Why Couples Really Fight: Emotional Triggers, Hidden Wounds, and the Power of Family Constellation Therapy

You've talked about the dishes, the in-laws, the chores — and yet, something in your relationship still feels stuck. What if you're not fighting each other… but rather, old wounds that never fully healed?

Why do couples fight?

They walked into the clinic, barely looking at each other. She was tense. Lips tight. A heart full of noise. He was silent—a frozen stare, as if bracing for impact.

“We fight all the time,” she said. “About the dishes, about who picked up the kid, about his mom, about how he doesn’t see me. I don’t feel loved anymore.”

And him? He swallowed hard. Whispered: “I have nothing left to give. Everything I do — it’s never enough. I don’t understand why we keep fighting. Why is it like this?”

That’s when I knew: They weren’t fighting about the dishes. They were silently negotiating with the pain they've been carrying inside.

Couple fights are just the symptom, not the real story.

Why do couples fight? - When couples tell me about the same argument happening over and over, I ask: What are you fighting for?

Beneath the conflict lies a story. A memory. Often, it's an intergenerational trauma that was never given words.

That’s why, instead of teaching communication techniques, I offered them something else: a Couples Constellation.

We placed representations for each of them and the relationship. And the field began to speak.

Hidden traumas, bodily responses, and emotional legacies that aren’t ours

He lost his mother when he was five. Since then, every woman who gets too close triggers fear in his body. Because when closeness = loss, the heart learns to pull away to survive.

She was born after a sister who died at birth. Without knowing it, she lived for both of them. And no matter how hard she tried, it was never enough. Because there was always someone else she was unconsciously trying to replace.

They weren’t fighting each other. They were fighting memories that didn’t belong to them, but lived inside them.

How early loss shapes adult identity

According to Family Constellation work, unresolved childhood loss doesn’t disappear — it gets embedded and shapes our personality.

This creates:

• A deep need for control, because life once proved it can change in an instant.

• Emotional distancing — driven by fear that closeness equals pain.

• A sense of unworthiness — “If someone died before me, maybe I wasn’t meant to be here at all.”

• Ambivalence in relationships — the longing to connect and the reflex to flee.

• Difficulty trusting — not just others, but ourselves: the fear that intimacy might dissolve our sense of self.

They had become two highly functional adults. But underneath, that insecurity, that missing sense of belonging, and the fear of surrender were driving every emotional reaction.

Their relationship became the space where all of this cried out for attention — sometimes through conflict, sometimes through silence.

When we finally say what was never said, something softens

They stood facing the representations of their losses, the ties that were never completed, and for the first time, said out loud:

“Mom, I miss you. But now, I choose to stay with the one I love.”

“Sister, I see you. But now I choose to live only my life.”

And that thing — that tension that had lingered between them for so long — softened.

Their eyes met. Not from a need to explain, but from a place of connection. No more defenses. Just presence.

Why relationships erode — and what heals them

Relationships don’t erode because love runs out. They wear down when inner insecurity takes over intimacy.

When emotional pain isn’t acknowledged in childhood, it doesn’t go away. It waits, just beneath the surface, and shows up precisely when we most want to connect.

In silence. In criticism. In disproportionate anger. The couple dynamic becomes a stage for old wounds to replay:

The boy who didn’t feel loved. The girl who never felt important. They resurface inside our adult bond.

In systemic therapy and Family Constellation, we understand relationships as a living field, not just between two people, but between their emotional histories as well. This includes early attachment patterns, transgenerational trauma, and unconscious identification with forgotten family members.

And what heals the relationship? Not technical solutions — but a courageous encounter with the emotional story beneath the pattern.

Love renews when we stop seeing our partner as “difficult” or “distant” and start seeing the unseen pain they carry.

Healing occurs when the relationship transitions from a state of survival to one of witnessing. And you don’t need a crisis to get there. Sometimes all it takes is a new way of seeing what’s always been there, just waiting to be named.

And that’s when the connection begins to change.

Couple's Tip: A Simple At-Home Exercise

Choose a quiet moment — no phones, no distractions. Sit facing each other, and begin each sentence with:

• “What I don’t always say, but my heart feels…”

• “Sometimes when I pull away, it’s because deep down I…”

• “I remember the child I was when… and it affects me in our relationship when…”

No correcting. No response. Just listening — and noticing what happens inside.

This isn’t about “fixing” the relationship — it’s about meeting the emotion, with love.

Feeling like something’s off in your relationship?

Maybe it’s time to pause and listen differently.

I invite you to a first conversation. A quiet, safe, and tender space. One that begins with a simple question: What’s happening between us?

This is not therapy “only for couples in crisis” — it’s a journey for those who refuse to give up on deep love.

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Sivan Avni | Couples Therapy Integrating Family Constellation and Differentiation

Reconnect. Support Love. Strengthen the Relationship.