Have we forgotten how to work things out?

Have we created a dating culture in which leaving has become easier than repairing?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, not only as a relationship coach, but as someone who is dating.

I’ve noticed how vulnerable those early moments of rupture can feel.

You barely know each other. There aren’t years of trust holding you together yet. Something gets misunderstood, someone gets disappointed or hurt, and suddenly there’s a question hanging in the air:

Are we going to talk about this, or is one of us going to disappear?

And I can feel the temptation in myself too.

To protect myself.
To make assumptions.
To decide what someone’s behavior means before I’ve actually asked them.
To pull away before I can be hurt.

Repair asks something harder of me.

To stay curious.
To own my part.
To risk saying what’s happening for me.
And to make room for the other person’s experience too.

Increasingly, I’m realizing that I don’t need someone I’m dating to never disappoint or misunderstand me.

What I want to know is:

Can we stay in contact when something gets uncomfortable?

And apparently, there’s something larger happening here too.

Research on ghosting, particularly among emerging adults, suggests that our modern dating environment has made disengagement remarkably easy. People describe ghosting, among other reasons, as a way of avoiding the difficult emotions involved in ending or changing a relationship.

Technology has made it incredibly easy to find connection.

But it has also made it incredibly easy to leave it.

When something gets uncomfortable, we can simply stop responding.

Which makes me wonder:

What happens to our capacity for relationship when leaving becomes easier than repairing?

Because if we stay in relationship with someone long enough, rupture is inevitable.

We will misunderstand each other.
We will disappoint each other.
We will hurt people we care about, and they will hurt us.

The presence of a rupture doesn’t necessarily tell us that something is wrong with the relationship.

Perhaps the more interesting information is what happens next.

Can I say:

“That hurt.”

“I think I misunderstood you.”

“I can see the part I played in this.”

“Can you tell me what happened for you?”

“Can we talk about it?”

That’s one reason I’m becoming particularly interested in the first ruptures that happen in early dating.

We often experience them as evidence about whether the relationship is going to work.

Maybe they are.

But not necessarily because the rupture happened.

Maybe what they reveal is how we respond to it.

Do we disappear?
Do we become defensive?
Do we punish or withdraw?
Or can we tolerate enough discomfort to become curious about each other again?

Of course, not every relationship should be repaired. Sometimes leaving is exactly the right choice. And when direct communication doesn’t feel safe, disengaging may be necessary.

But discomfort and danger are not the same thing.

And I wonder whether, in a dating culture where another possibility is always a swipe away, we sometimes miss the opportunity to discover what could happen if we stayed in the conversation a little longer.

Because the capacity to repair isn’t evidence that a relationship is failing.

It may be one of the things that makes a relationship possible in the first place.

I’m curious: when something gets uncomfortable in a new relationship, what’s your instinct, to move toward the conversation or away from it?

PS

P.S. Learning to navigate conflict and repair is something we can practice. That's exactly what my friend Lara and I will be exploring in our upcoming online workshop, The Art of Fighting Well, on December 13. If you're curious, we'd love to have you join us. 💗

Learn more HERE!