When a couple keeps having the same painful conflict

That the same fight keeps recurring is not a sign you are wrong for each other — it is a loop, and loops can be seen and stepped out of. Three things. First, see the loop you both fall into — one's reaction triggers the other's in a pattern that runs almost automatically, and naming it together as a shared thing you are both caught in, rather than a fight about who is right, changes everything. Second, find the feeling under each of your moves — the fear of being abandoned, of being attacked — because when each sees the tender feeling driving the other's move, the loop loses its fuel. Third, catch the loop early and step out together, naming it in the moment without blame: we are doing the thing again, let us pause. It takes practice. But this is the way out of the fight that had no end. What's the loop you keep falling into?