Couples therapy often begins with a quiet hope: Can this be fixed? Can we find our way back?
Approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) work from the idea that couples don’t break down because of incompatibility, but because of emotional injury. The silence, the criticism, or the withdrawal is seen not as rejection but as a protest: a hidden longing for connection. And when partners can reach each other emotionally again, repair becomes possible.
Often, this is true.
But not always.
Sometimes, what keeps intimacy out of reach is not just misattunement or old wounds. Sometimes, the reality is starker: the person you love may simply have a personality style that limits the depth of intimacy they can give.
When Personality Shapes Intimacy
Relationships often begin with intensity — the intoxicating sense of being seen and understood. But early idealization can hide something harder: an unconscious hope that the other will finally provide what has always felt missing — safety, responsiveness, emotional rescue.
For some couples, disappointments can be repaired. For others, the problem runs deeper. Defenses that once protected a person — self-sufficiency, emotional distance, hyper-independence — may have hardened into enduring traits.
“What may begin as a defense becomes a style of being.”-Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis
An avoidant partner, for instance, may not be withholding out of malice or miscommunication, but because closeness itself feels threatening. A self-sufficient partner may genuinely love, yet be unable to offer the kind of attunement or emotional reciprocity their spouse longs for.
This is not about fault. It is about structure. And no amount of vulnerability or better phrasing will fundamentally change a person’s way of relating.
Why Skills and Empathy Aren’t Always Enough
Much of contemporary couples counselling offers hopeful prescriptions: show empathy, express needs calmly, be vulnerable. These are valuable tools. But they assume that both partners are capable of meeting in a space of mutual responsiveness.
Sometimes, that assumption is simply false.
As Esther Perel has warned, labels like “anxious” or “avoidant” can oversimplify. But ignoring enduring personality patterns can be just as misleading. A therapist who focuses only on communication risks working endlessly to repair ruptures that are not ruptures at all — but reflections of how each partner is fundamentally built to love and attach.
“The task of the therapist is not only to help clients feel better, but to help them know themselves better—including the parts of themselves they don’t know.”
— Jonathan Shedler, The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
This is why psychodynamic psychotherapy, with its focus on underlying personality structure, offers something deeper than techniques. It invites couples to face the real shape of who they are together — and what is, and isn’t, possible between them.
When the Work Isn’t Repair—but Recognition
For some couples, therapy becomes less about “fixing” and more about naming reality.
It can mean recognizing that a partner who struggles with avoidance, detachment, or chronic self-sufficiency may never provide the kind of intimacy the other longs for.
At that point, two honest paths emerge:
- To stay, not in denial, but with clarity — accepting the limits of what the relationship can offer.
- Or to leave — choosing not to live with a hunger that cannot be met.
Not All Problems Are Repairable
Neither choice is wrong. Both can be deeply adult.
The most healing thing a therapist can sometimes offer is not another tool, but a truth:
Not all relational struggles are repairable. Some are only nameable. And that, too, can be a kind of healing.
When couples stop trying to turn each other into the partner they wish for, they may finally see the partner they have. That can lead to grief. It can lead to parting. But sometimes it also leads to a quieter, more realistic way of staying — one that no longer demands the impossible.
Closing Note
I offer psychotherapy and couples therapy in Berlin, with a focus on psychodynamic and attachment-based approaches. If you are struggling with an avoidant partner, or if you are questioning whether to stay or leave, therapy can be a space to face these truths with clarity and compassion.
Further Reading & References
McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process
Shedler, J. (2010). The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98–109
Johnson, S. (2004). The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection
Vanity Fair Interview with Esther Perel (2023)