The Art of Repair:
What Makes Some Relationships Resilient Pt 2
In Part 1, I shared how a weekend visit with a friend led to an unexpected rupture when she reached out to tell me I'd hurt her feelings. We explored the neuroscience of threat response, perspective-taking, and how two people can experience the same conversation completely differently.
Now I want to talk about what happened next, and more importantly, why it was different from how this would have played out years ago.
The Repair Conversation
When we got on the phone, I could immediately tell by her tone that she was upset and that reaching out had taken courage. Confronting someone with hurt feelings is vulnerable.
So the first thing I did was create space for her experience.
"I really want to understand what hurt your feelings," I said, "because that was not my intention. Would you be open to telling me what was happening for you?"
This is what relational psychotherapists call the beginning of repair after a rupture. After she shared, I apologized for the miscommunication and asked if it would help to hear a little of what my experience had been. She agreed, and I felt the energy shift as she listened.
I stayed calm. I was able to be fully present with her hurt feelings without collapsing into shame or defensiveness. I didn't need to destroy myself for doing something wrong because I could hold two truths at once: She was hurt, AND I hadn't intended harm.
She accepted my apology and was able to name that she'd felt triggered because of her own history with criticism. A repair was made. We ended the call feeling closer than before.
What Made the Difference: Affect Tolerance
What allowed this repair to happen was something psychologists call affect tolerance—the capacity to stay present with difficult emotions, both your own and another person's, without needing to shut them down, fix them, or escape from them.
Years ago, I didn't have this capacity. My friend's hurt feelings would have felt intolerable to me because they would have confirmed my deepest fear: that I was fundamentally bad and unlovable. To protect myself from that unbearable feeling, I would have become defensive, argumentative, or withdrawn.
But affect tolerance isn't something you're born with, it's something you develop. It comes from:
Learning to distinguish between feelings and facts. Her feeling hurt didn't mean I was a bad person; it meant she was hurt. Those are different things.
Building a secure internal working model. Through therapy, relationships, and self-reflection, I'd developed what attachment theorists call an "earned secure attachment", a sense of my own worth that doesn't completely collapse when someone is upset with me.
Recognizing that discomfort isn't dangerous. Sitting with the anxiety of "my friend is hurt and angry at me" was uncomfortable, but it wasn't going to kill me. I could survive the feeling.
As the Gottmans write in The Science of Trust: "The ability to self-soothe is one of the most important skills in maintaining healthy relationships." I was able to soothe my own anxiety enough to stay open to my friend's experience.
Self-Regulation vs. Co-Regulation
But here's something crucial: This wasn't just about self-regulation. It was also about co-regulation.
Self-regulation is the ability to manage your own emotional state, to calm your nervous system, tolerate difficult feelings, and think clearly even when activated.
Co-regulation is what happens when two nervous systems attune to each other and help regulate each other's states.
In our repair conversation, both were happening:
I was self-regulating by pausing, breathing, reminding myself of my own intentions
My friend was self-regulating by taking the risk to be vulnerable despite her fear
We were co-regulating when I validated her feelings and she softened in response
We were co-regulating when she listened to my experience with openness instead of defensiveness
“This is the dance of secure attachment in adult relationships, two people who can hold themselves steady enough to help steady each other.”
Sue Johnson describes this beautifully in Hold Me Tight: "In love, we are constantly shaping each other's emotional states and creating the context for each other's actions." My calm presence gave my friend permission to move out of her defensive state. Her willingness to hear my experience allowed me to feel safe being honest.
This is the dance of secure attachment in adult relationships, two people who can hold themselves steady enough to help steady each other.
What Used to Happen (And Why It's Different Now)
Years ago, this conversation would have gone very differently.
That initial text would have sent me into a shame spiral. The fear would have calcified into defensiveness before we ever got on the phone. Her hurt would have been something I tried to argue with instead of listen to:
"That's not what I meant."
"You're being too sensitive."
"You're misremembering what happened."
"I can't believe you're making me into the bad guy."
All of these responses, which used to be my default, come from a nervous system in threat mode. When I felt attacked (whether or not an attack was intended), my body would mobilize to defend itself. I would have needed her to see that her perception was wrong, that I hadn't meant it that way, that she was being unfair.
We likely would have gotten into a much bigger fight, each of us walking away convinced the other person was the problem.
What changed wasn't that I became a better person or that I stopped making mistakes. What changed was that I developed a strong enough sense of self to hold my own experience without needing her to validate it, and to hold her experience without needing to defend against it.
This is what family therapist Murray Bowen called "differentiation of self"—the capacity to maintain your own sense of reality while staying emotionally connected to another person. It's the ability to say, "I know my own intentions were good" while simultaneously saying, "I believe you that you experienced hurt."
It's recognizing that someone else's pain doesn't automatically mean I'm bad, and that my good intentions don't negate their pain.
“What changed wasn’t that I became a better person or that I stopped making mistakes. What changed was that I developed a strong enough sense of self to hold my own experience without needing her to validate it, and to hold her experience without needing to defend against it.”
What Successful Repair Looks Like
The Gottmans' research on successful couples (which applies equally to friendships) shows that repair attempts work when both people can:
Take responsibility for their part (even if it was unintentional)
Express genuine understanding of the other person's experience
Regulate their own defensive responses enough to stay curious
Make a bid for reconnection rather than withdrawing
In our conversation, I took responsibility for the impact of my words, even though I hadn't intended harm. I expressed genuine curiosity about her experience. I regulated my shame response enough to stay present. And I made a bid for reconnection by asking if she wanted to hear my perspective, not to prove her wrong, but to bridge the gap between our two realities.
My friend did her part too. She took the risk to be vulnerable. She stayed open enough to hear my experience. She acknowledged her own triggers. She accepted my repair attempt.
This is what makes relationships resilient, not the absence of hurt, but the capacity to move through it together.
The Takeaway
Healthy relationships aren't relationships without conflict or misunderstanding. They're relationships where ruptures can be acknowledged, where two people can hold different perspectives without one having to be wrong, and where repair is possible.
The gift my friend gave me was her willingness to be vulnerable enough to name her hurt instead of just pulling away. The gift I was able to give back was my capacity to stay present with her pain without making it mean something catastrophic about who I am.
Sue Johnson puts it this way: "The best predictor of a happy relationship is not how often you fight, but how well you repair after a fight."
This is what mature love looks like, not the absence of hurt, but the willingness to repair.
And repair is possible when we can:
Tolerate our own difficult emotions without being hijacked by them
Stay curious about another person's experience even when it conflicts with our own
Hold ourselves steady while also leaning into connection
Trust that rupture isn't the end of the relationship, it's an opportunity for deeper understanding
“This is what mature love looks like, not the absence of hurt, but the willingness to repair.”
The irony is that my friend and I are closer now than we were before this happened. The rupture and repair deepened our trust. She knows I can hear her hurt without falling apart. I know she values our friendship enough to risk conflict rather than quietly pull away.
That's the gift of repair: it doesn't just restore connection. It strengthens it.
Ready to develop the skills that make repair possible? Our therapists specialize in helping high-achieving individuals move from defensiveness to genuine connection. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if we're the right fit.