Every so often a body of work comes along that changes how you see the thing you do every day. For me, one of those was Dr. Sue Johnson's EFT, the Emotionally Focused approach she developed in the 1980s after watching couples cycle through the same painful fights. I am a coach, not a clinician, and I do not deliver EFT as a treatment. But its central insight reshaped how I sit with a couple, and I think every stuck parent deserves to understand it, because it explains why your fights feel so much bigger than the thing you are fighting about.
Here is the short version. Most marital conflict is not really about the dishes, the money, or the tone. It is a protest. It is one or both of you saying, in the clumsiest possible way, "I need to know you are still there for me, and right now I do not feel it." Once you see that, a lot of the fighting stops looking like a character flaw and starts looking like a signal.
Most marital conflict is not really about the dishes, the money, or the tone. It is a protest.
Matthew W. Hoelscher, PCC
The idea behind Sue Johnson's EFT
Johnson built her work on attachment, the same wiring that makes a small child scan the room for a parent. Her contribution was to show that we do not grow out of that. Adults need a felt sense of secure connection to a partner just as genuinely, and when that connection feels threatened, the oldest part of the brain treats it like danger. Not a metaphor for danger. Danger. That is why an ordinary Tuesday disagreement can flood you like a real emergency, and why "why are you so upset, it is just the trash" never once calmed anyone down.
This is not weakness and it is not codependence. It is the standard equipment of being human. Understanding that took the shame out of it for a lot of couples I work with, and shame is one of the things that keeps a marriage stuck.
Attachment is wiring, not weakness
We are taught, especially as adults, that needing your partner too much is a problem to fix. Johnson flipped that. The need is not the problem. The problem is when the need has no safe way to get met, so it comes out sideways as criticism, stonewalling, or a slow retreat into separate lives. When you stop treating your own need for closeness as a defect and start treating it as information, you can finally say the real thing instead of firing the decoy complaint.
The cycle underneath your fights
Sit with almost any stuck couple long enough and the same loop appears. One partner feels the distance and turns up the volume: complains, criticizes, pushes for a response, anything to get a reaction that proves they still matter. The other partner feels that heat as an attack, gets overwhelmed, and does the only thing that helps in the moment, which is to shut down and pull away. And here is the cruel part. The withdrawal reads to the first partner as "you do not care," so they push harder. The pushing reads to the second partner as "you will never be satisfied," so they retreat further. Rinse, repeat, for years.
The loop
The pursue and withdraw cycle
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One partner turns up the volume
One partner feels the distance and pushes for a response.
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The other shuts down
The other feels attacked, gets overwhelmed, and pulls away.
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The withdrawal reads as not caring
The withdrawal reads as "you do not care," so the first pushes harder.
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The pushing reads as never enough
The pushing reads as "you will never be satisfied," so the second retreats further.
Back to step one
Neither of you is the bad guy. The cycle is the bad guy. That reframe alone, learning to point at the loop instead of at each other, is one of the most useful things I carry out of Johnson's work and into a session.
The pattern most parents fall into
Johnson had a memorable name for these stuck loops, and with parents of young kids the pursue and withdraw version runs on overdrive. You are both depleted, so you both have a shorter fuse and a smaller tank for the other person's protest. One of you chases connection at 10pm when the house is finally quiet. The other has nothing left and goes silent, or reaches for the phone. Both of you go to sleep more convinced than yesterday that you are alone in this. This is usually where emotional disconnection sets in, and it is almost always the same loop wearing a tired face.
Finding the need under the anger
The move that changes everything is learning to say the softer thing under the hard thing. Under "you are always on your phone" is usually "I miss you and I am scared we are drifting." Under stony silence is often "I feel like I fail you no matter what I do, so I stopped trying out loud." Those softer truths are the actual message, and they are the only ones that pull a partner closer instead of pushing them away. This is the same muscle I am talking about when I teach couples how to improve the way they communicate. Say the need, not the accusation, and give your partner a target they can actually hit.
How I translate EFT into coaching
I take the insight and make it forward focused and concrete, which is what coaching is for. In practice that means we name your specific cycle out loud, in your words, until you can both spot it starting in real time. We slow down the moment right before the blowup and find the softer feeling underneath the reflex. Then you practice reaching for each other from that softer place, first in a session, then at home, until responsiveness becomes a habit instead of a lucky accident. I am not excavating your childhood for a year. I am helping you two feel safe reaching for each other again, quickly, which is the whole point.
Where this meets the 3 Stages
If this loop is running but the connection is bruised rather than broken, you are almost certainly in Stage 1, stupid arguments and constant fighting, which is the most fixable place a marriage can be. The attachment lens is also why my read on love differs from the popular one. The bond, the felt safety, is the foundation, which is exactly why I coach emotional connection as one of three essentials rather than one of five options. Get the bond feeling safe and most of the surface fights lose their fuel.
What this approach cannot do alone
I want to be square with you about the edges. The Emotionally Focused approach was not built for a relationship where there is ongoing abuse or where someone does not feel safe, and neither is coaching. If that is your situation, safety comes first and a licensed professional is the right call, not me. Same if there is untreated trauma or a clinical condition driving the cycle. Knowing where the lane ends is part of doing this honestly.
Talk it through
If you read the cycle above and recognized your own marriage in it, that recognition is the opening. Book a free consultation and I will help you name the exact loop the two of you are caught in and the softer needs sitting underneath it. No diagnosis, no jargon, just a clear look at why you keep having the same fight and how to step out of it.
Questions couples ask
Do I need to understand attachment theory to benefit from this?
Not at all. You do not need to know the word attachment to feel it when your partner turns away and something in your chest drops. The EFT insight is simply that most fights are a protest that the bond feels unsafe. I use plain language for it in coaching, name the cycle you two are actually caught in, and give you something to do about it. The theory is the why. The habits are the work.
What if one of us chases and the other shuts down?
That is the single most common pattern I see, and Sue Johnson's work named it beautifully. One partner pursues, gets louder, tries to force a response. The other feels flooded and withdraws to keep the peace. The withdrawal makes the pursuer chase harder, which makes the withdrawer disappear further. It is a loop, and neither of you is the villain. Once you can both see the loop as the enemy instead of each other, you can step out of it.
Is the Emotionally Focused approach the same as what you do?
I am a coach, not a licensed clinician, so I do not deliver EFT as a treatment. What I do is borrow its best insight, that fights are usually about a threatened bond, and turn it into forward focused coaching. If there is trauma or a clinical issue underneath, that belongs with a licensed professional, and I will say so. For a couple who are simply stuck in the cycle, the coaching version moves fast.
Can this help if we are already past constant fighting and just numb?
Yes, and it is important. Withdrawal and numbness are not the absence of the cycle, they are the late stage of it, where one or both of you gave up protesting and went quiet. The bond still matters, it just stopped feeling safe to reach for. Naming that and gently rebuilding responsiveness is exactly the kind of thing this approach is built to reach.