How to Fix a Struggling Relationship: 12 Steps

To fix a struggling relationship, start by making sure you both feel safe, then stop arguing about who is to blame and look at the pattern you keep repeating. Rebuild warmth with small daily habits, change how you start and pause hard conversations, and check in once a week. If the same fights keep coming back or one of you has checked out, bring in a couples therapist early rather than late.

These tips assume both partners feel safe. If you're afraid of your partner, these techniques aren't the right tool — go to Help Now.

This article is part of our complete guide to struggling relationships. Below are 12 practical steps in the order most couples find easiest, grouped into four stages: safety, understanding the pattern, rebuilding connection and handling conflict. You do not have to do them all at once. Pick two or three, practice them for a few weeks, then add more.

First, check that it is safe

Step 1: Make sure neither of you is afraid

This step is not a formality. Couples skills only work between two people who can disagree without fear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes intimate partner violence as including not only physical and sexual violence and stalking, but also psychological aggression meant to harm or control a partner ^[1].

Ask yourself honestly:

• Do I change what I say or do because I'm scared of how my partner will react?
• Does my partner control money, my phone, or who I can see?
• Have I been threatened, pushed, grabbed or hurt?

If yes, couples counseling and "communication tips" are not the fix. The National Domestic Violence Hotline does not recommend couples counseling for abusive relationships, partly because things said in a session can be used against the person being abused ^[2]. Contact the Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. In an emergency, call 911.

If you feel safe but your relationship is tense and distant, keep reading.

Name the pattern, not the person

Step 2: Stop the blame debate

Most struggling couples are stuck in an argument about the argument: who started it, who is more unreasonable, whose fault it really is. That debate has no winner. Try shifting from "you" to "we":

• Instead of: "You always shut down the second I bring anything up."
• Try: "We get into this thing where I keep pushing and you go quiet, and then we both feel worse. Can we figure out that loop together?"

Researchers have studied one common loop for decades. In the demand-withdraw pattern, one partner pressures for change through requests, criticism or complaints, and the other pulls back through defensiveness or silence. A study of 31 couples found that each person tended to push harder when discussing a change they wanted and to withdraw when the partner wanted the change ^[3]. In other words, the roles are partly about the topic, not just personality. See our glossary entry on the pursue-withdraw cycle.

Step 3: Draw your cycle together

On a calm evening, sit down with a piece of paper and map a recent fight. Not what it was about, but how it moved.

Notice the "felt underneath" columns. Under the sharpness and silence, both people usually feel something softer: worry, loneliness, fear of failing. Seeing that together is often the first moment couples feel like a team again.

Also look for the patterns the Gottman Institute calls the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. The Institute describes contempt, such as mockery and eye-rolling, as the single greatest predictor of divorce in its research ^[4]. If contempt is common, flag it as a priority. Our Four Horsemen self-check can help you each reflect privately.

Rebuild small daily connection

Before you try to solve big problems, rebuild some warmth. Hard conversations go better when there is goodwill in the bank.

Step 4: Turn toward small bids

A bid for connection is any small attempt to get your partner's attention or warmth: "Look at that dog," a sigh, a text with a meme. You can turn toward it (respond), turn away (ignore) or turn against (snap). The Gottman Institute reports that newlyweds who were still married six years later had turned toward each other's bids 86% of the time in the lab, compared with 33% for couples who later divorced ^[5].

Turning toward can take two seconds:

• "Ha, that's a great dog."
• "That sounds like a rough meeting. Want to tell me about it later?"
• Looking up from your screen and making eye contact.

This week, try to catch three bids a day you would normally miss. Our article on feeling disconnected from your partner goes deeper.

Step 5: Say one specific thank-you every day

Specific appreciation lands better than generic praise because it shows you noticed. Use the formula: what they did + how it helped.

• "Thanks for packing the lunches. It made the morning so much calmer."
• "I noticed you called your mom back even though you were tired. That was kind."

Appreciation tends to be contagious. In a set of studies, people who felt appreciated by their partners became more appreciative themselves, more responsive to their partner's needs, and more likely to stay together over time ^[6].

Step 6: Build reunion and goodbye rituals

Rituals of connection are small, predictable moments that say "you matter to me." The Gottman Institute suggests examples like a six-second kiss when you reunite and putting phones down for the first 10 minutes after you get home ^[7]. If kissing feels like too much right now, start with a real hello: stand up, look at each other, and ask one question.

Step 7: Hold a daily stress-reducing conversation

Once a day, take turns talking about stress from outside the relationship, like work, family or friends, while the other listens. The Gottman Institute's version runs 20 to 30 minutes with about 15 minutes each. The listener holds off on advice, validates feelings, and takes the speaker's side, even if they see things a bit differently ^[8].

Useful listener phrases:

• "That sounds exhausting."
• "No wonder you're frustrated."
• "I'm on your side here."

The rule that makes it work: no topics about your relationship during this talk.

Step 8: Do something new together

Routine can quietly drain closeness. In lab experiments, couples who did a short, novel and mildly challenging task together reported higher relationship quality afterward than couples who did something mundane ^[9]. Pick one new thing a week: a different walking route, a recipe from a cuisine neither of you has cooked, a free class, a board game you have never played.

Learn to handle conflict

Now you are ready to work on how you fight. Conflict is not the enemy. Every couple has it. What matters is how it starts, how it is paused and how it is repaired.

Step 9: Use a soft startup

How a conflict conversation begins strongly shapes how it goes. In a University of Washington study of 124 newlywed couples, the startup of a conflict discussion was key in predicting which couples later divorced ^[10]. A soft startup uses three parts: your feeling, the specific situation and a positive request.

• Instead of: "You never help around here."

• Try: "I'm feeling overwhelmed by the laundry piling up. Could we pick a night this week to tackle it together?"

• Instead of: "You care more about your phone than me."

• Try: "I miss talking with you at dinner. Could we keep phones in the other room while we eat?"

Our list of 25 soft startup examples covers money, chores, sex, in-laws and more.

Step 10: Pause when you're flooded

When a fight overheats, your body goes into fight-or-flight. This is called emotional flooding. Julie Gottman describes a heart rate over about 100 beats a minute (about 85 for very fit people) as a sign of flooding, and suggests breaks of 20 to 30 minutes, never longer than 24 hours, with a clear time to come back ^[11].

How to take a good break:

1. Agree on a signal in advance, like "I need a pause" or a hand gesture.
2. Say when you'll return: "Can we come back to this at 8:30?"
3. Do something soothing alone: walk, breathe slowly, listen to music.
4. Avoid replaying the fight or rehearsing comebacks.
5. Come back when you said you would.

The conflict pause timer can keep time for you.

Step 11: Repair and take responsibility

A repair attempt is anything that keeps a fight from spiraling. The Gottman Institute lists phrases like "Can I take that back?", "Let me try again", "I need your support right now" and "I can see my part in this" ^[12]. Accepting your partner's repair matters as much as making one.

Taking responsibility is the antidote to defensiveness. You do not have to accept all the blame, only your part ^[13]. "You're right that I snapped. I was stressed, but that's not on you."

Step 12: Check in once a week

A weekly check-in gives problems a scheduled place to go before they build up. A simple 20-minute format:

There is evidence that regular "relationship checkups" help. In a randomized trial with 215 married couples, those who did two checkup visits a year apart reported more intimacy, more felt acceptance and less distress than couples on a waitlist ^[14]. That trial used a structured, therapist-guided format, so a home check-in is a lighter version, but the principle of regular, kind attention holds.

See how to do a weekly relationship check-in for a first-time script.

What to stop doing

Fixing a relationship is partly about adding good habits and partly about dropping harmful ones. Try to stop:

• Kitchen-sinking. Bringing up every old grievance in one fight. Pick one issue.
• Contempt. Eye-rolling, mocking, name-calling or sarcasm about your partner's character.
• Threatening to leave mid-fight. It makes every disagreement feel like it could end the relationship.
• Fighting while flooded or drinking. Wait until you can think clearly.
• Venting about your partner to everyone. Pick one or two trusted, fair-minded people.
• Score-keeping out loud. "I did the dishes three times this week" rarely leads anywhere good.

A 30-day starter plan

At the end of the month, ask each other: "What felt different? What do we want to keep doing?"

When to get professional help

A couples therapist can help you see your pattern faster and practice new moves with guidance. A major research review found that couple therapy helps about 70% of couples who receive it ^[15]. Structured online programs can help too. In a randomized trial with 300 couples, an eight-hour online program based on an evidence-based couple therapy improved relationship satisfaction compared with a waitlist ^[16].

Get professional help if you notice:

• Ongoing contempt, or one of you withdrawing for weeks at a time.
• An affair or another serious breach of trust.
• Addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling or anything else.
• Depression or anxiety affecting daily life for either of you.
• Any fear of your partner. Contact an advocate first, not a couples therapist.
• Thoughts of self-harm. Call or text 988 now.

Our getting help guide explains your options, and how to find a good couples therapist covers what to look for. If you are unsafe, go to Help Now.

This article is for education and is not a substitute for professional help.

Keep going

• Back to the struggling relationships guide
• Signs your relationship is in trouble (and what helps)
• How to save your marriage when it feels too late
• How to stop fighting with your partner