Repair quiz
How do the two of you find your way back after a fight?
Ten quick questions about what you need after things go wrong. Then send it to your partner and see how your two ways of repairing fit together. Takes about two minutes. Your answers aren’t saved.
First
What should we call you?
Your partner will see this when you send them the result.
Right now, you tend to repair
This shows how you tend to repair at the moment, not who you are. People change, and so do the ways they come back to each other.
Pro tip, from the research
Read the research →The two of you
Practise it in the moment
Repair in Comminxy helps you slow down when a conversation gets heavy, say what you feel, and find a way forward together.
The four ways couples repair
After a fight, people reach for different things. None of them is the right one. Most of us lean one way, and trouble starts when two people lean opposite ways at the same moment.
By talking it through
Words are how you come back. Until it has been said out loud, it does not feel finished. What you need: to know when the conversation is coming. Silence with no plan feels scary.
With space first
You need the storm inside to pass before you can find words. Going quiet is not a punishment, it is how you get ready. What you need: a break with an end on it. Not walking away, just time, with a promise to come back.
Through small actions
You show it more than you say it. Making tea, sitting close, fixing the thing. That is your apology. What you need: for it to be noticed. A thank you lands deeper than being told it is fine.
With warmth and lightness
You find your way back through a smile. Lightness is how you check you are still on the same side. What you need: to feel light again, and for the joke to be read as a hand held out, not a dodge.
What happens when two styles meet
The quiz covers all ten combinations. These four come up most.
One needs time. One needs to talk.
The one researchers have studied most, and the one that gets stuck fastest. The more one pursues, the further the other withdraws, and the fight grows past whatever started it. The fix is a number agreed while you are both calm. Twenty minutes, said out loud, and then you come back.
One says it. One shows it.
One of you needs to hear the words. The other makes the tea instead. You are both repairing. Only one of you is being understood. One sentence alongside the gesture closes it.
One talks. One jokes.
A joke can feel like dodging to someone who still needs to talk, and staying serious can feel heavy to someone who comes back through warmth. Let the real thing be said first. Then the lightness is welcome.
Two of the same
Easier in the moment, because neither of you is confused by the other. The risk is different: the thing you both avoid never gets named, so it comes back next week wearing a different coat.
Where this comes from
The quiz is not a diagnosis. It is a way of naming something couples already feel. The ideas underneath it are well studied, and we have written each one up:
- Carrère and Gottman watched newlyweds discuss a disagreement and could predict how the whole conversation would go from its first three minutes, 96% of the time.
- Gottman and Levenson, measuring what happens inside the body during conflict, found an overwhelmed nervous system needs roughly twenty minutes to settle before it can hear anything.
- Gottman calls the small moves couples make to stop a fight repair attempts. What decides the fight is not how polished the attempt is, but whether the other person takes it.
- Carstensen, Gottman and Levenson watched long married couples and found the happiest used affection and humour during conflict, not instead of it.
Questions people ask
Is the quiz free?
Yes. No sign up, no email, no account. Your answers are not saved anywhere.
How long does it take?
Ten questions, about two minutes.
Do we both have to take it?
You can take it on your own and you will get your own result. The useful part comes when your partner takes it too, because then you see the two of you side by side, with one thing to try.
Is this a personality test?
No. It shows how you tend to repair at the moment, not who you are. People change, and so do the ways they come back to each other.