Is Your Relationship Stuck?

When my husband and I were dating, he was a youth pastor at a church in the little farming community of Iola, Texas. On July 4, 1976, bicentennial Sunday morning, he picked me up at my parent’s house in College Station to drive us to Iola where we were to sing special music in the worship service. We were running late, so he took a shortcut on an abandoned railroad track. It had been raining and the dirt road was now a muddy road in which his Monte Carlo got stuck up to the axles. No matter what he did, there was no escape. So, we got out and walked ankle-deep in sludge until a passing car graciously picked us up and took us to the church. After the service, a wonderful church member pulled the car out with his tractor. What a memory!

I wonder, is your relationship stuck like that car was stuck? If you’ve ever been stuck, you know that helpless, hopeless feeling of trying everything and nothing works. There’s no way to get yourself out. But what if it’s not your car that’s stuck? What if it’s your relationship? I see many couples who are stuck. We begin therapy and suddenly the whole process comes to a screeching halt and we just can’t get any traction. They are in an infinity loop where they repeat the same pattern over and over trying to get out, but nothing ever changes. The name for their stuckness is the Attachment Dilemma.

Is Your Relationship Stuck? The Attachment Dilemma

As human beings, we are created for connection. We long for it, we seek it, we need it like we need oxygen. Whenever we sense a disconnection in our relationship, or to say it another way, when we feel a threat to our attachment bond, our brain sets off an alarm that says, “Danger, danger; you’re not safe.” When things are not safe, our natural reaction is to freeze, to stay right where we are. Rigidity is the normal human response to fear. We lose our ability to be flexible and adjust and try new things, and we become stuck in our attachment dilemma.

What is the dilemma? It is that, on the one hand, you long to be connected and close with your partner. But because of what was just done or said, you don’t feel safe to express that longing, so you protect yourself by either pushing your partner in a clumsy attempt to draw him or her close, or you pull away from your partner in an attempt to mitigate the damage.

The Pursuing Partner’s Dilemma

In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we call the pushing partner the “pursuer.” They don’t realize it, but they are pursuing connection. They are calling their partner to come close, but in a repellant way. What happens is this: the partner says or does something that triggers the brain’s alarm to say, “It’s not safe!” Fear comes online and says, “If you don’t fix this now, bad things will happen.” The pursuer’s body gets activated. Adrenaline kicks in. They feel a reactive emotion of anger, maybe sadness, maybe fear, maybe confusion. And they do the same thing that they have done since they were children. It never works, but it’s all they know to do: criticize, complain, blame, nag. And the more they attack and push, the more their partner shuts down and disappears. So, the pursuer escalates the attacks, explains more, pushes more, repeats the same complaints, with the same response. Attacking doesn’t work.

So, the pursuer thinks, “Next time, I’ll just ignore it; I’ll stuff it.” But stuffing it and stuffing it eventually causes a nuclear explosion over something rather minor, which only makes things worse than ever. Then the pursuer thinks, “Then, I won’t do anything. But if I do nothing, nothing will change and the relationship will die.” Do you see the dilemma? They’re stuck.

The Withdrawing Partner’s Dilemma

But the pursuer is not the only one who is stuck. The withdrawing partner is stuck too because he or she also wants to be connected and close, but when their partner does or says something that threatens the connection, their brain sets off its own alarm that says, “It’s not safe.” Their fear says, “Fix it now.” But their protective mechanism when attacked is to shut down, slow things down, bring the heat down and get things back to a safe place that won’t destroy the relationship. They try to tell their partner that they’re sorry, they want to fix things, they want things to be good, but they hear their partner respond that what they’re saying and/or doing isn’t good enough. Deflated, they tell themselves that they’ll never get it right, it’s hopeless, they’re disappointing their mate, they’re failing. Instead of their apologies and explanations and efforts to tone things down making things better, their partner is just getting madder. So, finally they stop, go silent, and withdraw to try to keep things from going too far. But it doesn’t work. Things still get out of control, no matter what they do. They’re both stuck on the horns of an attachment dilemma.

How Can You Get Unstuck?

The first thing you need is someone with a tractor who gets your dilemma, who really understands and is tuned into what you’re going through. Without that, you can’t change. That someone is an Emotionally Focused Therapy therapist. Psychoanalysis, life coaching, communication techniques, negotiation skills, new ways of thinking…none of those things can get you unstuck and lead to real change. What you need is for a therapist to see your dilemma, tune in to it with you, track it with you in an empathetic way, and help you to express it to one another in ways that will be heard and received. There is tremendous power in putting words to our dilemma. When we can see it, describe it, give voice to our true feelings and needs driving it, and become vulnerable enough to share them with our partner in a safe, loving environment where we’re truly heard, the dilemma loses its power over us and for the first time, we feel movement out of it. Do you need a tractor? At SoulCare, we have one called Emotionally Focused Therapy. I urge you to read more about EFT and then reach out to us and let's get your relationship unstuck.