Breaking Negative Cycles In Relationships: An Emotionally Focused Therapy Approach
- ajongeleen2
- Apr 1
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 3
2025, April 1st. Anna Jongeleen
Understanding The Negative Cycle: The Withdrawer And Pursuer Dynamic
In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a central concept is the negative cycle, which can ensnare couples in emotional turmoil, causing feelings of disconnection and neglect. At the heart of this cycle are the roles of the withdrawer and pursuer. For the couple that is involved in a negative cycle, understanding its dynamic is essential to escaping its hold. We often think our partner is at fault, but in reality it is the Negative Cycle that is our common adversary.
The Withdrawer: Seeking Safety
The withdrawer typically shuts down or disengages during conflict, fearing emotional overwhelm or causing harm. This behaviour often stems from childhood experiences, where emotional expression was discouraged or punished. As adults, withdrawers retreat to protect themselves, but their actions can leave their partners feeling abandoned and emotionally disconnected.
The Pursuer: Seeking Reassurance
The pursuer, in contrast, craves reassurance and emotional connection. Driven by a fear of abandonment, they may become intense, demanding, or persistent in their pursuit. However, their behaviour can overwhelm the withdrawer, deepening the cycle of disconnection.
Breaking The Cycle: Healing and Hope
Recognizing the withdrawer-pursuer dynamic is the first step toward breaking the negative cycle in your relationship. With vulnerability and honesty, partners learn to express their unmet needs and fears to each other. Through safe communication, such as active listening and non-threatening emotional expression, couples can rebuild trust and foster a more secure bond.
Emotional Triggers And Attachment Styles
Emotional triggers are key to understanding negative cycles. For withdrawers, triggers may lead to statements like, “I feel frozen when I see him upset” or “I don’t know how to help, so I just wait for her to calm down.” Pursuers might say, “I feel shut out” or “I get angrier when he doesn’t respond.” The strategies individuals use are influenced by past experiences and attachment styles, resulting in three primary negative cycles: pursue-withdraw, pursue-pursue, and withdraw-withdraw. Identifying your specific cycle is crucial to breaking it and creating healthier, more connected relationships.
What Is The Negative Cycle?
Many couples think they’re fighting about surface issues like chores or tone of voice, but what’s really happening is they’re stuck in a Negative Cycle. This is a repeating pattern of misunderstood needs, emotional defenses, and reactive behaviors that drive partners further apart. Let’s break it down:
Example Of A Negative Cycle:
Triggering Event: Your partner leaves dishes in the sink.
Meaning You Make: “You don’t care about my needs.”
Unmet Attachment Need: “I can’t feel close or safe when I don’t feel like my needs matter.”
Vulnerable Emotions:
Fear: “What if my partner doesn’t care about me?”
Sadness: “It hurts to feel alone with my needs.”
Shame: “If they don’t care, am I lovable?”
Protective Emotions:
Feeling vulnerable leads to protective reactions like:
Anger
Frustration
Desperation
Overwhelm
Beliefs/Self-Narratives:
“I need my partner to meet my needs or I’ll keep feeling this way.”
“I’ll make them understand by doing to them what they do to me.”
“I’ll never have my needs met, maybe I don’t matter at all.”
These emotions and thoughts push us into primal coping modes:
Fight: Anger and conflict in an attempt to change the partner’s behavior.
Flight: Wanting to escape from overwhelming feelings.
Fawn: People-pleasing to avoid conflict and be ‘loved’ again.
Freeze: Disconnecting from the painful experience, feeling stuck.
Flop: Emotional collapse, self-blame, and depression.
Behaviours:
Accusations
Criticism
Withdrawal
Avoidance
These automatic reactions are learned coping mechanisms from childhood, based on past experiences and family dynamics. Over time, they can create more distance, triggering the partner’s own defensive reactions. This is how the Negative Cycle begins—it starts with small triggers but grows from deeper emotional meanings, unmet needs, and protective behaviours that spiral into disconnection.
Examining The Trigger:
Let’s take another example: Your partner leaves clothes on the floor.
Meaning Made: “You don’t care about my needs.”
Unmet Attachment Need: “I can’t feel close or safe when I don’t know my needs matter.”
Vulnerable Emotions:
Fear: “What if my partner doesn’t care about me?”
Sadness: “I feel alone in this relationship.”
Shame: “If my needs don’t matter, maybe I don’t matter.”
Protective Emotions: “I need to fight for my needs.”
Anger
Frustration
Emotional urgency
The body shifts into fight mode, not to hurt, but to reconnect. This results in:
Behaviour: “I need my partner to hear me and meet my needs so I don’t feel vulnerable!”
But the reaction often leads to:
Criticism
Accusations
Intensity
These are protest behaviours—the anxious partner’s attempt to fix the disconnection. However, they often push their partner further away. This reaction makes sense when viewed through the lens of attachment needs. It’s not about the socks; it’s about the deeper fear of being alone, unworthy, or abandoned.
Understanding The Avoidant-Anxious Cycle
Examining The Trigger Of The Avoidant Partner
Let’s shift the lens to the avoidant partner’s internal world.
Triggering Event:
The anxious partner protests that the avoidant partner left clothes on the floor.
The Meaning Made:
“You see me as a failure—and that’s not fair.”
Unmet Attachment Need:
“I can’t feel safe and close when my partner sees me as getting it all wrong.”
Vulnerable Emotions:
Fear: What if my partner sees me as incapable or unworthy?
Sadness: I feel like I’m always letting them down.
Shame: Maybe I’ll never be enough. Maybe I’ll never get it right.
These feelings are often outside of conscious awareness, but they’re powerful and painful.
Protective Emotions: “These feelings are too much. I need to protect myself from this pain.”
Anxiety
Frustration
Emotional numbness or overwhelm
The body prepares to shut down, deflect, or escape the perceived emotional threat.
Common Avoidant Behaviours:
Defend self
Try to fix it quickly
Appease
Shut down
Change the subject
Distract themselves
To the anxious partner, this can feel like coldness or indifference—but it’s often the avoidant partner’s attempt to prevent further pain, not avoid the relationship. This partner often didn’t grow up with models of emotional safety. When shame or criticism is triggered, their body says: “Retreat. Disengage. Escape.” This may help them survive discomfort in the short term—but it creates deeper disconnection in the relationship
Examining The Next Trigger Of The Anxious Partner
Let’s continue the cycle.
Triggering Event:
The avoidant partner dismisses or minimizes the anxious partner’s complaint about the clothes on the floor.
The Meaning Made:
“Now my needs don’t matter and I’m being unheard and invalidated.”
Unmet Attachment Need:
“I can’t feel safe and close if my partner isn’t able to understand and validate my feelings.”
Vulnerable Emotions:
Fear: What if I’m emotionally abandoned?
Sadness: I feel so alone.
Shame: Maybe my needs really are too much. Maybe I’m too much.
These emotions are painful and destabilizing—especially for someone with anxious attachment.
Protective Emotions:
“These vulnerable feelings are too painful. I have to make myself heard.”
The urgency intensifies:
Anger
Desperation
Frustration
Panic
Fight response
Common Anxious Behaviours:
Protest louder
Criticize
Ask rapid-fire questions
Plead or demand
Rehash the situation over and over
These behaviors are fueled by a desperate hope to be heard and understood—but to the avoidant partner, they feel overwhelming and confirming of their fear that they’re failing.
This is how the negative cycle intensifies: the anxious partner escalates in protest, and the avoidant partner prepares to shut down even further.
Examining The Next Trigger Of The Avoidant Partner
The cycle continues.
Triggering Event:
The anxious partner continues to pursue with protest, criticism, and emotional urgency.
The Meaning Made:
“I’m not being appreciated or treated with respect.”
Unmet Attachment Need:
“I can’t feel safe and close if my partner doesn’t appreciate me or see me as getting it right.”
Vulnerable Emotions:
Fear: If they see me as weak or wrong, how can they love me?
Sadness: I feel unloved and misunderstood.
Shame: I’m never enough. I’ll never get it right. I’m unworthy.
These emotions are often unspoken and unconscious—but deeply impactful.
Protective Emotions:
“These feelings are too painful. I need to escape before things get worse.”
This triggers a “flight” response:
Anxiousness
Frustration
Resignation
Emotional withdrawal
The avoidant partner begins to shut down to survive the emotional pressure.
Common Avoidant Behaviours:
Shut down
Change the subject
Leave the room
Distract themselves
Numb out or emotionally withdraw
Agree just to end the conflict (appease)
These moves create further disconnection, leaving the anxious partner feeling even more unheard—and restarting the cycle. To the anxious partner, this looks like avoidance. To the avoidant partner, it feels like necessary protection from emotional pain and shame.
How The Cycle Sustains Itself.
Each partner’s behaviour is a protective response to pain. But those protective behaviors trigger the other partner’s pain—fuelling the loop:
The anxious partner protests → triggers the avoidant partner’s shame
The avoidant partner withdraws → triggers the anxious partner’s fear of abandonment
Repeat.
The Way Out Begins With Awareness
Understanding the cycle is the first step toward breaking it. Once both partners recognize:
Their own vulnerable emotions
Their protective moves
How they impact each other
Now you can begin to respond with curiosity, validation, and new patterns.
Shifting The Pattern
Healing starts with awareness, compassion, and the courage to break the cycle together. This means:
Recognizing attachment styles: Understanding how avoidant and anxious tendencies shape reactions.
Practicing secure attachment behaviours: Offering reassurance, consistency, and emotional presence.
Practicing self-awareness: Noticing when emotions and protective behaviours arise.
Pausing before reacting: Creating space to choose a different response.
Validating each other’s emotions: Acknowledging pain without minimizing it.
Expressing needs clearly: Using “I” statements instead of blame.
Building new habits of connection: Small moments of appreciation, reassurance, and understanding.
Breaking the cycle is a journey, but with commitment and care, both partners can create a relationship that feels safer, more connected, and deeply fulfilling.