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Reconciliation
Op system update
Lindsay Brock Coulter
September 25, 2025
Hey LF Tribe ✨
How are you today? How’s your week going?
I was planning to write about commitment—to follow up on the Trust pillar in Gottman’s Sound Relationship House with its natural counterpart. But here we are instead, within the scaffolding between trust and commitment… reflecting on what makes these pillars challenging: mistakes, misunderstandings, betrayals, interpersonal trauma, and the tender work of repair, forgiveness and reconciliation.
During my graduate studies, I researched and developed an art therapy–based approach to the process of forgiveness, specifically within the context of divorce. Here’s some fun research you can check out ;-)
The clear mental and emotional health benefits of forgiveness have profoundly shaped how I navigated my parents’ divorce and how I support clients in their relationships.
As I transition from working primarily with individuals to focusing on couples, I’ve realized forgiveness alone isn’t enough — what’s truly needed is a deeply relational process called reconciliation.
Reconciliation has traditionally been a geopolitical term for me…
Think of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Rwanda’s Gacaca courts, or South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). These processes were not about erasing the past or pretending harm hadn’t occurred. They were about creating the conditions for people to live together again after unspeakable rupture.
Nations don’t reconcile by sweeping pain under the rug. They reconcile by:
Telling the truth
Centering the harmed
Repairing what can be repaired
Guaranteeing it won’t happen again
Couples need the same architecture—scaled down to a kitchen table.
Reconciliation in a marriage or partnership asks for no less: honesty, accountability, repair, and real change. It’s how trust is not only restored, but re-engineered for the future.
Forgiveness
Definition: A personal, internal process where you release resentment, anger, or the desire for revenge toward someone who hurt you.
Focus: About you—your own emotional freedom and healing.
Requires: Only one person. You can forgive someone even if they don’t apologize, change, or even remain in your life.
Outcome: You lighten your own emotional burden, but it doesn’t automatically restore the relationship.
Reconciliation
Definition: The process of repairing and restoring trust in a relationship after harm has been done.
Focus: About both people—mutual effort to rebuild connection.
Requires: At least two people, usually with acknowledgment of harm, accountability, change, and new boundaries.
Outcome: A renewed or transformed relationship, where trust and emotional security are gradually reestablished.
Why Reconciliation Is a Full OS Update
Forgiveness is like clearing your cache — it wipes away some of the heavy emotional files (resentment, anger, bitterness) so you can move forward with more ease. But reconciliation goes further. It’s not just about clearing space, it’s about rewriting the code relationships runs on.
Security patch: Trust has been breached, so reconciliation installs new “security features” — boundaries, accountability, and transparency.
Bug fixes: Old patterns that led to rupture are examined and repaired so they don’t keep crashing the system.
New features: Through reconciliation, partners often create new rituals, ways of communicating, and shared meaning that didn’t exist before.
Operating system upgrade: Instead of running on outdated scripts full of glitches, the relationship is updated to function more smoothly, reliably, and securely.
Without reconciliation, relationships risk running on old, buggy software — repeating the same errors. With it, relationships evolve into something stronger and more resilient than before.
So remember: Forgiveness heals your heart. Reconciliation rebuilds your bond. Both are powerful, but they’re not the same—and knowing the difference changes how we move forward in love.
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