Call them Maya and Chris. Eleven minutes into a fight about his mother's visit, Chris said, in a voice he tried to make funny, “Okay, can we rewind to the part before I was an idiot?” It was not a good joke. It was, technically, a surrender. And Maya, who was still angry and had three more points to make, had a choice in that half second that mattered more than any of the points.
What a repair attempt is
Any move, mid-fight, that says I'm still here and I don't want to lose you over this. John Gottman's lab, which filmed thousands of couples arguing and then followed them for years, found that the couples who stayed together didn’t fight less or fight nicer. They repaired. Somebody made a bid to lower the temperature, and the other person let it work. The couples who split made the same bids. Their partners didn’t take them.
Repair attempts are usually clumsy. A dumb joke. A hand on the arm. “Wait, I'm not saying it right.” “Can we start over?” Getting up to make tea. They’re clumsy because the person making them is flooded and is reaching with whatever they have. That’s what makes them easy to miss, and easy to swat.
Why the first one matters most
Because the second one is harder to make. Chris offered a clumsy hand. If Maya slaps it away (“Oh, so now it's funny?”), Chris has learned something about reaching, and next time he will reach later, or not at all. Couples who have been fighting for years often have no repair attempts left in them. Not because they stopped caring. Because every one they ever made got refused, and people stop doing things that don't work.
How to take one
You don’t have to stop being angry. You don’t have to agree. You only have to let the temperature drop. Maya, still with three points to make, said, “You were kind of an idiot. Rewind.” That is taking the hand while keeping your position. The fight went on for another ten minutes, but at a temperature where both of them could think, and the three points got made and, for once, heard.
The trick is to notice the attempt as an attempt. In the moment it will look like your partner changing the subject, making light of your feelings, or trying to get out of the conversation. Ask yourself one question: is this a hand, or a door? Most are hands.
How to make one
Say what you’re doing. The clumsiest repair works better with a label: “I'm trying to pull us out of this, badly.” Physical repairs land even when words fail: sit down next to them instead of across, put a hand out palm up. And the most reliable one in the language, when you can bear to say it: “You're right about that part.” Not the whole thing. That part. It costs almost nothing and it changes the room.
The fight that has no repairs left
If you read this and can’t picture either of you reaching, or can only picture the reach being refused, the fight isn’t the problem and technique won’t fix it. Something underneath has hardened, and a couples therapist's first job is to find it and soften it enough that a hand can be offered again. Read The same fight, again for what that underneath usually is.