Quote · Reimagining Love with Dr. Alexandra Solomon
"I'm Thinking About Getting Back Together With My Ex." (Part Two)
Where this was said
Question 12: What Are You Most Proud Of So Far?
At 45:25 · chapter starts 44:55
Healing in reconciliation is curvy, not linear, and Dr. Solomon's final question asks couples to stop and notice what is actually going right. [1] — Dr. Alexandra Solomon "Every time reconciling partners relate with more curiosity and patience, they create a corrective emotional experience. Noticing and savori…" 44:55 This is not toxic positivity or willful blindness — it's a neurological corrective to the negativity bias. Every time partners meet a difficult moment with curiosity instead of defensiveness, they create what therapists call a corrective emotional experience: receiving or offering something now that was unavailable before. Dr. Solomon is also honest about the emotional trap that waits in these wins — the urge to say 'If you could do this now, why couldn't you have just done it before?' That impulse is real, understandable, and ultimately corrosive. Instead, she offers a model of language that holds both gratitude and grief: 'Thank you for giving me now what you couldn't give me then. There's a small part of me that grieves what I couldn't have then, but a lot of me is glad to have it now.' That both/and — gratitude alongside sorrow, pride alongside vulnerability — is perhaps the most honest summation of what reconciliation truly demands.
Every time reconciling partners relate with more curiosity and patience, they create a corrective emotional experience. Noticing and savoring these wins isn't toxic positivity — it's the fuel that powers the hard work of building something new.
Each time partners relate with more curiosity and patience, they create a corrective emotional experience — feeling now what they could not feel then.
