When Relationship Stress Becomes Your Normal

Is Your Relationship Keeping You Stressed?

We all get stressed in our relationships. We argue, we misunderstand each other, someone says something badly and occasionally we get so worked up that we can't have a productive conversation anymore.

In Gottman Method Couples Therapy, we call this flooding. It's that point where your heart might be racing, your body feels tense and you're technically still having a conversation, but you're not really listening anymore. You're defending, attacking, shutting down or desperately trying to get your partner to understand you.

Flooding every now and then isn't necessarily something to worry about. What I'm much more interested in is what happens when this becomes your normal.

What happens when you're having the same argument, experiencing the same reactions and falling into the same pattern over and over again for months or even years?

Because at some point, it stops being about one bad argument. Your body can start anticipating what's coming before the argument has even begun.

Your body starts recognising the pattern

Imagine Sarah and Ben have been stuck in the same cycle for years. When Sarah feels disconnected, she wants to talk. Ben experiences her approach as criticism, becomes overwhelmed and withdraws. Sarah experiences his withdrawal as rejection, so she pushes harder, which makes Ben withdraw even further.

They've done this hundreds of times.

Eventually, Sarah hears Ben's car in the driveway and notices herself tense. Ben receives a text saying "Can we talk tonight?" and immediately feels a knot in his stomach.

They aren't actually arguing yet, but their bodies already know this dance.

I think that's something we don't talk about enough when we talk about struggling relationships. Your mind isn't the only part of you experiencing your relationship. Your nervous system is there too.

When we perceive threat, our bodies prepare us to protect ourselves. You've probably heard this talked about as fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and those responses can be surprisingly easy to recognise in relationships.

Fight might be the person who gets louder, argues harder, interrupts or desperately needs to prove their point. Flight might look like leaving, avoiding conversations or finding reasons not to be around. Freeze can be the person who goes completely blank during an argument and genuinely can't find the words. Fawn is the person who gives in, apologises, agrees or ignores their own needs because keeping the peace feels safer than continuing the conflict.

We sometimes look at these behaviours and think, Why do I keep doing this? or Why does my partner always react like that?

Sometimes the better question is: What is this person trying to protect themselves from in this moment?

But what happens when your body keeps doing this?

Our stress response isn't bad. We need it. The issue is when our stress systems are being activated repeatedly and we're not getting enough opportunity to properly recover.

Over time, chronic stress can affect things like sleep, concentration, mood and energy and is associated with changes across cardiovascular, metabolic and immune functioning. Researchers sometimes talk about allostatic load, which is essentially the cumulative burden on the body from repeatedly having to adapt to stress.

I'm not saying that being in a difficult relationship automatically makes you physically ill. Human health is far more complicated than that. But relationship stress is still stress, and if your home or your closest relationship has become one of the places where you're repeatedly on high alert, that's part of the load your body is carrying.

You might notice you're more tired, you're not sleeping properly, you're getting headaches, your shoulders are constantly tense or you're more irritable than you used to be. Maybe you're struggling to concentrate or you're just not feeling like yourself.

Sometimes other people notice it before you do.

And sometimes there's another interesting clue: you feel completely different when your partner isn't around.

You can laugh at work. You're relaxed with friends. You feel like yourself when you're out. Then you get home and notice your whole body tense again.

That's worth being curious about.

So where does the vagus nerve come into this?

You've probably seen plenty online about “resetting your vagus nerve”. There is some useful information underneath all of that, but there's also a lot of oversimplification.

The vagus nerve is an important part of our parasympathetic nervous system, which is involved in things such as heart rate, digestion and regulation. Polyvagal Theory takes this further and gives us a way of thinking about how our nervous system responds to safety, connection and perceived threat.

One concept I find particularly useful with couples is the idea of a ventral-vagal state, associated with feeling safe enough for social engagement and connection.

You don't really need to understand the neuroscience to recognise the experience.

Think about yourself when you feel completely safe with someone. You're more likely to be curious, make eye contact, laugh, listen properly and tolerate disagreement. You can hear your partner say, "I don't agree" without automatically hearing "I don't love you".

Compare that with yourself halfway through your worst argument.

You're probably not wondering, I wonder what's happening for the person I love right now?

You're protecting yourself.

That's why I sometimes describe conflict as two nervous systems having a conversation, not just two people.

How do you know when you're getting there?

One really simple tool is the Subjective Units of Distress Scale, or SUDS. Forget anything complicated; just give yourself a number from 0–10.

Rather than waiting until you're at a 9 and completely overwhelmed, start learning what happens to you at a 4 or 5.

Maybe your shoulders tighten. Perhaps your breathing changes or your voice gets louder. Maybe you start interrupting, stop making eye contact or notice that you're no longer listening to understand — you're listening for the next thing you can argue with.

That's the point where I want couples to become curious, because it's much easier to regulate yourself at a 5 than it is at a 9.

Can you actually “reset” your vagus nerve?

Not quite in the way social media sometimes suggests. There isn't a magic button that resets the vagus nerve and suddenly makes everything okay.

What we can do is learn what helps our nervous system move out of high alert and towards greater regulation and a sense of safety.

Start with your breathing. Slowing your breathing and allowing your exhale to be slightly longer than your inhale can support parasympathetic activity. You might gently breathe in for around four seconds and out for around six for a few minutes, rather than taking enormous forced breaths.

Movement can help too, particularly when your body feels full of fight-or-flight energy. A walk outside, stretching or simply moving your body may work far better than sitting on the couch repeatedly telling yourself to calm down.

You can also try orienting. Look around the space you're actually in. Notice what you can see and hear, feel your feet against the floor and bring your attention back to what's happening around you rather than continuing the argument inside your head.

Humming, singing and listening to music can be regulating for some people too. They influence our breathing and can be soothing, although I wouldn't suggest that humming for thirty seconds magically “activates” your vagus nerve.

And then there are your own cues of safety. This is where I want people to experiment. Maybe it's being outside, your dog sitting beside you, a warm shower, familiar music, movement or hearing the voice of someone you trust. Different nervous systems settle in different ways.

Interestingly, one of our most powerful sources of regulation can also be another person.

We call this co-regulation.

A softer voice from your partner, a reassuring expression, sitting beside each other rather than facing off across a room, or hearing "We're okay. We don't have to solve this right now" can completely change the experience of a difficult conversation.

That doesn't mean your partner is responsible for regulating you. But in healthy relationships, we can help one another find our way back to connection.

The reset isn't complete until you come back

This is the part I really want couples to understand.

Taking a break is not the same as avoiding the problem.

If you're flooded, saying "I'm too overwhelmed to do this well right now. I need half an hour to settle myself, but I will come back and we'll talk at 7.30" can be incredibly different from walking out and disappearing.

And then you need to come back.

Because every time you do that, you're creating a new experience.

We got overwhelmed and we recovered.

You left and you came back.

We disagreed and we're still okay.

I told you how I felt and you listened.

We got it wrong and we repaired.

Your nervous system learned the old pattern through repetition, and new experiences also need repetition.

You aren't trying to create a relationship where nobody ever gets angry, flooded or slips into fight, flight, freeze or fawn. That's unrealistic.

You're trying to create a relationship where you recognise what's happening sooner, know how to help yourselves regulate and can eventually find your way back to each other.

Because every relationship has stressful moments.

The question is whether stress is occasionally visiting your relationship, or whether it's moved in and started living there.