Why Are We Always Misreading Each Other? A Trauma-Informed Take on Attachment in Queer Relationships
You love each other. You’re committed. You’ve built a life—maybe a home, shared rituals, inside jokes. And yet, the smallest comment can spiral into silence. A look can trigger a shutdown. A missed bid for connection feels like rejection. You find yourselves caught in the same painful pattern, asking: Why does it feel like we’re speaking different languages, even when we’re trying so hard to connect?
For queer couples, this kind of misattunement is not only common—it’s often layered with the impact of trauma, shame, and a lack of cultural blueprints for relational safety. Many LGBTQIA+ partners come into relationships carrying histories of rejection, invisibility, or emotional abandonment. These histories don’t disappear just because you’ve found someone you love. In fact, love can bring them closer to the surface.
Let’s explore why these moments of “misreading” happen—and how a trauma-informed, attachment-based approach to couples therapy can help queer couples move from confusion and reactivity toward deeper understanding and lasting connection.
Misreading Isn’t a Failure of Love—It’s a Function of Protection
Attachment theory tells us that our nervous systems are wired for connection. As Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), puts it, “The most basic instinct we have is to seek contact and comforting closeness with those we love.” But for many queer people, that instinct has been complicated by lived experiences of conditional love, religious shame, or cultural hostility.
What looks like “overreacting” in the moment may actually be an old alarm system doing its best to keep you safe. One partner’s withdrawal may stem from a fear of conflict rooted in early experiences of punishment or emotional neglect. The other’s protest—perhaps loud, urgent, or tearful—might be a plea not to be left alone in the way they once were.
These aren’t personality flaws. They’re survival strategies. And in queer relationships, those strategies often reflect adaptive responses to a world that has, at times, asked us to fragment ourselves to stay alive.
The Unique Texture of Attachment in Queer Relationships
Attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized—are shaped early in our lives, but they don’t form in a vacuum. For queer people, those styles often take shape in environments where authenticity and attachment were at odds.
Perhaps you learned to hide your gender identity to preserve connection with your family. Maybe your religious upbringing taught you that intimacy was sinful unless it looked a certain way. Or perhaps you spent years feeling unseen by the culture around you, making emotional closeness feel like a risk rather than a comfort.
These experiences often lead to what psychologist Ellyn Bader calls developmental arrest—when a person’s growth in one area of relational capacity, like conflict resolution or self-expression, gets stalled because of chronic emotional invalidation. In queer couples, one or both partners may find it difficult to trust that they can assert themselves and remain in connection. That tension creates a relational push-pull: “I want you close, but I’m scared I’ll lose myself.” Or, “I want to be honest, but I fear you’ll leave.”
Recognizing these dynamics through a trauma-informed lens allows for more compassion and less blame. It invites a deeper question: What part of me is trying to protect me right now? And what does it need to feel safe with you?
Common Misattunements—and What They Often Mask
“You always shut down when I need you.”
What might be underneath: “I learned early on that being too emotional gets punished—or worse, ignored.”
Shutdown is often a protective freeze response. For someone with a history of emotional invalidation, going numb may be their only way to avoid overwhelm.“Why do you make everything into a fight?”
What might be underneath: “No one ever fought for me—so now I fight to be heard.”
Intensity can be a trauma echo. If someone has lived through invisibility or abandonment, they may raise their voice not to control, but to be seen.“You’re being too sensitive.”
What might be underneath: “I don’t know how to hold your emotions without losing my own stability.”
Minimizing a partner’s experience is often a defense against internal discomfort or unresolved fear.
When these misattunements happen, it’s not about who's right or wrong. It’s about competing attachment strategies clashing in the absence of enough safety, clarity, or shared meaning.
Moving Toward Repair: Practices That Rebuild Connection
The good news is that misattunement doesn’t mean misalignment. Couples can—and do—learn how to slow these patterns down, speak their truths more clearly, and create relational environments where both people feel emotionally anchored. Here are a few trauma-informed approaches you can learn in couples therapy to begin this shift:
Name the Pattern Together, Not the Problem in Each Other
Instead of saying, “You always ignore me,” try saying, “I think we get stuck in this cycle—where I move toward you, and you pull away. I wonder what’s happening for us there?” Stan Tatkin calls this forming a “couple bubble”—an intentional space where both partners commit to seeing the pattern as the problem, not each other.
Practice Reflective Listening
Often, misattunement happens because we’re listening to react, not to understand. Try pausing and reflecting what your partner just said: “So when I shut down, it feels to you like I’m disappearing—and that’s terrifying. Is that right?”
This not only slows the conversation, but also reassures your partner that their emotional reality matters.Revisit the Wound, Not Just the Behavior
It can be all too easy to stay focused on behavior and miss the underlying wound your partner might be holding. In her work with couples, Sue Johnson emphasizes that the heart of conflict is not about content, but about attachment fears. If your partner gets anxious when you’re late, it may not be about time management—it may be a trigger of abandonment from past relationships. It is crucial to be committed to exploring the deeper layer when present.
Create Small Rituals of Repair
After conflict, even small gestures—an “I’m here” text, making tea, a gentle touch—can help soothe attachment systems. Repair doesn’t require fixing everything. It requires staying present through rupture and into reconnection.
Seek Support from a Queer-Affirming Couples Therapist
A queer couples therapist who understands both attachment theory and the lived experience of LGBTQIA+ folks can help untangle these dynamics without pathologizing them. Couples therapy creates a safer container for both partners to understand their wounds, rewire their responses, and nurture a shared language of care.
Seeing Each Other Is a Practice, Not a Perfect Outcome
One of the most painful parts of misreading each other is the loneliness it creates. You’re lying next to the person you love, but you feel a thousand miles apart. You’re trying to reach for them, but something invisible is in the way.
The truth is: learning to attune, to be present and aware of someone's emotional state and needs, especially as queer people who’ve navigated disconnection to survive, isn’t intuitive. It’s brave. It’s slow. It’s a daily act of rebuilding trust not just in each other, but in your own emotional signals.
As Glennon Doyle writes, “Love is not a victory march. It’s a process of becoming brave enough to be fully seen.” And that’s the invitation: not perfection, but presence. Not agreement for agreements sake, but understanding.
You’re Not Getting It Wrong. You’re Just Becoming More Honest.
If you’re struggling with misattunement in your relationship, it doesn’t mean your love is weak. It often means your histories are loud. But despite the volume level, your history is not the whole story.
With awareness, intention, and the willingness to pause before assuming the worst, you can rewrite your couple narrative. You can learn to see each other with clearer eyes—and softer hearts. You can move from misreading into meaning, and from conflict into care.
Love isn’t about never missing a cue. It’s about committing to stay curious, even when the signal gets scrambled. And that is work worth doing.
Could Couples Therapy in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Across MN Can Help You and Your Partner Feel Safe Again?
If your relationship feels distant or reactive, it doesn’t mean you’re failing—it likely means something old is getting stirred up. At NobleTree Therapy, we offer affirming, trauma-informed couples therapy in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and throughout Minnesota to help queer partners slow down, make sense of their patterns, and reconnect with the safety they both long for. This work isn’t about blame or perfection. It’s about creating space to be seen, heard, and understood—together.
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Come as you are. Let’s find your way back to each other.
Other Therapy Services Offered at NobleTree Therapy in St. Paul, MN
At NobleTree Therapy, we support individuals, couples, and queer families across Minnesota who are navigating the complex work of becoming—together and alone. Whether you’re facing relational strain, wrestling with old attachment wounds, or searching for a deeper sense of self, our therapists offer a warm, inclusive space that honors your full humanity. In addition to couples therapy, we specialize in LGBTQIA+ affirming care, religious and spiritual trauma, creative identity exploration, and the quiet grief that often goes unnamed. Here, healing isn’t rushed—it’s invited, witnessed, and tended with care.
About the Author
Kendra Snyder, MA, LMFT, NCC (she/her) is the founder of NobleTree Therapy and a licensed trauma therapist serving clients across Minnesota and Colorado. With over a decade of experience, she works with individuals and queer couples navigating the layered terrain of identity, intimacy, and emotional safety. Rooted in somatic, depth-oriented, and attachment-focused therapy, Kendra’s work invites clients to explore the tender spaces between who they've been told to be and who they’re becoming.
She specializes in supporting those healing from religious trauma, chronic misattunement, and identity fragmentation—including LGBTQIA+ folks, adoptees, and anyone building a life beyond the blueprint they were handed. As both a clinician and a survivor, Kendra brings gentleness to the moments that feel raw and unnameable. In her couples work, she holds space for re-attunement, believing that love deepens not in perfection, but in the willingness to see and be seen—again and again.