The 3 Foundations of Intimacy (and Relationship Repair)

In my 20s, I tried again and again to leave an abusive relationship but kept going back to give it “one more try.” One weekend night, I remember explaining my needs and boundaries to him until the early hours of the morning, thinking that if only I could articulate myself “correctly,” he would understand and stop doing things that hurt me.

I was wasting my breath, hoping he would change, pouring my care and energy into a person who didn’t have the desire or capacity to return my efforts.

It was heartbreaking, but eventually my anger got the better of me. I remembered my boundaries, finally left, and never looked back. I thought relationships were supposed to be healing, but I ended up with worse scars than I started with and whole new layers of heartbreak and self-blame.

When people say that "relationships are healing," they get vague about exactly how.

Modern culture doesn’t teach the relational skills that move us from disharmony into repair and reconnection. Western media models relationship-destroying habits like sarcasm, disdain, and criticism that only deepen the divide.

Most of us didn’t learn how to do relationship repair from our families, either. At best, we learned how to soldier on and dismiss our feelings of upset, rushing forgiveness without having appropriate places to metabolize our anger. Or we learned how to use control, self-righteousness, and entitlement as tools to “win” at conflict. But there’s no such thing as “winning” at the expense of the other, in intimate relationships. 

Research says that half of marriages end in divorce, but how do we show up for the challenge and transform an unhappy relationship into a satisfying one, so we want to stay together?

Most of us come into our intimate partnerships with relational trauma from childhood or previous relationships — neglect, betrayal, and high-conflict are the norm.

We don't know how to name our feelings or negotiate our needs without leaning in too hard or shutting down altogether. We look to our partners to help us feel better, without learning how to tend to our own nervous systems and knee-jerk stress responses. It's no wonder that we carry self-sabotaging beliefs like "Marriage doesn't work," or "Monogamy is doomed to fail," or other negative beliefs shaped by past experiences.

Relationships aren't something we set up and then put on autopilot, as we coast into a glorious future of happily-ever-after.

They take daily and deliberate work, especially when we’re in conflict. But what is that work, exactly? How do we do it? What do we need to learn?

Three Foundational Skills for Intimacy and Relationship Repair

All relationships experience inevitable shifts from harmony into disharmony. Rupture feels terrible, and can induce feelings of panic and dismay, but it’s a normal part of healthy relationships. It’s what we do with the disharmony that makes the difference. With skill, we can reliably shift into repair and reconnection.

To be effective, repair work requires three foundational skills: accountability, empathy, and vulnerability.

When both sides of an intimate partnership are committed to practicing them, we can map and travel the path to reconnection.

Most of us were trained in childhood to think about repair incorrectly. We might see repair as forced and intrusive, a false forgiveness where our boundaries dodn’t matter and neither does our rage. Or we might experience repair as self-abandoning, because in the past our needs and wants carried so little weight that we now hold the belief that they don’t matter.

I’d like to share three foundational skills (based on Terry Real’s work) that teach us better ways to navigate disharmony, so we can co-create the fulfilling and rewarding intimate relationships we long for.

1. Accountability

For those of us with complex trauma from childhood or previous relationship experiences, accountability can feel intolerable. We expect that owning our poor behavior will lead to humiliation and abandonment from our partners. Our nervous systems brace as we deflect responsibility, overwhelming our partners in a misguided attempt to be right and arguing to regain control.

Not all relationship issues are 50/50. Sometimes, we’re more responsible for what’s happening than our partner is. Other times, they’re the ones behaving less healthily. It’s going to happen. Relationships are a practice, and accountability keeps us honest to ourselves and our partners when our efforts fall short, so we can do better next time.

2. Empathy

Accountability without empathy can feel rigid and uncaring. When we’re in a state of disharmony, it’s easy to move into logic and out of emotional connection. We make the mistake of believing that the fastest way out of disharmony is to resolve the issue that started it.

But moving too early towards resolution is a trap. Logic and solutions aren’t going to create repair. As soon as we enter the territory of disharmony, we need to repair our emotional connection before we revisit the original issue.

Too much empathy can also derail relationships, flooding us with unrestrained self-expression that activates both nervous systems with no clear path to resolution.

This is where empathy catalyzes a shift in dynamics that can otherwise loop and keep us stuck indefinitely. Turning towards our partner’s feelings gives us a surefire path back to reconnection. It’s not about who’s right or wrong; it’s about how the hurt partner feels.

This is where couples work can be most powerful, building on a foundation of accountability and wanting something better. We learn how to soften, in the presence of our partner, and build the scaffolding of care that vulnerability, our next skill, requires.

3. Vulnerability

When we’re accountable for our behavior and able to meet ourselves and our partners with empathy, it’s time to learn how to explore vulnerability. It’s risky, because we’re hoping our partners will hold us when we show ourselves. The reality is that sometimes they don’t, and we feel dropped.

I call this tolerable emotional pain. It hurts, but we can tend to our wounds and recover. This kind of relational resilience is a result of trauma healing. When we no longer carry the wounds of the past, it’s easier to respond to our needs in the present without feeling angry or overwhelmed.

We’re no longer children who can be abandoned; feelings of abandonment are emotional flashbacks from unresolved trauma, as are feelings of retaliatory rage, stonewalling, and shutdown. If our childhood vulnerability was ignored or punished, we carry wounding that needs to be resolved so we can discern appropriate adult vulnerability.

Intimacy requires vulnerability. The safest place to learn how and when to be vulnerable is in our intimate relationships, when we have a foundation of accountability and empathy to build on.

*

Satisfying, high-quality partnerships require ongoing repair, that quickly and reliably re-establishes connection.

Learning how to be accountable, empathic, and vulnerable will create the long-lasting intimate relationships we long for.

It’s especially marvelous to enjoy healthy partnerships when we’ve healed from complex trauma from childhood. Rather than carrying the wounding of the past into our futures, we can face what’s needed in the present to rewrite our relational stories.

Relationships are a practice, and these three skills give us a starting point for creating a foundation on which new skills and behaviors can take root.

It takes effort to be willing to see where we're falling short, and courage to dedicate ourselves to change. But that's where partnership calls us into greater depth and growth than we could ever do by ourselves.

It takes work, but it's worth it. 

If you’re curious what it can look like to heal complex trauma from childhood, or you’d like to explore working with your partner to heal how trauma is surfacing in your relationship, reach out and let’s connect.

*

Elie Losleben supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.