Taking a Time Out: How Pausing Can Protect and Strengthen Your Relationship
When tensions rise between partners, emotions can quickly take over. What starts as a small disagreement can spiral into criticism, defensiveness, or stonewalling before either person even realizes what’s happening. In those moments, one of the most effective tools for preserving connection isn’t pushing through the conflict—it’s pressing pause. Both Relational Life Therapy (RLT) and the Gottman Method emphasize the importance of taking time outs as an act of love, not avoidance.
In Relational Life Therapy, pioneered by Terry Real, time outs are seen as a vital form of self-regulation and respect. When partners become emotionally “flooded,” their ability to listen, empathize, and repair breaks down. A time out allows each person to step away, calm their nervous system, and reflect on what’s really being triggered beneath the anger or frustration. It’s a way of saying, “I care about this relationship enough to not keep fighting like this.” Importantly, RLT teaches that time outs should have structure—communicating clearly (“I need 30 minutes to cool off, and then I’ll come back”) prevents the other partner from feeling abandoned or punished.
The Gottman Method echoes this principle through what Drs. John and Julie Gottman call “self-soothing.” Their research shows that when heart rates rise above 100 beats per minute during conflict, rational thought shuts down. Taking at least 20 minutes apart allows the body to calm and the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for empathy and problem-solving—to come back online. When partners return to the discussion after self-soothing, they’re far more likely to speak with gentleness, take responsibility, and find common ground.
Time outs are deceptively simple - many couples really struggle to implement them. Once we get heated, our emotions love to love themselves, they’re sticky, and we don’t want to disengage from them. Our trauma gets triggered. But we have to learn how to take breaks, because failing to do so and getting into another hurtful argument can leave a scar on your relationship, and these scars add up over time. Some things can’t be unsaid. We need to learn to control ourselves. Once we’re triggered, it’s often too late. The earlier you can identify when you are getting activated the better. But also better late than never. Sometimes I work with couples who really struggle to implement time outs, and they want other solutions to their marital problems. There isn’t really another solution - we have to stop the fighting. If you can’t, we need to talk about in-home separation, and ultimately out of home separation, at least for a period.