How Couples Begin Again After Repair

"Reset is the fifth and final step in the PACER model we developed, as described in our book Love. Crash. Rebuild.. It's the point at which couples recognize that the relationship they are stepping back into is not the same one that ruptured-because they themselves have changed. Reset marks the moment when new patterns begin to replace old ones and the couple can experience their relationship as something distinct, something shared, something more resilient than before."

"As couples work through the steps preceding reset-pause, accountability, collaboration, and experiment-they build new ways of responding to stress and to one another. Reset occurs when the new ways of relating begin to feel reliable. Patterns that once unfolded automatically-defensiveness, retreat, escalation-are interrupted before they gain momentum. The couple notices this shift not because everything is suddenly easy but because the old pattern no longer feels inevitable."

Reset integrates everything learned during rupture and repair and signals that new relational patterns are beginning to replace old ones. Reset enables partners to experience the relationship as a distinct, co-created "us" grounded in trust and resilience rather than perfection. Rupture is inevitable in intimate relationships; the crucial factors are willingness and ability to repair and then to reset. Reset follows pause, accountability, collaboration, and experiment when new responses to stress become reliable and prior automatic patterns like defensiveness and retreat no longer feel inevitable.

Read at Psychology Today