How many times have you had an argument in a romantic relationship where, no matter what was said or how it was said, someone felt attacked even when there was no real attack?
Take an example. Julie gets angry when her partner Michael leaves the bathroom a mess. She resents being the one who ends up cleaning it. She also takes it as a sign of weakness, a flaw in his character. Subconsciously, it damages her self-esteem because she no longer gets the dopamine hit she once received from the fantasy of being with the perfect partner. That fantasy collapses and now she feels stress, disappointment, and the burden of responsibility for fixing the relationship. All of this happens beneath her awareness.
Her agitation triggers Michael. To him, her tone feels like his mother’s. Angry, never satisfied, impossible to please. He feels attacked even when she is simply expressing frustration. They both end up hurt. Hurt can cause anxiety when it is not resolving or we are unaware of its source triggers. Often, we push away hurt by automatically switching to anger.
We feel angry as a response to any feeling of powerlessness as a default. Our first reaction is to feel victimized rather than account for our mistakes and flaws.
For the adult inner child with a damaged self esteem, flaws and mistakes are often intolerable so we blame. We see our partners flaws and mistakes but seldomly our own. This is a natural defense for children of trauma and becomes pathological if we can not break free from this unconscious selfishness.
As long as leaving or conflict are the main options to communicate when we are triggered, we never quite come to the realizations about ourselves that we need to grow. The man ones being that we are wounded, selfish, unconscious, anxious, and flawed. The solution is to work harder to heal childhood wounds using practical methods, I.e., therapy, we should be more giving one action an one day at a time, manage our anxiety, relax, become more conscious, accept ourselves even while we work to compassionately remove our flaws. How exactly do we do this? Practice. Do something every day towards this end goal.
In an anxious, unconscious state, almost anything the other person says or does can feel like an attack. The nervous system interprets conflict as danger and switches into fight or flight. This is nature’s survival reflex at work. It is ancient, automatic, and difficult to interrupt once it begins.
Both people bring their pasts to the table. Michael brings his dirty sink. Julie brings her perfectionism. She has lived in an unregulated nervous system for years and cannot calm herself. He, on the other hand, dissociates from conflict. He shuts down. He seems tougher, but inside he is quietly collapsing. He feels gaslighted. He believes she knows what she is doing, that she stirs up conflict and throws tantrums to get what she wants. So he gives in to avoid the fight, and that becomes her method of communication. It is a cycle built on anxiety and avoidance.
Both are saying the same thing: “I need something.” But neither can hear the other. Their nervous systems are speaking louder than their words.
What if couples agreed to communicate differently? What if they wrote their needs down before speaking them, giving each other time to read and process without tone, volume, or body language? What if there was a shared program of repair, a real daily practice for two anxious people trying to stay in love?
Bickering is not communication. It is a symptom of nervous system dysregulation. It cools off for a few hours and then reignites because the body has not yet learned calm.
I believe that even if only one partner has a regulated nervous system, a relationship can still work. Regulation spreads. But even the calm partner will be triggered sometimes. The difference is that they recover faster and reflect before reacting.
Over time, however, a person with a regulated nervous system will grow in a different direction than a person who remains chronically anxious. If they do not grow apart, it means the person who appeared calm was only stable on the surface, managing anxiety instead of transforming it.
We can stay in unhealthy relationships for years if our nervous system adapts to suffering. We call it tolerance, but it is really fear: fear of separation, fear of the unknown. We learn to swallow our anger and convince ourselves it is fine. That suppression is the root of anxiety and resentment.
When we believe our partner is doing things to us, we are trapped in bias. We live inside our own perspective and cannot see the energy we bring to the relationship. By energy, I mean our attitude and content. What we put into the relationship emotionally determines what grows between us.
A healthy relationship is not one without conflict. It is one where both people can stay conscious long enough to regulate, reflect, and repair before the damage becomes permanent