Two Husbands Later

It took me two husbands to figure this out.

Happiness is an inside job. Once you see what you’re actually bringing to the relationship, you can’t unsee it.

Last week I asked my husband a simple favor. His response made me feel like I’d asked him to sever a limb. He made a comment — in a tone — and just like that, our pattern began.

I got mad. He shut down. I got madder that he was shutting down. And so on.

Classic pursuer-withdrawer. I pursue, he distances. I pursue harder. He distances more. We’ve been doing this dance for years.

Here’s what was actually happening underneath: he feels like I’m controlling (I kinda am). I feel like he’s selfish (he occasionally is). Neither of us is wrong. Neither of us is right. We’re just two people with different nervous systems, different attachment histories, and a very predictable pattern.

It was never about the favor.

It never is.

The Gottman’s calls these moments “regrettable incidents.” What’s underneath mine is a bid for connection that went sideways. I asked for something small. What I actually wanted was to feel like a priority. When he reacted the way he did, my brain heard: you don’t matter. So I got loud.

And when I get big and loud, he becomes a turtle and pulls into his shell. Which is its own kind of bid — his way of saying I can’t take any more right now. But to me it reads as abandonment. So I push harder.

Neither of us is trying to hurt the other. We’re both just trying to feel okay.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about conflict. It’s almost never about the thing. It’s about the story you’re telling yourself about what the thing means.

But after years of practicing this — really practicing it — something shifted.

I saw it happening in real time. I noticed the pattern. I understood why. And I chose to stop pushing.

Not because I was wrong. Not because he was right. Because I’ve learned that I can be right — in my mind — or I can be happy. I can’t always be both.

That’s not weakness. That’s not stuffing it down. That’s what Gottman calls physiological self-soothing — choosing to step out of the flood before it takes you somewhere you don’t want to go.

The day wasn’t ruined. The crisis (fight) was averted.

This is the work. Not the dramatic breakthroughs. Not the big revelations. The tiny moment where you see the pattern coming and you make a different choice.

That’s the inside job.

And once you do it once, you can do it again.

P.S. If you’re interested in learning what your pattern is — and how to break it — I’ve created a course to help: https://lisa-hoey.mykajabi.com/register-to-break-the-pattern