The first year of marriage is when the Representative retires and the real attachment patterns emerge. Here is what attachment science says about why it is so hard, and how to navigate it.
The internet gives you 15 signs. A couples therapist with 16 years of experience gives you one. Here’s what withdrawal really means, why certainty kills love, and how to tell the difference between a partner who is shut down and a partner who is gone.
Standard co-parenting advice fails when your ex has narcissistic features. Here is a clinical framework for protecting your children’s nervous systems, building enforceable parenting plans, and knowing when parallel parenting is the healthier choice.
Divorce is not something you ‘get over.’ It is something you metabolize. An attachment science approach to understanding what your nervous system needs during divorce recovery, from the Waltz of Pain to rebuilding your Sovereign Us.
The question you are really asking is not whether your relationship is over. It is whether you are willing to do the work required to find out. A couples therapist with 16 years of experience explains the clinical and attachment-science difference between a relationship in crisis and one that is truly done.
The vagal brake is the biological mechanism that determines whether you and your partner can stay connected or spiral into conflict. Understanding how it works changes everything about how you approach disagreements, intimacy, and repair.
Chronic negativity in a relationship is almost never a personality trait. It is a nervous system event. Learn what attachment science reveals about why your partner is always negative and what actually works to change the pattern.
Emotional neglect is the chronic, patterned failure to respond to a partner’s emotional needs. It is one of the most damaging forces a relationship can endure, not because it is dramatic, but because it is invisible.
A partner who can never admit fault is not arrogant. They are running a biological defense rooted in shame. Here is what attachment science says about why they do it and what actually works to break the pattern.
Join the Empathi Newsletter
Subscribe to the newsletter and get tips from Figs and the Empathi team!
Share "Signs of an Unhappy Marriage: What a Therapist Looks for (That Most People Miss)"
Reading this from the Bay Area? Figs and Teale see couples in person at 999 Sutter Street in San Francisco, and online across California.Free 30-minute consult