Couples At 30,000 Feet

Picture this: you’re cruising at altitude. The ride is smooth—until it isn’t.

A jolt. Then another. Manageable at first. You tense, but you settle.

Then the seatbelt sign comes on. A signal. A warning.

Now your body knows something your mind doesn’t want to admit: this may not pass quickly. You start scanning—your breath, the cabin, the faces around you. You brace. You grip. You distract. You automatically prepare for impact.

Everyone responds differently. Some talk. Some go quiet. Some get irritated. Some need reassurance. These aren’t personality flaws—they’re nervous systems trying to survive a present moment of uncertainty.

But underneath all of it is a universal fear:

What if this doesn’t stop? What if we’re not okay?

Now imagine the person sitting next to you turns and says, “Stop reacting like that. You’re making

this worse.”

That moment—that rupture—is what couples therapy often calls the negative cycle.

One partner feels danger and reaches out, protests, escalates, tries to control. The other feels overwhelmed and pulls back, shuts down, or criticizes. Each believes the other is the problem.

But what’s actually happening is simpler—yet often harder to see.

Both partners feel an underlying fear.

Both are protecting.

Both are reacting to the same turbulence: emotional disconnection.

When couples are stuck here, they’re not resolving anything. They’re surviving it. They personalize each other’s coping strategies instead of recognizing them as signals of distress. And the cycle tightens.

The longing underneath is rarely complicated.

What most people want in moments like this isn’t fixing, logic, or distance.

It’s someone who can say:

“I see how scared you are. I’m here. I’ve got your back. We’re in this together.”

When couples can risk that—when they can name the fear instead of defending against it—something shifts. The turbulence may still be there, but they’re no longer bracing alone. They co-regulate. They steady each other.

That’s the work of couples therapy: not eliminating bumps, but helping partners recognize the jolts so it doesn’t feel like they’re at 30,000 feet emotionally—and teaching them how to reach for each other instead of fighting for control or retreating into isolation.

In more secure relationships, conflict feels like potholes on a familiar road—jarring, but survivable. In distressed relationships, those same bumps might register as freefall. The nervous system reacts fast because the stakes feel like life or death. Couples therapy (like Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy) helps slow that moment down so partners can respond, not just brace.

The storm isn’t the failure.

Losing each other in the storm is.

Ciao for now,

David Byers, AMFT 147942