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.
Relationship Grief: Why Old Hurts Keep Couples Stuck (and How to Move Forward)
Old betrayals, lost dreams, and “wasted years” create hidden grief that silently powers the negative cycle. In this preview, Julie Menanno explains how to name and process relationship grief so couples can move out of stuckness and into secure connection—catch the full replay inside Julie’s Group.
Interrupting Your Negative Cycle: Chapter 5 (Part 1) of the Secure Love Book Club
In Part 1 of Chapter 5, we explore what it takes to interrupt your negative cycle in the moment. Julie shares how to slow down, name the pattern, and choose connection over protection—even when it’s hard.
Feeling Stuck In Your Relationship?
Julie Menanno pinpoints the hidden trio—unmet needs, fear, and negative cycles—that keep partners spinning in place, and shares the first tiny moves that push a relationship forward again.
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.
Emotional Intimacy: What It Looks Like (for Men) and How Avoidant and Anxious Partners Block It
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.

In this week’s group, I dove into identity loss in relationships and how we can slowly disappear in the service of “keeping the connection safe.” If you have ever felt like you’ve become a quieter version of yourself, edited your needs, or organized your whole life around keeping the relationship stable, this session will land.
We talked about how shame and early attachment learning can wire the nervous system to prioritize safety over authenticity, and why that strategy can feel protective in the short term but quietly blocks the closeness you are actually longing for. You will also hear how identity loss fuels hypervigilance, anxiety, and negative cycles, even when your partner is not asking you to shrink.
A portion of the meeting focused on the difference between denying your needs to keep the peace versus owning your needs while recognizing a partner may not be able to meet them.
Individual Exercise
How To Rebuild Your Identity
Couple’s Exercise