Infidelity and sex addiction can create deep emotional pain and distance in your relationship, often leaving you and your partner feeling disconnected, betrayed, and uncertain about the future. Sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida gives you and your partner a safe place to recover and heal after betrayal.
However, these hurtful behaviors are usually not the root of your addiction. They are symptoms of unresolved emotional wounds, often stemming from childhood trauma, especially involving a difficult relationship with a parent.
In couples therapy with Katie Ziskind in Melbourne, Florida, you uncover these deeper issues, heal from past pain, and rebuild trust and emotional intimacy after infidelity and betrayal.
Understand Your Sex Addiction, Infidelity, and the Impact of Childhood Trauma on Your Marriage in Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
Sex addiction, pornography addiction, and infidelity are often symptoms of deeper emotional wounds that trace back to unresolved childhood trauma.
If you or your partner grew up in an environment where a parent—often a father—was emotionally abusive, violent, or inconsistent, those early experiences are influencing the way you engage in your marriage today.
Infidelity and sex addiction are fueled by cycles of emotional avoidance, numbing behaviors, and conflict. When you’re caught in this vicious, secretive cycle, it can feel impossible to break free.
However, specialized sex addiction and infidelity marriage therapy, using approaches like the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in Melbourne, Florida, can help you heal, rebuild trust, and create a stronger emotional connection in your marriage.
Signs of Sex Addiction and Pornography Addiction
Sex and pornography addiction often develop as ways to numb uncomfortable emotions or fill emotional voids.
Some signs that you or your partner may be dealing with sex addiction or pornography addiction include:
- Compulsive Behaviors: You feel a constant urge to watch pornography or engage in sexual activity, even when it disrupts your daily life or harms your relationship.
- Escalation: Over time, the behaviors become more extreme, or you need more frequent engagement to feel satisfied. What once provided relief is no longer enough.
- Emotional Disconnection: You turn to pornography or sex as a way to escape or avoid emotions, instead of addressing them with your partner.
- Secrecy and Shame: You hide your behavior from your partner and feel a deep sense of shame or guilt about it. This secrecy often fuels feelings of isolation and emotional distance in your marriage.
Examples of Infidelity and Secret Keeping
Infidelity is often a symptom of unmet emotional needs. And, it can take many forms.
Common examples of infidelity include:
- Emotional Affairs: Forming a deep emotional connection with someone outside of your marriage, confiding in them about your emotional struggles, and feeling emotionally closer to them than your partner.
- Physical Affairs: Engaging in sexual activity with someone outside of your marriage, often in secret, to fill an emotional void or seek validation.
- Online Affairs: Participating in online chats, sexting, or viewing explicit content in a way that violates the trust in your relationship.
Secret keeping, which often accompanies infidelity, can manifest as:
- Hidden Addictions: Keeping pornography use, frequent sexual encounters, or emotional affairs secret from your partner.
- Financial Secrecy: Spending money on addictive behaviors like pornography or affairs without your partner knowing.
- Emotional Disconnection: Hiding your true feelings, avoiding emotional conversations, and not sharing your inner emotional world with your partner, leading to further emotional disengagement.
What Are Examples of Cycles of Emotional Avoidance, Numbing, and Conflict?
When unresolved childhood trauma is left unaddressed, it can lead to emotional avoidance patterns that fuel conflict and infidelity in your relationship. These cycles often look like this:
- Emotional Avoidance: You avoid emotional intimacy with your partner because it feels too risky or overwhelming. Instead, you turn to addictive behaviors like pornography or infidelity to numb your emotions.
- Numbing Behaviors: You use sex, alcohol, or pornography to escape difficult emotions like fear, anger, or rejection. This numbing prevents you from connecting emotionally with your partner, which leads to further disconnection.
- Conflict Escalation: Emotional avoidance and secrecy create tension in your relationship. When conflicts arise, they often escalate quickly because neither partner feels emotionally safe or connected.
These cycles can become ingrained in your relationship, making it difficult to break free. However, they often stem from deeper emotional wounds, like unresolved attachment trauma from childhood.
How Unresolved Childhood Trauma Leads to Avoidant Attachment
If you grew up with an angry, violent, or emotionally unavailable father, it’s likely that you developed an avoidant attachment style.
This means that, as a child, you learned to protect yourself by emotionally withdrawing, numbing your feelings, or disconnecting from others when things became difficult.
In adulthood, this avoidant attachment style can lead to:
- Emotional Withdrawal: You may struggle to open up emotionally with your partner or feel uncomfortable with vulnerability. When conflicts arise, you retreat instead of engaging.
- Fear of Rejection: Deep down, you may fear that if you show your true emotions or needs, you’ll be rejected or abandoned, just as you may have felt abandoned by a neglectful or abusive parent.
- Seeking External Validation: Instead of relying on emotional closeness with your partner, you may seek validation outside the relationship, through affairs, addictive behaviors, or pornography. This creates a cycle of disconnection, avoidance, and more conflict in your marriage.
Breaking the Cycle with Specialized Sex Addiction and Infidelity Therapy with Katie Ziskind at Wisdom Within Counseling
Breaking these patterns requires addressing the root causes—your childhood trauma and attachment wounds. Specialized sex addiction and infidelity marriage therapy, using the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), can help you understand and heal these deeper emotional wounds. Here’s how:
The Gottman Method: Building Trust and Emotional Intimacy
The Gottman Method provides practical tools for rebuilding trust and creating a stronger emotional connection. This approach helps couples:
- Repair Emotional Trust: After infidelity or addiction, trust is often shattered. Gottman therapy teaches you how to make meaningful “repair attempts” during conflict, allowing you to rebuild trust gradually.
- Improve Communication: Gottman’s techniques help you talk about difficult emotions, such as fear, hurt, or rejection, in a way that feels safe and constructive.
- Manage Conflict Effectively: You’ll learn strategies for reducing conflict escalation, managing emotions during arguments, and creating more emotional safety in your relationship.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): Healing Attachment Trauma
EFT goes deeper, addressing the attachment wounds that fuel avoidance and emotional disconnection. Through EFT, you and your partner will:
- Identify Negative Patterns: EFT helps you recognize the patterns of emotional avoidance and numbing that drive infidelity and addiction. By understanding these patterns, you can begin to change them.
- Heal Attachment Trauma: Therapy will guide you through the process of healing unresolved trauma from your childhood, helping you feel more secure and connected in your relationship.
- Foster Emotional Vulnerability: EFT creates a safe space for both partners to express their deepest fears, needs, and emotions. This fosters emotional intimacy and helps repair the emotional bond damaged by infidelity or addiction.
Rebuilding a Strong Couple Bubble in Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
Through the combination of the Gottman Method and EFT, sex addiction and infidelity marriage therapy helps you and your partner:
- Rebuild Trust: Learn to trust each other again by creating a safe emotional space where you can be open, honest, and vulnerable.
- Create Emotional Intimacy: Instead of turning to addictive behaviors or outside validation, you’ll learn how to turn toward each other for comfort and emotional connection.
- Break Cycles of Avoidance: Therapy teaches you how to engage emotionally, even when it feels uncomfortable. This helps break the cycle of avoidance and conflict that fuels infidelity and addiction.
Start Your Healing Journey in Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
If you’re ready to break the cycles of emotional avoidance, numbing, and conflict that are fueling infidelity or addiction in your marriage, specialized sex addiction and infidelity therapy in Melbourne, Florida with Katie Ziskind can help.
Using the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy, we’ll guide you and your partner toward healing, rebuilding trust, and creating a stronger, more connected marriage.
Reach out today to schedule couples therapy and start your journey toward a healthier, more fulfilling relationship.
Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching specializes in sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida.
Katie Ziskind specializes in helping couples repair after secret keeping, lying, betrayal, infidelity, and sex addiction. She help you get to the root causes of these numbing behaviors.
How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adult Relationships
Many couples struggling with infidelity, sex addiction, and pornography addiction find that their behaviors are tied to unmet love needs and attachment trauma from childhood. If you grew up with a father who was emotionally or physically abusive, you might have learned to suppress your emotions or seek external validation to cope with the pain.
A father who was domestically violent, gaslighting, physically punishing, or left for days at a time without explanation can leave deep emotional scars. These early experiences can manifest in your adult relationship in ways that create patterns of conflict, emotional disconnection, and infidelity.
Attachment Trauma and Its Impact on Your Relationship
Attachment trauma occurs when your emotional and physical needs as a child were not met by your primary caregivers.
If your father was emotionally neglectful, abusive, or inconsistent in his presence, it can lead to a sense of insecurity in your relationships as an adult. You learned to shut down your feelings. As well, you learn to avoid vulnerability. You learn to numb away your core feelings because you were not allowed to be yourself as a child. Due to your relationship with your father caused you to seek love and validation through unhealthy means, like:
Alcoholism or Substance Use:
Using alcohol or drugs to numb painful emotions, avoid vulnerability, or escape conflict. Growing up in an unstable environment may have taught you to rely on substances as a way to cope with feelings of rejection, abandonment, or low self-worth.
Infidelity and Sex Addiction:
When you feel emotionally disconnected from your partner, you may seek external validation through affairs or compulsive sexual behavior. Infidelity and sex addiction are often rooted in the need to feel desired, wanted, or worthy—needs that may have gone unmet in your childhood. These behaviors become a temporary escape from deeper feelings of inadequacy or rejection.
Pornography Addiction and Sexual Avoidance:
Plus, pornography addiction can be another way to cope with emotional pain, distancing yourself from real-life intimacy in favor of a more controlled or detached experience. Sexual avoidance with your spouse can also occur when emotional intimacy feels threatening or overwhelming due to past trauma.
Conflict, Fights, and Disengagement:
You feel triggered by unresolved trauma from your childhood in fights with your spouse. Then, it can lead to patterns of conflict and emotional disengagement in your marriage. You might find yourself reacting defensively. As well, you may be shutting down during arguments, or withdrawing emotionally to protect yourself from being hurt again.
Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida Includes Gottman Marriage Counseling and Emotionally Focused Therapy
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Melbourne, Florida, we combine the power of the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to help couples heal from infidelity, sex addiction, and emotional disconnection.
These two evidence-based approaches are highly effective in addressing the root causes of relationship conflict, rebuilding trust, and fostering deep emotional intimacy.
Infidelity and cycles of addiction, whether it’s sex addiction, pornography addiction, or alcoholism, often stem from deeper emotional issues such as unmet childhood love needs and attachment trauma.
If you or your partner grew up with a father who was emotionally neglectful, abusive, or inconsistent, it’s likely these early experiences are influencing your relationship dynamics today. This is where both the Gottman Method and EFT play a critical role in helping couples heal and reconnect.
The Gottman Method: Rebuilding Trust and Emotional Safety
The Gottman Method is a research-backed approach to couples therapy that focuses on creating healthier communication patterns, fostering emotional intimacy, and resolving conflict in a productive way. This approach is particularly helpful for couples dealing with the aftermath of infidelity or addiction, as it teaches you how to rebuild trust and emotional safety, step by step.
Here’s how the Gottman Method can help your relationship:
Repairing Emotional Wounds with the ‘Sound Relationship House’
The Gottman Method emphasizes building a strong emotional foundation, which Dr. John Gottman calls the “Sound Relationship House.” This framework focuses on fostering trust and commitment while addressing the emotional disconnection caused by infidelity or addiction. In therapy, you and your partner will work on:
- Rebuilding Emotional Trust: Infidelity often destroys trust in a relationship. The Gottman Method provides tools to gradually restore trust by fostering open communication, transparency, and emotional presence. You’ll learn how to create a safe emotional space where both partners feel heard and valued.
- Creating a Ritual of Emotional Connection: Gottman therapy focuses on turning toward each other instead of away during times of conflict or stress. You’ll learn to create positive daily interactions and rituals of emotional connection that strengthen your bond and help prevent the emotional avoidance patterns often seen in relationships with a history of infidelity or addiction.
Effective Conflict Resolution
One of the key elements of the Gottman Method is teaching couples how to handle conflict in a way that brings them closer, not further apart. When you’ve experienced infidelity or are struggling with sex addiction, conflict can become overwhelming. You might find yourself trapped in cycles of blame, criticism, or defensiveness. In therapy, you’ll learn how to:
- Soften Startups in Conversations: The way you begin a conversation often dictates how it will end. Using Gottman’s techniques, we teach you how to start conversations about sensitive topics—like infidelity or addiction—gently, so they don’t escalate into fights.
- Manage Conflict without Stonewalling or Avoidance: Avoiding emotional discussions is common in relationships where there’s been infidelity or addiction. We work on breaking the patterns of stonewalling (shutting down emotionally) and teach you how to stay present and engaged, even during difficult conversations. This helps both partners feel heard and reduces the feelings of isolation that often fuel destructive behaviors like alcoholism or pornography addiction.
3. Healing Emotional Distance through Positive Interactions
One of the most valuable parts of the Gottman Method is learning to increase positive interactions in your relationship, which helps heal emotional wounds from infidelity.
You’ll focus on:
Repair Attempts:
After an argument or period of disconnection, it’s crucial to make “repair attempts”—small gestures or statements that help soothe and reconnect with your partner. These attempts help to de-escalate conflicts and bring the couple back to a place of emotional safety.
Building Fondness and Admiration:
Infidelity or addiction can erode feelings of admiration or appreciation in a relationship. Therapy helps you rebuild these positive feelings by focusing on what you love and respect about each other, fostering emotional intimacy and a sense of connection.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): Addressing Attachment Wounds
While the Gottman Method focuses on practical tools for communication and conflict resolution, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) digs deeper into the emotional and attachment wounds that often underlie infidelity and addiction. EFT is based on the understanding that emotional connection is the foundation of a healthy relationship, and that attachment trauma from childhood can deeply impact how you relate to your partner.
If you grew up with an abusive or emotionally neglectful father, you may have learned to protect yourself from emotional pain by shutting down, avoiding intimacy, or seeking external validation through affairs or addictive behaviors. EFT helps you and your partner understand and heal these patterns.
Here’s how EFT can transform your marriage and relationship:
Identifying Negative Interaction Patterns
In EFT, we focus on identifying the negative interaction patterns that keep you and your partner stuck in cycles of conflict, avoidance, or emotional disconnection. For example, if you’ve experienced trauma from a father who was physically abusive or disappeared for long periods, you may have developed attachment wounds that cause you to shut down emotionally during conflict. This can leave your partner feeling abandoned or rejected, leading to more conflict and emotional disengagement.
EFT helps you recognize these patterns and teaches you how to break free from them by creating new, healthier ways of interacting that foster emotional safety and connection.
Healing from Attachment Trauma
Attachment trauma, especially from growing up with a father who gaslighted, lied, or was emotionally abusive, can lead to deep fears of abandonment, rejection, or not being worthy of love. These fears often manifest in adult relationships through infidelity, sex addiction, or emotional avoidance.
In EFT, we work on healing these deep-seated attachment wounds by helping you:
- Acknowledge Vulnerabilities: Many couples avoid emotional vulnerability because it feels too risky, especially when there’s been infidelity or addiction. In therapy, we create a safe space for both partners to express their true feelings, fears, and needs. This helps you feel emotionally seen and heard, which is critical for rebuilding trust and intimacy.
- Rebuild Secure Attachment: EFT focuses on creating a secure emotional bond between you and your partner. By addressing childhood trauma and unmet love needs, we help you establish a new, secure attachment where both partners can rely on each other for emotional support and connection.
Creating New Patterns of Emotional Intimacy In Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
EFT is all about transforming the way you and your partner connect emotionally. Instead of avoiding difficult feelings or turning to external coping mechanisms like affairs, pornography, or alcohol, EFT teaches you how to:
Turn Toward Each Other for Comfort:
When you feel emotionally distressed or insecure, we help you learn to turn toward your partner, rather than numbing. You don’t have to turn to a pornography website or alcohol. Pushing your feelings away through unhealthy behaviors harms your marriage bond. Essentially, emotional intimacy skills in couples counseling strengthens your bond.
Express Your Emotional Needs:
Many people, especially those with attachment trauma, struggle to express their emotional needs because they fear rejection. In EFT, we work on helping you identify and share your emotional needs with your partner. We often don’t learn how to do this growing up with emotionally neglectful parents.
In sex addiction and infidelity marriage counseling, you both work creating a relationship where both of you feel valued, heard, and supported.
How Gottman and EFT Combine to Repair Your Couple Bubble
Both the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy work together to create a powerful approach to healing infidelity, sex addiction, and emotional disconnection.
By addressing both the practical aspects of communication and conflict resolution (Gottman) and the deeper emotional wounds that drive negative behavior (EFT), these therapies help you and your partner:
- Rebuild trust and emotional safety.
- Heal from unresolved childhood trauma and attachment wounds.
- Create new patterns of emotional connection and intimacy.
- Break the cycles of avoidance, numbing, and conflict that fuel infidelity and addiction.
Start Healing Today In Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
Infidelity and sex addiction can feel overwhelming, but they don’t have to define your relationship. Couples therapy uses the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy in Melbourne, Florida. You and your partner repair your couple bubble, heal from the past, and create a fulfilling, emotionally connected relationship.
If you’re ready to take the first step toward healing, reach out to schedule a session with Katie Ziskind today. Together, we can rebuild the trust and emotional intimacy that your relationship deserves.
How Marriage Therapy Addresses the Root Causes of Infidelity and Sex Addiction
Couples therapy with Katie Ziskind in Melbourne, Florida, focuses on addressing these deeper emotional wounds. To address sex addiction and infidelity, you get to patterns from childhood. that lead to infidelity, sex addiction, and disconnection.
In sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, you uncover the root causes of your sexually addictive behaviors.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, Katie Ziskind helps you and your partner heal together and create a stronger emotional bond.
Unpacking Childhood Trauma and Emotional Neglect In Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
In sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we explore how your childhood experiences, with an abusive or neglectful father, have impacted your emotional patterns and attachment style.
For example, if your father was physically abusive and used violence or punishment as a way to control or manipulate, you learned to suppress your feelings. When you have a narcissistic father, you come to believe that love is conditional. It is very painful emotionally to have emotionally narcissistic parents. And, it is just as painful has enduring physical abuse in childhood.
Many times, emotional abuse and physical abuse in childhood causes deep pain. And, it contributes to sex addiction and numbing behaviors. When you believe love is painful or conditional, this can lead to an inability to trust your partner. As well, the beliefs that develop from childhood abuse and neglect lead to a fear of emotional vulnerability.
Furthermore, learning, from childhood trauma, that love is painful, cause you to turn to unhealthy behaviors like infidelity or substance abuse. You use these to cope with unresolved pain.
Rebuilding Emotional Safety and Trust In Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
Infidelity often stems from a lack of emotional safety in the relationship. In couples therapy, we work to rebuild the trust that has been broken by infidelity or sex addiction. This involves open, honest conversations where both you and your partner can express your feelings without fear of judgment or rejection.
We guide you through understanding how your past experiences have shaped your emotional reactions, and we teach you new ways to create a safe, loving space for each other.
Breaking the Cycle of Numbing and Avoidance
Whether it’s through alcoholism, pornography addiction, or secret-keeping, numbing behaviors can create a barrier to emotional connection in your marriage. Therapy helps you recognize these avoidance patterns and learn healthier ways to cope with your emotions. We teach you how to stay present with your partner sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida.
You learn how to express your emotions openly. And, you both can learn to turn towards each other instead of away during times of conflict or stress.
Creating a Strong Couple Bubble
A strong “couple bubble” is essential for emotional intimacy and a healthy, fulfilling relationship. This means that both you and your partner feel safe, supported, and emotionally connected within the relationship. Infidelity, addiction, and avoidance behaviors weaken this couple bubble, making it harder to feel close and connected.
Through sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we help you repair the cracks in your couple bubble. You define and foster emotional presence, trust, and empathy for each other’s vulnerabilities.
Healing unmet love needs from childhood in sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida
When you grow up in an environment where love is inconsistent or conditional—like having a father who disappears for days or punishes harshly—you may come to believe that you are unworthy of love or that love must be earned through unhealthy behaviors. Therapy helps you and your partner:
Address Unmet Love Needs:
We explore the ways your unmet needs from childhood are influencing your current behaviors. You may have learned to equate love with attention. Then, that attention is unhealthy, leading to affairs, sexually addictive behaviors, or emotional disconnection in your marriage.
Repair Emotional Disconnection In Sex Addiction and Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida
In sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we work on healing the emotional disconnection that results from numbing behaviors like alcoholism or pornography use. By helping you reconnect emotionally, we rebuild trust and intimacy so that you can experience a deeper bond with your spouse.
Break Free from Cycles of Avoidance:
Couples therapy teaches you to confront uncomfortable emotions rather than avoiding them.
This creates space for honest, vulnerable conversations that strengthen your relationship, allowing you to move forward together with a deeper sense of connection and security.
How Infidelity and Sex Addiction Couples Therapy Can Help You Reconnect
Infidelity and sex addiction couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida with Katie Ziskind provides the tools and support you need to repair your relationship and heal from the emotional wounds that have led to disconnection.
By addressing the root causes of infidelity and addiction, you can break free from the destructive cycles of numbing and avoidance that are keeping you and your partner apart.
Therapy can help you:
- Rebuild trust and create emotional safety in your relationship.
- Heal from unresolved childhood trauma and unmet love needs.
- Break the patterns of alcoholism, sex addiction, and secret-keeping.
- Repair emotional intimacy and strengthen your couple bubble.
Through compassionate guidance and evidence-based therapeutic techniques, you and your partner can rebuild your relationship and create a fulfilling, emotionally connected partnership. If you’re ready to begin the journey of healing and rebuilding trust, reach out today to schedule a session with Katie Ziskind. Together, you can create a stronger, more resilient relationship based on love, trust, and emotional intimacy.
Listen To “All Things Love and Intimacy” To Understand The Impact of Childhood Trauma Pain on The Breakdown of Your Marriage.
In this episode, “82: Sarah and Bob’s Story: Healing Childhood Attachment Trauma Through Couples Therapy” of the “All Things Love and Intimacy” podcast with Katie Ziskind, we dive deep into the impact of childhood attachment trauma and how early relationships with abusive, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable parents can shape the way we connect in adulthood.
Listen on Apple Podcasts: Click Here
When your current fight seems beyond frustrating, painful, annoying, and confusing, the expert help of marriage therapist and relationship coach Katie Ziskind helps you dive deeper into unmet childhood needs and inner child wounds.
We’ll explore the story of Sarah and Bob. They are a couple struggling with conflict, who realized that their biggest fight wasn’t just about a disagreement. But, their fight was rooted in their unresolved childhood wounds and unmet love needs.
Sarah’s avoidant tendencies and Bob’s need for external validation stemmed from the emotional abuse, neglect, and trauma they experienced growing up.
Both learned survival tactics—fight, flight, fawn, and freeze—which now prevent them from experiencing emotional intimacy in their marriage.
Join us as we walk through their marriage therapy journey, guided by emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT), to rebuild a secure attachment, foster emotional openness, and break free from their old patterns of survival.
If you and your partner find yourselves stuck in repeated cycles of disconnection, couples counseling with specialist, Katie Ziskind, helps dramatically.
This episode of “All Things Love and Intimacy,” will give you insight into how childhood trauma can shape your present marriage conflicts.
And, how emotionally focused couples therapy can help you heal together, creating a loving, emotionally secure partnership.
In this podcast episode, Katie Ziskind shares a couples therapy case that sheds light on how childhood relationships. When you grow up with with abusive, neglectful, or narcissistic parents, this can deeply affect your adult relationships.
This story will help you understand how those early attachment wounds can lead to patterns of anxiety, fear of closeness, and flight, fight, fawn, and freeze responses. Through emotionally focused couples therapy, we’ll explore how couples can work toward healing and building secure attachment.
Sarah and Bob, a couple in their late thirties, came into my office wanting to address a massive fight they had on Thursday night.
Both were left feeling upset, confused, and deeply hurt, with emotions ranging from annoyance to irritation. As their couples therapist, I knew this fight was likely not just about what had happened on the surface, but rooted in deeper patterns of interaction that had been forming for years. I decided to explore their past relationships, particularly with their primary caregivers.
We began the session by discussing the fight itself, but soon, I shifted the conversation to what may have triggered such strong emotional responses.
I asked Bob and Sarah to think about how their families handled emotions growing up, especially anger and conflict. It didn’t take long for Bob to start opening up about his relationship with his father.
At first, Bob hesitated, claiming his childhood was normal. He said he had a “good” relationship with his father, describing him as firm but fair. However, as we delved deeper, the cracks in this narrative started to show. When I asked Bob about what his dad was like when he got angry, Bob’s demeanor changed. He revealed painful memories of being hit with a belt, spanked, and punished harshly when he did something wrong. His father would make him sit alone for hours, and there were times his mouth was washed out with soap for speaking out of line.
As Bob shared more, I could sense the emotional weight he had been carrying for years. He had internalized his father’s actions as “just the way things were.” Bob even remarked, “All fathers did that at that time.”
I gently reminded him that, while many people endured similar experiences, it didn’t make them any less traumatic.
The physical and emotional abuse he suffered as a child caused him to feel afraid, helpless, and powerless. It silenced his voice in childhood, and those feelings were now showing up in his relationship with Sarah.
As Bob opened up, Sarah also began to reflect on her own childhood.
She shared that her father, too, was emotionally immature and prone to angry outbursts. Unlike Bob’s father, Sarah’s dad was more neglectful, often disappearing emotionally or physically when things got tough. Her brother struggled with depression and lost two friends, so Sarah found herself constantly in a role of holding everything together.
She developed a perfectionist mindset, always trying to be the fixer, and her response to conflict was to freeze or run away—flight and freeze became her survival tactics.
These childhood dynamics had set up deep-rooted attachment wounds for both Sarah and Bob. Bob, having grown up in an environment where he constantly sought approval, developed a fawn response. He craved external validation, praise, and reassurance, which later translated into numbing behaviors.
His need for validation led to emotionless sex, cheating on his ex-wife, and eventually workaholism—anything to chase the dopamine rush that would make him feel good, even if only temporarily.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s avoidant tendencies, driven by her need to be perfect and hold it all together, made her emotionally distant during their fights.
Her response to Bob’s vulnerability was often to jump into action mode. Sarah would always try and fix things, rather than to slow down and truly listen. So, marriage therapy helps Sarah learn to emotionally attune and validate Bob’s vulnerability.
Both of them were stuck in cycles of reacting from their childhood survival modes. Furthermore, Bob was stuck fawning and Sarah freezing and fleeing.
These patterns keep them stuck in a vicious cycle of fighting and disconnection.
To add, couples therapy helps them gain awareness and build a secure emotional bond.
At this point in the session, the tension between them was palpable. Bob’s eyes filled with tears as he talked about the extent of his childhood pain. I encouraged him to sit with those emotions, to allow himself to feel them fully.
For someone who had spent a lifetime running away from his feelings and numbing himself with various addictions, this was a huge step. As he cried, Sarah instinctively wanted to jump in and take action, to “solve” the problem. But I guided her to simply validate Bob’s vulnerability instead of trying to fix him.
This moment of vulnerability was a breakthrough for Bob.
For the first time, he wasn’t masking his pain with work, sex, or external validation. He was present with his emotions, and Sarah, too, was learning to be present with him. She told Bob, “I see you. I hear you.”
That simple validation allowed him to feel seen and heard, perhaps for the first time in a long time.
Through emotionally focused couples therapy, Katie Ziskind helps you trace the roots of their conflict back to your childhood attachment trauma.
Both had learned survival mechanisms that helped them get through difficult times as children.
But, those same mechanisms were now preventing them from having the close, secure attachment they both deeply craved in their marriage.
In couples counseling, we worked together on breaking these negative patterns.
Bob learned to identify when he was slipping into his fawn response—when he was chasing external validation rather than turning toward Sarah for emotional intimacy.
Sarah, on the other hand, learned to recognize her avoidant tendencies, understanding that freezing or fleeing wasn’t serving her relationship with Bob.
Instead of shutting down or jumping into action, she practiced sitting with uncomfortable emotions, both hers and Bob’s.
By fostering emotional vulnerability in their marriage, Sarah and Bob were able to begin the process of building a secure attachment. It wasn’t easy. And, it took time, but they started to break free from the survival strategies they had adopted as children.
Slowly, they learned to turn toward each other in times of distress, rather than defaulting to their fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses.
The journey from emotional disconnection to secure attachment was a challenging one, but it was also deeply rewarding. As Bob became more comfortable expressing his feelings, and Sarah learned to offer validation without trying to “fix” everything, they found themselves reconnecting in ways they hadn’t before. Their relationship became a safe place where both could express their true selves—vulnerable, imperfect, and human.
This story illustrates how emotionally focused couples therapy can help couples like Sarah and Bob unravel the deeply ingrained survival strategies they developed in response to childhood trauma.
By addressing those wounds and fostering emotional vulnerability, couples can build a secure attachment.
Infidelity Couples Therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching is Our Speciality
Infidelity can shake the very foundation of a relationship, leading to deep emotional wounds and a challenging path to healing. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we understand the pain and confusion that come with infidelity, and we’re here to guide you through the journey of rebuilding trust and creating a healthier, more connected partnership.
Understanding Infidelity, Secret Keeping, and Sex Addiction In Couples Counseling
Infidelity often triggers a cascade of emotions, including anger, betrayal, and disillusionment. It can lead to high conflict fights, disassociation, and avoidance patterns, making it difficult for couples to communicate effectively and work through their issues.
Our infidelity couples therapists in Melbourne, Florida addresses these challenges by focusing on:
Identifying and Addressing High Conflict Patterns:
Infidelity can exacerbate existing conflicts or create new ones. Through couples therapy, we help identify the patterns that lead to frequent arguments and teach effective communication strategies to address and resolve these conflicts.
Navigating Disassociation and Avoidance:
When trust is broken, partners may withdraw or avoid difficult conversations. Our therapy provides a safe space for both partners to express their feelings, confront their fears, and work through avoidance behaviors. We guide you in developing skills to stay emotionally present and engaged with each other.
Building a Strong Couple Bubble:
A “couple bubble” refers to the emotional safety and connection that partners create within their relationship.
Infidelity will erode this bubble. But, with the right tools and strategies, you can rebuild and strengthen it. Sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida focuses on fostering intimacy emotionally. Lying breaks down emotional intimacy on a care level. In sex addiction and infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, you can re-develop understanding for each other’s core needs. You can identify each other’s unmet core needs. And, you can give each other mutual support to restore and enhance your couple bubble.
How Can Infidelity Couples Therapy In Melbourne, Florida Help You?
Rebuilding Trust:
Trust is often shattered by infidelity, secret keeping, alcoholism, and sex addiction behaviors. But, it can be rebuilt over time with honesty, transparency, and commitment. We provide guidance on how to re-establish trust and set healthy boundaries to ensure both partners feel secure.
Enhancing Communication:
Essentially, effective communication is crucial for resolving conflicts and addressing the root causes of infidelity and sex addiction. Our sex addiction and infidelity couples counseling therapy sessions teach you how to communicate openly and constructively. We don’t learn these skills growing up. So, infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida is the first place to learn how to be your authentic, raw self. Meeting our the sex addiction specialists help you foster a deeper understanding of each other’s unmet love needs from childhood.
Trauma experiences leave deep wounds that often feel overwhelming when re-triggered. Infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida helps you openly communicate your vulnerabilities and concerns. Doing so opens the emotional communication lines in your marriage.
Healing Emotional Wounds:
Infidelity can leave lasting emotional scars. We offer support in processing these emotions and working through the pain, allowing you both to move forward with a renewed sense of connection and intimacy.
Creating a Vision for the Future:
Infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida helps you develop a shared vision for your relationship’s future. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we help you by focusing on creating a more fulfilling and resilient partnership. We work with you to set goals and build strategies for maintaining a healthy, supportive relationship moving forward.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our goal of infidelity marriage therapy is to support you through this challenging time and help you emerge stronger as a couple.
By addressing high conflict patterns, disassociation, and avoidance, and focusing on building a strong couple bubble, we help you navigate the complexities of infidelity and work towards a more loving and connected relationship.
If you’re ready to take the next step in healing your relationship, contact us today to schedule a consultation. Together, we can begin the journey towards rebuilding trust and creating a more fulfilling partnership.
Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida: Breaking Destructive Cycles and Healing Deeper Wounds
Infidelity is often a symptom of deeper emotional struggles rather than the sole issue in a relationship.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we understand that infidelity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For one, it’s often accompanied by cycles of numbing through alcohol, drug use, secret-keeping, and sex addiction.
For instance, sexual addiction, masturbation addiction, and pornography addiction often go hand in hand with alcoholism. To add, these secretive behaviors point to underlying fears that infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida can address.
As well, you can talk about emotional wounds, and unmet needs rooted in childhood trauma and attachment wounds.
Understand The Hidden Causes of Infidelity and Destructive Cycles In Melbourne, Florida Marriage Therapy
Many couples come to therapy believing that infidelity or sex addiction is the problem. However, we often find that these behaviors are coping mechanisms for unresolved emotional pain, especially from early life experiences. Commonly, we see:
- Fears of Rejection and Abandonment: Infidelity and secret-keeping can stem from deep fears of being unwanted, unloved, or rejected. A partner may seek external validation or chase the “high” of an affair to numb painful feelings of emotional inadequacy that may have started in childhood.
- Numbing Emotional Pain with Alcohol or Drugs: Substance abuse, like alcoholism or drug use, often goes hand-in-hand with infidelity or sex addiction. Many individuals turn to substances to numb the pain of unresolved trauma, seeking relief from emotional neglect, feelings of unworthiness, or the emotional wounds left by a parent, often an abusive or emotionally neglectful father.
- Sex Addiction and External Validation: Sex addiction is another way people seek external validation to fill emotional voids. The cycle of pornography use, secret sexual behaviors, or compulsive sexual encounters is often a way to escape uncomfortable emotions and momentarily feel desired or important. This can become a cycle of self-isolation, secrecy, and avoidance within the marriage, ultimately pushing the couple further apart.
How Do Childhood Trauma and Attachment Wounds Affect Your Romantic Relationship and Marriage?
The pain and fear that drive these destructive behaviors often begin in childhood, especially in homes marked by emotional neglect, anger, or abuse. Growing up with a father or parent who was emotionally absent or abusive leaves deep scars. These wounds, often related to feelings of not being good enough or lovable, manifest in adult relationships as:
- Fear of Vulnerability: People may fear showing their true selves to their partner, expecting rejection or abandonment, much like they may have experienced as children.
- Seeking Emotional Comfort Elsewhere: When partners don’t feel safe in their relationship, they may turn outward, seeking comfort in an affair, addiction, or substances to fill the void left by childhood attachment wounds.
- Cycles of Avoidance: The fear of being emotionally rejected often leads to avoidance patterns—avoiding deep emotional conversations, avoiding intimacy, or avoiding being fully present with a partner. This only reinforces emotional disconnection in the relationship.
How Can Infidelity Couples Therapy Help Break These Cycles?
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we specialize in helping couples uncover and address the deeper emotional issues fueling infidelity, substance abuse, and sexual addiction.
Through our infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we:
Address the Root Causes:
We work with you to explore the early life experiences that have shaped your emotional patterns. By understanding how childhood trauma and attachment wounds contribute to destructive behaviors, we help you heal the deep-seated fears that lead to infidelity and addiction.
Break Destructive Cycles:
As well, infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida helps couples break the cycles of numbing. This includes secret-keeping, and avoidance that are often coping mechanisms for unresolved emotional pain. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our marriage therapists in Melbourne, Florida teach tools for emotional self-awareness. We teach you about healthy coping, honesty, and building trust within your relationship.
Rebuild Trust and Emotional Intimacy:
Healing from infidelity requires rebuilding emotional safety and trust. Our therapy focuses on open, honest communication where both partners can express their feelings and vulnerabilities. By creating a secure attachment, couples can learn to turn toward each other for comfort. Instead of seeking validation or escape elsewhere, you can learn to co-create emotional intimacy.
Heal Childhood Trauma Together in Infidelity Couples Therapy in Melbourne, Florida:
Understanding how childhood trauma affects your relationship allows both partners to approach the healing process with compassion and empathy.
By addressing the deeper wounds, you can build a stronger emotional bond, working together to nurture a healthy, fulfilling relationship.
A Path to a Stronger, More Connected Relationship
Infidelity, substance abuse, and sexual addiction can feel overwhelming. But, they are often signs of deeper emotional wounds that need healing. At Wisdom Within Counseling in infidelity couples therapy in Melbourne, Florida, we help couples move beyond these destructive behaviors.
Our couples therapists specialize with couples in cycles of avoidance and addiction. We teach you how to build a relationship based on trust, emotional vulnerability, and mutual support.
If you’re ready to break free from these cycles of addiction and rebuild your relationship, contact us today. You get a safe place to start your journey toward healing and deeper emotional connection in your marriage.
Marriage therapy for infidelity in Melbourne, Florida helps you heal from your past, and create a deeply connected, fulfilling relationship.
Transforming Conflict in Your Relationship: How Couples Therapy Can Heal Childhood Wounds
Are you and your partner caught in a cycle of frustrating fights, annoyance, and irritation that seem to come out of nowhere? Do you find yourselves arguing over seemingly small issues, only to feel emotionally distant and disconnected afterward? These conflicts may feel like they’re about surface-level disagreements, but beneath them lies something much deeper—unresolved childhood wounds that can keep you from fully connecting with each other.
Understanding the Deeper Roots of Your Conflicts In Marriage Counseling
When you argue with your partner, it might feel like you’re simply disagreeing over chores, time spent together, or unmet expectations. But what if those conflicts are actually pointing to something more profound? Couples therapy can help you explore the underlying patterns in your relationship and uncover the root causes of these painful cycles.
Often, these fights are triggered not by the issue at hand but by deeply ingrained attachment wounds. Early relationships with emotionally unavailable, abusive, or neglectful parents can create a lasting impact on the way you interact in your adult relationships. If you grew up in an environment where you didn’t feel safe, loved, or validated, those unmet needs often carry into your romantic relationships, shaping how you seek love and connection.
What Is The Role of Childhood Attachment Trauma in Your Relationship and Marriage?
Attachment trauma refers to the emotional wounds created when, as children, we don’t receive the consistent care, nurturing, and emotional availability that we need. Maybe your parent was emotionally distant, or you experienced physical or verbal abuse. Perhaps you had to grow up too fast because your caregiver wasn’t able to provide the safety and support you needed. These early experiences can leave lasting scars, shaping how you attach to others in adulthood.
In a relationship, you might unknowingly expect your partner to meet the emotional needs that went unfulfilled in childhood. When they can’t meet those expectations, feelings of hurt, rejection, and insecurity often surface. This leads to a cycle of arguments that seem unrelated to the core issue but are, in fact, your way of seeking connection, safety, intimacy, and reassurance.
How Are Your Big Fights Are Really About Unmet Emotional Needs?
A big fight isn’t just about the disagreement itself. It’s about unresolved childhood wounds, past emotional neglect, or experiences where you didn’t feel seen or heard. Couples therapy provides a safe space where you and your partner can dive deeper into these patterns. By understanding the root of your frustration, you’ll start to realize that those conflicts are often a call for emotional reassurance.
You might be asking your partner, “Do you really care about me? Am I important to you?” without even realizing it. These are questions born out of childhood experiences, and until those wounds are healed, they will continue to show up in your relationship, often in the form of frustrating fights.
Healing Through Couples Therapy with Katie Ziskind
Couples therapy offers a transformative opportunity to break free from these painful cycles. It allows you and your partner to explore the emotional layers beneath the surface conflicts. By working together with a therapist, you can:
- Identify the underlying emotional triggers that stem from childhood attachment trauma.
- Develop healthy communication patterns that foster connection rather than disconnection.
- Learn to respond to each other’s emotional needs with empathy, understanding, and reassurance.
- Create a safe emotional space where both partners feel secure, loved, and valued.
Rather than continuing to fight over the same issues, couples therapy helps you and your partner understand the deeper emotional wounds driving the conflict. Together, you can work toward healing those wounds, building a stronger, more connected relationship.
Seeking Safety, Intimacy, and Connection Through Couples Therapy
At the core of every relationship is the desire for emotional safety and connection. When you and your partner are fighting, you’re often both seeking the same thing: reassurance that you matter, that you’re loved, and that you’re safe. But childhood attachment trauma can make it difficult to express those needs in a healthy way. Instead, they often come out as frustration, anger, or withdrawal.
By engaging in couples therapy, you’ll learn to shift from conflict to connection. Therapy will help you and your partner create a new narrative, one that replaces fighting with vulnerability and irritation with intimacy. You’ll learn to recognize when childhood wounds are driving the conflict and how to offer each other the emotional safety that was missing in your early experiences.
Take the First Step Toward Healing Through Marriage Counseling
If you and your partner are struggling with frustrating fights, irritation, or emotional distance, couples therapy can provide the path to healing. It’s not just about resolving the fight of the moment—it’s about healing the deeper wounds that keep you from experiencing true intimacy and emotional closeness. You deserve a relationship where you feel secure, loved, and understood.
Let couples therapy help you break free from the cycle of frustration and step into a relationship that nurtures emotional safety and connection. Start your journey toward healing and growth today.
About Katie Ziskind
I am a Certified Sex Therapy Informed Professional (CSTIP), Gottman level two trained marriage therapist, and complex trauma specialist.
Furthermore, I specialize with disconnected couples in counseling.
Couples therapy helps you when you want to stay together and want to work together. Marriage therapy helps you heal after high conflict fights, anger issues, affairs, sexual avoidance, and sexual rejection. Learn skills to develop a foundation of emotional connection, trust, and love in your marriage.
In couples therapy, I support couples who struggle with infidelity and need an affair recovery specialist that takes them through specific steps to attune to each other. Intimacy is all about being emotionally vulnerable to build a closer relationship.
We don’t learn emotional expression skills growing up.
I help couples grow together through life transitions and stressors like infertility, becoming new parents, having a child with special needs, loss and grief, dealing with chronic pain, alcoholism, becoming empathy nesters, and do so while reduce criticism, hurt, and conflict.
Katie Ziskind specializes in helping couples feel safe and excited emotionally and build a strong bond, and growing together.
I help you and your partner gain sex positive skills to have more regular sexual experiences, understand foreplay, increase sexual pleasure, rebuild sexual desire, connect to your sexual, erotic playful sides together.
As well, I give you both a safe place to talk about how your strict, conservative, religious upbringing has lead to feelings of shame, guilt, fear, avoidance, lack of satisfaction, and anxiety around sex. Marriage therapy helps you shift into reconnecting to sexual embodiment.
I help you and your spouse get familiar and comfortable talking about emotions, needs, expectations emotionally.
To add, I have a podcast available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify called, “All Things Love and Intimacy.” As well, you both can take my sex and intimacy course on teachable for $20. Check it out https://sex-and-intimacy-course.teachable.com
Background in somatic therapies
I have also thought hundreds of yoga classes in the last 15 years and love somatic yoga therapy. Furthermore, I specialize in meditation, mind-body connection, breathing techniques, and a holistic, yogic lifestyle. Also, I have my 500 hour yoga therapy training and children’s yoga trainings. In person and video sessions are available. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, sex and intimacy specialist, holistic relationship coach, and the owner of Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching.
Instagram @WisdomWithinCt
Facebook @WisdomWithinCt
LGBTQIA+ Affirming
Where can we get marriage therapy help near Melbourne, Florida?
Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching helps couples on video and in person in Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, Melbourne, Palm Bay, Titusville, Satellite Beach, Rockledge, Indialantic, Indian Harbour Beach, West Melbourne, Melbourne Beach, Grant-Valkaria, Malabar, Florida.
As well, Wisdom Within Counseling and Coaching helps couples in therapy in Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Coral Gables, Homestead, Key Biscayne, Aventura, Sunny Isles Beach, Doral, Miami Gardens, North Miami, North Miami Beach, South Miami, West Miami, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Biscayne Park, Cutler Bay, El Portal, Florida City, Golden Beach, Hialeah Gardens, Indian Creek, Medley, Miami Lakes, Miami Shores, Miami Springs, Opa-locka, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest, Surfside, Sweetwater, Virginia Gardens, Florida. You can learn to break the cycle of frustrating fighting in your marriage in Naples, Marco Island, Everglades City, Ave Maria, Immokalee, Florida.
