5 Steps to Rebuilding a Relationship

It’s hard when you experience a tough time in your relationship. Especially when you still love each other very much but have somehow drifted off the beaten track in one way or another.

Many relationships fall apart in times of distance and difficulty. But if you are reading this, the chances are that you are considering a different path – the path of rebuilding your relationship.

Deciding to rebuild your relationship is a positive first step. But you’ll need to be prepared, the road to repair might be a long one. There will be lots of old emotions and habits that need to be resolved, and new memories to create whilst you are both working on rebuilding your relationship.

However, nothing will be too hard to accomplish if you both love each other, and are committed to rebuilding your relationship. The relationship that will grow from the ashes of your old relationship together will undoubtedly be something much stronger and fulfilling.

Here are the 5 steps that you’ll need to consider to rebuild your relationship

1. To rebuild a relationship, both parties need to invest in doing so

If one party has not reached the decision, or realization that they want to work at rebuilding the relationship, then there are some steps and strategies that may need to be taken into consideration before you continue to commit to this relationship. After all a relationship takes two people.

2. Change your past habits

After you’ve jointly made the decision that you are both still committed to your relationship. You’ll both need to work hard at changing some of your past habits.

There’s no doubt that if your relationship needs to be rebuilt, you will be experiencing sensations of blame, guilt, and lack in some way. Such as a lack of trust, a lack of intimacy, lack of conversation, and then all of the blame and guilt that will accompany the lack of either party.

This is why it’s important to start noticing how you both communicate with each other. And work hard to change the way that you talk to each other so that your communication can become more loving and considerate.

Because when you are demonstrating love and consideration to each other, it will start to dissolve some of your past ‘hurts’, and sow the seed to rebuild your relationship in a way that will become much more solid and intimate.

3. Resolve the unhappy experiences

Even though you both might be committed to rebuilding your relationship, a big part of that will lie in resolving the unhappy experiences that have now become part of your past.

If there are issues with trust, they’ll need to be handled, the same with anger, grief, and so on. As already mentioned, you’ll need to learn how to communicate better.

Ideally working with a relationship advisor, hypnotherapist or some other type of counselor will help you to easily resolve these issues in a controlled environment. Be mindful to not accidentally continue to project these problems out onto each other.

This is a vicious circle that will not help at all in rebuilding a relationship and is one that you’ll definitely want to avoid.

If it’s difficult to see a third party for support, try using creative visualization to work through the associated feelings – it will help greatly. All emotion dissolves when it’s allowed to be expressed. So through creative visualization, you can visualize yourself allowing the excess emotion to release from your body.

And if you feel any emotions, or want to cry, allow those feelings or sensations to be expressed (sometimes it can show up in a tingling sensation somewhere in your body) just sit with it allowing yourself to express anything that needs to be expressed until it stops – it will stop.

This will release those pent-up emotions, allowing you to concentrate on rebuilding your relationship without repressing a negative emotion. This will make it much easier to communicate in a loving and considered manner.

4. Let go of any resentment

This step is similar to step 3. When anybody is rebuilding a relationship, it’s important to let go of any resentment or hurt from any past indiscretions.

For example, if you are rebuilding a relationship after an affair, the innocent party must be genuinely ready and willing to let go of the problem and move forward. It should not be something that is constantly thrown up in challenging times, or during an argument.

If you are committed to rebuilding your relationship but are finding it difficult to come to terms with any discretions, despite your commitment, it might be time to seek some support individually from a third party counselor to help you reconcile this.

This small investment will bring great rewards to your relationship, in the long term.

5. Take a deeper look at yourself

If you are responsible for indiscretions in your relationship, part of rebuilding this relationship will require you to understand why you did what you did in the first place. Perhaps you are aloof and distant in your relationship and that has caused problems, maybe there are anger issues, jealousy, challenges with taking care of money, children or property and so on.

It’s time to take a deeper look at yourself and notice any patterns that you have always had in your life.

Look back to when you first started to act out these indiscretions and ask yourself what you were thinking, and what you were hoping to gain.

This is a personal piece of work, that you may not feel you can share with your partner, and that is perfectly ok. You should have the space to work through this, but it’s important not to use it as an excuse to avoid working on the hard task of rebuilding your relationship (at least not if you want to repair it!).

When you notice patterns of behavior that may have been present for many years, then you can start to work through them and understand why they occurred, and in understanding why, you’ll be empowered to make the changes that you might need to make in order to achieve a happy and fulfilled life with your partner.

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Rachael Pace Author

Rachael Pace is a noted relationship writer associated with Marriage.com. She provides inspiration, support, and empowerment in the form of motivational articles and essays. Rachael enjoys studying the evolution of loving partnerships... Read more and is passionate about writing on them. She believes that everyone should make room for love in their lives and encourages couples to work on overcoming their challenges together. Read less