By: Chadley Zobolas, LCSW, LMFT
Our closest relationships have a way of bringing our deepest fears, needs, and protective patterns to the surface. Even when we deeply love and care for someone, we can find ourselves caught in familiar cycles of conflict, disconnection, or misunderstanding. Once we're in these patterns, it can feel like the momentum takes over, leaving us reacting in ways we don't fully understand or intend.
Most of us want more than anything to feel seen, understood, and emotionally connected to the people we love. And often, we want to offer that same sense of safety and attunement in return. So why do we find ourselves getting stuck in the very patterns that create the distance we're trying to avoid? And what might these patterns tell us about our own attachment needs, fears, and past experiences? Let's break it down.
The Cycle: Understanding Our Relationship Patterns
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, helps us understand the recurring patterns of interaction that emerge in our closest relationships. Often referred to as the cycle, these patterns can take the shape of an infinity loop (see diagram below), where each person's emotions, thoughts, and protective responses influence and reinforce those of the other.
Although these cycles unfold between people, each of us brings our own attachment history, emotional needs, and learned ways of protecting ourselves into the dynamic. We may pursue connection when we fear abandonment, withdraw when vulnerability feels threatening, or struggle to communicate what we're truly feeling beneath our reactions.
Through relationship-and attachment-focused therapy, we can begin exploring our own experience within these cycles, understanding what our protective responses are trying to accomplish, and tending to the underlying wounds and unmet needs that keep these patterns alive. As we develop greater awareness and security within ourselves, we can begin showing up differently in our relationships, creating more opportunities for connection, openness, and repair.
Before we get any further, I want to acknowledge something important: the cycles we find ourselves caught in don't develop in isolation. Our histories of trauma, attachment, and early relationships can play a profound role in shaping how we respond to conflict and disconnection.
These articles explore those influences in greater depth:
Understanding Your Role in the Relationship Cycle
Let’s begin by getting curious about your experience within the cycle. What happens on your half of the infinity loop? What emotions, fears, and attachment needs are driving your responses? And how might these patterns be connected to the ways you've learned to protect yourself in relationships?
By exploring each component of the cycle, we can begin making sense of why these patterns emerge and what you might need to experience something different. Let's break it down together.
Initial Trigger/ Alarm Bell
This refers to what happens that’s upsetting, overwhelming, or completely sets you off.
Some examples:
My partner gave me that look I absolutely hate.
The dishes still aren’t done.
My partner checked out while I was talking to them… again!
Initial Internal Reaction
When the trigger happens, what do you notice happening internally in that immediate moment? Does your heart sink to your gut? Do you get red hot? Do you go numb?
The Story You Tell Yourself
About yourself
Some examples: “I don’t matter to my partner.” or “My needs are too much.”
About your partner
Some examples: “My partner doesn’t care about me.” or “My partner is selfish.”
How You Cope
What do you do in response to the trigger? Some partners:
Walk away or give their partner the silent treatment
Yell at their partner or call them names
Apologize or try to smooth things over quickly
Become short and snippy with their partner
As we start to make sense of what’s happening on your side of the cycle, it’s important to keep in mind that the different components of your cycle - your thoughts, actions, and emotions - are triggers for your partner, too. This is where the other half of the cycle begins to take shape.
Pursuers and Withdrawers
The terms pursuer and withdrawer describe two common protective strategies people may rely on when navigating conflict or disconnection in relationships. These patterns are often influenced by our attachment experiences and the ways we've learned to seek safety and connection.
Pursuers:
A pursuer in a relationship is a partner who leans towards anxious attachment strategies or reaches towards their partner in times of relational distress and unmet needs.
On the outside, pursuers can come across as being pushy, complaining or ‘nagging’ their partner, and being more verbal during the conflict.
On the inside, pursuers can often find themselves scared of what will happen if they don’t talk through conflict until they find a resolution, and the thought or feeling of disconnection with their partner feels unbearable.
Pursuers reach and reach and reach as a protective strategy and a way to try to get their unmet needs seen and met by their partner.
Withdrawers:
A withdrawer in a relationship is a partner who leans towards avoidant attachment strategies or pulls away from their partner in times of relational distress and unmet needs.
On the outside, withdrawers can come across as dismissive, minimizing, constantly trying to “silver-lining” things, or exploding in an attempt to get space.
On the inside, withdrawers are simply trying to cope with the overwhelm and hurt they’re experiencing in the best way they know how – which is to push down, avoid, and look on the bright side.
Withdrawers pull away because it’s what feels safest and most known, but it’s important that we don’t let that automatic response fool us. Withdrawers are in need of safe, fulfilling attachments with others just like everyone else. They just need to feel safe enough to be able to tap into their attachment needs and voice them.
Many relationships consist of one pursuer and one withdrawer, but it’s also possible for two pursuers or two withdrawers to exist in a relationship with each other as well. Do you have a sense of who’s who in your relationship?
Recognizing these patterns is an important first step, but learning to communicate what's happening underneath them can be much more challenging. If you're interested in exploring this further, our article on how to improve communication in relationships offers practical exercises to help you better understand your emotional responses, express your needs, and create more opportunities for connection.
How Can Relationship-Focused Individual Therapy Help?
We often think of relationship therapy as something we turn to when our relationships are struggling. But you don't have to be in crisis, or even in a relationship, to begin exploring the patterns that shape how you connect with others.
Even the most fulfilling, connected, and secure relationships can bring up old fears, unmet needs, and protective responses that deserve our attention. Through relationship-focused individual therapy, we can explore the cycles you find yourself caught in, understand the emotions and attachment needs beneath them, and begin recognizing how your past experiences influence the ways you show up in relationships today.
Our approach draws from attachment theory and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to help you make sense of your relational patterns with greater compassion and understanding. Together, we'll work toward softening the protective strategies that no longer serve you, communicating your needs more openly, and developing a greater sense of security in yourself and your relationships.
The hope is that you'll feel more able to show up authentically, navigate moments of disconnection, and experience the closeness and connection you've been longing for.
Ready to Create New Patterns in Your Relationships?
Understanding why we get caught in familiar cycles can offer so much clarity, but creating lasting change often requires support in tending to the deeper wounds beneath them.
Through relationship-focused trauma therapy in Denver, we can work together to soften old protective patterns, build a greater sense of security within yourself, and create more opportunities for the connection you've been longing for.
You don't have to navigate this work alone. We'd love to support you.
