened.

The most important part is what comes next. 

• Does the person who tore the fabric lead the effort to repair it? 

• Do they grab some bright colored thread and consciously and thoroughly repair the fabric? 

• Do they just say ‘I’m sorry’ and expect the other person to move on?

• Do they disregard the tear completely and act like it didn't happen? 

The effort to repair must equal the size of the tear. 

And, in my experience, a tear without a repair can lead to resentment in relationships. 

Just bypassing the tear and ‘getting over it’ leaves a gaping hole.

The way this has looked in my life:

My husband and I were at a weekend event, and we were packing up on the last day. I was exhausted from all of the fun adventures and socializing. My husband was asking me questions, and I kept snapping answers back - just kind of being a dick. I call that ‘random dagger syndrome,’ when someone throws negativity as a result of internal unresolved issues at someone when they didn’t do anything.

I quickly noticed my shitty behavior and paused.

Step 1: I take responsibility for the tear: ‘I apologize for being so short with you when you’re trying to help. I take responsibility for those comments. I take responsibility for being a dick. It has nothing to do with you.’

Step 2: I then grab the metaphorical 'thread' and ask, ‘What can I do to repair?’

He paused and thanked me for taking responsibility for my behavior. He then asked me to figure out why I was being so short and to figure out what I needed to better take care of myself.

Step 3: I start sewing up the tear: ‘I commit to doing the work to figure out why I said that - to find out if there’s any underlying anger, fear or resentments.’ 

I then proceeded to do some anger work and realized that my inner child was exhausted because I didn’t take good enough care of myself the night prior and put other people’s needs ahead of her. 

My inner child was pissed and needed a juice box, a snack and a nap. 

Step 4: I let him know that I really just need gentleness and some alone time to recover and a nap when we got home.

Now, if this was a big tear, the repair may look like one person requesting that the other person pauses each day to give them a hug and say out loud that they take responsibility for their actions and commit to do better. 

Every request is different.

As the relationship goes on, the plain fabric either becomes a gorgeous tapestry of different colors of thread and ribbon or a tattered hot mess. The fabric that has been thoughtfully repaired over and over can keep you both warm and then the other is just shreds of material with you both in the cold.

I’d love to hear how tears and repairs have shown up in your relationship.

- Kristin

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