Dr. Tracy Dalgleish explains how partners' critical tones trigger deeper, often childhood-rooted feelings (inadequacy, fear) that lead to self-protective responses (e.g., "there you go again") and create emotional fusion — a loss of separateness where one partner internalizes the other's experience. She links these reactions to learned protective mechanisms from primary caregivers or sibling dynamics (example: unaddressed sibling bullying). This produces an ‘‘infinity’’ negative interaction cycle that escalates distance; she highlights repairing it via regulation and reconnecting (named here as "lesson three: be connected" and referenced in chapter four of her book).
Chapters
So when your partner hears a critical tone, it's likely that it triggers something deeper for him. Maybe these are feelings of inadequacy or a fear that he's not enough for you. And those feelings most likely originate much before he found you. Those are often deeper feelings. But then he responds to you with a there you go again or you're ruining the day. This is him protecting himself, even though it ends up creating more distance between you. And it's tricky because when we go into these self protection modes, it is this, in a sense, emotional fusion. Because what we do in that moment, I'm putting my hands together because this is often, I'll do it right here. It's emotional fusion, one hand on top of the other. Because right here it's this loss of ability to see that, that you are having some experience that probably has nothing to really do with me, but I'm vacuuming it in into myself and making it about me. As soon as I make it about me, it doesn't feel good. You better believe I'm going to protect myself. And that protection right there is often connected to this old mechanism of how people remained connected to their primary caregivers. Remember, as children we, we saw parents do something that we might do now. We had parents do that thing to us, which we might do now in our romantic relationships, or we learn to do the thing to help keep ourselves protected and connected with them. I recently had a client not talk about the relationship with their caregivers, but actually a sibling relationship of how there was bullying between these two siblings. And the parents didn't interject and, or interrupt and stop the bullying pattern. And right there was how this person learned to develop these protective mechanisms because they had to, because it was every day this experience with this sibling. And that would lead them to feel like I have to protect myself while also remain connected in this family. So then when we go back to the cycle, when your husband says, there you go again, right? So he's popped up. It's in the emotional part of his brain. He's not connecting with you. He hears this as criticism. He's protecting himself. This then triggers something inside of you. This is the infinity loop. It's the infinity negative interaction cycle. It's lesson three, inside be connected. It's my favorite lesson to recommend to people because it's at the core of emotionally focused couples therapy. And also for those who have pre ordered my book, it's also a part of chapter four which helps you identify those patterns within your own marriage. But so here you are, something is triggered inside of you. And maybe it's even shame because you feel like you can can't get it right. But whatever it is, it leads you back into the cycle and both of you not being able to break it and feeling further apart. And it's tricky because that cycle piece then is how do we then get back together? What is it that you both need so this doesn't derail? And Melissa, you had said earlier that then this derails the entire date. And that to me says that your husband stays longer in this sense of dysregulation. And now the question is, if this is going to continue happening, how do we find together a way to become regulated back again?
