The Importance of the Choice Point

You've had this fight before.

Maybe it was about the dishes. Maybe it was about how they spoke to you in front of their parents. Maybe it was about sex, or money, or who forgot to book the thing.

The topic changes. But somehow, it always ends up in the same place.

You say your thing. They say their thing. You feel that familiar heat rising in your chest. They get that look on their face—the one you know too well. And before you know it, you're both doing the thing you always do.

You shut down. They pursue. They criticise. You defend. You leave the room. They follow you. You explode. They collapse.

However it plays out in your relationship, you know the script. You could write it in your sleep.

And afterwards—once the dust settles, once someone apologises or you both just... stop—there's this exhausted, hopeless feeling: Why do we keep doing this? Why can't we just... not?

Here's the answer. And it might change everything.

Your Reaction Isn't Random

Let's slow things down and look at what's actually happening in these moments.

Something your partner does—a tone of voice, a facial expression, a behaviour, even a silence—lands on something tender in you. Something old. Maybe it touches a place that learned long ago: I'm not enough. I'm too much. I'll be abandoned. I'm not safe. I don't matter.

In that moment, your nervous system doesn't see your partner. It sees threat. It sees the parent who dismissed you, the schoolyard that rejected you, the past relationship that betrayed you.

The wound is old. The trigger is now.

This all happens in milliseconds, below conscious awareness. You don't decide to react. Your body decides for you.

And then you do the thing—whatever your version is. You withdraw into icy silence. You attack with sharp words. You defend with excuses. You shut down completely. You over-explain. You leave. You cling.

This isn't random. It's your protection. It's what you learned to do when you felt this way as a child, and it worked well enough to get you through. It kept you safe. It helped you survive.

But here's the brutal truth: the strategy that protected you as a child is now destroying your adult relationship.

Your Protection Is Their Poison

Watch what happens next.

Your reaction—the thing you do to protect yourself—lands on your partner. And it doesn't land neutral. It lands right on their wound.

Your withdrawal? It triggers their abandonment wound. They're leaving me. I'm not worth staying for. I'm alone.

Your criticism? It triggers their shame wound. I'm failing. I'm not good enough. I can never get it right.

Your defensiveness? It triggers their invisibility wound. My feelings don't matter. I'm not being heard.

Now their nervous system activates. Now they feel the threat. Now they do their version of protection—the thing that once kept them safe.

And their reaction? It lands directly on your wound.

Their pursuit feels like suffocation. Their silence feels like abandonment. Their anger feels like danger.

So you do your thing again. Harder this time. More withdrawn, more critical, more defensive. Because clearly it didn't work the first time, so maybe if you do it more...

And they do their thing again. Harder. And round and round you go.

The Dance Nobody Chose

This is the dance. Neither of you choreographed it. Neither of you wants it. But fight after fight, you find yourselves doing the same steps.

She pursues, he withdraws. He withdraws, she pursues harder. She pursues harder, he withdraws further. Until someone explodes or someone gives up or you both collapse into exhausted distance, waiting for the next time.

Or: He criticises, she defends. She defends, he feels unheard and criticises more. She feels attacked and defends harder. Until the wall between them is so thick neither can remember what they were even fighting about.

The content changes. The dance stays the same.

You fight about dishes, money, sex, parenting, in-laws, time, chores. But underneath every fight is the same dance. The same wounds. The same protections. The same cycle.

And here's what makes it truly tragic: both of you are just trying not to hurt.

Both of you are trying to feel safe. Both of you are doing the only thing you know to do when you feel that old, familiar pain.

You're not trying to hurt each other. You're trying to protect yourselves.

But your protection is their poison. And their protection is your poison.

So How Do You Stop?

First, you have to see it.

Not after. Not the next day when you're calm and can analyse what went wrong. But in the moment—while it's happening. You have to develop the ability to notice: Oh. There it is. We're doing the thing.

This is harder than it sounds. When you're triggered, you don't feel like you're doing a "pattern." You feel like you're responding to something your partner is actually doing. You feel justified. You feel like this time is different.

It's not different. It's the dance.

Seeing the cycle is the first step out of it.

But seeing isn't enough. You can understand the pattern perfectly and still be unable to stop yourself mid-spin. That's because you're not dealing with logic. You're dealing with your nervous system. You're dealing with survival instincts. You're dealing with wounds that were formed before you had words for them.

You need to build the capacity to pause—to create a gap between the trigger and the reaction, between the wound being touched and the protective behaviour being deployed.

In that gap, everything becomes possible.

Taking Responsibility for Your Steps

Here's the hardest truth: You cannot change your partner's steps. You can only change your own.

You cannot make them stop withdrawing. You cannot make them stop criticising. You cannot heal their wounds for them.

But you can take full responsibility for your side of the dance.

You can learn to notice when you've been triggered—not ten minutes later, but in the moment.

You can learn to feel the activation in your body and name it: There it is. That's the wound. That's the old story starting up.

You can learn to pause before the protective behaviour takes over—to breathe, to ground yourself, to regulate your nervous system before it runs the old programme.

You can learn to choose a different step.

And when you change your step, the dance cannot stay the same.

What This Looks Like in Practice

If she always pursues and he always withdraws, but one day she pauses and says, "I notice I want to chase you right now, but I'm going to give you space and trust you'll come back"—the dance stumbles.

His withdrawal was choreographed to her pursuit. When she doesn't pursue, he doesn't know what to do. Something new becomes possible.

If he always criticises and she always defends, but one day he pauses and says, "I'm feeling frustrated, and I don't want to come at you with that. Can I tell you what I'm actually scared about underneath?"—the dance stumbles.

Her defence was choreographed to his attack. When he doesn't attack, something in her softens. Something new becomes possible.

One person changing their step changes the whole dance.

The Questions Worth Asking

If you want to start changing your steps, get curious about yourself:

• Where do I feel it in my body when I'm triggered? What sensations arise?

• What's the behaviour I reach for when I feel this way? What does it look like from the outside?

• What wound is this behaviour protecting? What old story does it serve?

• What is my partner probably feeling when I do this?

• And the big one: Can I create enough space—even just a few seconds—to choose something different?

This isn't about suppressing your feelings or "being the bigger person" while seething inside.

It's about feeling it fully while not letting it run you. It's saying to yourself: I'm activated. This is old. I don't have to do the thing. I can stay here. I can breathe. I can choose.

The Hopeful Truth

You're not going to stop getting triggered. Neither is your partner. That's not the goal.

The goal is to stop letting your triggers run the show. The goal is to feel the old wound and stay present with your partner. To be in pain and not make your partner pay for it. To notice the dance and choose a different step.

This is hard work. It's humbling. It asks you to take radical ownership of your own reactivity instead of pointing at your partner and saying, "If you would just stop doing that..."

But it's the only way out.

And here's what's beautiful: you don't both have to do it perfectly for things to change. One person interrupting their pattern—even imperfectly, even sometimes—starts to shift the whole system.

You might not be able to control your partner's steps. But you can change the dance.

If you recognised yourself and your relationship in this post, you're not alone. This is the most common pattern we see in couples work—and it's the most changeable. Awareness is the first step. You just took it.