How do couples become stuck in painful relationship patterns without meaning to? This educational article uses the metaphor of a tango to explore how attachment needs, emotional reactions, communication patterns, and relational “moves” can shape connection and conflict in romantic relationships. It is intended as an informational guide and not as a replacement for therapy. Couples seeking support improving communication, strengthening emotional connection, or changing recurring relationship cycles may wish to explore our couples counselling services or learn more about Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), an evidence-based approach that helps couples recognize and change negative interaction patterns.
How is it that we sometimes feel so out of sync with our loved ones? It is particularly confusing when finding ourselves often hurting or hurt by those closest to us. Fights and arguments seem to arise out of irrelevant, innocuous events and suddenly we’re at odds with one another. How did this happen and why does it seem to happen so often?
If we care about each other, why do we become so reactive and stuck in conflict?
The confusing nature of these questions and the desire to find a way through or back to an earlier time in the relationship when love, affection, joy, and fun came so easily is what brings people into our counselling office. You’ve read about and tried strategies to improve relations. You’ve given each other space, hoping that time, 20 minutes, a couple hours, or days, would be enough to heal. You’ve counted to ten before speaking, changed the words you use when responding, tried to find aspects in your partner that you respect, admire, or for which you are grateful. Perhaps you’ve seen some improvement but somehow you keep finding ways to hurt one another.
Relationships can feel like a dance — when couples are emotionally in sync, they can better understand and respond to each other
However, while no pair performs the steps perfectly, those dancers who make it look so easy are repairing subtle mistakes quickly, smoothly, and together. Onlookers don’t see the years of practice in getting it wrong, stepping on each other’s toes, and finding their way back to the steps.
This can be demoralizing to watch these “dancers” when it seems as though you just can’t seem to find the flow with your partner. Somehow you or your partner continue to misstep and you’re getting increasingly agitated by one another. Perhaps, at times, you wonder whether you’re just not suited to be partnered together.
Working with an Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) counsellor can feel like working with a dance instructor who helps identify the subtle interaction patterns that keep couples stuck in repeated conflict
Such a therapist will help by examining with you the way you and your partner have been dancing, defined by what you and your partner say and do in the midst of an argument. One action elicits a partner’s reaction, to which you then react, and so on until you’re both hurt and angry.
You will be led to discover the emotions that fuel these arguments. Often the emotions on the surface are obvious: anger, disgust, contempt, resentment, hurt, etc. These are reactive emotions that keep you distant and are so easily triggered. Some people may not know what they’re feeling and may actually experience themselves as emotionally numb. This state, too, prevents intimacy and connection.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples recognize the subtle interaction patterns that can keep them stuck in repeated conflict
They tend to cover over the core emotions that are risky to reveal. The couples therapist will work together with you to develop an atmosphere of safety within which it may become easier to try new dance steps. Within the context of safety the EFT therapist will help you understand how the emotions that fuel your dance are triggered and choreograph new encounters with you and your partner by which you can share these more vulnerable emotions.
Over time, couples often become more emotionally attuned as they practice new ways of connecting both inside and outside of therapy
You will learn to develop the emotional safety necessary for you and your partner to be open with one another. You will find yourselves dancing more smoothly together, more quickly repairing subtle missteps and attempting never-tried-before moves.
Emotionally Focused Therapy has a robust body of research indicating that this model helps couples express newly formulated emotions “in an engaged, open way that captures the essence of these emotions, without the need for avoidance, reactive blaming, or clinging” (Johnson, 2019, p. 40).
If you would like to work with one of our counsellors trained in EFT, you can view their profiles, and make an appointment online. If you have further questions, give us a call or email and we’d be happy to help.
Sojourn Counselling and Neurofeedback is located in Cloverdale, Surrey, and serves clients across the Greater Vancouver area and online across BC.
