When the argument isn’t about what it seems to be about
It’s eleven at night. You started off talking about who’s picking the children up tomorrow and, three sentences later, you’re at “but you never”. Neither of you could say at what point it went wrong.
The next day, if someone asked you, you’d say you argued about schedules. But that’s not what it was. It almost never is.
Most couples’ arguments aren’t about what they seem to be about. Underneath “you haven’t done the washing-up” there is usually an “I don’t feel we’re carrying this together”. Underneath “you’re always late” there is often an “I need to know I matter to you”. The problem is that the second part doesn’t get said. The first part does, with a scowl, and the other person replies to the first part, also with a scowl.
And so it goes, again and again.
It’s not that you don’t talk. It’s how
Many couples come to therapy saying “we just don’t communicate”. It’s almost never true. They communicate a great deal: through silences, through tone, through softly slammed doors, through that way of answering “nothing” when everything is wrong.
What’s happening isn’t a lack of communication. It’s that a way of talking to each other has set in that no longer helps you understand one another, only defend yourselves.
The psychologist John Gottman has spent decades filming couples as they argue, and he has identified four ways of communicating that predict fairly well that a relationship will break down. They are worth knowing, not to point fingers at each other, but to recognise them when they show up.
Criticism
“I’ve felt lonely this week” is not the same as “you’re so selfish”. The first is about you and opens a conversation. The second is about who the other person is, and shuts it down.
Contempt
Eye-rolling, sarcasm, that “sure, sure” that means the opposite. It is the most damaging of the four, because it communicates something worse than anger: it communicates “I’m above you”.
Defensiveness
Answering a complaint with another complaint. “I don’t help? Excuse me, and who took the car to the garage?” It’s human and it’s understandable. It is also a way of telling the other person that their distress doesn’t interest you.
Stonewalling
Going quiet, looking at your phone, leaving the room. Inside, there is no indifference: usually there is a person who is overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do with so much intensity. But from the outside, it reads as abandonment.
If you’ve recognised yourselves in any of these, it doesn’t mean your relationship is doomed. They show up in almost every couple at some point. What makes the difference isn’t that they never appear, but what you do afterwards.
The dance you always do the same way
There is a pattern that repeats so often it has a name of its own: one pursues, the other withdraws.
One of you needs to talk. Needs to sort it out now, clear it up now, know now that you’re OK. They insist, ask questions, raise their voice.
The other gets overwhelmed. They feel their body speed up, they can’t find the words, and they do the only thing they can think of to bring the tension down: withdraw. “Not now.” “Leave it.” They go to another room.
And here’s the trap: the more one pursues, the more the other withdraws. And the more one withdraws, the more the other pursues. Both are trying for the same thing – for the relationship to be OK – and both are doing exactly what makes things worse for the other.
This is almost never a question of personality. It usually has to do with how you learnt to bond long before you met. The one who pursues has usually learnt that if they don’t insist, the other person disappears: that is the logic of anxious attachment. The one who withdraws has usually learnt that intense closeness is dangerous and that the safest thing is to handle it alone: the logic of avoidant attachment.
Neither of you does it to cause harm. Each of you does what you learnt to do to survive emotionally. And if you wonder why you always end up with the same kind of person, we explore it more calmly here.
Five things you can do
They aren’t tricks. They are small changes that, kept up over time, shift quite a lot.
Start with yourselves, not with the other person
Swap “you never listen to me” for “I feel lonely when I tell you something and you’re on your phone”. It sounds similar, but it isn’t. The first sentence invites defence. The second invites closeness.
Look after the first thirty seconds
Gottman found that the way a difficult conversation starts predicts how it will end in the vast majority of cases. If it opens with blame, it’s already lost. If it opens with “I need to tell you about something that’s going on with me”, there is a conversation to be had.
Ask for a pause, and set a time
When your body is activated, with your heart racing and your chest tight, you cannot listen. Literally: your brain is busy defending itself. Asking for twenty minutes isn’t running away, as long as you say all of it: “I need to stop for twenty minutes and then we’ll carry on – I’m not leaving.” That second part is what stops the other person from being left in a panic.
Ask before you answer
“What has hurt you most about this?” A single question, asked sincerely, defuses more arguments than any line of reasoning. Because what nearly everyone wants in an argument isn’t to win: it’s to be understood.
Repair
This is the most important part of the whole article. The couples who last aren’t the ones who never hurt each other. They’re the ones who know how to come back afterwards. A message a little later, a hand on the back, an “I went too far”. Repair doesn’t erase what happened, but it tells the other person that it won’t break what you have.
When it makes sense to ask for help
You don’t need to be on the verge of breaking up. In fact, the sooner the better: it is estimated that couples take an average of six years to ask for help after a problem first appears. Six years is a long time to keep repeating the same dance.
It may be a good time if you recognise yourselves in any of these signs.
- You always argue about the same thing and already know by heart how it will end.
- You’ve stopped arguing, but you don’t tell each other anything either.
- One of you feels they are walking on eggshells at home.
- There is a subject – the in-laws, money, sex or the children – that is simply off-limits.
- Something big has happened – an affair, a loss or a move to another country – and you can’t find a way to get through it together.
In couples therapy it’s not about deciding who is right. We don’t act as referees. What we do is help you see the dance from the outside, understand where each of your steps comes from and learn to talk to each other differently. Often the person who seems to be the problem is simply the one voicing the distress out loud.
And yes, your attachment style can change. That door doesn’t close in your twenties, or at forty, or at sixty. The relationships that hurt us are repaired, to a large extent, within other relationships.
If any of this sounds familiar, you can write to us with no obligation and we’ll tell you how we work. Sometimes a first conversation is enough to stop feeling that you’re alone in this.
