Is your relationship beyond repair?

Couples often ask me how many serious ruptures* it takes before their relationship is beyond repair. In other words, when is it time to give up? The answer to this is not straight forward, and here is an analogy to demonstrate the complexities of such a situation.

Say you have a garden, with a patch of lawn/turf that gets a lot of traffic. (This is the vulnerable part of your relationship.) The kids take a shortcut on the way to the front door.  

You take a shortcut on the way to the car.  The dog has a favourite circuit of the yard, which includes that particular patch of grass. The habits of life create a lot of wear-and-tear for that patch.

At first, nothing much seems to happen. But underneath the grass, the soil is compacting, and water and nutrients can’t get down to the roots. The shoots that do emerge, brave as they are, are too week to sustain further incursions of boots, paws, bike-tyres or the like. The ultimate result is bare ground.  No grass.

How many serious ruptures does it take before your relationship is beyond repair? In other words, when is it time to give up?

Four things are happening, whether we are talking about a relationship or the turf. Let’s spell this out:

1. Damage is occurring long before it is evident.
2. There is not enough recovery time between wear-and-tear episodes on the grass.
3. Adequate repairs are not being made.  In the case of our grass, adequate repairs would be aerating the soil, nutrients and water.
4. The cause of the wear-and-tear is not being addressed, that is, in this case, excessive traffic, which is beyond the capacity of that grass to repair.  Perhaps ANY grass. The habit patterns that lead to the damage have not been identified and changed.

Before we apply this to your relationship - perhaps you are already headed there - let’s keep it simple for a moment longer, with the grass.

1: The damage

Trust is the most important quality that will enable your relationship to endure over time and be more and more secure and reliable.

I've written extensively on how to build trust in my Relationship Insights. Want to dig deeper? Read: How to build trust as a couple.

2: Recovery time

In certain seasons, grass recovers more slowly than others, for example, Winter. Certain kinds of turf do better with recovery than do others - ask the greens manager at your local Golf Club and he or she will know all about this.

Sometimes all that is needed for your poor patch of grass is a long spell without wear and tear. Recovery happens by itself.

You would have seen patches of grass in the local park, cordoned off, so it can do this self-recovery, this rehabilitation, this rest.

How much water, nutrients and aeration would be needed to bring our patch back to good health? How often? Well, it depends on the patch, the season, the level of damage, the time over which the damage has occurred, to name a few variables.

3: Adequate repairs

In order to know what repairs to make, you would pay attention to all of the unique factors about your turf. A generic solution might miss the mark completely.

4: The cause

The cause of the dead grass needs to be determined, and action taken. What comes to mind?

Basically, something - or someone - needs to change. Perhaps remember to go along the path, instead of the short-cut to the car?  Park the car in a different place? Create a barrier so the dog does a different circuit of the yard? Train the kids to go the long way to the front door - I can hear the complaints already!

Thinking further, you might decide to do something more durable with that patch, if the behaviour changes mentioned are unlikely to stick.  Perhaps a radical change is required; is it the ideal place for a new path or paved feature?

What we want to approach here is the very serious subject of how many ruptures a relationship can stand before it breaks, before it no longer sustains growth, just like the turf. Put another way,

• How can you sustain your relationship through and beyond inevitable ruptures?
• How can you repair when the fabric of your relationship has worn thin?

There is good news. Relationships are generally more durable than the turf.

Read deeper about relationship ruptures and strategies for how to make your garden grow again here.