“Why does my wife never acknowledge everything I do for her, and only focus on the one time I forgot to call her when I was late home?” Marcus a 38-year-old realtor pleaded. “I try to tell her I love her every day, make sure we are on good terms before we go to sleep every night, and try to praise her as often as I can, but it just doesn’t seem to stick. It takes just one time falling asleep on the sofa before bed time, that sets her off accusing me of not desiring her anymore and or ‘checking out’ on her.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones among romantic partners
Marcus’s positive, helpful and caring behaviors were barely recognized by his wife Sophia, a 36-year-old make-up-artist and digital influencer. He did a fair chunk of chores at home and made sure that Sophia had down time from her stressful job. She was grateful but it didn’t make her feel warm towards him. It didn’t provide the benefit of the doubt if he was involved in showing a property and was late to her sister’s party. She never forgot it, or forgave him. She felt her family was snubbed; she felt let down, and devalued. Whenever they had a tense moment, she would bring it up, see him only through that negative lens of someone who was unreliable and therefore not worth trusting and getting close to.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones – they reverberate and wash away positive experiences – by default
Marcus felt hopeless about his efforts to show his attentiveness, care and concern that landed like a leaf being blown away in a gust of wind. He felt let down, devalued and snubbed – just like Sophia. Both were wired to be vigilant for threats of feeling unseen, unheard, and lacking significance. Like all humans, emotionally safety dictates how interactions are perceived, experienced, remembered and used to predict future interactions.
Positive stuff is okay; it may even be momentarily satisfying, even for an instant when each one feels recognized for their intention, stance, and actions – but it doesn’t embed, and echo when negative emotions are unleashed. It’s as if the brain is wired to home in on the threats, and cannot afford to be restored to a more trusting intimate place in case it reduces the threshold of alertness to possible threat.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones – reinforcing older hurts making the most recent one more powerful.
Sophia often felt that Marcus never took her work stress seriously and rarely comforted her when she related her fears about being trolled online. If he did, it was paying lip service, lacking genuine empathy for his wife. She often said, just a touch or a hand, some physical attunement would be so meaningful, but rarely received.
During one couples’ therapy session (yes they came to therapy to hold things together) Sophia broke down talking about the intimidation she felt online as an influencer – that she might be doxed and lose her business. I noticed that Marcus put his arm around her shoulder as he listened attentively. Sophia hadn’t felt that touch of empathy, that touch of comfort; that touch that gave her the message she wasn’t alone and that he got it. When I asked if Sophia if she was aware of it, she sat up, with eyes wide in astonishment. She didn’t know what to do with the information and in that moment just paid lip service toward Marcus with perfunctory thanks.
Once again, they did to each other what they accused the other of doing. How do you think Marcus felt when his genuine gesture went unnoticed? Yes, he felt unseen and devalued, making it less likely he would try it in future – resulting in Sophia feeling vindicated that he never consoled her empathically – a vicious circle, where negative interactions outweigh positive ones.
But noticing it in couples therapy, meant that Marcus was seen, Sophia was alerted and encouraged to attend to the good stuff.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones – requiring five or more sustained positive ones to neutralize toxicity.
Research indicates that negative expectations are so powerful, that it takes five or more positive encounters to reduce the salience and tone of one negative interaction. In a 2001 report in the journal Review of General Psychology, the authors headlined their findings by stating ‘Bad is Stronger than Good.’ They outlined studies with married couples where negative interactions had a stronger resonance, drowning out the positive ones – so that the partner who was perceived to be the instigator of hurt had to offer at least five positive ones in similar situations before it became trustworthy and zeroed out the initial negative experience.
The basis for the strength of the negative interactions was a pre-existing insecurity in the partner who dwelt on the negative interactions, limiting emotional safety and intimacy. In other words insecure partners are steeped in a history of unreliable, unstable, and inconsistent relationships with significant attachment figures, which they then overlay on their romantic partners.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones – needing to be dealt with head on
What would you suggest for Marcus to do in compensation for the echoing hurt from one tiny transgression that Sophia experiences as a Tsunami?
Would you tell him to compliment her looks?
Would you advise him to show more interest in her working days?
How about inviting Marcus to identify and empathize with her anxiety by offering more quality time together?
Perhaps you’d nudge him to be more spontaneously affectionate!
The research quoted above also discovered something counter-intuitive.
Being nice, attentive, and affectionate made little or no difference.
What did make a significant difference was talkng through the negative interaction – let Sophia express her disappointment and sense of devaluation – that enables her to feel validated, and therefore safer.
As a child, Sophia couldn’t show her anger and desperation to be seen, protected, and valued. But she can do so as an adult – when she experiences the echo of her childhood insecurity through the vehicle of negative interactions with Marcus. He becomes the proxy for those who failed her. When Marcus absorbs her vulnerabilities, both become safer and stronger – and above all, begin to live in the real world, rather than relive the past.
Negative interactions outweigh positive ones – acknowledging and validating hurt leads to more security and trust
If Marcus can handle the negative experience on his end when hearing Sophia’s distress and pain, blaming him for her emotional state; then the couple have a chance of reducing the repetition of these exchanges that pull them apart. Surviving the intense emotions that are unleashed, makes the positive stronger and therefore more likely to counter the negative.
Using the safety of the couples therapy format, intense emotions can be released, contained, absorbed and most of all translated for each partner by the therapist. Both are validated and both sets of wounds defined.
When Sophia gets evidence in real time that her pain is felt by Marcus and that he survives it, their connection can exist on another level. Marcus can be more honest in real time about his hurt and not store it up for recrimination later on, that only heightens the hurt.
Sophia can be more open about her insecurity and need for concrete signs of care for her pain – she needs it physically, offered in a sincere and loving way – not shifting pain from one to the other, but sharing in each other’s sense of not being seen in their wounded places.
Many therapists may encourage the partner who triggered the hurt to treat their wounded partners to vacations, dinners, gifts or pampering at home. It doesn’t hit the spot.
As the research shows, Sophia registered Marcus’s efforts in all of the above. But it did nothing to ease her insecurity, pain, or sense of devaluation. Watching her lack of reaction in session was immensely wounding to Marcus – but was a powerful opportunity to allow me to help them deconstruct the negative interactions that hurt Sophia – releasing the tension, allowing greater transparency between them. He has to be more upfront about his attempts to empathize and she has to be nudged to feel it, not just register it intellectually. Her head and heart have to be united in real time while in therapy.
You may also like:
Tolerating the Bad Stuff so the Good Feels Even Better
Sharing Emotions Promote Bonding that Supports you in a Crisis
Why Your Efforts to “Cheer Them Up” Doesn’t Work for Depressive Personalities
© Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2026
