by Susan Campbell and John Grey
Falling in love is the easy part. Staying in love is another matter. Some couples seem blessed with everlasting love. Then there’s the rest of us — who start running into trouble once the honeymoon is over. We encounter differences, disagreements, disappointments. Buttons get pushed. We watch helplessly as loving feelings start to fade in the face of misunderstandings, blowups, shutdowns, or vicious communication cycles.
What do couples blessed with ongoing happiness know that we don’t know? In a word, they know how to repair. They are good at quickly attending to the little glitches that every relationship encounters. Those of us who do not naturally know how to do this suffer a buildup over time of unrepaired ruptures. Eventually this buildup leads to feeling unsafe or guarded with each other. And we find ourselves feeling less intimate, less relaxed, and often more alone.
This gradual erosion of loving feelings is extremely common — so common that it could be considered normal. But what if there were another path you could take with your partner? What if you knew how to repair upsets skillfully and quickly? What if you could learn to approach relationship ruptures in a way that deepens intimacy and makes you feel more secure? The ability to repair like this is a skill you can learn. And once you learn this skill, you can do it in five minutes!
This book teaches you a step-by-step process that addresses the root causes of the frustrations and hurts that get triggered in a relationship. You will learn how to use any upset as a doorway to mutual healing and deeper trust. If you are currently in a relationship, you can immediately put these tools into practice with your partner. If you are single, you can use them to heal wounds from past relationships and prepare yourself for a successful loving partnership. Partnered or not, you can use these tools to improve communication with all the significant people in your life.
By the time you finish reading and doing the exercises offered here, you will:
Understand what really causes blowups, shutdowns, stuckness, and vicious cycles (it’s not what you thought it was).
Know how to defuse conflicts and get back to feeling close.
Know how to help your partner calm down and listen to you even when he or she is upset.
Be able to ask for what you want in ways that will be well-received.
Be able to make sure your connection with your partner does not get compromised by hidden resentments or unfinished business.
Know how to help your partner feel secure with you so he or she is less likely to get triggered.
Know how to work with your own unfinished emotional business and past wounds in a way that promotes greater self-love and self-esteem.
Start rewiring your brain so that you are less apt to get triggered.
Have a well-practiced formula for making up after a fight or misunderstanding in a way that deepens your shared love, trust, and sense of safety.
We have named this formula the Five-Minute Relationship Repair. It is a step-by-step procedure you can do in five minutes or less — once you have gone through all the exercises in this book.
The early chapters show you how the nervous system is connected to emotions and why people tend to get triggered so easily by an unintentional act from an intimate partner. In these chapters, you will learn how to spot the early warning signs that someone is triggered and how to immediately pause to calm yourselves and come back to being present.
Next, a series of exercises will help you communicate about difficult or upset feelings in a way that evokes empathy from your partner. You will learn the distinction between core feelings (which are soft, tender, and vulnerable) and reactive feelings (which come across as aggressive, defensive, hard, or protective). You will see that many of the upsets you experience are based on complete misunderstandings. And you will learn why taking responsibility for your own reactions is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself and your relationship.
The final chapters take you even deeper into learning how to heal the fears and sensitivities that give rise to frustrating communication cycles and patterns. There you will put it all together — everything you have learned about why you react and what you really need from your partner — into the Five-Minute Relationship Repair process. This section includes fill-in-the-blank scripts that guide you and your partner in getting to the root of any upset and resolving it. Saying each script to each other removes all sense of threat or blame, replacing defensiveness with open-hearted self-disclosure and loving reassurances.
Are you ready? Ready to reprogram all the unfortunate reactive habits you’ve picked up over the years? Ready to start anew with yourself or with a partner, living in a way that continually deepens your capacity for love and trust?
Okay. Let the healing of old patterns and learning of new tools begin — making way for a life of shared happiness and lasting love.
Exercises, Appendices, and Free Online Workbook
There are various important exercises throughout this book. Each will help you learn the tools we present and apply them to your circumstances. To make it easier for you to do these exercises, we have compiled them into one convenient, well-organized workbook. You can download and print this for free, our gift to you. We will frequently refer to the online workbook and suggest you use it in doing the exercises. Utilizing it will enhance your ability to integrate these new tools into your life.
Additionally, we have created two appendices to help you. Appendix A summarizes important scripts you will be using for repairing upsets. Appendix B offers lists of words you can use to fill in the blanks in some of the key exercises in this book. For ease of use, these appendices are duplicated in your online workbook.
The workbook is a valuable tool. To get the most out of this book, we highly recommend that you download the workbook now at www.fiveminuterelationshiprepair.com.
Susan Campbell, PhD, trains coaches and therapists throughout the United States and Europe to integrate the tools in Five-Minute Relationship Repair into their professional practices. In her own practice, she works with singles, couples, and work teams to help them communicate respectfully and responsibly. The author of Getting Real, Saying What’s Real, and other books, she lives in Sonoma County, California. www.susancampbell.com
John Grey, PhD, is a relationship coach specializing in intensive couples retreats. He also trains couples therapists in a state-of-the-art approach that integrates the latest neuro-science and attachment research. He has taught communication workshops at Esalen Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and Scripps Institute. He lives in Sonoma County, California. www.soulmateoracle.com