Ever Notice This in Relationships?

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “opposites attract.”
And often, it’s true.

In the early stages of a relationship, we’re frequently drawn to someone who fills out the less developed parts of ourselves—someone who gives us permission to behave in ways we’ve disallowed. The spontaneous one meets the steady one. The emotionally expressive partner meets the grounded, logical thinker. The caretaker meets the one who finally lets themselves be cared for.

This early time of romance is also a time of deep rediscovery. We are reclaiming parts of ourselves lost after childhood, remembering the safety of attachment love, and finding the nervous system relief—the exhale—of coming home.

I remember when I met my husband that his grounded, steady, and confident nature gave me the security I was craving and learning to develop in myself.

From an attachment perspective, this makes sense. Early bonding activates the same neural pathways associated with safety, curiosity, and play (Bowlby, Siegel). Novelty and difference feel enlivening, not threatening. We don’t experience the other as “other” yet—we experience them as expansion.

But this instinctive falling doesn’t last forever.

Eventually, something shifts.

At some point, often without realizing it, we interrupt this process by doing a very specific thing:

We try to make our partner more like us.

Sounds like hell, right?
And sometimes, it is.

But this impulse—this power grab, this dance, this survival strategy—is also rich with information. It tells us about our wounds, our vulnerabilities, and the ways we learned to stay safe in relationships.

What once felt like freedom begins to feel threatening. The very traits that drew us in now activate discomfort: Why are you so emotional? Why are you so rigid? Why can’t you just see it the way I do?

From a nervous system lens, this is not a moral failure. It’s a shift from connection mode to protection mode. When we feel unsafe—emotionally unseen, overwhelmed, or afraid of losing the bond—we reach for control.

In my own relationship, it wasn’t long before I noticed all the ways my husband wasn’t living up to the secure savior of my dreams. He was too carefree in areas that I wanted him to be serious in and I sure let him know!

This is often when familiar patterns emerge. Relationship researcher John Gottman identified four communication styles that predict relationship distress, which he famously called The Four Horsemen (Gottman Institute):

• Criticism (attacking character rather than naming a need)

• Defensiveness (self-protection through denial or counterattack)

• Stonewalling (withdrawing or shutting down)

• Contempt (sarcasm, mockery, superiority—the most corrosive of all)

These behaviors don’t appear because people are cruel. They appear because something tender is being protected.

From a trauma-informed lens, these strategies often began as adaptive responses—ways to survive emotional neglect, chaos, or misattunement earlier in life. What once kept us safe now quietly erodes intimacy.

What’s striking is that these dynamics don’t stay contained within romantic partnerships.

We see them in friendships, families, workplaces—and yes, even in political discourse. When difference feels intolerable, when nervous systems are overwhelmed, the urge to convert, dominate, silence, or withdraw takes over.

The question beneath the conflict is often not “Why won’t you agree with me?”
It’s “How do I stay connected and safe when you are different from me?”

Instead of asking, How do I get them to change?
A more generative question might be:

What am I trying to achieve by making you more like me?

Safety? Predictability? Relief from old pain? Validation that my way of being is acceptable?

Once I started asking myself why I wanted my husband to change I realized that I didn’t. Those wild parts of him were also parts I was attracted to, asked for even. My objections weren’t about what he wasn’t giving me, but about what I wasn’t attending to in myself.

Therapy can be a powerful place to slow this question down—to explore what’s being protected beneath the impulse to control, and to find ways to stay connected without erasing difference.

This is the heart of the work I do with couples and individuals: not choosing sides, but helping people listen to the intelligence of their patterns without being ruled by them.

If you find yourself in a disharmonious relationship—romantic or otherwise—where you feel compelled to change the other, that pull is worth listening to. Not to obey, but to understand.

I’m currently accepting New York State–based individuals and couples for virtual or in-person psychotherapy. If this resonates, you’re welcome to reach out.

What part of you first felt free when you fell in love—and what would it be like to protect that part without needing someone else to become you?