When your marriage or relationship is in a secure place, something shifts. You can pause and actually observe what’s happening when you start to disconnect.
From there, emotion regulation becomes possible. You can reflect on what the conflict means to each of you.
Once you understand the meaning behind it, you can ask for what you need and stay open to what your partner needs.
How Do You Know When You’re Headed for Potential Relationship Disaster?
“There’s a reason you get stuck and start spinning with your partner or spouse”
In a distressed relationship, regulating emotions is hard. Reflecting on meaning and responding to each other’s needs can feel out of reach.
When you’re out of sync with each other, you’ll likely get stuck acting and reacting in typical negative patterns of the “Demon Dialogues” described in Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson. The fighting usually fits one of three patterns:
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Attack/Defend: this is a tit-for-tat patterns, where one partner gets angry or agitated and attacks, and the other partner defends themselves.
One partner attacks, the other defends, which escalates more attack, followed by more defensiveness.
This is the most common pattern in a distressed marriage or love relationship. Instead of the deeper emotions of anxiety, sadness, or shame being described, anger and withdraw patterns take over the couple.
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Attack/Attack: both of you are on a battlefield, making the other partner the enemy.
Anger dominates, while sadness, anxiety, or shame stay buried underneath, hidden behind the “protection” anger provides.
You feel “on edge,” tense, and ready to go on the attack at any moment.
How This Plays Out in Relationships
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Withdraw/Withdraw: you and your partner likely were stuck in one of the two above patterns of attack/defend or attack/attack, and over time, both of you started to “give up” the fight and shifted into withdraw/withdraw.
This pattern also shows up when both of you grew up in families where open conflict was avoided at all costs.
As the withdraw/withdraw pattern continues, resentment and sadness most likely grow, and feelings of loneliness can damper your relationship.
If you’ve shifted into a withdraw/withdraw pattern from another, this is the most dangerous pattern in a relationship because this pattern can shift from withdraw/withdraw to checked-out/checked-out, when a relationship is not salvageable.
Do you see your pattern in one of the three cycles described above? If so, there’s a lot you and your partner or spouse can do to change it.
Give us a call to talk about more ways to address your own challenges in your marriage or love relationship.
You can also read more in Sue Johnson’s Hold Me Tight, based on Emotionally Focused Therapy, a top-rated couple therapy model with empirical evidence that helps more than 70% of couples improve their marriage or love relationship.
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Travis Atkinson, LCSW, specializes in evidence-based couples therapy including the Gottman Method, EFT, and Schema Therapy, for couples in NYC and online. Take the first step today.
