How to Make Up After a Fight: Finding Your Way Back

If you want to know how to make up after a fight, start with the moment afterwards. Wait until you're both breathing calmly again, say one sentence that's real, and only then talk about what happened. Who was right when often sorts itself out along the way or stops mattering.

This guide is about the aftermath. How to avoid arguments or have better ones is in our guide to arguing in a relationship. Here it's about the question you ask yourself when the door has been slammed or the silence is sitting at the kitchen table: how do we get back together?

Calm down first

In the middle of a fight, almost nothing can be settled. The body is under current, sentences get shorter and harder, and every answer sounds like an attack. That's normal and has nothing to do with character.

A pause helps if it's clearly agreed. The difference between a pause and storming off lies in one sentence: "I need twenty minutes, then we'll keep talking." Someone who just leaves lets the other sit alone with the question of whether it's over. Someone who names a time gives certainty.

What helps during the pause is different for everyone:

• a walk around the block, without your phone
• drinking water, opening a window, changing rooms
• writing down what you actually wanted to say
• deliberately slower breathing

What doesn't help: rehearsing the sentences with which you'll win when you come back. Whoever collects ammunition in the pause comes back with ammunition.

Who takes the first step?

Often each waits for the other to begin. But the first step isn't a defeat. It only shows that the relationship matters more to you than the point on the scoreboard.

The first step can be tiny. Setting down a glass of water. Asking whether the other has eaten yet. A short message: "I'm still thinking about earlier. Shall we talk when you're ready?" That's not an apology and doesn't have to be. It's an open window.

If you notice it's always the same person who has to start, bring that up later. It's one of the things you can say in a calm moment, not in the middle of the anger.

An apology that lands

Many apologies fail because of one small word. "I'm sorry you felt that way" sounds as if the mistake lies in the other's perception. What works better is what sounds like responsibility:

• Say what you did: "I interrupted you in front of your friends and put you down."
• Say what that probably set off in the other: "That must have embarrassed you."
• Say what you want to do differently, if you really intend to.

No "but" afterwards. If a "but you also" follows the apology, the other only hears the second part. Your own reasons are allowed later, in a sentence of their own and not as an add-on.

And stay honest: if you're not sorry about something, don't say you are. You may be sorry that the evening is ruined, or that the other was sad. That's true, and it's fine to say it.

People accept apologies very differently. Some need words, others a gesture, still others a night of distance first. It's worth clarifying once, ideally in a moment without a fight. A question that suits this well: "How do you like to apologize, and how do you like to receive an apology?"

The talk afterwards

When the mood is softer, a second, calm conversation is worthwhile. It has a different goal than the fight. You want to understand what happened, and you don't need to crown a winner.

A few rules that carry the conversation:

• Each tells their view, the other listens without interrupting. Then you briefly sum up what you heard before you answer.
• Speak for yourself: "I was hurt when ..." rather than "You're always so ...".
• Look for the actual trigger. The fight about the dishwasher may have been one about appreciation or about a day when someone was exhausted.
• Keep it to the one topic. Whoever digs up old grievances turns a conversation into an interrogation.
• End with something concrete that's small enough to keep.

Ask yourself too where you contributed to the escalation. That's easier when the other does it first. So it's worth starting with your own part.

How you know it's really over

Some couples talk a fight to death and still don't feel reconciled afterwards. Others never say a word and are close again soon. Both happen.

It helps to know your own yardstick. How can you tell that a fight between us is really over, even if nobody says sorry? For some it's a shared laugh, for others a hug, for others the first normal dinner. If you know this about each other, you don't have to guess whether peace is already in effect.

Making amends without a big show

Flowers and presents are nice, but they don't replace a conversation. Small, fitting gestures usually work better than big ones:

• making the coffee the way the other likes it
• taking over the chore you argued about
• listening without looking at your phone
• suggesting a walk with no agenda
• asking the other what would do them good right now

The most important thing is that the gesture fits the other person, and not what you yourself would like to receive.

When it keeps repeating

Two people argue, that's part of it. It gets harder when the same fight keeps coming back, when one of you regularly shuts down, or when insults and contempt become a habit. Then the fight is usually just the symptom of something deeper: a need that never gets heard, or a fear you don't talk about.

Here couples counseling or therapy can help. That doesn't mean things are going badly for you. A coach doesn't only help a team once it's losing every game, either. More on the bigger questions is in how to save your relationship.

If in an argument someone has to be afraid, gets hit, threatened or intimidated, that is no case for a guide. Then protection counts. In immediate danger, call 911 in the US or 999 in the UK. The National Domestic Violence Hotline in the US is 1-800-799-7233, and the National Domestic Abuse Helpline in the UK is 0808 2000 247. Both are free and open around the clock.

Preventing, so there's less to settle

No relationship gets by without arguments, and it doesn't need to. But some things soften the ground you argue on:

• Talk about small things before they get big. An annoyed sentence on Tuesday is easier than an outburst on Saturday.
• Have a fixed habit ready after disagreements, such as tea together or a walk.
• Know how the other ticks: who needs distance, who closeness? Who gets loud, who goes quiet?
• Say more often what's going well. Someone who only talks when something goes wrong links conversations with annoyance.

More on talking in daily life is in communication in relationships.

Where Us2 fits

Part of what's missing after a fight is an easy way into conversation. Us2 gives you a question every day that you both answer separately. You only see the other's answer once you've answered yourself. That takes the pressure off the conversation, because nobody has to react before they've said something. Questions like "What do I do in an argument that actually helps you, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time?" bring out things you'd never say in the heat of the moment.

If you want to try it: on the home page you can test Us2 for three days free, without payment details.