Many people in wonderful and loving relationships occasionally find that something has happened and it is just not the same any more.  There are obviously two kinds of categories that these duets may fall into – one that is event-driven; one that is progressively degraded.  If your duet is in the first category – event-driven – then you should consider skipping the second paragraph and going to the third one.  

If you find that your relationship, while once great, is no longer in that category then you should take heart, because you are in good company with millions of couples.  Relationships are under greater stress in our society than ever before.  The stress of job, money, home, kids, family and much more are placing increased pressure of the greatest of duets.   If you are in this category, of a degraded and sliding in the wrong direction relationship, then you should take steps to halt the slide and begin to make reparations to get it back to where it was – perhaps even better.

Not unlike other forms of human intervention in people-related scenarios, correcting a relationship requires to ingredients:  an understanding of what is wrong; an awareness and skill level necessary to fix it.   Let’s deal with the first one – understanding or diagnosis – to determine what it is that you need to fix.  This is the first step in the correction of any problem in a relationship and it requires careful attention so no mistakes are made.  If this part is done incorrectly, you could wind up making things worse by trying to fix something that is not the problem – or not broken at all!   You should start with a thorough analysis and discussion with your mate and document in writing what you both feel is wrong.  Then you both should prepare a list of changes – from most-needed to least.  Then create an easiest-to-most difficult to achieve list as a response to your partner’s wish list.   This will produce a combined list of issues that can be addressed – with both your responses reflecting how difficult it will be for both of you to produce the changes that the other one needs.  This jointly-produced list will be the first cut at getting what you both want, since many of the items you listed as important will fall within the relatively easy-to-accomplish sector or your mate’s response.   This modified response scenario will help both of you give and take in the process of repairing of your relationship.

If, on the other hand, your strained relationship is due to an incident that injured one of the partners you should discuss the problem fully – without anger or “how could you?” elements – to determine if the act was intentional and/or repeated.   If that was the case then you should work to repair that specific situation with appropriate apology and forgiveness.   Assuming that the injured party accepts and is willing to grant some genuine forgiveness, then the two of you can move on.

If you are attempting to get ex back or if you are developing a plan to win your ex back this type of repair strategy may give you structure.  Regardless, you may learn that an attempt to get your ex back might be met with a willing participant.