When someone we love feels betrayed, our instinct is often to explain, defend, or fix as quickly as possible. We want the pain to stop – both theirs and our own.
We often believe that if we can talk fast enough or say the “right thing,” we can somehow repair the rupture. But anyone who has sat inside broken trust knows that real healing doesn’t happen on a deadline. Real healing happens through a slower process of honesty, transparency, and most of all, accountability.
Accountability isn’t about getting stuck in a shame spiral and offering the same apology over and over. It’s about slowing down long enough to look clearly at what happened and the impact it had on the person we hurt. It asks us to stay with the pain instead of trying to outrun it.
I was reminded of this recently in my work with a couple I’ll call Dan and Kirsten. Their story is not unusual and it highlights how ruptures can be left unaddressed for years, but with intention and care, can heal surprisingly quickly.
For years, Dan hid his marijuana use from Kirsten, insisting he was just stepping away to “cool off” or get some work done when family stress escalated. What she didn’t know was that he was smoking during all those times when their children needed two engaged adults and when she needed a reliable partner beside her.
Learning that he had kept this secret was painful enough, but the deeper wound came from the timing of his use. During meltdowns, sibling fights, school stress, bedtime battles, or any moment when the house felt like it might tip into chaos, Dan just disappeared.
He numbed himself, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for hours, and left Kirsten alone in the emotional storm. She didn’t just discover that her partner had been hiding an addiction. She discovered she had been left alone in some of the hardest moments of her life, moments when she needed help but was expected to carry everything by herself.
As we slowed things down in session, it became clear that this was not only the pain she was carrying. We were touching on something much older in her, something she had survived for decades without fully naming. Kirsten had grown up in a home where she was the responsible one, the one who soothed younger siblings, the one who managed crises, and the one whose needs were rarely, if ever, met. Being left alone while caring for others was not just painful. It was the familiar suffering.
When she finally recognized how these two realities were connected – the abandonment she experienced in her early childhood and the abandonment she was now experiencing in her marriage – she said she felt a strange mixture of grief and relief. For the first time, the chaos inside her made sense.
But naming the truth also allowed a deeper fear to surface. She told me that the hardest part now was the belief that if Dan could leave her alone in the chaos of their family life, and never attune to her nor support her through it, what else might he leave her alone with in the future? In that moment, she could feel how completely her sense of safety was in peril and only decisive action on Dan’s part could make it right.
This is the point where I introduced the “50 Ways I Hurt You” practice. The title can feel intimidating, but it’s meant to help the partner who caused harm truly see the depth and texture of the pain their choices created.
It starts with writing a list of every way you may have caused hurt. You begin with the obvious actions and work steadily toward the less visible impact. After each statement, you add the phrase “and that hurt,” as a reminder of the emotional reality being named.
Examples often look like this:
- I hid my marijuana use from you, and that hurt your trust in me.
- I left you alone with the kids when things were hardest, and that hurt your sense of partnership, that we were in this together.
- I numbed out instead of stepping in, and that hurt your belief that I would show up not only for our family, but for you.
And as we go deeper, it expands:
- That hurt your trust in yourself and made you question your instincts.
- That made you lose sleep and wonder what else you didn’t know.
- That made you fear what future holidays and important family moments would feel like.
- That left you imagining how you would navigate the hard conversations with the kids alone.
As Dan began writing his list, something important happened. He started to understand that the hurt he caused had ripples far beyond the moments when he stepped outside to smoke. He also began to feel the weight of his own pain, a pain that had lived inside him long before he met Kirsten.
Over several sessions, Dan traced his marijuana use back to adolescence. He grew up in a home with no emotional safety net and no reliable adult to help him regulate fear, loneliness, or confusion. He learned early that soothing was something he had to do for himself.
Marijuana became the only predictable source of comfort he ever knew. It made sense that he turned toward it when parenting became overwhelming, because it had been his numbing mechanism since before he had words for what he was feeling.
There was a moment when he said softly, almost in disbelief, that he had never had a safe, secure attachment figure in his entire childhood. For the first time, he realized his coping strategy was not evidence of moral failure, but evidence of a boy who was doing the best he could without any real emotional support.
He acknowledged that there was real healing work he needed to do. But he also understood something essential. If his marriage was going to survive, he had to prioritize repairing the broken trust with Kirsten before turning fully toward repairing his own wounds. He wanted the marriage deeply, and this meant slowing down and showing up with consistent, grounded accountability.
The part many people don’t see is how deeply moving this process is for me as a counselor. When I sit with a couple doing this work, I truly see the pain of both partners. I see the moments when both start to make sense of their pain. I see the fragile, beautiful beginning of trust coming back to life when honesty, authenticity, and accountability replaces dissociation, dishonesty, and defensiveness.
Getting back to the list – even though it may be long, you never read it quickly or try to get through all of it in one sitting. You move slowly, always asking permission before anything is shared. I make sure each partner feels grounded and supported. We focus on only as much as both partners have capacity to share and hear that day. The healing is not in completing the list. The healing is in knowing that you’re both in this together – one partner cared enough to sit down, think deeply, and take accountability for the harm they caused with their actions. The other cared enough to receive what is shared with compassion and empathy.
When trust is broken, the injured partner truly needs to see evidence that their partner understands the scope of the hurt. Trust begins to rebuild in quiet, steady moments when truth is held with care.
We can’t undo the past, but we can create the conditions for trust to grow again. It starts with truth telling, reliability, emotional courage, and a willingness to sit in discomfort for the sake of connection.
If you and your partner are ready to rebuild trust and create a stronger foundation for your relationship, my Repair Your Relationship Couples Counseling Intensive offers a focused and supportive space for this work.
Couples move beyond dissociation and defensiveness, understand that ancient attachment wounds are the roots of their disconnection, and begin to experience the safety and closeness that genuine repair makes possible. If you want to do this incredibly brave, beautiful, and difficult work, I’d be honored to show you how. You can find out more and sign up for a free, 30-minute Exploratory Session here.
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