Why We Fight
Fights between couples are inevitable; they’re going to happen. The closer we get to people, the greater the expectations we have for them. Which also means the greater the opportunities for them to let us down. In our current culture, we depend on our partner to meet most of our needs (physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, etc.) in a very similar way to how we depended on our parents to meet most of our needs when we were younger. That attachment/bond/dependence is strong and any hint of a rupture to that attachment is jarring. We get emotional when we perceive the attachment bond to be threatened in any way because it’s incredibly important to us. If we didn’t care about our partner, we probably wouldn’t waste our emotional energy on them.
Fighting To Combat Disconnection
Just as with our parents, we want our partners to answer three big questions for us with an emphatic yes. These questions help us feel secure in our connection to our partner. If they don’t answer these questions with an emphatic yes, we doubt our connection to them and we feel insecure in the relationship.
These questions are:
1. Are you there for me?
2. Can I count on you?
3. Do I matter to you?
When we perceive any hint of a no or a maybe not, we respond in the way we learned to respond in our childhood to perceived threats to our attachment bonds. This usually looks one of two ways: a protest or a retreat. Which means you either have two partners protesting, two partners retreating, or one partner protesting and one partner retreating.
How We Fight
Two Protestors
Partner 1: “I have to stay late at work tonight.”
Partner 2: “Again?!”
Partner 1: “Well, someone has to make money!”
Partner 2: “You’re the one who wanted me to stay home to watch the kids!”
Partner 1: “Well, you’re the one who wanted to have kids in the first place!”…
One partner protests because they don’t feel connected and they don’t know how to ask for what they need to reconnect. The other protests back because they feel attacked and if they hadn’t already felt disconnected, they definitely do now. And on and on it goes.
Two Retreaters
Partner 1 inner dialogue: “My partner is going to be so disappointed in me for staying late at work again, I better just avoid them tonight.”
Partner 2 inner dialogue: “My partner must stay at work so late to avoid spending time with me, I guess I’ll just figure things out around here on my own so I don’t burden them further.”
The disconnection scares us, but we don’t believe there’s a point in protesting it because of the stories we have in our heads about how our partner feels about us. Our partner’s retreat causes us to believe our partner does not care about us and then we retreat out of fear. Our retreat causes the other to further retreat and then we’re more disconnected than we could ever imagine.
One Protestor And One Retreater
Partner 1: “I have to work another late night tonight.”
Partner 2: “Do you have any idea how much stress that puts on me?!”
Partner 1: “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
Partner 2: “You just never think about how your actions affect me!”
Partner 1: *Comes home with feelings of inadequacy and quietly tries to avoid angry partner*
One partner is feeling overwhelmed and can’t communicate what they need to their partner without intense emotion, the other partner gets overwhelmed by the intense emotion and retreats to a safe place, their retreat causes the protestor to feel even more disconnected, which causes them to protest even more and round and round we go.
How do you respond to a perceived rupture in your attachment bond?
Do you find yourself protesting or retreating? Do you see you and your partner in any of these scenarios? Do you want to know how to step out of the cycle that further exacerbates the disconnection so that you can repair the connection in a loving way?
How to step out of these cycles of disconnection:
Vulnerability! Yes, it sounds too simple to be true, but I really do believe it’s the answer. The only way to step out of one of these nasty cycles is to communicate your needs in a way that isn’t going to trigger your partner in the way you always trigger them. You have to choose to admit that you feel disconnected and scared.
Examples of how this may look:
“When you work late, I feel super overwhelmed by the kids and I don’t feel supported by you. I’m wondering if there’s a way we can resolve this.”
“When you don’t spend time with me when you get home, I feel you don’t care about me. I want to feel closer to you.”
“When you criticize me, it makes me feel like I’m a disappointment to you and causes me to want to move away from you. I want to be close but it’s scary for me when you say the things you do to me.”
These kind of statements are much more likely to get a kind, compassionate response from your partner than a protest or a retreat. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself.