Something happened. Maybe it escalated fast. Maybe no one is talking right now. Before you come into your next session to present your case, you both need to be in a place where you can actually do something productive with the hour. This list is how you check. Each partner should do this separately. If you can honestly answer most of these, you’re ready for your next session. If you can’t, that’s the most important thing we’ll tackle first (except for Step 1, which is a dealbreaker until addressed).
Step 1: You did not cross any of these lines.
Physical aggression. Throwing or breaking things. Taking or restricting access to your partner’s possessions. Verbal statements intended to wound rather than communicate, including declarations of hatred, contempt, or intent to end the relationship made in anger. Threats of any of these. These are not flooding behaviors. They are control behaviors or deliberate injury, and they change what happens next. Our work together will not continue, in any format, until the following steps are completed between you and your partner:
- Name to your partner specifically what you did, in your own words. Not “things got out of hand.” Not “we had an incident.” What you did.
- Take full ownership without conditions, justifications, or reference to what your partner did. “I did this. It was wrong. It is not something you caused.”
- Restore or repair whatever was affected, damaged, or taken. If what was damaged was your partner’s sense of safety in this relationship, name that specifically.
- Ask your partner directly whether they consider the amends for these “crossing any of these lines” items sufficient to move forward with our work together. Yes, there may be hurt feelings about the issue overall; here, we are talking about anything that comes from the list above. If your partner does not feel that amends were sufficient for the items listed above, the work is not yet done.
Both of you must agree, separately and explicitly, that amends were made before this checklist continues. There is no version of our work together proceeds around these behaviors. They get named, owned, repaired, and confirmed by both partners first.
Step 2: You can describe what happened without making yourself the only victim.
This is not a request to invent wrongdoing you didn’t do. It is a request to be accurate. If you genuinely behaved well, you can say so. If you behaved badly, you can say so. What you cannot do is arrive with a story in which only one of you is a person.
Step 3: You know what you were actually feeling, not what you were thinking.
A feeling is one word: Scared, humiliated, dismissed, alone. “I felt like they didn’t care” is a thought, not a feeling. What was the feeling underneath that? Hint: Avoid the words “you” and “your”.
Step 4: You can identify which destructive patterns you used.
Criticism, defensiveness, contempt, or shutting down, for yourself, not your partner. Be specific. Name-calling, mockery, and personal attacks are contempt, full stop. Yelling, blaming, and attacking make the situation significantly worse. Shutting down and disengaging is also passively destructive. If you used them, name them and own your choice in choosing them.
Step 5: You take responsibility for your own flooding.
Your partner did not “make you” flooded. Your nervous system responded to what was happening, and managing that response is yours to do. Did you take ownership of your activation, or did you treat it as something done to you? Can you identify what flooding feels like in your body (racing heart, tunnel vision, inability to hold a thought, etc)? Did you recognize it before you hit the point of no return, or did you blow past it? Specifically:
- When you flooded, you took an effective break. At least 20 minutes, doing something genuinely calming, not replaying the argument or building your case. Did you actually calm down, or did you just stop talking while staying activated?
- When your partner needed a break, you let them go. Without following them, escalating on the way out, or treating their need for space as rejection or abandonment. Did you treat the break as a strategy or as a threat?
- You came back. You took the break and returned rather than using distance as punishment or avoidance. Did you come back after the 20 minutes, and did you signal that you were ready?
Step 6: You made a genuine repair attempt, including ownership without conditions.
A repair attempt is anything meant to stop the slide: A pause, a touch, an apology, a subject change. An apology that includes “but” or “if” is not ownership. Did you try? Did you let your partner’s attempts land? Did you allow your partner to have their own experience of reality, or did you override it by telling them what they were “really” feeling or what was “really” happening? In other words, did you respect that, or did you argue with it? Did you actually, as a part of the repair, state your real complaint underneath your version of the fight in one sentence? Something that starts with “I needed” or “I felt.” Not “you always” or “you never.” Can you actually articulate what the actual hurt under the argument was for you, without naming your partner’s behavior?
Step 7: You are not arriving at your next session with the conclusion already drawn.
“I’ve already made up my mind,” “I don’t know if I want to stay together anymore,” “I’m done,” and “I want a divorce” are all predetermined answers wearing the costume of a question. If you have already decided what the outcome of this session should be, you are not coming in to work. You are coming in for confirmation. Are you willing to be moved? If not, the session is irrelevant and should be rescheduled.
Step 8: Active alcohol or drug use is not an unspoken variable in this relationship.
If one or both partners are using alcohol or other substances regularly, and that use is affecting communication, emotional availability, or the ability to engage with practicing your new relationship skills, this must be named and actively addressed before any additional work together continues. This is not a moral judgment. It is a functional requirement.
Relationship skills practiced together require access to emotional regulation and cognitive processing that substance use impairs. When active use is a recurring pattern between sessions or between modules, the work done here does not hold. These skills are designed to be practiced in a clear-headed state. If that condition is not consistently available, continuing is not productive for either partner. Before the work continues:
- The partner whose alcohol or drug use is a factor must be able to name specifically what they are doing to address it. Not “I’m cutting back.” What, specifically, and with what accountability structure.
- The other partner must be able to confirm that the between-session environment is sufficiently stable to practice the material. If they cannot, that answer is itself the answer.
- If neither of those conditions is met, the next step is a scheduled accountability session before any further relationship work is done.
Continuing to work on the relationship while working around active substance use is not a workaround. It is a way of building on a foundation the work is not allowed to touch.
Final Thoughts
You won’t have perfect answers for all of these (except for Step 1, which is non-negotiable). However, your willingness to attend to (and take ownership of) each of these questions will directly affect whether your next session will be one in which you have a chance to stabilize your situation, or one where you attempt to use the session to litigate.