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Couples can be trapped in negative cycles when each unknowingly triggers the other's traumatic reactions.

Trauma-related responses often emerge as criticisms or unresponsiveness, escalating relationship conflicts.

Recognizing the traumatic origins of negative cycles can foster empathy and interrupt destructive patterns.

Individual and couples therapy may work together to identify and change unrecognized trauma-driven cycles.

Many interactive patterns or dynamics have been described that lead couples into negative or vicious interpersonal cycles (Johnson, 2019; Watzlawick et al., 1967). A well-described pattern involves one member of a couple who is obsessional and prone to emotional distance with a partner who is dependent and attention seeking (Barnett, 1971). The latter member’s expression of needs causes the obsessional partner to withdraw, intensifying the longings and frustrations of the dependent partner.

Other couples suffer from what I have come to describe as interlocking traumatic cycles, which can create persistent conflict and disruption. Each partner brings unresolved traumatic experiences and defensive responses into the relationship, and these vulnerabilities inadvertently trigger one another. One partner's reactions activate the other’s traumatic fears, and these responses in turn reinforce the first partner's traumatic expectations. Because trauma is difficult to recognize and put into words, members of the couple typically blame each other for these problems, not recognizing the influence of old wounds. In some cases, individuals with complementary traumatic vulnerabilities may be drawn to one another, perhaps in part through unconscious attempts to master earlier traumatic experiences (see the tendency to repeat trauma in Busch, 2026, and Freud, 1920). Identifying these dynamics in treatment is often crucial for relieving these conflicts.

I will provide two examples to demonstrate........

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