When Both Partners Are Hurting: Breaking the Cycle in a High-Conflict Marriage

How two people can stop protecting themselves long enough to find out whether something different is possible

One of the hardest things about healing a marriage after years of hurt is that there often isn't one person who has been hurt and one person who did the hurting. Sometimes there are two people who have been hurting each other, and hurting themselves trying not to be hurt again.

There may have been a major betrayal or another choice that caused profound injury. If so, accountability matters. Understanding the relationship in which something happened does not excuse the person who made that choice or make the injuries equal. And many high-conflict marriages also contain years of smaller injuries: criticism, defensiveness, rejection, withdrawal, resentment, loneliness, failed attempts to connect, and moments when each person stopped feeling important to the other.

Over time, both people develop ways to protect themselves from being hurt again. The problem is that the very strategies designed to keep each person safe can eventually become part of what keeps the relationship unsafe.

When Protection Becomes the Pattern

Gottman's Four Horsemen - criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling - give us useful language for understanding what happens next. Criticism evokes defensiveness. Defensiveness fuels more criticism. Pursuit can intensify withdrawal, and withdrawal can intensify pursuit. Contempt grows when resentment has accumulated for so long that partners stop giving each other the benefit of the doubt.

Eventually, each person becomes convinced they're simply reacting to what the other person is doing. The withdrawing spouse thinks, “This is why I can't talk to you. You attack me.” The pursuing spouse thinks, “This is why I can't trust you. You disappear when I need you.” The defensive spouse thinks, “No matter what I do, I'm always the bad guy.” The critical spouse thinks, “If I don't push, nothing will ever change.”

And that is one of the great traps of a high-conflict marriage: each person's protective strategy becomes evidence that the other person's fears were justified.

I sometimes talk with couples about putting down the sword. The sword is easier to recognize: criticism, contempt, sarcasm, accusation, character attacks. But sometimes we also have to put down the shield. Defensiveness, shutting down, explaining away every complaint, refusing to engage, or emotionally disappearing may feel protective to the person doing it. But a shield held between two people long enough prevents either person from reaching the other. And sometimes the shield itself becomes a weapon.

Your Brain Is Trying to Keep You Safe

There is a reason these patterns can be so difficult to interrupt. We have big, beautiful brains that are designed, in part, to keep us alive. When the brain detects threat, it becomes very interested in protecting us. That system was enormously useful when the threat might have been a predator. It can become much more complicated when the perceived threat is the person sitting across from us at the kitchen table.

Relational threats are real. Rejection, humiliation, betrayal, abandonment, contempt, and repeated disappointment hurt. After enough painful experiences, our brains become very good at predicting what is going to happen next. She's going to attack me. He's going to leave. Nothing I say will be good enough. She won't care. He'll disappoint me again.

Then we begin responding not only to what our partner is doing in this moment, but to what our brain predicts they are about to do based on everything that has happened before.

This is also why physiological self-soothing matters. Gottman's work describes what happens when people become flooded during conflict: the body moves into a state in which listening, empathy, problem-solving, and productive conversation become much harder. Taking a break, slowing the body down, and returning when we are more regulated is not avoidance when we actually return. It is a way of becoming calm enough to make a choice instead of allowing our protective response to make every relational decision for us.

The goal isn't to convince yourself that nothing bad could happen. It is to become regulated enough to ask: Can I put down the sword? Can I lower the shield a little? Can I approach my partner differently this time?

The Stalemate of 'I'll Change When You Change'

Both people may desperately want something different. And each may be waiting for the other person to make it safe enough to move.

I'll stop criticizing when you start showing up. I'll stop withdrawing when you stop criticizing me. I'll be vulnerable when you stop using my vulnerability against me. I'll apologize when you apologize. I'll work on my part when you work on yours.

It sounds fair. It can also create a perfect stalemate.

Changing the pattern does not mean giving up on reciprocity, fairness, or mutuality. It's abandoning transactional reciprocity as the prerequisite for change.

Healthy reciprocity does not require simultaneous reciprocity. Someone may have to go first. That person takes a relational risk without knowing exactly what the other person will do with it.

Going first, however, does not mean going alone. A healthy relationship ultimately requires two people. One partner may soften a start-up, stay in a conversation a little longer, take responsibility without immediately defending, initiate affection, make a repair attempt, or respond to a bid for connection. Then the other person has a choice about what to do with that invitation.

If one person repeatedly reaches while the other never moves toward them, that matters. Going first is not an agreement to carry the relationship indefinitely. It is an opportunity to change one part of the pattern and see what becomes possible.

Doing Something Different Is Only Half of It

There is another challenge that can be just as difficult. Both partners need opportunities to encounter the other person doing something different. But both partners also eventually have to be willing to let something different matter.

If I have spent years believing that you always leave when things get difficult, my brain may barely register the nine times you stay and remain laser-focused on the tenth time you leave. If I believe that nothing I do is ever good enough for you, I may discount the moments when you recognize my effort because I'm already bracing for the criticism I expect to come next.

Part of healing is being willing to notice new evidence, even when there is still plenty of old evidence telling us not to. That doesn't mean pretending the past didn't happen or trusting before trust has been earned. It means allowing today's behavior to become part of the evidence too.

Someone has to risk doing something different. The other person has to risk allowing it to count.

Compassion Without Excusing

None of this means that every injury in a marriage is equal or that responsibility should be divided neatly down the middle. Some choices carry profound individual responsibility. Betrayal, cruelty, dishonesty, or other serious injuries require accountability from the person who caused them.

And accountability does not require us to pretend that people make painful choices in a vacuum. We bring our histories, wounds, fears, attachment patterns, unmet needs, and protective strategies into our relationships. Those vulnerabilities can collide for years until both people experience the marriage as a place where they need protection.

Seeing the system does not erase individual responsibility. It helps us understand what has to change if the system itself is going to become different.

Small Moments Begin to Rewrite the Pattern

Gottman's work offers practical alternatives to the Four Horsemen: a gentle start-up instead of criticism, appreciation and respect instead of contempt, taking responsibility instead of defensiveness, and physiological self-soothing when we are too flooded to stay productively engaged. Gottman also emphasizes turning toward bids for connection and making repair attempts when conversations begin to go sideways.

These things can sound almost too ordinary for a marriage carrying years of hurt. And that is part of their power. A new relationship is not created by one dramatic conversation. It is built through repeated moments in which something happens differently.

A repair attempt might sound like, “That came out wrong. Let me try again.” Or, “I'm getting defensive. Can we slow this down?” Or, “I need a break, but I'm coming back. I don't want to leave this unresolved.” Sometimes it is simply, “I know we're both hurting right now. I'm not your enemy.”

Over time, the question can begin to shift from “Who started this?” or “Whose fault is this?” to “What is happening between us right now, and what can I do that doesn't feed it?”

Is There a Marriage #2?

Sometimes a couple reaches a point where trying to save the marriage they have been living in no longer feels hopeful. There may be too much accumulated hurt, too many failed attempts, or too much evidence that Marriage #1 is not sustainable as it has been.

That doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is over. A different question may be worth asking: Is there enough love, willingness, and capacity left to find out whether the same two partners could build Marriage #2?

Marriage #2 is not recommitting to more of the same. It is not pretending the past didn't happen, minimizing injuries, or deciding that love should somehow be enough. It means asking what would have to be fundamentally different for both people to experience the relationship differently.

That might require both people to put down their swords. Both may eventually need to lower their shields. Both need to learn how to regulate themselves enough to approach rather than automatically protect. Both need opportunities to give the other person something they have been asking for. And both have to become willing to notice when their partner actually does something different.

You cannot know whether Marriage #2 is possible while both people are still protecting themselves with the strategies that helped create the ending of Marriage #1.

Someone may have to take the first risk. The other person then gets to decide what they will do with the invitation. One changed moment makes another changed moment possible. Over time, those moments can become evidence that the relationship itself is changing.

And if genuine efforts are repeatedly made and not received or reciprocated, that tells us something too. The purpose is not to keep one person trying forever. It is to create enough room for both people to discover whether something different between them is actually possible.

A Different Question

Perhaps the most useful question in a hurting marriage is not “Why should I go first?” It may be: “What can I do, in this moment, that gives my spouse an experience of something different?”

Not because everything is my fault. Not because my spouse's behavior doesn't matter. Not because accountability is unnecessary. Because relationships change when patterns change, and patterns cannot change if both people remain frozen in the positions that have kept them safe.

The past still matters. The injuries still matter. Accountability and integrity still matter. And so does the possibility that the next moment can be different from the last one.

Sometimes rebuilding begins when two hurting partners become willing to stop waiting for the other person to go first - and start finding out what happens when they each choose, one moment at a time, to create something different.

Want a Practical Gottman Resource?

If you would like a copy of the Gottman Guide on the Four Horsemen or Self-Soothing, contact Kassie directly at Kassie@beachcottagecounseling.com

About the Author

Kathryn "Kassie" Welch is a Resident in Marriage and Family Therapy providing online therapy to couples and individuals throughout Virginia and Florida. Her work is grounded in the Gottman Method, with additional training in trauma, betrayal recovery, and neurodivergent relationships. She helps couples move beyond repeating patterns, strengthen communication, and create relationships that become a source of support rather than another source of stress.

Learn more or schedule a consultation at EngageRenewTherapy.com.