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Your marriage
What keeps a marriage well is not the big gestures. It is knowing each other, turning towards each other in ordinary moments, staying regulated when it gets hot, and repairing quickly when it goes wrong. Most of the practices here take under five minutes.
Narrowed down
4 practicesTheme · Repair after rupture
How long you have · Twenty minutes
Approach
Name one old hurt with your spouse that still aches, gently and without re-litigating.
When you were not there that day, it marked me. Naming it is not attacking, it is asking to heal.
When your spouse names a wound you caused, listen without defending, even once.
Not I didn't mean to. First: I hear that I hurt you, and I am sorry. Defence can wait.
Where the harm has truly stopped, begin to set down a grievance you have carried.
Not forgetting, releasing. Once the wound is no longer being made, let it start to close.
Revisit a past fight only once you are both calm, from the balcony, without climbing back into it.
Processing means talking about the incident, not re-fighting it. Wait until the heat is gone.