The Case of the Angry Couple

Jess, a retired engineer in her mid-50s, and Liam, a math instructor 10 years her junior, have lived together for 20 years. They met skydiving, though they haven’t been doing anything adventurous for a while due to Liam’s worsening sciatica.

They’re coming to therapy because they’ve grown increasingly distant since Liam took medical leave, although occasionally he tutors online. Their fighting has escalated to the point where they barely speak. “He’s so passive aggressive,” Jess says. “When I come home late, he double locks the door so I can’t get in unless I repeatedly knock and call his phone.”

“I only did that a few times,” Liam mumbles. “And it was by accident.”

Jess laughs out loud and mumbles something unintelligible.

“Her favorite pastime is twisting the narrative so I look bad,” Liam sneers, “but I’m not the one who kicked her out of the bedroom. She parties a lot. Most nights, she chooses to sleep on the couch with the dogs.”

Jess shakes her head. “He exaggerates everything. He’s always criticizing me. Yes, when my friends call and want to do fun things, I go. They actually appreciate me.” 

Liam admits that even though things are bad with Jess, he’s not really on board with coming to therapy. “Everything we do here will get weaponized at home,” he says.

Becoming a Team Again

By Ellyn Bader

Earlier in my career, I might’ve approached partners like Jess and Liam by searching for the right interpretation, an incisive confrontation, or a perfectly delivered insight that would turn things around. But today, my approach—based on the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, which I developed in the 1980s with my husband, Dr. Peter Pearson—is different. Before offering insights, skills, or action steps, I focus on motivation. Without motivation, partners won’t engage, open up, or apply new skills, and even the most brilliant therapeutic perspectives will quickly wither.

When partners like Jess and Liam are spiraling down, the therapist’s task is to create a compelling context for why they should grow and change. This requires leading with clarity and direction, and providing structured experiments that help partners discover what’s possible for them.

I begin by stating my hypothesis to Jess and Liam: the change in Liam’s physical capacity is a big loss for both, and Jess’s retirement has left them with more time and less meaning in their lives. Skydiving was a powerful connector, and now they’re feeling lost without anything compelling to replace it.

Early on, I need a commitment from both partners that they’re willing to engage in behavior that will lead to change. I proceed with a process intervention, a structured “meta-argument” exercise designed to illuminate the futility of how they fight, not what they fight about.

A New Dream

“Will you show me how you fight?” I ask them. “Let’s start with an argument that comes up a lot and go from there.”

“You stay out too late partying with your friends,” Liam begins. “And you’re never around when I need your help.”

“Well, you’re lazy,” Jess retorts. “There’s plenty you could do around the house, and your back pain is no excuse for sitting around doing nothing.”

Next comes the experiential piece. I ask them to repeat a brief version of the same argument, this time with heightened awareness, while tracking two things: what they feel when their partner is being bossy or critical, and what they feel when they are being bossy or critical.

Jess and Liam repeat their argument, but this time, their statements are much more tempered. After a few minutes I stop them and ask a series of questions.

“You each have your own way of being bossy. What did you notice when your partner was bossy?”

“I felt very heated,” Jess says.

“And I was really annoyed when she called me lazy,” Liam adds.

“What did you notice when you were bossy?” I ask.

Both tell me they don’t like to think of themselves as bossy.

“What response are you hoping for when you take a bossy approach?” I clarify. “How likely are you to get that response? How motivated are you to give your partner what they want when you feel bossed around?”

It’s a bit of an aha moment for both, and they tell me they didn’t want to accommodate, but felt stubborn. By creating these mini-experiments, partners usually begin to realize they’ve been repeatedly using a strategy that neither of them likes, values, or believes has any chance of success—not because I told them, but because they experienced it.

“Would you be open to understanding what just happened from another perspective?” I ask. They both say yes—as most couples do.

“You’re both fighting for what you want and protecting yourself using behavior that’s guaranteed to fail,” I explain. This naturally leads me to my next question: “Why do you think you keep doing something that has almost no chance of working?”

Jess responds first. “I’ve felt pretty hopeless and don’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t know how else to get her attention,” Liam says.

“My questions are designed to be disarming, not accusatory,” I tell them. “I want you to shift your focus from blame to self-reflection, from defending your positions to understanding your patterns. What stands out isn’t the topic that you’re fighting about—it’s the process of how you’re fighting. Each of you winds up telling the other what they do wrong, what not to do, and what they should do. And it seems neither of you responds well to being bossed around by the other. Are you open to a very different approach?”

Jess and Liam nod affirmatively.

Couples often think the alternative to fighting is “getting along better.” I propose something different: transforming the relationship.

“Right now,” I tell them, “you’re two individuals screaming in pain with no idea how to get relief. The two of you once functioned as an extraordinary team. You literally jumped out of airplanes together! You didn’t do that by bossing each other around; you did it by depending on each other and having a mutually agreed upon goal. There were risks, you trusted each other, and you communicated well. Your lives and circumstances have changed massively. Jess, I think you’re actually frightened by Liam’s back issues. You’re afraid you can’t depend on him, and that’s getting in the way of envisioning a new future. It’s time to stop being opponents and start being a team with a new dream.”

Then, I ask the following questions: “What’s the dream you once had for your connection? Is there a version of it still worth fighting for? What kind of teammate would you each strive to become? What would be the benefits and rewards of creating a new future and becoming great teammates again?”

Liam tells me their dream was to have big adventures. Jess agrees and adds that it felt safe relying on Liam. This was—and is—a dream worth fighting for. But right now, without being able to have those adventures, they just can’t see a way forward.

“A really good team requires three things,” I say. “A shared mission (a vision of who they want to be together), agreed-upon rules of engagement (how they’ll handle differences, disagreements, and disappointments), and a commitment to small, repeated actions in order to create a new way of being together. If we work together, we’ll focus on these three things.”

Since Liam wasn’t initially on board with therapy, I address him individually. “Liam, can I check something with you?” I ask.

“Sure,” he replies.

“I heard that you don’t trust that what happens here won’t be weaponized at home. Is it fair for me to say you’re not resisting change, but protecting yourself from more pain, blame, and disappointment?”

He nods.

“Here’s what’s surprising,” I say. “When someone protects themselves this hard, it usually means the relationship still matters. You don’t armor yourself for something you don’t care about.”

Liam pauses. “I never thought about it that way,” he says.

“I’m curious,” I continue. “Is there even a small part of you that wants the two of you to start feeling like teammates again? Not perfect teammates, just better than what you have.”

“Yeah, a small part,” he replies.

“That’s enough,” I say. “I’m not asking you to leap out of a plane today. But I am curious whether each of you would be willing to do another brief experiment. It’s something that all great teams do, it’ll take less than five minutes, and you won’t have to commit to anything.”

Both Liam and Jess agree.

“All great teams understand and acknowledge their teammates’ strengths,” I tell them. “So here’s what I’d like each of you to do. Acknowledge one strength and say to the other what you appreciate and value about the other person, and why this is meaningful to you.”

Saying what you value is about the other person. Describing why it’s meaningful lets them know about you. This is a critical step toward building a strong team that brings out the best in everyone. It means being acknowledged for what you do and who you are. “Take your time with this,” I tell them.

Jess says she values how good Liam is with budgeting and money. Liam says Jess makes him laugh and keeps him from being too serious.

I ask Jess and Liam to do this exercise every other day until our next session. We’re looking for strengths and appreciations. When they return, we’ll review these strengths and discuss what it was like to hear what was appreciated and how it felt to express appreciation.

“We’re not going to fix anything yet,” I say, “but you will hear what your partner values about you. If you choose, we can build a new model that begins to make your current, ineffective patterns obsolete.”

This strong start moves most couples from a reactive stance to an aspirational one. Research, clinical experience, and human nature all point to the same conclusion: people will endure pain and risk and practice new skills if the goal they’re working toward feels worthwhile. Jess and Liam don’t need to be perfect, but they are stuck. They need the momentum of a new direction, and a therapist who can point the way and keep them on track. Once they get a glimpse of this new direction and become a team with a new dream, therapy shifts from defending positions to building a rewarding future.

Processing Transitions

By Alexandra Solomon

I begin my session with Liam and Jess by asking easy, open-ended questions, wanting to learn about them as a couple and what led them to my therapy office. Liam shares about transitioning from a full-time job to occasional math tutoring and the resultant changes in the rhythm of their days, compounded by his worsening sciatica. I turn to Jess to learn about her experience, and she reflects on the consistent conflict between the two of them, and her tendency to go out with her friends “who actually appreciate her.” Jess mentions that she and Liam met skydiving and once shared a whole host of high-adrenaline activities before Liam’s chronic pain got in the way. At 55, she’s 10 years older than Liam but finds herself moving at a much faster pace. Jess also shares that she’s adjusting to life post-menopause.

I make a mental note that although Liam is the one on medical leave, both Liam and Jess have a relationship with Liam’s shift from full-time teaching to occasional tutoring. How does his transition impact the way he sees himself, and how does it change Jess’s view of him? Similarly, although Jess is the one dealing with the physical and emotional shifts of menopause, Liam also has a relationship with her transition.

This couple seems to be experiencing energetic asynchrony. I’m curious what it’s like for Jess that Liam is slowing down, whereas she’s not. We know from research that engaging in exciting activities together is good for couples, evoking passion, growth, and increased security. Liam and Jess are facing the loss of these shared activities and the high dopamine, risk, and excitement they’re accustomed to feeling together.

Midlife couples often report feeling more like “roommates” than lovers, citing diminished intimacy and connection. It will be important to help Jess and Liam find ways to coregulate and experience pleasure together. I voice this out loud and muse about ways they can retain some of the energy their shared activities once evoked. While Jess and Liam are experiencing ordinary/normative changes, they’re also going through extraordinary/unexpected ones. How might they adapt their old activities to Liam’s limitations? What novel activities might they explore together?

Three Lenses

I’ll be organizing my work with them around three lenses. First, the intrapsychic or internal lens: What shifts in identity are stirred within each of them by these changes (self-definition, purpose, questions of worth)? In what ways are old wounds, family of origin and otherwise, evoked by these changes? Second, the interpersonal or relational lens: What are the ways in which these transitions have put them at risk of becoming caught in cycles of distance and misunderstanding? Third, the cultural lens: In what ways are cultural messages (romantic mythology, sexism, and ageism) making a hard thing harder, constricting their ability to collaborate creatively in the face of these changes?

Each of us brings our own proclivities and coping strategies to transitions, often honed over many decades. Some of us ritualize all developmental milestones. Some of us stuff down our feelings, put on a happy face, or portray a stiff upper lip. Some of us protest loudly, refusing to “go gentle into that good night” (to quote the Dylan Thomas poem). Transitions are challenging enough on their own, but when you’re part of a couple, your partner has a front row seat, watching you avoid and fumble and try on this new version of yourself. It’s immensely vulnerable.

I help couples to locate themselves and talk explicitly about transitions for three important reasons. First, the journey is often strangely invisible to the traveler. It’s hard to see the forest when you’re entangled in the branches of the trees. I’ve found that naming the transition itself feels validating and orienting for couples. Second, silence is itself a communication. The unspoken still shapes the space, leaving partners to import their own—often inaccurate—stories about the other’s experience. A couple who doesn’t talk about their experiences of transition will still embody and enact those experiences. Third, talking about it together with me puts the couple in the ideal position relationally—shoulder to shoulder, looking together at “the problem.”

My goal is to help Jess and Liam grieve together the losses of the passage of time and changes connected to aging and health. Although it seems paradoxical, when we’re brave enough to grieve, we create fertile soil from which something new can grow. We move away from asking, “Who do you have to be now that you are older?” and into asking, “Who do you get to be now in this season of your life? What do you get to claim and experience, separately and together?”

As we move further into the session, I learn about the ways they each pull away from the other to self-protect. Jess shares her belief that Liam purposefully locked her out during their most recent fight, and we explore the possibility that she feels forgotten, or rejected by Liam. Here I think about the problem-saturated narrative keeping them stuck, given the brain’s relentless tendency to seek confirmation for its beliefs and fears. If Jess truly believes that Liam doesn’t care about her, she’ll see this evidence everywhere. We’ll want to shake up this belief system so that Jess can extend Liam the benefit of the doubt.

Jess mentions her childhood experiences of caring for younger siblings from a young age, and the sense that she wasn’t a priority for her overworked parents. With Liam immersed in his chronic pain and the challenges of going from a 40-hour to a 5-hour workweek, she seems to be experiencing a sense of loneliness that feels all too familiar, deepening her hurt and fueling her hostility. Liam argues that no matter what he says, “it gets twisted”, and I can see the hurt underneath his anger.

With some prompting, Liam shares that he struggled in school and often felt rejected by his classmates. Every time Jess critiques him or sees the worst in his behavior, he feels the sting of not being “enough,” leading him to pull away to avoid that feeling. The cycle is polarizing: when Jess feels forgotten by Liam, she withdraws by turning toward her friends, seeking out the warmth and acceptance that she isn’t feeling from Liam. The more she pulls away, the more Liam feels rejected and withdraws in anger. His retreat confirms her aloneness.

Liam was likely drawn to Jess’s energy and spirit of adventure. He must miss being the beneficiary of her big, warm attention, and maybe he even feels jealous of her friends. I want to encourage Liam to connect with and name the sadness, shame, and fear of disappointing Jess that lie beneath his angry retreat, and to help Jess witness it, accept it, and offer him compassion. Conversely, it will be important for Jess to connect with and name the worry, sadness, and loneliness that lie beneath her frenzied, distracted behavior, and help Liam witness it, accept it and offer her validation and care.

As they connect with the needs and emotions underlying their behavior, and witness each other’s pain, I feel confident they’ll find a way forward, shoulder to shoulder, through these difficult but wholly inevitable transitions. When couples are courageous enough to turn toward themselves and each other, transitions become initiations—into wisdom, self-awareness, and connection.