Getting Back Together: A Plan

Part one is a gate

The four questions in part one are not a warm-up for part two. They are a gate, and one honest use of this sheet is to finish part one and then not do part two. If you already know you are getting back together whatever the answers say, that is allowed, but fill part one in anyway and keep it, because in four months it will tell you something your memory will not.

Both people answer separately. Comparing the answers is the point, and the comparison is worth much less if one of you watched the other write. If only one of you is willing to do it, part one still works alone. Part two does not, because it contains agreements and an agreement made by one person is a resolution.

Answer in behaviour rather than in character. "He was distant" cannot be answered or checked. "He would go two or three days without replying and then carry on as though nothing had happened" can be answered, and can be checked again in six weeks.

Q1. What the problem was, in behaviour

Describe it so an outsider could check it.

Write what actually happened, in a form a stranger could verify. Not that you grew apart, and not that he was emotionally unavailable, because neither of those can be observed and so neither can be different later. What did each of you do, how often, and what happened next. Most people find this harder than expected, and the difficulty is the useful part: a problem you cannot describe in behaviour is a problem you will not notice returning, because you will be watching for a feeling instead.

Q2. What is different, and who could verify it

Time passing is not one of the answers.

Something has to have changed other than the calendar. Ask what it is, then ask how somebody who does not care about either of you would confirm it. Started therapy in March and has gone every week since is verifiable. Feels differently about it now is not. This question is uncomfortable because the honest answer is often that nothing has changed except that both of you found the separation worse than expected, which is real, and is a reason to talk rather than a reason to resume.

Q3. What each of you did with the time

One of you rebuilt. One of you waited.

Two people can spend three months apart in completely different ways, and the gap between those ways predicts a great deal. One rebuilt a life and one held a place open. Neither is disqualifying on its own, but a reunion between somebody who changed something and somebody who was on hold tends to put the entire responsibility for the relationship on the first person from day one. Write what you actually did with the months, including the parts that were only getting through them.

Q4. What happens the first time it comes back

It will. Decide now what happens then.

It will come back at least once, probably early, and usually in a smaller form than before. The reunions that survive have decided in advance what that moment means and what happens in it. Not a punishment and not an ultimatum: a named response. Who says something. How soon. Whether it gets raised on the spot or at an agreed time. Couples who skip this question tend to treat the first recurrence as proof that nothing changed, which produces a second ending faster and more bitterly than the first one.

Month one: what is not in it

Three things that feel natural and shorten the reunion.

Three things to leave out, all of which feel natural. No relitigating the breakup: the account has been given, and going back over it turns every ordinary disagreement into the old one. No marking the anniversary of the split. And no immediate return to the previous living arrangement, however practical that would be, because the arrangement carried the pattern and moving straight back into it restores both at once. The first month is also not the time to test whether it all still works, since testing produces the strain it is testing for.

Month one: keys, nights and pace

The pace gets set by momentum unless you set it.

Reunions get logistical quickly, and the logistics are usually settled by momentum rather than by agreement. How many nights a week to begin with. Whether keys go back now or later. What you tell people, and when. Who already knows. Each item is small enough to feel not worth discussing, and together they set the pace of everything else, which is why the standard reconciliation is back to full-time inside nine days and struggling by week five. Slower is not a lack of commitment. It is what gives the month something to review.

Week four: the review, written down

Twenty minutes, in writing, in the diary now.

Put a date in the diary now for the end of week four and treat it as an appointment rather than as a mood. Twenty minutes, both of you, three questions: what has actually been different, what has already recurred, and what each of you is still not saying. Written down, because a spoken review at week four turns into an exchange of reassurance, which is what both of you will want at that point and what neither of you can check later. The written version is what you compare against at week twelve.

The line: what would mean this is not working

Defined now, because later it will bend.

Define it now, while you can still think clearly, because a definition made later will bend to fit whatever is happening at the time. One or two specific things, phrased as events rather than as feelings. Nobody is obliged to act on this, and writing it down is not a plan to leave; it is the difference between deciding and drifting. Reconciliations that end badly a second time have usually been over for some months before either person said so out loud, and the line is what shortens that gap.

The ordinary kind

A reconciliation planned this way is uncommon, and it is better than the usual sort. The usual sort is two people who missed each other, which is genuine and warm and is not a plan, and it accounts for most of the ones that end again inside a year.

If you have read this far and found part one unanswerable, that counts for something. Not being able to describe what went wrong in behaviour, or what has changed, or what happens when it recurs, is not a neutral result. It usually means the decision is being made by how much the separation hurts, which is a real feeling and a poor forecast.

None of this tells you whether to go back. That is yours to decide, and people do get back together on nothing more than wanting to and make it work. It is simply a good deal rarer than the wanting makes it feel.