Planner
About 12 minutes · On your own, then together
The Repair Do-Over
Take one fight that went wrong and plan the way back into it — where it turned, what you would say now, and when you are going to say it.
What this is for
Before you start
Most fights are not lost at the start. They are lost at a specific moment part-way through, usually one anybody can point to afterwards, and then nobody goes back for it. This planner takes one recent fight, finds that moment, and turns it into a short thing you say — at a time you have already decided on, so it does not depend on the mood of the evening.
The day after, or the week after. It works best while you can still remember the sequence and badly once the fight has become a general grievance. If the fight is still live, wait — this is for afterwards, and doing it in the middle turns it into ammunition.
The research behind it
What the evidence actually says.
There is decent evidence that recovery is its own skill, separate from how the argument went. In a study of 73 young-adult couples, how well a couple came back during a four-minute cool-down after a filmed conflict predicted satisfaction and whether they were still together two years later — over and above how the conflict itself had gone. The older literature calls the underlying move accommodation: swallowing the impulse to hit back and answering constructively instead. And a study of 61 couples filmed and followed for a year found the approaches that felt least successful in the moment — direct, specific requests — were the ones that produced change, while the pleasant indirect ones felt better and changed nothing.
Where it runs out
The recovery study cannot say what recovery is made of — the authors are explicit that they measured an outcome without identifying the skill underneath it. And the accommodation papers are the authors' own “preliminary” evidence, largely cross-sectional and heavily student-sampled, so they cannot tell you whether accommodating makes couples happier or happier couples accommodate. This planner is built on the shape of those findings, not on a trial of this worksheet.
Our write-ups of these papers:
- The Conversation That Feels Like It FailedSixty-one couples, filmed and followed for a year: why directness works when it feels worse.
- How a Hard Day Gets Into the EveningWhere a lot of these fights actually start, which is often not in the room.
The papers
Salvatore, J. E., Kuo, S. I., Steele, R. D., Simpson, J. A., & Collins, W. A. (2011). Recovering from conflict in romantic relationships: A developmental perspective. Psychological Science, 22(3), 376–383.
Open access · PMC3060296Recovery during the cool-down predicting satisfaction, and stability two years later.
Rusbult, C. E., Verette, J., Whitney, G. A., Slovik, L. F., & Lipkus, I. (1991). Accommodation processes in close relationships: Theory and preliminary empirical evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(1), 53–78.
doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.1.53The move itself — inhibiting the destructive reply and answering constructively.
Overall, N. C., Fletcher, G. J. O., Simpson, J. A., & Sibley, C. G. (2009). Regulating partners in intimate relationships: The costs and benefits of different communication strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 620–639.
doi.org/10.1037/a0012961Directness predicting change over twelve months, where the pleasant approaches did not.
Checked against the publisher record before this piece went up. If a number here cannot be traced to the paper above, it should not be here.
The The Repair Do-Over worksheet
The worksheet
Nothing filled in yet
Everything you type stays in this browser, on this device. It is not sent to us, and we could not read it if we wanted to.
One more thought, if you want it
Elena can read what you have written and add a short note at the end. This is the only thing on this page that sends anything anywhere.
Fill in a few answers first — there is nothing to read yet.
Take it with you
Printing gives you the whole worksheet on paper, with your answers in it — or with ruled lines to fill in by hand if you have not typed anything. Your browser’s print dialogue will offer “Save as PDF”.
Want us to write when the session for two opens?
We’ll send one email then, and nothing else. To be exact about what this does and does not do: it does not email you your answers — those stay on this device and we never receive them — and the worksheet itself lives at this address, so a bookmark or a printout is the way to keep it.
A repair does not have to be accepted to have worked.
You are not making the offer in order to get one back. Sometimes it is taken well, sometimes it gets a shrug, and sometimes it lands two days later. What you control is that it was made, clearly, and at a time you chose rather than at midnight in the middle of something else.
Questions
What people ask about this one.
- What if they don’t accept it?
- Then it has still been said, and it has changed what is true between you. The evidence on coming back from conflict is about the attempt and the recovery, not about whether the other person responds correctly. Do not repair twice in one evening, though — a second attempt in the same hour reads as pressure.
- Doesn’t owning my part mean I was the one who was wrong?
- No. Owning a part is not conceding the argument, and this planner deliberately asks for your part and not for theirs — you cannot write their half, and trying is what turns a repair back into a fight.
- How soon after should I do it?
- Soon enough that you both still remember the sequence, and not while either of you is still lit up. The next day is usually about right. A week is late but not too late; a month and you are re-opening something that has healed over badly, which is a different conversation.
- Can we both fill one in?
- Yes, and separately is better than together — fill it in on your own devices, then compare where each of you thought it turned. That comparison is often more useful than either plan on its own.
When you want the other half
Do this one live, with Elena.
Your first session is free — about fifteen minutes, on your own, no card and no account. Bring what you just wrote, or bring the bit you got stuck on.
Also on the shelf
Two more that go with this one.
- Worksheet
The First Draft
Write the opening sentence before you have to say it — the one that names the thing without putting your partner on trial.
Open it → - Agreement
Two Circles
Sort the things you keep going round on into the ones that are actually negotiable and the ones that are a difference to live around.
Open it →
Would rather take a reading first? The trust and dependability check-in is 12 questions, about 3 minutes, free and with no signup.