Same Fight, Every Sunday
Why You and Your Partner Keep Having the Same Fight
Last week I was working with a personable, well educated couple who came to me for couples counseling. They told me their biggest struggle is the argument they keep having around household chores. Their Sundays had started to feel relentlessly monotonous.
Every Sunday they argue. She ends the day feeling disappointed, unimportant, unseen, and let down in every way. He believes he is never going to meet her expectations, that no mater how hard he tries he will never hit the mark. To him, he's in a no-win situation.
John Gottman, a well known researcher of marriage and relationships, found that a large majority of relationship conflict is about perpetual, or unresolvable, problems rooted in fundamental differences between partners. For example, one partner likes to go out and do things on weekends: a bike ride, a hike, a run together. The other likes to curl up on the couch and binge a show together. For my couple last week, he wants to relax and recharge on the weekend. She wants to "get things done" around the house, to get ahead on the household chores. Only when everything is done can she truly relax. During stretches of high stress at work or at home, they both become more entrenched in their own way of coping. When they are stressed or distressed, he tends to need more sleep and downtime- and she tends to need to be moving and doing.
Gottman puts relationship conflict into three categories:
Solvable problems. These can be about chores, sex, parenting, or money, but they're conflict that's genuinely just about the topic.
Perpetual problems. These can also be about domestic chores, sex, parenting, time together, time apart, or money. The content is the same as for solvable problems, but this is content a couple returns to over and over, with no lasting resolution.
Gridlocked perpetual problems. These typically grow out of perpetual problems and become a firmly entrenched dialogue between partners. This is the conflict that feels like Groundhog Day. Couples feel like they do and say the same thing over and over, spinning their wheels. It's like gridlock on the interstate. No one is going anywhere fast.
As a couples therapist, the couples with perpetual problems and gridlocked perpetual problems are the ones I tend to see in my office. Sometimes the conflict isn't totally gridlocked yet, but both partners can see it heading that way. Problems become gridlocked because as humans we tend to focus on finding a solution rather than finding a way to talk about the problem. Gottman's research points to something important: it's rarely the content of the problem, and even though the content can feel like everything, it is really about the couple's ability to establish a real dialogue about it.
Dan Wile, a well known marriage counselor, wrote in his book "After the Honeymoon" that when you choose a partner, you're also choosing a particular set of unresolvable problems. Two people sharing a life will have conflict. One leaves the cabinet doors open. Someone always forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste. One spends, the other wants to save. One connects through physical touch, the other needs words of affirmation.
What's Actually Happening Underneath
Gottman's framework tells us that gridlocked conflict is always about something other than the content. It's about the unspoken feeling or the hidden need underneath the issue. Every time you and your partner revisit the topic, you feel more polarized and more rejected. It becomes one of those times that talking just seems to make the situation worse. Losing the argument or compromising feels like it would cost you more than the argument itself, and in a way, it would, because there is real need underneath it.
This is where Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), developed by Sue Johnson, adds an important piece of how to resolve these seemingly unresolvable conflicts: attachment. EFT holds that beneath almost every gridlocked fight is a bid for connection and reassurance. When couples get really stuck, it's hardly ever because they have stopped caring. Rather, it is because each partner has become afraid the other one will not show up for them, and they've each had to find a way to protect themselves from that fear.
EFT describes this as a negative cycle. One partner moves toward the conflict, raising a concern, pushing for a response, sometimes with criticism. The other partner moves away, shutting down, changing the subject, or leaving the room. Neither behavior is really about the toothpaste cap or the chore list. The pursuing partner is protesting a disconnection they can feel. The withdrawing partner is feeling like a failure in the relationship. Both are managing pain. Both are trying to protect the bond, even though their strategies end up damaging it.
To return to my couple from last week, their gridlock isn't about chores. Underneath the endless Sunday arguments are unspoken beliefs and unmet attachment needs. When he hears her criticism, he hears that she thinks he's lazy and not worth having around. The pain of that leads to his tuning out. He distances himself emotionally, and sometimes physically, to get away from the pain. She believes her needs don't matter to him, and that's painful too. She manages that pain by handing some of it back to him in the form of criticism. Neither of them is trying to hurt the other. Both are trying, in the only way they know how, to get back to feeling secure with each other.
There are ways out of the cycle. We are a small group practice specializing in working with couples. You don’t have to figure this out on your own. Give us a call at 865-268-9656, email info@heartsmindstherapy.com or schedule a consultation here:https://mendingheartsmindspllc.as.me/?appointmentType=52731759