07/04/2025
Your Partner Feels So Far Away: Understanding Avoidant Attachment Style in Marriage Counseling
If youâre in a relationship where it feels like youâre constantly reaching for your partnerâbut they keep pulling awayâyouâre not alone. Maybe, every time you try to talk about emotions or closeness, they shut down, change the subject, or act like nothingâs wrong. Youâre not making this up. What youâre feeling, being ignored, the importance, rejection, and the loneliness, is real. And, what your spouse has is an avoidant attachment style. When you are running fights because your spouse has an avoidant attachment style, marriage counseling can help you co-create a secure attachment style. Your spouseâs avoidant attachment style is pushing you two apart and you need professional couples therapy. Emotionally Focused Therapy for high conflict couples at Wisdom Within Counseling with Katie Ziskind in Connecticut is exactly what you need to rebuild meaningful connection.
When you have an anxious attachment style, youâve been craving closeness. You are deeply yearning for that emotional warmth, that feeling of being truly seen by your partner.
But instead, youâre met with silence, shutdowns, irritation, yelling, and distance. Maybe, they retreat into work, pour another alcohol drink, or spend hours consumed by po*******hy. And, here you are, left holding the emotional weight of the relationship. You are trying to keep your marriage connection alive while feeling like youâre loving someone who keeps disappearing and pulling away. In your marriage, it is really difficult to feel secure and safe because you are screaming for your avoidant spouse to give you comfort and love you.
Having a dismissive mother or emotionally explosive and militant father leads to an anxious attachment style. Your anxious attachment style is not your fault. It is a survival mechanism from trauma. The harder you try to bridge the gap, the wider it feels. And deep down, itâs breaking your heart.
A reactive cycle of anger and the silent treatment in your marriage is only the surface issue. These fights are redundant, frustrating, and leave you feeling hopeless and powerless.
Fighting over s*x or chores is only the surface.
With Katie Ziskindâs professional expertise in this specialized area of high conflict couples counseling, you can rebuild your couple bubble. From couples counseling, you gain skills to build a secure attachment by fostering emotional attunement skills and validation tools.
Common issues high conflict couples often face:
Frequent, unresolved arguments that escalate quickly
One partner shuts down while the other pursues (âpursue-withdrawâ cycle)
Mistrust due to betrayal, secrecy, or past infidelity
Poor emotional regulation and reactivity
Difficulty expressing needs without criticism or defensiveness
Feeling misunderstood, unheard, ignored, or emotionally invisible
Deep-seated resentment that builds over time
Lack of physical intimacy, affection, or emotional closeness
Avoidance of difficult conversations or emotional vulnerability
Repeating the same fights without resolution or change
An avoidant attachment style can be changed into a secure bond through Emotionally Focused Therapy for high conflict couples at Wisdom Within Counseling with Katie Ziskind. It is a survival strategy, that developed in childhood.
Wisdom Within Counseling offers the speciality of high conflict couples therapy via telehealth video and in person near Westbrook, Old Saybrook, Ess*x, Deep River, Chester, Madison, Killingworth, Guilford, Branford, East Haven, North Branford, Old Lyme, Lyme, East Lyme, Niantic, Durham, Haddam, and Middletown, Connecticut.
Right now, you feel like roommates, not lovers. So unimportant, unseen, and alone.
This is therapy for those who donât want a cookie-cutter experience. Youâll receive custom sessions that often go beyond the standard 50-minute model. Most couples benefit from our 90-minute sessions. A 90-minute length allows for emotional depth and resolution rather than leaving in the middle of a crisis.
Our couples therapists believe in quality over quantity, spaciousness over rush, and true emotional repair over band-aid fixes. Your fights may appear to be about s*x, money, the dishes, or who puts which child to bed. But, they are much deeper.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can expect a trauma-informed, somatically integrated, emotionally focused experience.
Katie Ziskind specializes with high conflict couples needing a Gottman trained marriage therapist and certified s*x therapy informed professional.
Katie Ziskind will go there with you. Sheâll help you uncover the buried fears, unmet needs, and protective patterns that drive your worst fights. You can talk openly about s*xual desires, boundaries, fantasies, needs, and performance anxiety.
FAQâs
Why is inner child work important in couples therapy?
Many high-conflict fights stem from childhood emotional woundsâtimes when you felt unloved, unheard, or not good enough. Katie Ziskind helps couples explore these early experiences, not to blame, but to understand the emotional root of their reactivity. By healing those parts, couples can create a more secure and connected present.
Can Katie Ziskind help us if weâre considering divorce but still love each other?
Yes. Katie Ziskind is a trauma and high conflict couples therapy specialist. She offers specialized therapy for couples on the brink of divorce who want to give their relationship one last, deeply supported chance. Her process helps you identify core emotional needs, rebuild communication, and decide from a place of clarityânot chaosâwhether to reconnect or part ways.
How can marriage therapy with Katie Ziskind help couples dealing with trauma and PTSD?
Katie Ziskindâs approach addresses how unresolved trauma and PTSD patterns show up in relationships through shutdowns, explosive arguments, or emotional withdrawal. Through a gentle, emotionally focused method, Katie Ziskind helps each partner feel safe, regulated, and understood, so they can stop reacting from old wounds and start responding with compassion and connection.
What makes Katie Ziskind an expert in couples therapy for high-conflict marriages?
Katie Ziskind is a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in working with couples on the brink of divorce. She combines Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), trauma-informed care, and somatic healing to help partners break out of destructive fight cycles, reconnect emotionally, and rebuild trust from the inside out.
How does unresolved trauma contribute to high-conflict arguments in my relationship?
When trauma isnât processed, it lives in your body and nervous system. You may find yourself overreacting or shutting down during small disagreements because your brain is interpreting your partnerâs tone or behavior as a threat. Fights get very intense and both of you get flooded. Katie Ziskind helps couples recognize these trauma responses and shift from reactivity to emotional regulation.
Can childhood trauma really affect how I fight with my partner as an adult?
Absolutely. If you grew up with emotional neglect, criticism, or unpredictability, your nervous system learned to survive by either defending, avoiding, or pleasing. In your marriage, these early adaptations and trauma survival mechanisms show up. You and your spouse get into explosive fights, emotional shutdowns, or people-pleasing patterns that make conflict feel impossible to resolve. Understanding how current fights have roots in childhood trauma helps break the cycle of anger, rejection, abandonment, feeling invisible, hurt, and powerless in your marriage.
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Emotionally focused couples therapy helps high conflict couples with avoidant attachment styles build intimacy. Telehealth video, Connecticut
