In the first article of this series, I explored the Formulation HAC which assists in organising assessment data and developing treatment goals into three-time spans – Past, Present and Future. Each time span was described with a therapeutic intention: Healing, Attuning or Creating. With this in mind, we are able to organise the formulation, goals and interventions into the three areas of Healing the Past, Attuning the Present and Creating the Future. In this second article I will explore the Relationship Repair Continuum as a way of formulating the difference between the type of injuries that occur in relationships and the type of interventions required to support couples in their healing.
After working with hundreds of struggling and wounded couples over many years it has become evident to me how important and complex the art of repair is for couples. Injury, hurt, and negative conflict are inevitable across all relationships; what isn’t inevitable is the success couples have in making lasting repair.
The Relationship Repair Continuum (RRC) creates a lens for therapists to view relationship injuries that offers guidance in formulating how best to process these injuries, assisting couples in making thorough repair.
Not all injury and repair are the same. Relationship injuries can be a small misstep in communication with only minor repair required to address such issues. However, there can also be major ruptures in trust, creating deep and lasting injuries that require intensive and sustained restorative dialogue. The RRC is a tool to categorise the various types of injury and determine the intervention best used to repair.
Type of Relationship Injury - a continuum
It is useful to be able to define different types of relationship injuries in terms of being on a continuum between unilateral and bilateral. Unilateral injury is best described as those injuries that have occurred that are asymmetrical, where there is a clear transgressor and subject to the injury. Unilateral injury occurs when one partner acts in their own best interest and not in the interest of the partner, where they step outside of the relationships explicit and implicit boundaries to meet their own needs and interests without the knowledge or consent of their partner. Unilateral injury also occurs when aggressive or contemptuous behaviours are directed towards the partner. These forms of abuse create fractures in trust and safety in the relationship and require deeper repair. Examples of unilateral injuries include betrayal, infidelity, intimate partner aggression, undisclosed drug, alcohol or porn use relapses and secret keeping.
Bilateral injuries are those relationship injuries that are symmetrical, where both partners have been hurt and have hurt. Bilateral injuries can be small dents in the fabric of the relationship over time. These small paper-cut injuries, when unaddressed, can accumulate over time to become more symbolic/emblematic of a negative landscape in the relationship. The small but continuing moments of turning away or turning against one another when not repaired have a significant influence on the negative trajectory of the relationship, steadily moving the relationship into a low trust, low commitment state. Bilateral injuries also include incidents and fights that have occurred in the relationship past that have not been adequately processed and healed, leaving a lasting imprint on the couple and discolouring/smudging the lens in which the relationship is viewed.
As with any binary construct (unilateral/bilateral), human interaction does not neatly fit into two discrete camps rather, relational interaction and injury is complex and requires a broader spectrum to be viewed from. Some relationship injuries require a more nuanced approach where the injury that has occurred it not absolutely bilateral or unilateral. Where one partner may share most of the responsibility for the injury however the other also shares some of the responsibility. Therefore, it is a question of the degree of bilateralness in the relationship injury.
For example, a credit card may have been overspent by a small amount say 25 dollars by partner 1 when there was an agreement to stay within a certain budget. Upon this discovery, partner 2 reactions with very contemptuous, name calling, highly escalated and aggressive. This leaves a deep scare for partner 1. In this example whilst an agreement is broken in a minor way by partner 1, the reaction by partner 2 was extreme and particularly damaging to partner 1. Whilst a repair can occur bilaterally in this instance, the injury caused by partner 2 in the moment is more significant and therefore a higher level of deeper atonement is required.
Types of Restorative Dialogues and Interventions
There are many excellent interventions that create repair for a misspoken word or missed bid for connection. Repairs for moving gridlocked relational problems to dialogue, to repairing deeper hurts, betrayals and breeches of trust. These restorative dialogues aim to bring a clearer attunement and understanding of the injuries and issues including emotions, subjective perspectives, and positive needs. Responsibility taking and finding the deeper sorry and forgiveness, or at the least the beginning of forgiveness, is required for repair to be comprehensive. According to the RRC, once the type of injury is determined, the interventions used to repair become clear. Below provides a description of interventions used for unilateral and bilateral injuries.
Unilateral injuries and interventions
Unilateral intervention focusses on the more hurt partners experience of the impact of the injury. As previously outlined, unilateral injury is best described as those injuries that have occurred that are asymmetrical, where there is a clear transgressor and subject to the injury. Gottman therapy offers an excellent intervention framework to address unilateral injuries and betrayals, Atone, Attune and Attach.
The goal of the atonement is to begin a restorative dialogue that creates openness and transparency where the hurt partner can express their deep hurt and pain with their partner listening, empathising with the emotions and expressing their remorse for their actions. The transgressor of the injury also needs to understand that atonement not only includes verbal apologies, but it also requires behaviour change, ongoing transparency and verification. For healing, repair and forgiveness to occur the transgressor of the injury needs to truly understand and empathise with the partners experience, pain, betrayal and hurt. They need to express a genuine and deep apology in which they take full responsibility for their actions and the subsequent consequences of these on their partner, including articulating a coherent narrative about how they turned away from them and acted outside of, or contrary to, the best interests of the partner and the relationship. The nature of the injury and the depth of hurt will determine the length of atonement. Deep hurt and betrayal requires ongoing restorative dialogue, atonement, transparency and often verification until healing and forgiveness occur.
Bilateral Injuries and Interventions
Conflict, missteps and injuries are inevitable. Estimating the proportion of time when couples are fully available to listen, hear and respond to each others perspective, needs and wants in a non-judgemental or critical way is approximately 50% of the time they are together. The probability of the couple being in sync is the same as two coins be tossed and both landing on heads which has a 25% probability meaning that 75% of the time the relationship is ripe for misunderstanding, miscommunication, and injury.
Gottman therapy offers a range of intervention to repair bilateral injuries depending on the type of repair required.
- For injuries caused by small missteps, miscommunication, missed bids for connection, harsh start-ups and negative escalation, interventions such as the Repair Checklist , the antidotes of the Four Horseman, the Flooding Ritual Break intervention, the aftermath of a failed bid for connection can be used.
- For injuries caused by a disagreement on a topic or event or for a gridlock perpetual problem, interventions such as the Gottman Rapoport Conversation and the Dreams within Conflict, are useful.
- For injuries about a particular fight or incident, the Aftermath of Fight or Regrettable Incident assists with the repair.
In John Gottman’s research, the consistent failure of repair attempts is a sign of an unhappy future. A relationship can survive negativity, four horseman, flooding and gridlock perpetual issues provided each partner learns to repair effectively. Without that, relationships get stuck in a finite game where one partner wins and the other loses but ultimately the relationship loses. The Relationship Repair Continuum is a simple tool to assist therapists to accurately categorise the type of relationship injury and with this information better determine the most effective intervention to promote stable and long term repair and healing.