For romance, is it "reconcile" or "reconcile their relationship/love"?

"Reconcile their relationship" is the proper term, but in common parlance "reconcile" is used. Just as "text" is used for "send a text message."

"Reconcile" means "restore good relations".

IMHO "reconcile their relationship" would be redundant.

Depends on the sentence. It could be reconciled. But reconciled their relationship is not redundant, simply because there are other kinds of reconciliation. So many other kinds that I'd want to know exactly what they did reconcile.

"Reconcile a relationship," sounds kind of strange to me. They reconcile, OR they reconcile their differences or their checking account statement. But there's nothing else to reconcile the relationship with,if you see what I mean.

I think the context should be more than enough to suggest the most common meaning rather than something from accounting.

But if you want to be completist what is being reconciled are the obstacles that block the path to a relationship, not the relationship.

Thus something like: they 'reconciled their differences'.

They rekindled their relationship.

VTwriter said:

They rekindled their relationship.

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Rekindling is different from reconciling, though. I think of rekindling as re-igniting a metaphorical fire of sorts. Reconciling is just healing a relationship, not necessarily making it passionate.

I would just say that they "reconciled" and let the context clarify what it means. "Reconciling their relationship" is a little long and awkward feeling to me.

bunny-gypsy said:

Weird question, I know, but I'm having trouble with that phrase. It's supposed to be a verb, but I do not know if I should leave it as is like: "they reconcile", or should I say, they "reconcile their relationship/marriage/love"?

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I believe reconcile is an intransitive verb, meaning you don't reconcile something, you just reconcile, e.g., "After years of separation, the couple reconciled."

So, "reconciled their relationship" would be gramatically wrong.

On the other hand, you could probably get away with using it with a prepositional object, e.g., "She reconciled with her estranged husband." But better would using the noun reconciliation with "with," as in "Her lawyer brokered a reconciliation with her estranged husband" or "a reconciliation between Estelle and her estranged husband"

AudreyInDC said:

I believe reconcile is an intransitive verb, meaning you don't reconcile something, you just reconcile, e.g., "After years of separation, the couple reconciled."

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I think you can do both. The intransitive version just means 'to become reconciled'. Transitively, I think you can reconcile a couple.

The couple can reconcile because the word means to take things that are different and make them compatible.

Torgo said:

I think you can do both. The intransitive version just means 'to become reconciled'. Transitively, I think you can reconcile a couple.

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Oops, you're right - Merriam-Webster online has it as both a transitive and an intransitive verb:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reconcile

All the same, if reconcile is going to be used transitively, I'm more comfortable with expressions like "He couldn't reconcile his ideals with reality" than "They couldn't reconcile their relationship" - the latter still sounds like a mistake. I think as a previous poster stated, it's probably tautological and therefore wrong.