The More, the More: Why Couples Get Stuck in the Same Argument

How often have you found yourself thinking ‘OMG we’ve gone and done it again - just like last week and the week before!’

I can remember realising that my ex-husband and I were caught up in a repeating cycle of combative behaviour which was getting us nowhere. I didn’t have a name for it then, but it’s known as ‘the-more-the-more’. In our case, from my point of view, it was a cycle of him accusing me of something and me getting defensive, which generally ended up with one of us withdrawing.

The more he accused me, the more defensive I got and the more defensive I was the more he accused me. And then it would break – either I would turn away from him or he would slam out of the house for a walk (which was by far the better option!).

The problem with the-more-the-more is that at each stage of the cycle the two partners are triggering the same behaviour in each other. Sometimes over and over again.

It causes hurt and pain and very often the loss of a sense of who your partner is. It’s as if we narrow our focus down to those repeating behaviours and don’t notice the good things as much.

The-more-the-more takes many different shapes.

• The more she pursues, the more he withdraws and the more he withdraws, the harder she pursues.

• The more he shuts down, the more she talks, explains or presses and the more she presses, the more he shuts down.

• The more anxious she becomes about the relationship, the more he minimises the problem and the more the problem is minimised, the more anxious she becomes.

• The more she complains about lack of affection, the more he feels scrutinised and pulls back and the more he pulls back, the more deprived she feels.

• The more one tries to control, the more the other rebels and the more they rebel, the more controlling the first becomes.

They might look very different, but there’s an underlying pattern to all of them, which is two protective responses accidentally provoking each other.

I feel unsafe/disconnected → I do something to protect myself or restore connection → my response makes you feel less safe → you protect yourself → your response confirms my original fear.

In other words the more unsafe I feel, the more I try to get the thing from you that I believe will make me feel safe, but the more I do that, the more unsafe you feel and therefore you do more of whatever it is you do to feel safer.

For example:

• She fears disconnection, so she pursues.

• He experiences pursuit as pressure or criticism, so he withdraws.

• His withdrawal confirms her fear that she cannot reach him, so she pursues harder.

• Her increased pursuit confirms his sense that closeness is overwhelming, so he withdraws further.

Neither is simply reacting to the other person's behaviour. They're reacting to what that behaviour means to them.

When we understand that both sides of the-more-the-more derive from early childhood responses to feeling unsafe, we’re getting somewhere.

There are two ways to approach the problem of the-more-the-more. The first is what you do when you notice it happening. The second approach is to get more clarity about the relationship between your childhood experiences and your default behaviour when you get caught up in the loop of the-more-the-more.

What you can do when you notice the-more-the-more

Any pattern of behaviour which has repeated over and over again for a long time will be your default reaction when you feel threatened. There’s no shame in this – it’s just your brain doing what it’s designed to do, keeping you safe.

At the beginning you may not notice it until afterwards.

Let me give you an example. Kerry and Jon (not their real names) had been married for 28 years. They’d had a long time to get established in their own version of the-more-the-more.

Kerry told me that they had become more distant in recent years. Whenever she tried to draw Jon closer, he resisted and said that she was too emotional and was overwhelming him. Then she would get defensive and protest that she just wanted some affection and he would react by blaming her for making him feel like he wasn’t good enough for her. They would spiral into an argument and then she would slam out of the house and go for a long walk.

After we had talked about the pattern she and Jon had been caught up in, she was able to notice it while she was out for that walk. That was the first step to breaking out of the loop.

I suggested she use a couple of tools to help stop the loop when it was in progress.

1. Be curious about his reaction and listen to what he was saying rather than interrupting him to defend herself.

2. If she could catch it early on, use relational mindfulness. This is a simple technique where we create a pause by breathing in and out slowly for 5-10 seconds and then choosing a different response from our usual reaction.

It takes a while to get good at tools like these, but when you make the commitment to change your own behaviour there may be unexpected changes in your partner. Kerry explained to Jon that she had decided to try these two tools in the spirit of experimentation, and he surprised her with the positivity of his response.

Finding out why you do what you do

Moving away from these patterns can be more difficult when they have become entrenched over a long period of time. This is where it helps to understand why we do what we do.

Remember the-more-the-more kicks off when we’re triggered. We’re more likely to be triggered if we’re tired, stressed, ill or hungry. But the trigger isn’t the real reason we react so strongly. The real reason is that in the moment we don’t feel safe.

Kerry felt unsafe because she felt disconnected from Jon, while Jon felt unsafe when Kerry pressed him for affection. These triggers are like echoes of something from the past – from our childhood.

For Kerry the formative experience was the feeling of disconnection she had experienced when her parents separated and her father (who had been quite distant already) repeatedly failed to show up to take her out for the weekend. The distance she felt from Jon triggered an old abandonment wound which went right back to when she was eight years old.

Jon on the other hand had experienced something very different. His mother had been intrusive and had sought comfort from him when she and his father fell out. He had been unable to cope with his mother’s emotional intensity and withdrew as soon as he could.

Understanding the roots of their triggers made it easier for Jon and Kerry to feel compassion for each other and for themselves. With a new-found approach of tackling this together, they were also able to find compassion for their younger selves who had been trying so hard to keep them safe.

There are three things that parents are supposed to give their children:

• Nurture

• Guidance

• Limits

Kerry and Jon had to learn how to re-parent their younger selves and that meant all three aspects of parenting – including placing limits on them. We always need to reassure our child parts that we will protect them and keep them safe, and make it clear that they don’t need to keep us safe anymore. This naturally leads to the limits we place upon them: no shouting, no defensiveness, no acting out.

The aim of this isn’t to get rid of the parts of us that learned how to protect us. It’s to recognise when they’ve taken over, understand what they’re trying to protect us from and help them discover that we have more choices now.

And that changes the way we see the-more-the-more. Instead of two people behaving badly, we begin to see two people trying to feel safe, each using strategies that accidentally make the other feel less safe.

Once you can see the pattern, you have a much better chance of stepping out of it.

If you and your partner keep finding yourselves back in the same argument, even though you both know it isn’t getting you anywhere, a Clarity Call can help us look at the pattern you’re caught up in and what may be driving it.

You can book a complimentary call here: Relationship Dynamics Clarity Call.