How to Repair After a Fight: A Step-by-Step Conflict Recovery Guide for Couples

The single most-cited finding in couples research is John Gottman’s observation that it isn’t whether couples fight that predicts whether they stay together but how they repair afterwards (Gottman & Levenson, 1992). It can be learned and the protocol, what to do in the next twenty minutes, the next twenty-four hours, and the next month, is mapped in clinical detail by forty years of research.

This guide is the chronological version. It starts the moment a conversation crosses from disagreement into something hotter, walks through what to do during the fight, after the fight, and the harder work of breaking the patterns that keep returning. This one is about what happens when the communication has already gone wrong.

Repair is a research-supported framework for couples in healthy disagreement. It is not the right framework for relationships involving physical danger, coercive control, or abuse. The disclaimer banner above this article lists crisis resources for the US, UK, and Canada. If your fights involve threats or someone feels unsafe, the protocols below are not what you need; those resources are.

Phase 1: During the fight — Recognise flooding

The Gottmans found that most couple conversations don’t go off the rails because of what’s said. They go off the rails because one or both partners hit a physiological threshold and stop being able to listen, think, or repair (Gottman, 1994). This is called flooding, and it has measurable signs.

Heart rate rises above 100 beats per minute. Breathing shortens. The face flushes. Cognition narrows — the partner can suddenly only think about what they’re going to say next, can’t hear nuance, can’t access compassion. The technical name is sympathetic nervous system activation. The colloquial name is “I’m seeing red.”

Most arguments worsen because partners try to keep talking past this point. The research is unambiguous: nothing productive happens after either partner is flooded. The brain regions that would let you negotiate are functionally offline (Tatkin, 2012).

The skill is noticing it in yourself first, since you can’t read your partner’s nervous system. The signs:

• A sudden inability to remember what your partner just said
• Tightness in the chest, shoulders pulling up
• An overwhelming urge to either escalate or shut down
• Thoughts that are absolute (“they never…”, “this is hopeless”)
• The sense that you’re “winning” or “losing” rather than working anything out

When you notice this, the conversation is over for now. The deep-dive on physiological flooding walks through the body cues in more detail; the de-escalation scripts cover what to actually say in the moment.

Phase 2: Calling a time-out properly

Most couples have heard “take a time-out.” Most do it wrong, in ways that make it worse than continuing the fight. A time-out done badly looks like abandonment (“I’m done with this”) or stonewalling (silent withdrawal with no return time). A time-out done well is a protocol — short, repeatable, and unmistakable in form.

The four-step time-out protocol

Step 1 — When to call it. Call the time-out the moment you notice flooding in yourself: the racing heart, the narrowing thoughts, the urge to either escalate or shut down. Don’t wait for your partner to notice. Don’t wait until you’ve “made your point.” Tatkin’s work on physiological flooding is unambiguous on this — once the threshold is crossed, every additional minute of conversation deepens the rupture rather than resolving it (Tatkin, 2012). Earlier is always better than later. If you only realise mid-sentence, stop mid-sentence.

Step 2 — What to say. Name the state, not the partner. “I’m getting flooded and I won’t be useful for the next twenty minutes.” Not “I can’t deal with you right now.” Then specify the return — not “we’ll talk later,” but a concrete time: “Let’s pick this up at 8pm” or “I’ll come back in thirty minutes.” The Gottmans recommend a minimum of twenty minutes for the nervous system to return to baseline (Gottman, 1999). Longer is fine; shorter doesn’t work. The body genuinely needs that long. Wile’s clinical work on post-fight conversations makes the same point from a different angle: the structure of the pause is part of what makes the return possible (Wile, 1993).

Step 3 — What to do during. Separate physically. Different rooms are enough; a walk around the block is better. Do not draft your next argument. Do not text a friend the worst things your partner said. Do not scroll. The third phase below covers the somatic detail of what self-soothing actually looks like, but the headline is: the break is for the body, not the case.

Step 4 — How to re-enter. Return at the time you named. Don’t blow past it; don’t come back early. The opening line matters more than couples realise. Try something neutral that names the relationship, not the fight. “I’m back. Can we try again?” works. If either of you is still flooded on return, name that and extend by another twenty minutes. Two pauses are better than re-entering hot.

Make the time-out unilateral, not negotiated. You don’t need permission. You can declare a time-out at any point. If your partner objects, the script is: “I love you. I’m too flooded to do this well. I’ll be back at [time].” Then leave the room. The deep dive covers the distinction between this and stonewalling, and the difference is the return.

If you are the partner being time-outed, it can feel harsh, but do not chase. Resist the urge to follow them, send a text, or extend the conversation through the door. The time-out fails if it becomes the next argument. Sit with the discomfort. The deep dive on stonewalling vs. silent treatment covers the receiving end of this in detail.

Sam and Jordan, a same-gender couple two years into living together, had a recurring fight that started over scheduling and always ended in the same place: Sam shutting down, and Jordan escalating to fill the silence. The first time Sam tried the protocol, mid-fight, the words came out clumsily: “I’m going to the bedroom for twenty minutes. I’m not leaving the conversation. I’ll be back at 9:15.” Jordan, who reads silence as rejection because of an earlier relationship, almost followed. Instead, they sat on the couch, set a timer, and waited. Sam came back at 9:15 with: “Okay. I’m calmer. Can we start again?” It wasn’t elegant. It worked. The protocol doesn’t need to be smooth the first time; it needs to be unmistakable. The concrete return time is what tells the partner left behind that this is a pause, not an exit.

Phase 3: Self-soothing — what to do during the break

The point of the twenty minutes is for your nervous system to come down, not for you to rehearse your argument. Most couples spend the break doing exactly the wrong thing: going over the fight in their heads, drafting better comebacks, accumulating resentment. By the time they reconvene, they’re back at baseline-plus, not baseline.

What actually works (and the research is specific here): physical activity that doesn’t lend itself to rumination. A walk is the most-tested option. Vigorous exercise. A shower. Tatkin’s research adds physical self-soothing techniques like hand on chest, slow exhale, conscious downregulation of the breath (Tatkin, 2012).

Sue Johnson’s EFT research recommends what she calls “anchoring” — finding one stable image or sense that pulls you out of the conflict loop (Johnson, 2008).

What doesn’t work: phones (the news, social media, and group chats all keep the nervous system activated), alcohol (interferes with the prefrontal cortex’s return to function), and rehearsing the argument with a friend (often increases the negative sentiment override). The deep-dive on Repair After Emotional Flooding covers the somatic protocol in detail.

Phase 4: The repair conversation

This is the core of the pillar, and it deserves the most attention. The protocol comes from Gottman’s Aftermath of a Fight framework, which is one of the most-tested couple interventions in the literature (Gottman, 1999). It has five steps, and they go in order.

Step 1: Each partner describes their subjective experience without challenging the other’s

This is the step most couples skip, and it’s the one the framework rests on. Each partner takes a turn describing what they felt during the fight instead of what happened — not what was said, but what it was like to be them. The listener’s only job is to receive it. No “but I didn’t…”, no “actually what happened was…”. The listener might disagree with every sentence. That’s fine. The exercise is to hear it.

Gottman calls this honouring two subjective realities. Most couples’ fights stall because each partner is trying to convince the other that their version of events is the right one. The Aftermath framework concedes upfront that both versions are real to the person experiencing them, and both deserve to be spoken.

Worked example. A partner who came home and snapped at the other might describe their experience as: “I felt like I was carrying so much from work, and when I walked in and the kitchen wasn’t done, I just felt invisible, like nothing I do registers.” The other partner’s experience: “When you snapped at me about the kitchen, I felt humiliated. I’d been planning to clean it after dinner. It felt like nothing I do is good enough.” Both are real. Neither cancels the other.

Step 2: Each partner shares what they were triggered by

The trigger isn’t usually what happened in this fight. It’s a deeper pattern from earlier in the relationship, or from before the relationship. “When you said I never help, what got triggered was the feeling I had growing up that I was never enough for my mother.” Naming the trigger isn’t an excuse; it’s information that helps the partner understand what they’re up against.

This step is where therapy-level work most often happens, and it’s also where couples without a therapist most often hit a wall. If you find yourself unable to name your triggers, that’s a useful signal — it might be that this is the conversation that warrants a session with a professional. The Twogle Check-In is one option; ongoing therapy is another. The deep-dive on Couples Conflict Style Quiz helps couples identify their recurring trigger pattern.

Step 3: Each partner takes responsibility for what they own

Take responsibility for the specific behaviours in this fight, not for what the partner felt. Reflect on what you could have done differently.

“I shouldn’t have snapped. I was tired, but that doesn’t make it okay to take it out on you.” is specific and real, unlike “I’m sorry you felt that way.”

The Gottman research found that the form of the apology matters enormously. Apologies that are conditional (“I’m sorry if you felt…”), apologies that include a counter-attack (“I’m sorry I yelled, but you also…”), or apologies that are pre-emptive (“I knew this would happen, I’m sorry”) don’t function as repair (Fincham, Beach & Davila, 2004). Apologies that are specific, unqualified, and stand alone do. The deep-dive on sincere apologies walks through the anatomy in depth; the short version is below.

Anatomy of a sincere apology

Fincham, Beach and Davila’s 2004 work on forgiveness and conflict resolution isolated the components that actually move a partner from hurt toward repair. An apology that misses any one of these tends to land as performance rather than reckoning. A sincere apology has five parts, and they go in roughly this order.

1. Acknowledgement of specific harm. Not “I’m sorry for what happened” but “I’m sorry I cut you off in front of your sister.” The hurt partner needs to hear that you understand the exact thing you did. Vague apologies signal that you haven’t actually thought about it from their side.

2. Taking responsibility without “but…”. The word “but” cancels everything that came before it. “I’m sorry I snapped, but you also…” is not an apology. It’s a counter-attack with a softer opening. If there’s something your partner did that you also want to raise, raise it separately, after the apology has landed. The apology stands alone or it doesn’t stand at all (Fincham, Beach & Davila, 2004).

3. Expressing regret, not just registering the fact. Tone carries this. “I regret that I did that” lands differently from “I shouldn’t have done that.” The first names a feeling about the harm; the second is a procedural acknowledgement. Both might be true, but only the first communicates that you wish you had behaved differently. Wile’s clinical observation is that the partner receiving the apology is reading for whether you actually mind what you did (Wile, 1993).

4. Offering repair. Not a promise to “do better” — something concrete. “I’m going to call your sister tomorrow and tell her I was out of line.” Or, if no external repair is possible: “I’m going to pay closer attention when I’m tired around your family, and that’s when I get sharp.” The offer demonstrates that you’ve moved past regret and into action.

5. Asking what would help. The most-overlooked step. “Is there anything I can do that would help right now?” Your partner may say nothing; they may say “just sit with me for a minute”; they may say something you don’t expect. The question matters even if the answer is small, because it cedes some of the responsibility to them. Apologies imposed unilaterally rarely feel complete to the person receiving them.

Two failure modes to watch for. The first is the flood-apology, where one partner — usually the one who feels worse — apologises for everything, including things they didn’t do, just to make the discomfort stop. This isn’t repair; it’s surrender, and it tends to corrode the apologiser over time. The second is the strategic apology — the apology offered to end the conversation rather than acknowledge the harm. Both partners can usually feel the difference, even when they pretend not to.

Priya and Alex, a queer couple in their thirties, fought after Alex made a joke at a dinner party about Priya’s spending. Priya was quiet the whole drive home. The next day, Alex tried: “I’m sorry I made that joke at dinner — I could see your face change, and I kept going anyway. There was no good reason for it. I’m going to be more careful about money jokes in front of other people, because I know that’s a sore spot with your family. Is there anything I can do right now that would help?” Priya didn’t have an immediate answer, but said later that the apology had landed because it named the specific moment, the specific harm, and didn’t try to be clever. The apology that hadn’t worked, two months earlier in a different fight, had been: “I’m sorry you felt embarrassed.” Same words, almost, but a different sentence.

Step 4: Each partner identifies one thing the other could do differently next time

Not a list. Just one specific thing that is behaviourally describable. “Next time you’re stressed from work, could you tell me before walking in? Even a text saying ‘rough day, need a minute’ would help me not take the snap personally.” The receiving partner doesn’t have to agree to it, but hearing it is itself part of the repair.

Step 5: A small acknowledgement of the connection between you

The Gottmans recommend ending the conversation with a small gesture toward the relationship. “I love you. I’m glad we did this even though it was hard.” A touch. A pause. Whatever is honest. The point is to mark the transition out of the fight and back into the relationship.

The full protocol takes thirty to ninety minutes the first few times, less as it becomes practiced. The deep dive on the Aftermath of a Fight worksheet walks through the most common ways couples get stuck inside the five steps and what to do.

Phase 5: Rebuilding connection, the next 24 hours

The Gottman research is clear that the small bids for connection in the day following a fight are more predictive of long-term recovery than the depth of the apology itself (Driver & Gottman, 2004). A touch on the back as you pass in the kitchen. A specific positive observation (“you handled that hard thing well”). The decision to sit in the same room rather than retreat to separate ones.

This is also when the deeper work happens, not in the conversation but in the choice each partner makes about what to carry forward. The choice to forgive (not forget — forgive) is its own piece of work, and it isn’t instant. Most couples report that even after a successful repair conversation, the lingering hurt takes days to a week to fully resolve. That’s normal; the marker of repair isn’t the absence of any feeling about the fight, it’s the presence of normal interaction despite the lingering feeling.

If a week later one partner is still cold, or one partner is still rehearsing the fight, the repair didn’t fully take. The deep-dive on How to Reconnect After Giving Each Other Space covers what to do when the standard protocol leaves a residue.

A worked example of post-repair reconnection. Mateo and River had finished a difficult Aftermath conversation late on a Sunday night about an unequal division of household labour. The conversation went well, in that both partners felt heard. But the next morning was awkward. River woke up still feeling small; Mateo woke up worried that the apology hadn’t been enough. Instead of revisiting the fight, Mateo did three small things across the day: made River’s coffee the way they liked it without being asked, sent a midday text that said “thinking of you, no agenda,” and sat next to River on the couch in the evening instead of in the other armchair. None of these was grand. None of them were apologies. They were what Gottman calls bids — small acts of turning toward — and they did more for the repair than the conversation itself had. The language of repair, in the 24 hours after, is small and physical, not verbal and grand.

How repair builds earned security

There is a longer arc to all of this. Couples who repair well over months and years are doing something the attachment literature calls building earned security, a stable sense that the relationship can survive rupture. Each successful repair tells the nervous system that the bond is robust; that disagreement and distance are not permanent. Over time, this shifts how partners enter conflict in the first place. The flooding threshold rises. The recovery time shortens. The 3am catastrophe-thinking quiets down, because the felt sense of “we always come back” overrides it.

This is the bridge to the attachment work in Cluster B. Couples in the anxious-avoidant trap — one partner pursuing, one withdrawing — often have the same fight on a loop precisely because repair never fully completes, which means earned security never accumulates. Each unrepaired rupture deepens the protective pattern. The deep-dive on Breaking the Anxious-Avoidant Cycle walks through how repair specifically does and doesn’t work in that dynamic, and what to add on top of the protocol in this article. If you’ve read this far and felt that the standard protocol describes a different relationship than yours, that’s where to go next.

Phase 6: Breaking perpetual conflict patterns

Some fights are perpetual. The Gottmans found that 69 percent of couple conflicts are unresolvable and rooted in personality differences or core values, not in something that can be argued through (Gottman, 1999). The dishes fight is rarely about dishes. The money fight is rarely about money. These fights recur not because the couple is failing but because they’re working through a fundamental difference that doesn’t resolve.

Perpetual vs solvable: knowing which one you’re in

Before you can break a pattern, you have to know which kind of fight you’re having. Gottman’s framework draws a hard line between solvable and perpetual problems, and treating one like the other is one of the most common ways couples exhaust themselves.

Solvable problems have a situational trigger and a discrete fix. Whose turn it is to do the grocery run. Whether to host both families on the same holiday. How to handle a specific disagreement with a neighbour. These fights feel bound; there’s a decision to make, the decision sticks, and the fight goes away. The Aftermath protocol from Phase 4 is well-suited to these.

Perpetual problems are different in kind. They recur month after month, often year after year, around the same emotional terrain. They’re rooted in temperamental differences (introvert/extrovert), values (how money should be handled), family-of-origin patterns (how much closeness with parents is normal), or core needs (one partner needs more novelty, the other more security). You can argue with them for forty years and not resolve them, because there is nothing to resolve. There are just two people with two real differences trying to share a life. Gottman’s longitudinal data suggest that the majority of fights in stable, happy couples are perpetual. The successful couples aren’t the ones who solved them. They’re the ones who learned to talk about them without contempt.

The test for which kind you’re in is simple: have you had this fight before? If you’ve had a version of it three or more times across the relationship, it’s perpetual. Treating it as solvable, believing this conversation will end it, guarantees disappointment. Naming it as perpetual is the first move that lets you handle it differently. “This is one of our recurring ones. I don’t think we’re going to fully solve it tonight. Let’s just talk about how to handle it better than last time.”

The Dreams Within Conflict exercise

The Gottmans’ core intervention for perpetual problems is called Dreams Within Conflict. The premise is that behind every entrenched position is a dream, fear, or value — something deeply important to that partner that the fight is, on the surface, never about. Until both partners understand the dream underneath, the fight will keep returning in different clothes. The exercise walks couples through finding the dream.

It is a structured conversation, deliberately one-directional at a time. One partner is the speaker; the other is the listener. Roles do not switch mid-conversation. The full exercise is done twice, once in each direction, usually on different days. Forty-five minutes per round is normal.

The speaker’s job is to share the underlying dream, fear, or value behind their position on the perpetual problem — not the position itself, but what’s underneath it. Not “I want us to save more money,” but “I grew up watching my parents fight about money every month, and I told myself that when I had my own family, we wouldn’t live that way. I’m scared of becoming them.” Not “I want more independent time,” but “I lost myself in my twenties trying to be what someone else needed. I have a quiet panic that I’ll do it again if I don’t protect my own time.” The speaker is excavating, slowly, what the fight is actually defending.

The listener’s job is harder than it sounds. The listener does not solve, does not reassure, does not negotiate, does not relate it to their own experience. The listener asks questions designed to understand the dream more fully. The Gottmans give a short menu:

• “What’s the story behind this for you?”
• “What does it feel like when this comes up between us?”
• “What would it mean to you if you got what you’re asking for?”
• “What’s the fear underneath this?”
• “Is there something from earlier in your life that this connects to?”
• “What does the dream look like, if you imagine it?”

The listener may genuinely disagree with the speaker’s dream. That doesn’t matter — the exercise is not about agreement. It’s about each partner letting the other dream out loud without being argued with. Most couples find this almost intolerable the first time. The urge to defend, to explain your own position, to fix what your partner is afraid of, is enormous. Suppressing that urge is the entire skill.

A worked example. A couple in a recurring fight about how much time to spend with extended family ran the exercise. The speaker, in the role of the partner who wanted more visits, expected to talk about logistics. Instead, with the listener just asking questions, she ended up in tears talking about her grandmother’s death two years earlier and the quiet certainty that her parents were running out of time. The listener had heard the position dozens of times. He had never heard the dream. He didn’t suddenly agree to triple their visits. But the fight, after that conversation, changed shape. It stopped being about scheduling and started being about loss. They built accommodations from there.

The exercise is slow. Couples typically run it once a month on a serious perpetual problem, and it can take three or four rounds before the dream comes fully into view. It is not a one-conversation cure. It is a way of changing the orientation a couple has toward the fight — from adversaries trying to win to two people trying to understand what each is protecting.

What managing perpetual problems looks like in practice

Couples who manage perpetual problems well do three things, on top of the dreams work above.

They name the perpetual problem. Naming it makes it visible. “We have a recurring fight about how much time we spend with my family. I don’t think we’re going to fully agree on this. Let’s talk about how to handle it the next time it comes up.” The deep dive on Why You Keep Fighting About the Same Things walks through how to identify your three or four perpetual problems.

They find the underlying meaning. Behind every perpetual problem is a value or a dream. Behind “we should spend more time with my family” might be “I’m scared of losing my parents and I want my kids to know them.” Behind “I need more independent time” might be “I lost myself in my last relationship and I’m scared of doing it again.” The Gottman dreams within conflict exercise above is the structured way to find these.

They build small accommodations, not grand compromises. Couples who manage perpetual problems don’t solve them. They build small habits that reduce the friction. The partner whose family is far away gets a standing weekly visit; the partner who needs alone time gets two evenings a week. The accommodation isn’t fair in any abstract sense — it just works for these two people. Tatkin describes this as building a couple bubble — a private agreement that doesn’t have to make sense to anyone outside it (Tatkin, 2012).

When repair isn’t working

There is a population of couples for whom the protocol above doesn’t work, and it’s important to recognise when you’re one of them. Signs:

• The same fight has been recurring for years with no movement, even after multiple Aftermath conversations
• One or both partners has stopped trying to repair
• A repair conversation can’t get past Step 1 — one partner can’t tolerate hearing the other’s experience without interrupting
• One partner is consistently the only one initiating repair
• The fights are escalating in frequency or intensity rather than de-escalating

In these cases, the protocol isn’t the right tool — a third party is. The Twogle Check-In is one structured option, but for sustained patterns, ongoing therapy with a Gottman- or EFT-trained therapist is the appropriate next step. The deep-dive pillar on DIY Marriage Counseling at Home covers the spectrum from self-guided work to professional support, and when to move from one to the other.

For couples experiencing abuse — physical, emotional, financial, or sexual — none of the protocols above apply. The crisis resources in the disclaimer at the top of this article are the first step. Repair work is for couples whose disagreements happen within a safe relationship; it is not the framework for safety problems.

Frequently asked questions

What if my partner won’t repair?

This is the hardest version of the problem, and worth taking seriously rather than working around. First, distinguish between two situations that look similar from the outside. The first: your partner is willing to repair but is bad at it or shuts down — they get defensive, they can’t stay in Step 1 of the Aftermath conversation without interrupting. This is a skills problem and is workable. Lead with smaller repair attempts. Don’t require the full protocol. Try a single sentence: “I want to come back to last night. Can I tell you what it was like for me?” Lower the bar for what counts as repair until something is possible, then build from there. Wile’s clinical observation that “the conversation you can have is better than the conversation you can’t” applies here (Wile, 1993).

The second situation: your partner is unwilling to repair. They refuse to discuss it. They stonewall every attempt. They treat your request as the new offence. This is a different kind of problem and is not solvable through your own better technique. Couples in this dynamic for any sustained period need a third party — a therapist, a structured Check-In, sometimes a separation period — to clarify the question. Continuing to be the only partner who initiates repair, for years, is a path into resentment that no amount of personal skill can route around.

How long does repair take?

It depends on the rupture. A small fight — a sharp word, a misunderstood text — often closes inside a few hours, sometimes with nothing more than a touch and a look that says we’re back. A medium fight — a real disagreement, raised voices, hurt feelings — typically takes one Aftermath conversation plus 24 to 72 hours of small reconnecting bids. A serious rupture — a fight that touched a core wound, or revealed something one partner hadn’t seen before — takes a week to several weeks, and sometimes a second or third conversation as the layers come into view. Repairs that involve betrayal (lies, infidelity, broken agreements) are on a different timescale entirely — months at minimum, with professional support — and are not the subject of this article.

A useful diagnostic: at 72 hours after the Aftermath conversation, can you and your partner have an unrelated, ordinary, light interaction without strain? If yes, the repair is largely complete and the rest is residue that will fade. If no, something in the conversation didn’t land, and another round is needed.

Is repair the same as reconciliation?

No, and the distinction matters. Repair is the work of closing the wound from a specific fight: naming what happened, taking responsibility, and restoring connection. Reconciliation is the broader decision to continue the relationship after a serious rupture, often a betrayal. A couple can repair a hundred fights and still face the question of whether to reconcile after a major breach.

A couple can also reconcile (decide to stay together) without ever fully repairing (closing the wound). These couples often look stable from the outside and are quietly carrying years of unresolved hurt. The healthiest relationships do both: they repair the small things as they happen and reserve the word reconciliation for the decisions that actually merit it.

What to try this week

If you haven’t fought in a while, this article will feel abstract. Bookmark it. Read it again after the next fight.

If you’ve just had a fight, try the Aftermath conversation. Take the five steps in order. Don’t skip Step 1. Don’t combine it with the regular conversation about the issue itself — this isn’t problem-solving; it’s about the experience of the fight. Most couples need a day or two between the fight and the Aftermath conversation. Less, and you’re still flooded; more, and the details get fuzzy.

If you’re in a chronic fight loop: identify which of your fights is perpetual. Name it out loud to your partner using the framing in Phase 6. “I think this is one of those problems we’re not going to fully solve. Let’s talk about how we want to handle it instead of trying to win it.” That sentence alone shifts the dynamic.

Read deeper

• During the fight: Stonewalling physiology , De-escalation scripts , Silent treatment vs stonewalling
• Self-soothing: Repair after emotional flooding
• The repair conversation: Aftermath of a Fight worksheet , Sincere apologies , Conflict resolution worksheets , Repair conversation template
• Rebuilding connection: Micro repair attempts , Reconnect after space , Validation statements
• Patterns and styles: How to stop arguing , Gottman Four Horsemen , Why you keep fighting about the same things , Conflict style quiz , How to fight fair
• Bridges to other clusters: How avoidant attachers handle conflict , What to do when your partner shuts down , Couples Communication (pillar), DIY Marriage Counseling (pillar)

Sources

• Driver, J. L., & Gottman, J. M. (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43(3), 301–314. DOI: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2004.00023.x
• Fincham, F. D., Beach, S. R. H., & Davila, J. (2004). Forgiveness and conflict resolution in marriage. Journal of Family Psychology, 18(1), 72–81. DOI: 10.1037/0893-3200.18.1.72
• Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Gottman, J. M. (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy. W. W. Norton.
• Gottman, J. M., Coan, J., Carrere, S., & Swanson, C. (1998). Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(1), 5–22. DOI: 10.2307/353438
• Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.221
• Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown and Company.
• Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship. New Harbinger Publications.
• Wile, D. B. (1993). After the Fight: Using Your Disagreements to Build a Stronger Relationship. Guilford Press.