Relationship rifts are unpleasant, but new research shows how to push reset.

Relationships inevitably involve disappointment and mistakes. In a close relationship, it is highly likely that, at some point or another, one partner will inadvertently offend the other, creating a rift that may seem unfixable. Even small lapses from good harmony can throw things off.
Perhaps you asked your partner to comment on the new prescription sunglasses you just bought, which are, by definition, not returnable. Instead of giving you the rave reviews you were hoping for, your partner comes up with a mocking critique that is unhelpful and insulting to your general level of taste and fashion. Deflated, you walk out the door and try to find a way to cheer yourself up, but the comment penetrates too deeply.
Even in relationships that are not necessarily “close,” there can be disappointments and failures. A healthcare provider fails to address your questions with respect and courtesy, or the customer support representative at the other end of the phone line gives you a snappy comeback to your request for service. You need what you’re trying to get from them, so how can you get over your feelings of betrayal?
The Nature of a Broken Relationship
A newly-published study by University of Toulouse’s Lars Meyer-Waarden and University Jean Moulin Lyon’s William Sabadie (2023) on service breakdowns in the hospitality industry provides an excellent model for understanding what goes on when some type of failure threatens a relationship. In the case of this industry, you can only imagine how many relationships can verge on the brink of destruction. Food is overcooked at restaurants, airline computer systems break down, and hotel rooms are untidy, just to name a few possibilities. Indeed, the authors noted, “because of the ‘people factor,’ service failures in the hospitality sector are inevitable.”
Thinking now about a “people failure” you’ve experienced, what could the company have done to bring you back into the fold? According to the French authors, it all depends on relationship quality (RQ) and strength. On the one hand, you may be more forgiving when you’re basically loyal to a given company or brand. However, countering this may be the greater sense of betrayal when a company you’ve supported for years or decades fails to deliver.
Bringing this back into the sphere of close interpersonal relationships, you can see where there can be useful parallels. It can be helpful to know what to ask for when your partner lets you down; just as useful is knowing what you can do when you’re the one who’s failed.
Testing a Model of Relationship Reparation
In their investigation of reparation efforts by hospitality companies, Meyer-Waarden and Sabadie contrasted offers of refunds vs. vouchers and apologies/offers delivered by phone or in writing. RQ served as the other predictive factor. These effects were contrasted with their impact on customer responses through a sense of perceived justice.
Drawing on past theory and research, the French researchers proposed that this sense of justice would be at the heart of a dismayed consumer’s feelings after being let down; in their words: “perceived justice explains how people react when faced with conflict-laden situations.” You expect, then, that people will treat you fairly, whether it’s your close partner or a service agent on the other end of the phone line. If a relationship is going to be repaired, that sense of justice must be restored.
RQ, in turn, was defined in this study in ways that are perfectly consistent with theories of close relationships; namely, that a relationship’s quality is higher when those involved in it feel satisfied, can trust each other, are committed, expect the relationship to continue, and are willing to invest in it. Like close relationships, too, individuals seek to express their needs and become attached to certain brands.
The authors tested their model by presenting online participants with a scenario in which they received poor service from a restaurant serving them on an important occasion. At “Chez Toni’s,” they had to wait for a table despite having a reservation, received cold meals, and were not treated well by their server. The experimental conditions varied by the length of the relationship (how many times they were told they had eaten there before), the amount of reparation, and the nature of the contact in which the restaurant manager offered the reparation.
To measure perceived justice, the research team asked participants to rate whether the restaurant's response was just, balanced, and appropriate. Measures of RQ included ratings of satisfaction, trust, and loyalty intention.
The findings supported the study's overall framework in that high RQ predicted the extent to which reparation efforts on the part of the restaurant worked to restore loyalty. Customers who valued their relationship with the restaurant, in general, were more forgiving. However, to ensure complete restoration of loyalty, they also had to perceive that the restaurant manager was willing to go through considerable effort to win them back. As the authors concluded, “It is only when complainants are treated with courtesy and respect through personal phone calls that distributive justice has a positive effect on justice perceptions.”
What’s Needed for Relationship Reparation to Work
From the French study, it is clear the sense of justice is fundamental to a good relationship. When your partner insults your taste, this violates your belief that your partner will treat you respectfully. As the findings suggest, whether you can get over this sense of violation depends on what your partner does next and whether it rises to the level of sufficiently recognizing the harm that’s been done. The apology, in other words, needs to fit the crime both in amount and intensity.
In the case of the sunglasses example, this may seem like a small offense in the larger scheme of things, and your partner may not even be aware of how much it’s hurt you. As the aggrieved party, it would therefore be important for you to communicate your feelings. After doing so, you might want to prepare yourself to accept the reparation your partner offers.
All of this can be reversed, as you might imagine, in case you caused the relationship rift. Being willing to listen to your partner’s feelings of injustice and then offering a sincere apology can help pave the way back to harmony.
To sum up, relationship rifts are unpleasant and inevitable, but they don’t have to be permanent. Knowing how to restore justice can help you leave those rifts behind and strengthen your relationship’s bonds of loyalty and commitment.

reference:
psycholory today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202304/how-to-reset-a-broken-relationship

New research suggests what may really be going on in a burned-out relationship.

The feeling that your relationship isn’t going the way you expected it to can make you feel emotionally depleted. A couple generally enters into an intimate partnership with the hope that it will grow and flourish over time. When this doesn’t happen, the resulting disappointment can make you question why you ever got involved with this person in the first place.
Certainly, romantic characterizations of relationships emphasize the idea that couples move into a “happily ever after” state once they’ve decided to commit to each other. Even though you may realize that the reality of a relationship is unlikely to live up to this fantasy, you may still be at least somewhat surprised when the reality deviates even farther from that idealistic scenario.

What Is Relationship Burnout?
You’ve undoubtedly heard of burnout in the context of occupational settings. Burned-out employees feel exhausted and unenthusiastic about their day-to-day job routines, but they may also be plagued by the question of why they entered that particular occupation in the first place. According to a new study by Kharazmi University’s Solaleh Zamani and colleagues (2023), the counterpart in relationships of “marital burnout” occurs when couples realize “the reality of their marriage is not what they expected” (p. 1).
For the sake of generalizing beyond marriage, the term “relationship burnout” will be used here instead. As defined by the Iranian authors, this is a condition reflecting a “myriad of factors” including “emotionally life lost function” in which an individual’s coping strategies have become overwhelmed. The individual suffering from this “profound emotional state” may experience a range of physical reactions such as lethargy and headaches, emotional reactions such as feelings of hopelessness, and a sense of frustration with one’s partner.
The 10-Item Couple Burnout Questionnaire
The Zamani et al. study was intended to examine predictors of relationship burnout, but before turning to its findings, you can first test yourself on your own experience of relationship burnout. Rate yourself on these 10 items (0=never, 7=always) from an earlier study by the late University of the Negev Ayala Malach Pines and colleagues (2011):

When you think about your marriage/intimate relationship overall, how often have you felt:
1.Tired
2.Disappointed with your spouse/intimate partner
3.Hopeless
4.Trapped
5.Helpless
6.Depressed
7.Weak/Sickly
8.Insecure/Like a failure
9.Difficulties sleeping
10.‘‘I’ve had it’’

Who Is Most Prone to Relationship Burnout?
If you’ve diagnosed yourself or your partner as showing signs of burnout (with scores higher than 5 per item), the next question becomes which “myriad” of factors is leading to this unfortunate condition. Zamani et al. propose that those high in the quality of alexithymia, or “without emotional words,” would be very likely candidates. People who show this particular trait find it difficult if not impossible to relate to their partners or even be responsive to them because their emotional life is so empty. Their “deactivating strategies” (p. 4) lead them to tune out instead of connecting when their partners need them the most.
In addition to being poor communication partners, those high in alexithymia may also be characterized, the Kharazmi U. researchers propose, by an insecure attachment style. The qualities of fearing emotional closeness (avoidant) or being afraid of abandonment (anxious) both can impede their ability to grow within their relationship and, as importantly, facilitate the growth of their partner.
A related deficiency, the inability to regulate one’s emotions, could further contribute to relationship burnout. People high in emotional dysregulation would describe themselves as easily getting out of control when they get upset, and they would also state that they are confused about labeling their feelings.
The 216 adults in the Zamani et al. study were recruited through a family psychiatric clinic on the basis of self-identifying as suffering from relationship burnout, and this was confirmed via their scores on the Couple Burnout Questionnaire. Most were over the age of 30 and the majority (71 percent) identified as female. The analyses were conducted on data gathered prior to their entry into an emotion-oriented couples therapy program.
By statistically modeling the predictors of alexithymia scores, the Iranian authors were able to show that, as expected, attachment styles were not the primary influence on this outcome, but had their effect only through the mediational contributions of emotion dysregulation. In other words, emotion regulation had the effect of reducing secure attachment's effects but increasing the effect of insecure attachment's effects on alexithymia.
If emotion dysregulation is the key factor that predicts the alexithymia underlying burnout, the next question becomes how to help couples strengthen their relationship by focusing on emotions. According to emotion-focused therapy, the framework adopted by the Iranian research team, it may be possible to do just that. In this approach, individuals learn to gain better understanding of their experienced emotions and strengthen their emotion regulation. Such a strategy could, Zamani et al. argue, turn insecure into secure attachment.

Rekindling the Burned-Out Romance in Your Relationship
Because attachment style is so often regarded as fixed in early childhood, it may seem difficult to understand how it could be “adjusted,” as Zamani and colleagues propose. Even more to the point, if alexithymia is a trait, is it reasonable to think that it could be changed through intervention? It may also seem like quite an impossible task to turn the burners back on in a relationship that has become depleting.
The Kharazmi U. research team and the therapy clinic with which it is associated provide hope that all of these positive changes are within reason. The steps toward achieving this goal include developing greater awareness and understanding of emotional experiences that occur in the lives of a couple. As they do so, their emotional resilience becomes strengthened.
Turning this into practical steps, the findings suggest that you begin by working with your partner to stop and examine your emotions as they evolve over the course of your daily experiences. Which deeply held insecurities and anxieties are tapped when you get into an argument? Which similarly deep positive emotions do you feel when you and your partner validate each other’s feelings? If one of you feels uncomfortable talking about your emotions, this can become even more of a reason to take on the challenge.
To sum up, although burnout may seem to be an inevitable result of a relationship that has endured over time, the Iranian study suggests that it can be remedied, if not prevented. As you work on identifying and gaining control over your emotions, you will be on the way toward finding fulfillment in enjoying each other’s inner lives.

reference:
psychology today
link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202304/10-ways-to-tell-if-your-relationship-suffers-from-burnout