Commentaries on the Marriage-Of-Opposites

One of the outcomes of couples therapy

As couples therapy progresses, and two people begin to get along better... each partner, typically, is careful not to say or do things that are going to trigger their partner. At the same time both partners in the marriage work within their own individual selves to manage their own vulnerable propensity to get triggered. This all happens as security in the marriage grows and open communication has come to replace the negative cycle. Negative moments are increasingly taken as "misdemeanors" and not as "felonies." Partners work both not to offend or to be easily offended. 

Each desires a certain personalized appreciation

There is a particular way each of us wants to be appreciated... a way that is personal to us. This gets so buried in the negative cycle it seldom gets heard. Typically what the other person hears is something negative, something along the lines of how the other fails to appreciate! The desire ends up coupled with criticism, and seldom gets lovingly taken in by the other. This then sets off a negative cycle in place of an important sharing that could bring the couple much closer. As the therapy evolves there are valuable moments when each in the marriage has the opportunity to vulnerably speak the particular appreciation they long for. When this is shared in a vulnerable as opposed to blaming way, the chances of positive reception and significant healing are very high!

Raw spots... pivotal emotional injuries in our attachment histories

We all carry within us emotional sensitivities... psychological wounds where we have felt abandoned, rejected, misunderstood, devalued or shamed in our attachment histories. Following Sue Johnson, we refer to these emotional injuries as "raw spots." Typically, we carry the hope within that the support and safety with our primary partner will heal our raw spots... it is painfully disillusioning for so many of us to discover that it is precisely our partner who most triggers these raw spots within. (to be cont)

Pursuing and Avoiding as Personality Types or as Adaptations to Different Relationships

After many decades of working with couples I have come across a significant minority of situations where persons in the role of pursuers or avoiders in one relationship, switch these roles in succeeding relationships. A person might be a pursuer in one relationship but an avoider in a subsequent relationship, and visa versa. This contrast is pause for reflection… as it challenges the notion of pursuing/avoiding as personality traits and points to the two types as external adaptations to varied relationship situations. (to be continued)

Vulnerability in pursuers contrasted with avoiders

Most pursuers live with an inner experience of compelling inner need towards their partner. Commonly, in their pursuing they seek emotional response and rapport. Not uncommonly, they are partnered with someone who is not connected-up with their need for empathic response from their partner. These individuals can, in fact, be very attached, but have difficulty speaking from their heart to their partner. It is this difference that is at the core of the marriage-of-opposites.

This is the simplest picture, but things can be more complicated than this. Some pursuers have “burned out” with disappointment in their partner's response to them and have become closed to their own longing to reach for the other. These shut-down pursuers can become detached and withdrawn from their less emotionally wired partner. Sometimes, at first glance at the beginning of therapy, a couple can look like a detached-detached marriage, and only after time does it become obvious that one is, in fact, a pursuer underneath the shutdown. 

Likewise, emotional avoiders generally not in touch with their own vulnerability, can become overwhelmed with vulnerability when things in real outer world have gone awry… leaving them feeling painfully anxious about failure in their outer world. For avoiders, the experience of the anxiety is typically more about the fear of not being on top of things in their real life, in contrast to pursuers whose anxiety is generally about the presence or absence of heartfelt contact with their partner. What avoiders do seek from their partner, however, and it is typically highly important to them... is a sense that their partner deeply appreciates them for what they have done and accomplished. 

The First Sessions In EFT Couples Therapy

The EFT Process in First Sessions

Commonly EFT couples therapy begins with a question such as “what is hard between the two of you?” or “how are you both hurting?” or “what is happening between you?” The point is to begin to bring forth how the relationship dance goes… and the process of the “negative cycles” in the marriage.

Next, I ask the couple to give me an instance or two where this negative cycle has happened. With each specific instance, I go into granular detail… “you said this, the other said that, and you responded how, and how did the other respond to that, etc.” I want to get down the dance steps of exactly how the negative cycle unfolds. Even these beginning questions tend to be organizing of a couples’ marital experience, and this commonly provide some relief... and hope! This sorting out the negative cycle is a process that will be repeated many times over the course of the therapy. Laying out the negative cycle in all of the numerous hard moments in the marriage, becomes a skeleton upon which to hang/guide the therapy. Commonly in EFT, it is customary to video or audio record the session so as to be able to study exactly how the back and forth interaction goes. 

As I mirror back to the couple the dance steps of their cycle I begin to include and inquire about the feelings inside for each partner. “They said this, you responded with this, but what were you feeling inside that drove your response?” I begin to supplement the back and forth responding from each partner by inviting a sharing of what the feelings are inside, and how the reactive responding is driven by the feelings inside.

Commonly, the feeling inside is driven by some sense of threat, and I point out how the negative behaviors are attempted self-protection of the threatened feeling inside. In doing so, I highlight the understandability of how the threatened feeling inside gives rise to the particular defensive behaviors in each partner.

Commonly, in these early meetings, whenever possible, I highlight the positive intentions present in each partner… the positive intentions that gets lost, misunderstood, and not recognized in the negative cycle.

As the sessions progress, I begin to spend more time with each partner probing into and organizing the emotional feelings inside. In this process, following the seminal works of John Bowlby and Sue Johnson, the emotional triggers within each partner are traceable to “attachment injuries and insecurity” both earlier in life and in the marriage. Sue Johnson, in particular, has highlighted how, at the core of things, both partners are filled with attachment seeking and longing. That attachment is the motor that drives couples to be together… but also that attachment is inherently vulnerable, thereby leaving couples’ easily triggered, ready to go into defense… and that defense begets defense, resulting in the negative cycle. 

In these early sessions we begin to discern the difference between the defensive behaviors of the cycle, and the emotional trigger that happens underneathe. Unpacking for each partner what is threatened and triggered inside begins to activate empathy within each partner for the other, empathy in place of the negative cycle. Images of the other as rejecting or attacking begin to be counterbalanced begin to be replaced by well-meaning images of the other as vulnerable, fearful and defended.

Note, I have increasing found it valuable to have a one-on-one session with each partner in the first weeks of the couples therapy. This provides me a special opportunity to better understand the triggering process within each partner in the marriage, and how the respective life histories contribute to triggering vulnerability. These individual meetings, which will happen periodically throughout the therapy, allow me to support each partner in understanding and grappling with their own triggering process. In this vein, I ask each partner to begin to formulate an individual project, which is theirs to work on… that will ultimately feed back into the marriage in a positive way. This lends itself to two vectors of healing in the marriage: one, the healing of the negative cycle between the partners, and two, the healing within each partner in relationship to their own emotional injuries inside. The tying together of these two vectors of healing deepens the EFT work, and better guarantees that the benefits of the therapy will last a lifetime. More about this later!

Add-ons to EFT Couples Treatment #2

Targeted Followups

There are moments in eft therapy with couples that valuable new understandings start to emerge in the couples sessions, but still provide only a delicate glimmer of new ways of being or thinking about the marriage. Targeted followup conversations with each partner can provide an essential bit of additional support to consolidate these new behaviors and new narratives. These targeted conversations can provide a more granular understanding that can be powerfully tailored to each partner in the marriage. They enable a deeper integration between healing couples growth with the individual psychodynamics/historical injuries and immaturities within each partner. 

Add-ons to EFT Couples Treatment

The purpose of the next series of posts is to share a number of add-ons to eft couples therapy that I have found helpful in treating an expanded range of couples with eft treatment. What I have in mind here are couples who present larger than usual challenges to eft therapy. Trauma situations, personality immaturities, alignments with narcissistic false self organization, rigid resistances to opening vulnerability, intransigent high conflict situations, and addictions are all situations that can deeply interfere with successful eft treatment. One caveat to begin with… though the roots of eft treatment are in short term therapy, all that follows presumes a long-term adaptation of eft treatment. 

First a caveat… all of these additions to eft are directed towards the effective furtherance of the “eft tango,” which I and others view as the heart of eft couple’s treatment. (lay out the eft tango)

Text Communication To Couple A Few Days Following The Eft Session

Many couples in eft therapy struggle with holding onto the core message of eft sessions in the days following the session.Texting or phoning-in a “summarizing thought” in the days following the session, both helps lay in more deeply the underlying message of the session, and helps the couple more fully generalize the healing benefits of the session into their lives outside in the world. In addition, this brief communication following the sessions enables the therapist to more effectively tailor the therapeutic message to the particular resistances within the couple that were evident in the session. It provides a second opportunity for the therapist to refine their interventions address any piece of the therapeutic picture that they missed in the session. 

The Individual Project

An essential aspect of eft work is to drill down within the couple to the core individual vulnerable feelings that underlay and drive the negative cycles in the marriage. To this process I add a clarifying conversation for both in the marriage; that it is important for each in the marriage to slowly formulate an individual psychological project that is their individual work to do… that will then feedback in a positive way to reducing negative cycles and enhance the marital attachment. It is my experience that this adds a dimension of individual responsibility to the therapy… that compliments the couples interactional healing forged in the eft tango process. The creation of the individual project sets up a powerful interactive process between couples attachment on the one hand and individual individuation on the other. This, in turn, deepens both… individuation deepening attachment, and attachment deepening individuation!  

Review Of Session Tapes

Individual meetings with each partner have long been an aspect of emotion focused couples work. These episodic individual meetings, among other things, support a deepened conversation with each partner about the individual dynamics  in the marriage… and enable guidance with respect to the individual projects. In addition, these meetings allow a listening review of recordings of the prior eft couples session. This review enables a highly granular look at exactly how the negative cycles unfold in the marriage (blow by blow) including a probing inquiry into what is happening individually while these cycles unfold. This is a vivid powerful process.

The ubiquity of projection in marriage

Every one of us has things about ourselves that we feel bad about... places of shame, guilt, self-rejection, or humiliation... that we each acquired during our childhood, or even from emotional injuries later in life. We do our best in our lives to compensate or defend against these “feelings of badness,” however they always emerge in some form or another. In particular, they come up in our relations with others, especially with our primary partner in marriage. Whatever is the particular way we judge ourselves inside, it is inevitable that we will have moments where we imagine our partner judging us in the same way. Commonly, over the course of long marriages, these inner self-judgments and the imagined judgments of others become fused and confused. Hence, in situations where we feel threatened or badly about ourselves, we may not be able to to distinguish between our partner actually thinking ill of us from our own thinking ill of ourselves. The two experiences become so intermixed and fused, the experience of one immediately triggers the experience of the other. This process is at the heart of most negative cycles in marriage. It is my experience that this “projective process” is ubiquitous in marriage... commonly silent during periods of secure attachment, but emergent during moments of diminished attunement or mutual support. 

Steadying the negative cycle is a necessary condition but not sufficient...

One of the great contributions that Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) has brought to marital treatment is an understanding/method to take down the negative cycles in struggling marriages. In addition, with the inclusion of what is called "stage two work" we have an understanding/method to convert the marital negative cycles into empathic healing and attachment intimacy in marriage. To this is added "stage three work" where both in the marriage are supported in bringing forth their underlying needs/desires/hopes into a safe sharing/reception within the marriage. My concern for the long term health of marriages is that the encountering conversations continue to happen both between sessions but also long after the therapy has come to an end. For this reason, it is important to continue a deepening of the couples therapy past the resolution of areas of conflict; because the more long-lasting changes in the marriage depend upon changing the "interactional process" in the marriage, not the resolution of content differences. That is, that the couples therapy is only enduring if it alters the actual dance that the couple does. To last, the therapy must impact the actual process of the couple. Otherwise, the improvements within the marriage inevitably recede over time.

The Individual Project in EFT Couples Therapy

There is an individual aspect to EFT therapy! EFT couples therapy will deliver the greatest benefit if each partner in the marriage forms an individual project for themselves. To this end I encourage the scheduling of individual meetings… at least 1x month, sometimes 2x per month, to support the growth of each partner’s individual project. It is crucial that both participate in the individual part of the work. This makes the therapeutic work symmetrical. Otherwise the couples therapy becomes lopsided.

 

Part of my agenda here is that the eft work support individual growth at the same time that it supports marital growth.

Growth in one realm supports growth in the other. This leads to a more integrated life and integrated world.

 

It also prepares the marriage for the years following the therapy. By staying connected to your individual growth, you will always have an individual richness to bring home to the marriage… which continually reinvigorates the marriage. The marriage becomes the holding context of your life and your world. The sharing of your individual growing becomes the fertilizing source of innovation in the marriage.

 

In the individual project you have the opportunity to dig into the "ins and outs" of your inner triggers in the marriage... what Sue Johnson refers to as "raw spots." These are the different places of threat that live within each in the marriage. In the context of the individual session each person gets to more deeply understand historical origins of the raw spots in their life, and more deeply understand how they evoke such powerful reactivity within themselves in any current day. Please note reactivity can be expressed through shutting down as much through emotional escalation.

 

The deeper understanding deriving from each partner’s individual project, once the negative cycle is lowered, can then lead to a much deeper level of vulnerable sharing in the marriage, and much more feeling of connection and intimacy. Which in turns feeds back into individual healing for both partners.

 

Special mention must be made of the shame/blame cycle. Blaming and shaming is typically the biggest obstacle to marital healing. As is inevitable in life generally, it is inevitable in marriage that disappointments, hurts and missteps occur. This fact is heightened in marriage precisely because marriage is the one place where we most want to feel the world on our side... so the threats of failed support and attunements are greatest... and therefore the situation where we are most likely default to our historical defenses. This is the situation in life where marital partners are most likely to resort to both blaming and shaming the other; the situation of our greatest need on the one hand, and greatest vulnerability on the other hand.

 

The EFT couples method is specifically designed to take down the blaming/shaming cycle. First by tracking in great detail the “back and forth” of the couples negative cycle, and then unpacking each partners “defensive moves” to the human vulnerable feelings underneath, ultimately to the unspoken positive intentions down even deeper... the threatening cycle gets transformed into a story about two people who care about each other. Slowly, safety and reassurance enters into the room, and with this the fear of being blamed and shamed is replaced by a feeling of empathic connection.

 

Most of this work is accomplished within the actual couples sessions. However, the work from the individual meetings can truly deepen each partners awareness of what happens inside of themselves individually when the cycles are activated. This provides a huge additional resource to bring to bear while working through these negative cycle moments. Rather than react defensively, each partner is more resourced to talk about what is happening inside of themselves… to share rather than react. The individual work maximizes the likelihood of this positive outcome.  

Mutual blaming and the projection of "badness"

There is a concept in psychoanalytic thinking of the "bad object." The notion is rooted in the black and white thinking of early childhood, where the world gets divided up into "the good and the bad." Often times, this oversimple breakdown of life survives within each of us, even as we grow up and mature into a much more realistic view of life. One prominent place it continues to live inside of us, and in our society at large, is in the area of shame. In public discourse, for example, accusations of shame commonly boil down to projecting "badness" onto the person shamed. Few things in public life are more painful than having ourselves attributed with such labels of badness. 

This is especially true in marriage. In choosing our primary partner, we hope to establish an emotional home base where we are protected from the threats of being shamed and diminished so common in the outer world. At least with our chosen partner we are hopeful of being seen as essentially good... good and worthy. In my experience, this is a nearly universal longing in all marriages. 

But a truism about marriage is that this is exactly where we are revealed in all of our limitations. And yet, it is exactly with our partner that we most need to be seen for best in us. In marriages dominated by the negative cycle, the opposite happens. Our partner mirrors back to us the ways they are disappointed in us, and we in turn mirror back our disappointment in them. This "death by a thousand cuts" can easily do in any marriage... even marriages with fundamentally good potential. 

Shame by itself is also a normal part of life, as in shame over this or that misstep. The place where shame becomes hugely damaging (to self and other in relationship), is when it rises to the level of toxic shame. In toxic shame we are not just ashamed of a misstep in the world or with our partner, in toxic shame we are essentially ashamed of ourselves, our own being in the world, our inherent nature. There is a common phrase in todays world where one claims something shameful of ordinary scale... we say "that's my bad." I actually find this non-catastrophic acknowledgment of misstep as helpful in marital healing. By contrast, in situations of "toxic shame" the feeling is one of "all badness" ... that I have no worth, that there is no goodness or love within me, that I am "bad-bad" in that way that young children can concretely feel. Couples amidst the negative cycle are highly at risk of evoking this feeling of "bad-bad" in each other, at times passing it back and forth like a "hot potato! 

The Still Face Experiment

The still face experiment, conducted by Dr. Edward Tronick, is a very powerful demonstration of early attachment behavior... behavior that plays out in marriage decades latter. The experiment vividly demonstrates a young child’s reaction to maternal coldness and non-response. Sue Johnson’s ground breaking work on emotion focused couples therapy is based on the insight that couples insecurities/conflicts are rooted in the same attachment behaviors evident between mothers and children depicted in the film. 

Almost without exception, when shown this video, couples are deeply moved... and commonly see instant parallels between the video and their marital difficulties. The pursuers in marriage powerfully relate to the absent mother as similar to their feeling with their avoiding partner... who feels so absent to them. Likewise, watching the video often gives avoiders a first ever deep insight into what happens to their pursuing partner when they make distance from them. 

https://youtu.be/apzXGEbZht0

On knowing your process in how you go wrong!

There is a point in EFT therapy, after the couples negative cycle has has been repeatedly described and engaged, when the couple's therapy benefits from a shift into examining the exact micro-moment process that happens within each partner that causes them to "pull the trigger" on the negative cycle. That is, it is crucially important for each in the marriage to recognize/understand exactly the steps they go though inside themselves that lead up to their own respective triggering. To a degree, the success of the therapy depends upon learning how not to end up triggered. Slowly, but persistently, each in the marriage needs to acquire "tools of understanding" that enables them to "stand down" in their reactive response. This involves learning to think differently about the negative cycle, but even more, learning to discern within oneself the "cascading individual elements" that result in fight/flight... and learning how to alter, quiet down or turn off these individual reactivities. When each in the marriage learns to discern this process within themselves, it gives them new capacities for self-control... and leaves them more more able to resist the inevitable provocations that daily occur in the marital dance. 

I write these words here because it is my view that this individual component of the couples work is often not done to the depth of maximal benefit. The reason for this is understandable; so much of what is special about eft work is that both partners in the marriage learn to calm down in a mutual way as part of improving shared process with our partner; we find ourselves getting better because our partner gets better with us, and they get better because we our better with them. Better than any other therapy, eft guides and harnesses this approach, and couples often respond quickly to such a process. However, it is my understanding that depth-full individual work adds in a crucial additional amount of resilience within the couple. so that the couple is able to resist the negative cycle even when what they are getting back from their partner is not warm and connecting, even provocative!

Whose cab ride is it?

It is a psychological truism.... that if one partner initiates an encounter they are seeking something from the other, if only unconsciously! Couples must learn to take care to discern who the initiator is at any given point in time. Marriage works best when the initiator is responded to in terms of what they are seeking, not in terms of the listeners reactivity. I Have used the analogy of a cab ride, the clarification of “whose cab ride is it anyway”, whole dime is on the line? This bit of “personal discipline” alone can majorly reduce the number of unnecessary negative cycles in a relationship

 

The initiator may, in fact, not know what they are seeking. But the task of the receiver of the approach is to take in that the other person is about something, and to assist them in some way toward clarification. Most importantly, the task for the receiver is not to serve as an off switch to the other person’s moment of reach. 

 

The Pursuers Seeking of Over-Closeness and Fusion

Both pursuer and avoider styles are rooted in early attachment insecurity. They each carry inherent biases that complicate relationships through-out life. Here I want to comment on the pursuer style. 

 

Commonly, the pursuer is viewed by both in the relationship, as the one most knowledgeable about emotional connection and attachment. Sometimes they are viewed as the “expert” in matters of emotion and connection.  And, because they swim in emotional waters far more than their avoiding partner, this is partially true. However, because the pursuer adaptation commonly forms in an early history of childhood abandonment and chaotic family life (oftentimes traumatic), their pursuing attitude can leave them emotionally dysregulated and vulnerably exposed. They are typically the “carrier of closeness” in the relationship, but the form of closeness that they habitually seek is actually a “compensatory over-closeness” rather than the closeness of secure attachment. 

 

This is a situation where the pursuers emotional seeking of the other Is “fused” rather than differentiated. That is, “the emotional seeking of the other” is dominated by "compelling inner need” for exact “tune-in” from the other. At these times, the pursuer ends up in protest towards their avoidant partner when sufficient attunement is missing. (Of course, this then activates the avoiders distancing defenses and a negative cycle ensues, wherein the pursuer ends up getting less than they had before the cycle). There is a problem however with the pursuers seeking of contact, and that is, even when they get close to the contact they seek, these good moments do not necessarily instill in them an experience of secure attachment going forward. In order for that to happen a deeper form of healing has to happen for them with their avoidant partner. 

 

There is a complicated problem in all of this, that only gets resolved through persistent "eft unpacking" of the negative cycle. The problem is...  the pursuer, and oftentimes the avoider, both assume that "the fused picture of relational contact" is the healthy form of close attachment that somehow the relationship needs to arrive at. But, it is not! And this gives both in the marriage the wrong idea of what they are striving towards. It creates a dysfunctional vision to guide the couple. 

 

This confusion lives in both pursuer and avoider in different ways. For the avoider, the buy-into of the fused/over-close vision of connection commonly leaves them retaining a despairing conclusion that they will never measure up to how a relationship is supposed to be. For the pursuer, the persistent seeking of fusion closeness leaves them feeling chronically anxious that somehow what they seek with their partner never lasts. 

An open letter to couples in distress...

Understanding how precarious things can come to feel for couples in the middle of disappointment/conflict/rupture I wanted to offer some informed understandings for couples to hold onto during these most terrible of moments. 

First, I want to say, that it is highly likely, that the hard place you find yourselves in at this moment in time, is not an objective proof of fatal incompatibilities in your marriage, but rather is a particularly intense expression of "the negative cycle;" not evidence of inherent badness, but rather reflections of a particularly "bad dance" between you, filled with missteps, leaving you both demoralized and defended.  

Second, I also understand that the "bad moments" can feel all the more bad in contrast to the hopefulness engendered by the therapy. There is a way that successful moments of reconnection brought about by the therapy can leave each in the marriage more vulnerable and less self-protected, resulting less defended hurting during the inevitable moments of let-down between therapy sessions. 

Third, it is my impression that most couple's therapies, at the start or the middle of treatment, depend as much upon the repairing of already occurring negative cycles, as opposed to the absolute reduction of the number of negative cycles to begin with. This highlights that the acquisition of the skill to repair is central to the success of eft treatment; this allows two persons to relax and not be so frightened of the next misstep to come... knowing that they have the skill to get back onto course with each other when the inevitable disconnections occur. 

Forth, to continue with an aspect of the repair process, there are those terrible "push come to shove" moments that so many of us come to in marital therapy, moments when "we've had it" and we cross over the line and declare to our partner... "were done," the negative cycle to end all negative cycles. In fact, these are generally not actual endings, but they do raise the specter of truly ending. This is a moment of existential choice, where one of several things can happen... but three possible outcomes stand out! (to be continued) An actual ending. Or the relationship can continue to limp along with added injury and insecurity. Or, one or both partners can shift out of projective blaming, drop down into the hurt vulnerable feelings underneath the negative cycle... and share. 

 

Everything in marriage is about communication

Again, speaking abstractly, all interactions in a marriage are, at some level, about communication. Even marital fights, are a certain form of communication. In this vein, marital therapy is about trying to "decode" what is, at heart, being communicated; and helping the couple to discern the underlying message that each in the marriage is expressing about the partnership... and making that clear to all. This is always where marital therapy must start and end... a conversation based upon the couples underlying emotional truth. 

However, it is my experience, that most couples who come into marital therapy do not have clarity about the underlying truth in the marriage. Although the couple may think they know whats going on in the relationship, in fact, they often have a great deal of confusion discerning the negative reactive cycles in marriage... versus the underlying emotional truths that truly drive the attachment relationship.  Our task as therapists is to help the couple come to a deep recognition/understanding of how the negative cycles work, and to learn to communicate with each other from the core, "more true feelings", underneath. This, of course, requires the growth of trust and safety over the course of the therapy. It is the creation of safety in the relationship that enables the the couple to by-pass the the tendency to respond with the defensive negative cycle... and talk to each other from the deeper underlying feelings of core attachment and vulnerability. And this is the place where the marriage starts to be each partner's safest refuge in the world.  

Speaking abstractly...

Speaking abstractly, each pattern of "being in the world" is a habit of seeking nourishment of that which is desired... and a habit of defense protecting against that which is feared. Habits are deeply ingrained automatic ways of behaving. Changes in marital therapy (and individual therapy) involve shifts to relating in new ways. And to relate in new ways with our primary partner means taking in offerings from them that we have long ago learned to ignore or diminish. Even when we consciously come to want to shift in this or that crucial way we still run into our unconscious habits that resist valuing, and often cannot even see...  what our partner has to offer. 

 

The issue of fusion versus communication

Most of us have had significant attachment wounding in our early lives. Hence, we bring to our adult primary attachments a certain amount of insecure expectations, to which we respond to with either pursuing or avoiding modes of defending. Most of us have never learned how to talk about these feelings, one person to another. Our romantic attachments leave us feeling so youngly vulnerable, we commonly function from the expectation that mutual attunement should just work out on its own. In essence, we commonly function from a kind of self-other fusion when it comes to our primary attachments. Hence when attunement fails or disappoints, we are caught without sufficient differentiation to be able to be able to actually communicate about our differences, rather, we just react.