4 Simple Ingredients to Finally Fix Your Broken Relationship

Broken relationships are a traumatizing experience.

You still love your partner, but you know something’s wrong. You’re not ready to leave, and yet you’re not truly happy with the way things are. You don’t even know if there’s anything you can do to fix your relationship. What’s worse: you start to question your ability to love.

But what happens if you give up and don’t try to fix it?

Imagine the heart-breaking regret you would feel if you gave up on a person who truly loves you. How would you feel knowing you didn’t give your best to your relationship?

It’s not easy to fix a broken relationship, but it’s possible.

I can’t give a step-by-step guide to fix your relationship (it’s not like a recipe to bake a cake). But I can tell you the key ingredients you will certainly need to go back to the loving relationship you deserve.

These are the key steps to start fixing your broken relationship:

1. Become a scientist.

Scientists have a unique way of seeing the world. They don’t focus on action; they focus on questions that help them understand how things work. Here’s the catch: you can’t fix what you don’t understand. You need to take a step back and have a scientific look at your relationship.

Before you take action, you need to find out what’s wrong.

When you don’t know what truly causes your problems, any action you take is wrong. It’s like using a band-aid to fix a headache. Yet, the problems in your relationship might not be so obvious.

Here are a few questions to identify what breaks your relationship:

What typically happens before you fight?
How do you and your partner react when you fight?
How does the fight make you feel? What else makes you feel this way?

You should do your best to have an analytical perspective of your problems. But, if you have trouble seeing things clearly, you can find someone who is not emotionally involved in the situation (maybe your best friend).

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Once you know what’s wrong, you can act like a sniper to fix your relationship.

2. Learn the best problem-solving tool.

Your relationship problems don’t disappear when you throw them under the carpet. There’s only one unsexy way to fix your problems: facing them head-on. Can you guess the best way to do it? With clear communication.

But how can you communicate if you don’t understand yourself?

Most people are poor communicators because they don’t know how they feel, what they want, or why they’re upset with their partner. That’s why your relationship is full of misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

So here are a few practical tips to make you a master of communication:

Master your self-knowledge. Understand what triggers you, what you expect from your relationship, and why you feel the way you feel. It’s a basic step that most people skip.
Learn how to listen. Communication is a two-way street. It feels great to speak your mind, but it might not feel great to hear about how you hurt your partner. So be prepared to accept some uncomfortable truths.
Remember the team mindset. You and your partner want the same thing: to fix your broken relationship. You play on the same team, not one against the other. This mindset makes you reach the solution way faster.

Great communication isn’t sexy. It takes self-reflection, and you have to be humble to hear harsh truths. But it’s the ultimate problem-solver in relationships.

3. Strengthen your mind.

You can never fix a broken relationship if you’re emotionally broken. So before you fix your relationship, make sure you’re on good terms with yourself.

Great relationships take emotionally strong people.

When your relationship is broken, your emotions go all over the place. You feel anxious, confused, and scared. That’s when you go into defense mode and not into problem-solving mode (and you stay stuck there forever).

Here are a few things you can do to become emotionally strong:

Take a step back. Your emotions cloud your judgment. When you spend months in a broken relationship, you become desperate to find a solution. But when you’re desperate, you can’t see the solution, even when it’s right in front of you. So take a step back from your strong emotions.
Stay quiet. When you’re in an argument, and you respond emotionally, you’ll surely say things you don’t mean. That’s why your problems grow stronger and more complicated (until you can never solve them). When you notice you feel too emotional, step away from the discussion. You can always come back with a clear mind.
Listen to your feelings. Nobody likes to feel anxious and sad. It’s no surprise you’d want to avoid your negative emotions. But every emotion has a purpose. If something makes you uncomfortable in your relationship, maybe you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign you have to change. All you have to do is listen.

It takes years to develop your emotional strength. But when you do, it becomes 10x easier to solve your problems (and finally fix your broken relationship for good).

4. Take the next step.

There’s one unsexy truth nobody tells you about relationships: you need to learn how to forgive. Forgiveness is the last step to fixing your problems.

Forgiveness is powerful, but it’s way easier said than done.

You don’t expect your partner to be perfect (if you do, you don’t want a relationship; you want to live in a fantasy). Sooner or later, your partner will make a mistake. When that happens, you’ll need to know your limits.

What are you willing to forgive? What is non-negotiable to you?

Forgiveness isn’t sexy. It takes a great deal of maturity to understand your partner is a human who makes mistakes and to understand that relationships are complex. It takes self-knowledge to know what you want and to stand your ground when your partner crosses the line.

But you can’t fix a broken relationship without forgiveness.

It’s not about forgetting what happened. It’s about deciding to move on and make plans together.

…

It hurts like a b*tch to fix your broken relationship. But it hurts more to let go of a person you truly love. When you think about it, love is as rare as a diamond.

How often do you fall in love with someone who loves you back?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t fall in love with a different person every week. It takes months and effort to meet new people. And to have them feel the same? It’s like lightning striking the same place twice.

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When you have a relationship worth fighting for, you have already won.

You might feel lost right now. But ultimately, all it takes to fix your broken relationship is two people who are willing to do the work. You can figure out the next steps together.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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