Why Couples Get Pulled Into the Same Fight Over and Over

The Riptide Effect: Why Couples Get Pulled Into the Same Fight Over and Over

You’re talking about whose turn it is to call the plumber, same fight over and over. Somehow, twenty minutes later, you’re rehashing that thing that happened at your sister’s wedding four years ago. Neither of you can quite explain how you got there. You just… did.

Sound familiar? There’s actually a name for this in the relationship world, and calling it a “riptide” is about as accurate a description as you’ll find. Just like the ocean current that drags swimmers away from shore before they realize they’ve left it, these arguments have a pull that feels almost physical. One moment you’re in shallow water. The next, you can’t touch the bottom.

And it’s more common than most couples want to admit. Research from the Gottman Institute — drawn from over 40 years of longitudinal studies — found that 69% of relationship conflicts are perpetual, meaning they never get fully resolved. (Gottman, J.M. & Silver, N. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Three Rivers Press.) Couples aren’t failing to fix their problems. They’re getting caught in the same current, over and over again.

You’re Not Actually Fighting About the Dishes

The topic almost never matters. Couples stuck in this pattern will tell you — honestly, if they’re being reflective — that the specific argument is basically interchangeable. Dishes, finances, parenting decisions, how someone said something at dinner. The content rotates. The feeling is always the same.

What’s really happening has very little to do with the subject at hand. When a conversation starts to escalate, both partners’ nervous systems respond to each other in real time — a process researchers call “mutual dysregulation.” Your stress response triggers your partner’s stress response, which amplifies yours, which amplifies theirs. You’re not just two people arguing. You’re two nervous systems bouncing off each other, each one making the other more reactive, more activated, less capable of thinking clearly.

The riptide pulls fast because biology is faster than rational thought. Your brain narrows your focus, sharpens your defenses, and suddenly your partner doesn’t look like your partner anymore. They look like a threat.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

Most couples focus on the argument itself — who said what, who owes an apology. What gets ignored is the slow accumulation of damage happening underneath all of it:

• Your kids are absorbing it. Children don’t need to hear the words to feel the instability. A landmark study by researchers at the University of Rochester, University of Minnesota, and University of Notre Dame found that children who showed distress during parental conflict had measurably higher levels of cortisol — the body’s primary stress hormone — compared to children who were not distressed. Because elevated cortisol has been linked to a wide range of mental and physical health difficulties, the researchers noted it may help explain why children in high-conflict homes are more likely to develop health problems over time. (Davies, P.T. et al. (2008). Adrenocortical Underpinnings of Children’s Psychological Reactivity to Interparental Conflict. Child Development, 79(6).)
• Intimacy quietly disappears. Every unresolved cycle builds a thin layer of resentment. You stop bringing things up because you already know how it’ll go. Distance grows in the space where closeness used to live. According to Gottman’s research, it takes five positive interactions to offset the damage of a single negative one — and most couples in recurring conflict cycles are running a serious deficit. (Gottman, J.M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.)
• Your body is keeping score. Living in recurring conflict means your body stays in a partial stress response that doesn’t fully switch off. In a widely cited study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues at Ohio State University found that couples who showed consistently high levels of hostile behavior during conflicts healed wounds at 60% of the rate of low-hostility couples and produced significantly higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines — markers linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and accelerated aging. (Kiecolt-Glaser, J.K. et al. (2005). Hostile Marital Interactions, Proinflammatory Cytokine Production, and Wound Healing. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(12), 1377–1384.)
• Small fights aren’t small. A 16-year longitudinal study from the University of Michigan’s Early Years of Marriage Project found that ongoing marital tension — not just explosive blowups, but the quieter, repetitive strain most couples dismiss — predicted declining marital well-being across the full course of the study. As researcher Harold Markman has noted, when normal disagreements go unresolved, negative feelings build up and fuel destructive patterns that progressively erode the positive foundation of the relationship. (Manalel, J.A. et al. (2019). Beyond Destructive Conflict: Implications of Marital Tension for Marital Well-Being. PMC6663571. / Markman, H. (1991), cited in Karney & Bradbury, Psychological Bulletin.)

The Pattern Is the Problem — Not Your Partner

This is the part that tends to shift something when couples really hear it: the enemy isn’t the person across from you. It’s the cycle itself. You’ve both been pulled into a pattern that neither of you consciously chose, and you can’t break it by simply trying harder or being better in the moment.

The first step — and it’s genuinely powerful — is learning to recognize when you’re getting pulled under before you’re already drowning. Your body knows before your mind does. Watch for:

• Jaw tightening or teeth clenching
• Chest tightness or shallow breathing
• A rising heat up the back of your neck
• Heart rate picking up noticeably
• The urge to talk faster, louder, or shut down completely

These aren’t just physical quirks. They’re early warning signals that your nervous system is moving into threat mode — and that the riptide is beginning to form.

You can’t logic your way out of a riptide once you’re in it. But you can learn to feel it starting. So here’s something worth trying: next time a conversation begins to pull, pause before you respond. Notice what’s happening in your body. Name it, even just to yourself. That single moment of awareness is the beginning of interrupting a pattern that — without it — will just keep repeating. Same current, different day.