Past the Pursue-Withdraw Cycle: What EFT for Couples Doesn't Reach
- Dr. Maura Ferguson
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
If you've done any research about couples therapy, you've likely come across Emotion Focused Therapy, or EFT-C. It's one of the most well-researched approaches available, and for good reason. Before EFT, a lot of couples work focused on symptoms of conflict in couples including communication skills — teaching partners to argue more fairly, listen better, avoid certain phrases. That kind of work has value. But many couples found that even after the fighting calmed down, something underneath it stayed the same.
EFT, developed by Sue Johnson and colleagues, addressed this by turning attention to emotion — specifically, the attachment fears sitting under most conflict. Underneath "you never listen to me" is often something closer to I'm afraid I don't matter to you, or I'm afraid you'll leave. It's a significant contribution, and it helps a lot of couples.
What an attachment lens doesn't quite reach
There's another layer to couples' lives together, though, that attachment theory doesn't fully account for — one that a contemporary psychoanalytic approach is built to work with.
Each of us brings more than our attachment history into a relationship. We also bring unconscious material — old fears, old roles, unresolved dynamics from earlier relationships and family life — that we're not fully aware of, and that we sometimes project onto our partner without either of us realizing it's happening. A partner can come to represent something in our inner world that has very little to do with who they actually are: the critical parent, the person who will inevitably disappoint us, the one who needs rescuing. These aren't just fears of abandonment; they're specific, personal, often unconscious storylines that get played out between two people.
A contemporaory psychoanalytic coupes approach pays close attention to this. It treats the couple not just as two people with two sets of attachment needs, but as its own living system — something the two partners are creating together, much of it outside conscious awareness. The therapist's job includes noticing what's being put onto whom, what role each partner has unconsciously been assigned, and what the couple's dynamic in the room, right now, reveals that a description of past events alone cannot.
Put simply: EFT helps couples understand what they're afraid of. A psychoanalytic approach also asks why this particular fear, with this particular person, taking this particular shape — and often the answer reaches further back than either partner's account of the relationship.
It's worth being clear that this isn't really an either/or. Emotion and attachment aren't set aside in our approach — they're folded in as one part of a larger picture. When we work with couples, we're still attending closely to what each partner feels and fears, and to the attachment patterns between them; that's simply not the whole of what we're attending to. In practice, this means our approach does what EFT does — and more. Nothing in the emotion-focused, attachment-informed work gets left behind; it's held within a wider frame that also has room for the unconscious material otherwise known as our blind spots.
A structural question worth thinking about: meeting separately during assessment
Many couples therapists, across a range of approaches, begin by meeting with each partner individually before working with the couple together. There can be good reasons for this — it can surface things a partner might not say with their spouse in the room, and it gives the therapist a fuller picture of each person's history.
But it's worth pausing on what this sets up before the couples work has even begun, as a matter of course rather than on a case by case basis.
When a therapist meets separately with each partner early on, they hear one partner describe their history — childhood, family, previous relationships — without the other partner there to react to it. That reaction matters. How someone responds, in the moment, to hearing their partner talk about a difficult childhood or a painful past relationship — with tenderness, or defensiveness, or a flicker of recognition — tells the therapist something important about the relationship. Meeting separately means missing that moment.
It can also come at a cost to the couple themselves. Each partner may find themselves wondering what the other said behind closed doors, and what the therapist now thinks of them. Even without anyone intending it, this can quietly stir up feelings of exclusion, or a kind of low-grade suspicion — what did they say about me? For couples where trust or feeling left out is already a sensitive area, this structure can end up recreating the very pattern that brought them to therapy in the first place.
And there's something for the therapist to consider, too. Hearing one partner's story in detail, before spending much time with the couple together, makes it harder not to carry that account — consciously or not — into the joint sessions. Staying able to hold both partners' experience in mind at once, without leaning toward either one, is one of the most demanding parts of doing couples work well. A structure that makes that harder to sustain is worth thinking carefully about, even if individual conversations still have a place somewhere in the process.
Both matter
None of this is a case against EFT, or against ever speaking with a partner individually. EFT does real, valuable work, and for many couples it's exactly what's needed. It's more an invitation — for clinicians and for anyone considering couples therapy — to ask what a given approach and its assessment structure can and can't see. A couple is more than two attachment histories side by side. It's also its own unconscious system, being created together, session by session, in the room. The frame a therapist chooses from the very first meeting either helps that system come into view, or makes it harder to see.
If you're a couple considering therapy and wondering whether this approach might fit what you're looking for, we'd be glad to talk it through with you. And if you're a couples therapist working within an EFT or another attachment-based or behavioural framework and finding yourself curious about this layer of the work, we're happy to be a resource — whether that's a conversation about a particular case, or simply comparing notes on how our approaches meet.
Are you looking for support navigating conflict as a couple or are you a clinician looking to deepen your work with couples through consultation?
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Read More:
If you are experiencing physical, emotional, financial or sexual abuse in your relationship, traditional couples therapy is inappropriate for you. A basic sense of safety is a human right and a fundamental requirement for couples therapy to be beneficial. If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, call the
Victim 24/7 Support Line: 1-888-579-2888;
Assaulted Women's Helpline: 1-866-863-0511 (toll-free, 24/7, multilingual service available)
National Domestic Violence Hotline www.thehotline.org
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