Attachment Based Relationship Tips
Looking to strengthen your relationship? Our blog offers expert relationship tips rooted in attachment theory and Emotionally Focused Therapy. Learn how to identify your attachment style, communicate more effectively, and foster emotional safety with your partner. From overcoming conflict to building deeper trust, our practical advice and tools, created by couples therapist Julie Menanno, are designed to help you move toward a secure and fulfilling connection. Dive in and start transforming your relationships today!
Escaping the Negative Cycle: Before, During, and After a Hard Conversation
Negative cycles keep couples stuck in the same fights. Here’s Julie’s Before/During/After roadmap—with simple scripts for staying connected and repairing after disconnection.
Preventing Your Negative Cycle: Chapter 6 of the Secure Love Book Club
Learn how to turn everyday interactions into an “attachment-friendly” environment, swap reflexive fight-or-flight reactions for healthy connection, and use Julie’s E-V-I-C-T framework to keep shame (and negative cycles) out of your relationship.
Mapping Your Negative Cycle: A Workshop to Transform Your Relationship Patterns
Get stuck in the same argument with your partner? The Mapping Your Negative Cycle workshop helps you uncover what’s really happening—and how to change it.
What Is a Negative Cycle?
Every couple has a negative cycle that hijacks connection. Peek inside Julie’s coaching group to learn the first steps for slowing yours—and find out how to join the next live session.
How Personal Anxiety Can Impact Your Relationship
Trying to control your environment—like keeping a spotless house—can sometimes be a way to manage inner anxiety caused by relationship disconnection. But when that strategy backfires, it can create more of the very disconnection you’re trying to avoid. This post explores how personal anxiety shows up in relationships, and how couples can break the cycle.
Your Partner Isn’t the Enemy—Your Negative Cycle Is
In emotionally stuck relationships, your partner isn’t the enemy. The negative cycle is. Learn how to identify the cycle, understand each other’s roles, and begin the process of healing.
Tips for Preventing the Negative Cycle When Discussing a Difficult Topic
Tough conversations can easily spiral into disconnection when couples fall into the negative cycle. But it doesn’t have to go that way. These tips can help you communicate better, create emotional safety, and stay connected even when things get hard.
The Negative Cycle: Part Six – Putting It All Together
The real enemy in your relationship isn’t your partner—it’s the negative cycle you both get caught in. When you understand how it works, you can work together to step out of it and reconnect.
The Negative Cycle: Part Five – Examining the Next Trigger of the Avoidant Partner
It may look like the avoidant partner doesn’t care, but in reality, they’re overwhelmed. When conflict escalates, their instinct is to shut down—not to hurt their partner, but to protect themselves.
The Negative Cycle: Part Four – Examining the Next Trigger of the Anxious Partner
When anxious partners feel dismissed, they often double down in protest. It’s not about control—it’s about emotional survival and the fear of being too much to love.
The Negative Cycle: Part Three – Examining the Trigger of the Avoidant Partner
Avoidant partners aren’t trying to push love away—they’re trying to avoid the shame, fear, and overwhelm of feeling like they’re never enough. Here’s what’s happening beneath the shutdown.
The Negative Cycle: Part Two – Examining the Trigger
The anxious partner in a negative cycle isn’t just “overreacting”—they’re fighting to feel seen, heard, and emotionally safe. Here’s what’s happening beneath the surface.
The Negative Cycle: Part One – What Is the Negative Cycle?
The negative cycle is the real enemy in many relationships. It’s not about who left socks on the floor—it’s about how that moment touches deeper fears, needs, and emotions that create disconnection.
Insecure Attachment Styles and How They Keep You Stuck
Anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment styles often keep partners stuck in negative cycles. Learn how to break free by improving communication, self-awareness, and emotional regulation.
How Both Avoidant AND Anxious Partners Block Emotional Intimacy
Both avoidant and anxious partners block emotional intimacy in unique but equally intense ways. By understanding these dynamics, couples can begin to break the negative cycle and build a more secure, emotionally connected relationship.
Is It Time to Seek Professional Support for Your Relationship?
Are you caught in repetitive arguments, facing trust issues, or feeling distant from your partner? Explore how couples coaching can provide the professional support needed to rebuild trust, connection, and intimacy.
How Anger Shows Up in Anxious Attachment, and What Is the Work?
Anger can feel overwhelming and frequent if you have anxious attachment. Learn how this response is rooted in vulnerability, fear, and past wounds, and discover strategies for healing and assertiveness.
Blaming vs. Owning: Taking Responsibility in Relationships
Discover the difference between blaming and owning in relationships, and learn how taking responsibility for your emotional needs can create space for healing, growth, and connection.
Why Avoidant Attachment is Linked to a Fear of Failure (Or of Being Seen as a Failure)
Discover why avoidant attachment is linked to fear of failure, how it shapes relationship dynamics, and actionable strategies for healing and connection.
The Protest Behaviors in Relationships
Learn how protest behaviors create negative cycles in relationships, their underlying causes, and actionable steps to foster healthier communication

Most couples believe that if they could just get on the same page, their conflicts would finally settle down. The problem is that agreement alone does not guarantee connection. You can agree and still feel unseen. You can disagree and stay deeply bonded.
In this meeting, Emotional Safety vs. Agreement, we will look at conflict through an emotional safety lens. We will explore what emotional safety actually feels like, what happens in the nervous system when safety drops, and how negative cycles begin when you and your partner stop feeling safe with each other.
You will learn:
The difference between emotional safety and agreement
How your nervous system reacts during conflict
How to recognize when safety has dropped between you
Emotional safety scripts you can use in real time
What to say less of and what to say more of when you want connection
How to repair after a moment where safety went missing
Thank you for doing this work with me and for your courage in looking at your patterns with honesty and compassion.