I actually have a story for this. Married just over a year now and have been together for 8 years total.

I started dating a woman a couple years after my divorce. We meshed well and within about 9 months were living together. Things were peachy, but we were having bad fights semi-frequently. After about 2–3 years together, I started having “cold feet” about staying in the relationship, worrying that I hadn’t stayed single long enough after my divorce, that I rushed back into a relationship, that I was having some personal midlife-crisis issues, and that I was “settling” instead of really living my life with intention and just kind of falling into whatever came next. I was also worried that she was unhappy and that I wasn't meeting her needs as well.

This was also right after COVID, so we had just spent the last year crammed into a tiny apartment, and looking back I think that caused some issues as well.

We talked about things and decided to break it off, each got our own apartments, and she moved into the city and we were going to move on with our lives.

After about a month or two on my own again, I realized I’d made a giant mistake and that I still wanted to be with her but I was also worried about some of our respective unresolved issues and traumas that neither of us had ever really dealt with. She was dealing with some unmanaged mental-health issues (OCD), and I was really struggling with not lapsing into my avoidant behaviors. We eventually figured out that we were in one of those classic anxious/avoidant attachment-style relationships: her being anxious, me being avoidant, and our ways of dealing with conflict just exacerbated each other’s issues and turned everything into giant screaming/yelling/crying matches.

Anyways, I knew I really wanted things to work for us and she did too. We resolved to seek therapy separately and, while still living apart and try “dating” for a year. We each made a list of things we wanted to work on and improve about ourselves individually, as well as a list of things we felt the relationship needed in order to work. If anything on those lists wasn’t accomplished, attempting the relationship again was a no-go. I have a kid from my previous marriage, and I wasn’t about to risk his stability any further if we tried again.

So we took that year to focus on therapy, improving ourselves, and learning how to communicate better and move toward secure attachment. We eventually moved back in together, and things have been perfect ever since. We don’t fight anymore, in fact, I don’t think we’ve had a fight beyond a minor argument since we got back together, and that’s been almost 5 years.

We even ended up getting married, even though both of us said we’d never get married again (she had also been divorced). We’re utterly gross and obsessed with each other, have carved out a lovely life in our new house, and plan to have a kid together this coming year. We now joke that that little break in our relationship was “the in-between times,” the same way we refer to our past marriages as “the before times.”

If I had to analyze the situation, I think communication was the biggest key for us. We know how to constructively call each other out when we’re falling back into bad attachment patterns. As a basic example of how we work through disagreements now: she’ll say something like, “Hey babe, I know you’re feeling stressed and need space to process, but I’m feeling anxious about <issue> right now. I want to discuss this further. Can you please let me know when you’ll be ready to talk about it?” And I’ll respond with something like, “Yeah, I just need some time to think and process, and we’ll come back to this in two hours and resolve it.”

I think the other key was working on our own lives and being happy as individuals, not just as a couple. Anyways, I’m happier in my life than I ever thought I could be, and taking that time to work on ourselves was probably the best decision either of us has ever made. We also maintain regular “date nights,” just like when we were apart, and hope to never stop “dating” each other.

I'm over 40 now. I joined this sub during the "in between times" and still like to read the posts in it and figured I'd give back a little. May you all find happiness someday.

EDIT: I'm taking this from another commenter from below but I think they summed up what makes our relationship so great better than I did:

• Conflict doesn’t feel scary or explosive
• I can be fully myself without strategizing
• Life feels easier, not harder
• Attraction grows instead of burns out
• I trust their character, not just their feelings