I know we are all excited when getting married, and for a good reason.

However, close to 50% of marriages end in divorce, and it’s even higher on subsequential marriages.

It’s not all doom and gloom, and couples who get premarital counseling before getting married have much better outcomes but in longevity and marriage satisfaction.

If you are busy planning your wedding, then I created the premarital counseling made a simple post.

In this blog post, I will give you some insight into why some marriages fail and how you can avoid becoming one of them.

Relationship conflict

Any marriage has what I call an emotional bank account. When you share positive experiences or give each other your love languages, you add deposits to your bank account.

When you have tension, conflicts, or stress, then you take our deposits.

If you keep drawing out without putting in, you will go into emotional overdraft and neglect it for too long, and you can guess what will happen.

Make monthly deposits, and you can learn more about how to do that by knowing your partner’s love language. Try the love language quiz here.

Conflict starts when we reach out but either feel or anticipate that our emotional needs will not be met, that they don’t care or that they will not engage with us.

Attachment is critical to our survival and is a response hard-wired into us through millions of years of evolution.

We feel safe when we know our caregivers will respond to our needs as our very survival depends on it.

While we adults and our necessary attachment might now be our parents, then the fundamental needs are the same.

When we feel we might lose that attachment, we respond with blame, criticism, attack, which is a strategy used to get an emotional response, any emotional response, so we know our partner still cares enough to Engage.

You can see the attacks or blame as protest behavior.

It’s also a natural fight response when stress is triggered, as it would be when we fear losing an attachment.

The other typical response pattern to attachment fears is to do the opposite to attacking, to escape by withdrawal.

This way, we protect ourselves from the rejection of not having our needs meet and the pain that entails.

It’s also a helpless state as we have given up even trying.

This is much more dangerous than the protest behavior described above.

However, the blame and distant cycle reinforce the fears of abandonment, as blame will make the other defend or retreat, which creates more emotional distance and feeling of abandonment.

The cycle then repeats itself.

What your partner is trying to communicate when they attack or blame you is:

Can I reach you?

Are you available when I need you?

As a relationship coach, I have noticed that some key moments matter more than others. You can learn more in this step by step article.

It’s a clear sign that their need is to feel secure with you.

If you experience this protest behavior, find out your partner’s attachment language so you can show them how much you care and that you are there for them. (discussed later in this book)

Don’t try to argue with whatever logical reason they are attacking you for.

It’s just a cover-up for some underlying attachment fear.

Trying to use logic will likely have zero positive effect and only create less closeness.

Until the underlying emotional need is met, it will only continue.

Someone, I dated once got angry that I could not attend her friend’s birthday party with her.

I instantly realized that her anger was not about the party, and if I could come or not, she felt I did not want to integrate more into her life.

Her concern was about my commitment and if I wanted to be part of her life.

I had also felt frustrated that she had not been part of my children’s lives.

So I said to her, “is it not absurd that we get upset with each other when what we are trying to say is that we care so much about each other that we want the other to be a bigger part of our lives.”

She said yes instantly as I had recognized the unfulfilled attachment need below the surface conflict.

I joined her friend’s birthday party to follow up on my verbal commitment to action, and we had a chance to be more precise about our needs.

The conflict was gone before it had even really started, and it all lasted 5 minutes.

Men often get stuck arguing about the logic of what their partner brings up as men have been raised to use logic far more than their emotional circuit.

Address the emotional need, and it’s solved.

Remember the key attachment questions that arise when there is conflict is:

Will you be there when I need you?

You can answer this question by being there for your partner when needed, and if you have not done so in the past, you can do it from today.

The critical question that arises when there is conflict is: (more about individual needs in a later chapter)

Do you care about/accept my needs and boundaries?

They want to know that you recognize their needs and accept them or are willing to work on your fear if you can’t accept them.

The one who is objecting or trying to inhibit the other is often reaching a boundary.

They need to know you will respect their boundary and support them if they decide to work on those fears.

While dealing with conflicts is necessary, then remember that sex compatibility is part of a marriage’s glue. Hence, as a Zensensa sex coach, I created the free sex quizzes here.

The three destructive cycles

It’s essential to understand attachment styles and how we learn to feel safe in relationships.

In my online marriage counseling, I found clear patterns and tools to understand our partner’s safety needs, click here now to read the article.

The three typical negative cycles people get caught in when their attachment is damaged are:

1. The blame game.

Both parties attack each other and are triggered by the fear response that only gives us three options: to fight, flee, or freeze.

The fight/flight cycle usually doesn’t last that long before one person withdraws and stops engaging.

For example, buying tablecloth linens, it’s tempting to think that when it comes to buying tablecloths, the only thing that matters is the size of the tables you need to cover. It’s better you decide both and agree in the middle.

Fighting, blaming, or attacking is a sign of your partner trying to reach out to get a response and to see that you still care.

It also means they still care about you; that’s why they are desperate for a response.

If they did not care about you, they would disengage and have no emotional response at all.

As strange as it may sound, the fact that your partner is blaming or attacking you means you are essential to them and that their attachment needs are not fulfilled.

They are scared.

It’s not an effective strategy but the best they can do when their fear response is triggered.

If you can spot what’s going on, you don’t have to respond by also engaging in the blame game.

You can break this cycle.

2. Attack – withdraw.

This is when one person is proactively blaming or attacking the other partner in a desperate attempt to get attention and get their attachment needs meet.

They are often unaware of their attachment needs and therefore can’t express them and thus lash out.

Often lashing out makes the other withdraw in defense and the hope that the attack will stop.

This is the escape fear response.

However, this only triggers more attacks as withdrawal leave the attachment needs more neglected.

So, the negative cycle continues often until a relationship breakdown or complete disconnect.

If you tend to withdraw, notice when you feel overwhelmed and communicate that while addressing their attachment needs.

You could say, “I am feeling overwhelmed when you attack me, so I can’t hear what you need, and I want to hear what you need so I can be there for you. It would be great if you can explain to me what you need.”

3. Withdraw – withdraw.

This is often the final stage where both partners have given up on getting their attachment needs to be met.

This is the most dangerous cycle because it means both partners have given up and no longer have enough energy to invest in getting attachment back.

The person that used to attack is feeling helpless and are grieving and has let go of hope.

In the end, the couple starts to anticipate needs will not be meet, and so they attack or withdraw before anything even happened and don’t give the positive outcome a chance, and so they are stuck in a cycle of disconnect.

This cycle often needs professional help to be solved, and sometimes it’s already too late at this stage.

Therefore, I am a big advocate of prevention over treatment.

Before getting married, there are four skills you should know and master, and I use these daily in my couples therapy, read more in this handy article.

It’s easy for intimacy to get lost in our stressful and busy lives, and in marriage counseling, I see pain and resentment of how this has gone missing. Still, there are simple ways to maintain intimacy click here to read the article.

Thomas is the Founder of Zensensa.com the leading institute for relationship intimacy.

He is the author of two books and the host of the Zensensa podcast.