When Partners Are Healing at Different Speeds with a Couples Therapist in Saint Paul, MN

When partners are healing at different speeds, it can feel deeply unsettling—even when love is still strong.

One partner may feel ready to talk things through, make sense of the past, or move toward change. The other may still feel raw, overwhelmed, or unsure how to begin. This difference can create tension, fear, and confusion. Many couples quietly wonder, “Are we drifting apart?” when the deeper truth is often, “We’re just healing in different ways.”

In the work of a couples therapist in Saint Paul, MN, this is one of the most common and tender challenges couples bring into the room. Different healing speeds do not mean something is wrong with the relationship. They usually mean that each partner’s nervous system is responding in its own protective way.

Healing happens in the body, not just the mind

Many people assume healing is about insight or effort. But healing also happens through the body.

Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), teaches that underneath conflict is a simple attachment need: “Are you there for me?” When one partner wants to move faster, they are often reaching for reassurance and closeness. When the other partner slows down, they are often trying to stay emotionally safe.

Stan Tatkin explains that partners bring different nervous system patterns into relationships. Some people calm themselves by moving toward problems and talking things out. Others need space, quiet, or time before they can re-engage. These patterns are not choices. They are learned survival responses.

This is why somatic couples therapy in St. Paul, MN can be so helpful. Somatic therapy focuses on what the body is communicating—tight chests, shallow breathing, frozen posture, racing thoughts, or numbness. When couples learn to listen to these signals, healing becomes less about pushing and more about pacing.

The emotional cost of healing at different speeds

When couples don’t understand the reason behind different healing speeds, pain often builds on both sides.

The partner healing faster may feel:

• Impatient or frustrated

• Afraid the relationship will never change

• Lonely or burdened by doing “more work”

The partner healing more slowly may feel:

• Pressured or judged

• Afraid of making mistakes

• Ashamed for not being “further along”

Over time, both partners may start to feel misunderstood.

The faster partner may push harder for conversations or answers. The slower partner may shut down or withdraw to protect themselves. This can create a cycle where both feel rejected, even though both want connection.

A skilled couples therapist in Saint Paul, MN, helps couples slow this cycle down and see it clearly—not as a personal failure, but as a pattern that can be changed.

Healing is not a race or a checklist

One of the most important shifts couples can make is letting go of the idea that healing should look the same for both people.

Healing does not move in straight lines. It moves in waves. Some weeks feel hopeful and connected. Other weeks feel heavy and distant. Progress may show up as fewer blowups, shorter conflicts, or quicker repair—not as constant calm or agreement.

John Gottman reminds us that long-term relationship success depends less on avoiding conflict and more on how couples repair after disconnection. Repair matters more than speed.

This is why learning relationship repair skills in Minneapolis, MN, and surrounding areas is so valuable. Repair skills help couples stay connected even when healing speeds don’t match.

How couples therapy supports different healing speeds

In therapy, couples often focus on three main areas when healing timelines don’t align.

1. Understanding what speed really means

Instead of arguing about how fast things should move, couples explore:

• What feels scary right now?

• What does my body need to feel safe?

• What happens when we go too fast—or too slow?

When speed is translated into fear, grief, or longing, partners often soften toward each other.

2. Creating clear pacing agreements

Rather than talking whenever emotions overflow, couples may create structure, such as:

• Set times to talk about hard topics

• Agreements about how long conversations last

• Clear ways to pause without abandoning the conversation

• Promises about when and how to return

Structure reduces anxiety. The faster partner knows the connection is coming. The slower partner knows they won’t be overwhelmed.

3. Practicing repair instead of perfection

Repair doesn’t require perfect words. It requires willingness. Repair may sound like:

• “I’m feeling overwhelmed. Can we slow down?”

• “I’m noticing I’m getting defensive.”

• “I care about you, even though this is hard.”

These moments rebuild trust one step at a time.

Somatic tools that help couples stay connected

In somatic couples therapy in St. Paul, MN, therapists often use body-based tools to help couples regulate together.

Nervous system check-ins

Partners may pause and notice:

• Is my body tense or relaxed?

• Is my breath shallow or steady?

• Do I feel present or far away?

This helps couples decide whether to keep talking or focus on calming first.

Short, contained conversations

Instead of long talks that lead to shutdown, couples may use 10–15 minute containers. Short conversations help the slower nervous system feel safer and help the faster nervous system trust the process.

Grounding together

Simple actions—placing feet on the floor, taking a slow breath, sitting side by side—can help both partners stay connected during difficult moments.

What you can try at home

If you and your partner are healing at different speeds, these practices can help.

Name the difference gently

Try language like:

• “I think we’re moving at different speeds, and that’s scary for me.”

• “I need more time, but I don’t want to disconnect from you.”

Naming the issue without blame often lowers tension right away.

Choose connection over resolution

You don’t need to solve everything at once. Focus on staying emotionally connected, even if the issue remains unresolved.

Celebrate small signs of progress

Notice when:

• A hard conversation ends more calmly

• You return to each other more quickly

• One of you speaks up instead of shutting down

These moments show healing is happening.

Different speeds can strengthen a relationship

Healing at different speeds does not mean a relationship is failing. Often, it means the relationship is learning how to hold complexity.

The faster partner often learns patience, gentleness, and trust in the process. The slower partner often learns courage, voice, and confidence that they won’t be rushed or left behind.

Like two trees growing side by side, your roots may deepen at different times. What matters is that you are still sharing the same ground – turning toward each other with honesty, care, and commitment.

Working with a couples therapist in Saint Paul, MN can help you learn how to slow down without giving up and move forward without pushing too hard. With support from somatic couples therapy in St. Paul, MN, many couples discover that honoring different healing speeds doesn’t weaken the connection; it deepens it.

Love is not proven by who heals first.

It is proven by choosing, again and again, to come back to each other.

CAN A SOMATIC COUPLES THERAPIST IN SAINT PAUL, MN, HELP YOU STAY CONNECTED WHEN YOU'RE HEALING AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS?

When one of you is ready to name what happened, feel what you've been avoiding, or shift how you relate to your past while the other is still too raw, too numb, or too overwhelmed to begin, the distance between you can feel like abandonment. In romantic partnerships, this can show up as one partner in therapy processing childhood wounds while the other isn't ready to look at their family of origin. Or as one person asking for different patterns in conflict, intimacy, or parenting, while the other's nervous system registers change as a threat. A conversation about feelings, an invitation to couples therapy, or noticing your partner transforming in ways you can't yet access can activate panic. This urgency is shaped by experiences where being left behind meant being unlovable, where needing more time looked like resistance, and where not healing fast enough meant you were the problem. These patterns aren't signs that you're incompatible or that someone is failing; they're your nervous systems responding to the vulnerability of moving at different speeds when connection once felt conditional on keeping pace.

Your somatic couples therapist in Saint Paul, MN, can help you and your partner begin to recognize and tolerate different healing speeds as part of the process rather than a threat to connection. In somatic couples therapy, you'll learn to notice how the urge to rush your partner forward, hold yourself back, or collapse into resentment shows up in the body and between you—and to practice staying present with the gap without demanding your partner catch up, suppressing your own progress, or leaving because the loneliness of different timelines feels too painful. This work isn't about syncing up or waiting for permission to heal. It's about learning to stay connected when one of you is moving and the other needs to be still. At NobleTree Therapy, sessions move at a pace your nervous system can handle. We honor how different speeds live in the body—the guilt of moving ahead, the shame of needing more time, the grief of watching your partner access something you can't yet reach—and use gentle, body-based practices to support staying tethered when the gap between you feels like proof the relationship can't hold both timelines. If this resonates, you're invited to reach out and explore whether this work feels like a next step.

• Let's connect—schedule a free consultation

• Learn more about somatic couples therapy at NobleTree

• You don't have to heal at the same speed to stay connected. Sometimes, honoring the difference is the work.

OTHER THERAPY SERVICES OFFERED AT NOBLETREE THERAPY IN ST. PAUL, MN

At NobleTree Therapy, we support individuals, couples, and families across Minnesota who are learning to love each other through profound change—when one person is questioning everything while the other isn't ready, when deconstructing feels urgent to one partner and destabilizing to the other, and when the timeline of healing becomes another thing to fight about. Many people come to this work carrying the imprint of environments—spiritual, familial, or cultural—where staying close meant staying aligned, where difference was dangerous, and where moving at your own pace meant you were falling away. Somatic couples therapy in St. Paul, MN, is one way we help partners slow down and examine how the fear of desynchronization continues to shape connection, patience, and the permission to be in different places without it meaning the relationship is ending.

Alongside somatic couples therapy, NobleTree Therapy offers LGBTQIA+ affirming care, support for healing religious trauma and spiritual abuse, and space for the grief that emerges when you realize healing isn't linear and your partner's pace isn't a referendum on your own. We also work with individuals exploring how the pressure to keep up, the guilt of moving ahead, or the shame around needing more time shows up in the body long after leaving systems that demanded lockstep conformity. Whether you're learning to trust that your partner's slower pace isn't resistance to you, practicing what it means to give someone space to question without taking it personally, or discovering that you can hold different truths at different times without losing each other, our work honors your lived experience and the wisdom of moving at a pace each nervous system can sustain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kendra Snyder, MA, LMFT, NCC (she/her) is the founder of NobleTree Therapy and a licensed trauma therapist serving Minnesota and Colorado. Her work is deeply informed by an understanding of how systems that demand unity—whether religious, cultural, or familial—can shape a person's capacity to tolerate difference in healing timelines, honor a partner's slower or faster process, or acknowledge that desynchronization doesn't mean disconnection. For over a decade, she has supported individuals and couples navigating the discomfort of realizing that healing together doesn't mean healing identically, and that loving someone includes letting them arrive at their own understandings in their own time.

Kendra's approach is somatic, depth-oriented, and relational, with a particular focus on how the fear of being out of sync—the urgency to align, the shame around moving too fast or too slow, the pressure to convince your partner to catch up or slow down—becomes embedded in the nervous system and carried into adult partnerships. In her somatic couples therapy in St. Paul, MN, she helps partners recognize when the need for matching timelines is actually a protection against the vulnerability of difference, and how to gently stay present with divergent paces without abandoning yourself or demanding your partner change. Her practice is especially attuned to people healing from spiritual systems that equate uniformity with love, adoptees navigating different timelines of identity formation and family reckoning, LGBTQIA+ individuals holding tension between partners at different stages of coming out or transition, and anyone learning that connection can survive, and even deepen, when healing doesn't happen in tandem.

Kendra believes that relational healing unfolds not through forced synchronization or emotional matching, but through the courage to honor different paces, the practice of staying curious when your partner's process doesn't mirror your own, and the slow restoration of permission to be exactly where you are: early, late, stuck, racing ahead, or circling back, and still worthy of love. At the heart of her work is a commitment to helping couples move out of the belief that love requires sameness and into connections that feel mutual, embodied, and spacious enough to hold the truth that two people can be healing in the same relationship while standing in very different places.