What We Can Learn From How We Show Up In Relationships

What We Can Learn From How We Show Up In Relationships

At the core of every healthy relationship lies connection, honesty, and repair. It sounds easier than it is sometimes. When we’re stressed or triggered, even the most loving couples can fall into old patterns of criticizing, shutting down, clinging, or pulling away.

Relational Life Therapy (RLT), developed by psychotherapist and author Terry Real, is a powerful approach that helps couples understand these patterns and learn new ways of relating. Unlike traditional models that often focus on communication skills alone, RLT goes deeper. It looks at how each partner’s history, defenses, and learned relational habits shape the way they show up with one another.

Through this lens, couples are invited to move from reactivity and blame to awareness and accountability. The goal isn’t to “win” an argument, but to become more relationally mature, or more able to stay grounded, connected, and open, even when things get heated.

How The Relationship Grid Can Help

One of RLT’s foundational tools is the Relationship Grid, a simple yet profound map that helps clients recognize their relational stance, or how they typically position themselves when conflict arises.

The Relationship Grid illustrates how two major dimensions, self-esteem and boundaries, interact to shape our behavior in relationships. Self-esteem runs vertically in the relationship grid. At the top is one-up, what Real refers to as a sense of superiority or grandiosity. At the bottom is one-down, associated with a sense of inferiority or shame. Boundaries run horizontally. On one end is being walled off, or presenting too much distance or protection. On the other end is being boundaryless, which is essentially being too enmeshed or too dependent in the relationship. 

When you combine these two axes, you get four quadrants, or four ways people tend to show up when under relational stress. The beauty of this grid is that it shifts the focus from who’s right or wrong to how the pattern operates. As Terry Real says, “The blame is on the pattern, not the people.”

Recognizing Our Relational Stance

Each quadrant has its own emotional logic and set of coping strategies. Let us be really clear that none of these are inherently bad. Each represents a way we protect ourselves that may get in the way of true intimacy in our relationships. Let’s go over the different types of relational stances. 

1. One-Up and Walled-Off. 

This stance blends superiority with distance. People in this quadrant often appear confident or self-assured on the surface, but their behavior can come across as inaccessible, dismissive, or even arrogant.

They may say things like, “I don’t need to talk about this,” or use sarcasm and withdrawal as a form of control. Partners often describe feeling small, unseen, or unimportant in their presence. Underneath, this stance often hides shame and fear of vulnerability. By staying “above” the conflict, the one-up and walled-off partner avoids the discomfort of being wrong or exposed. In relationships, this stance might look like stonewalling or emotionally checking out during conflict, dismissing a partner’s concerns as “overreactions,” offering advice or criticism instead of empathy, and/or keeping emotions tightly contained and refusing help.

2. One-Down and Walled-Off

This stance blends low self-worth with emotional withdrawal. People in this quadrant tend to appear distant, quiet, or resigned. Their inner world often includes feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy, or numbness.

Since they feel unworthy or powerless, they may retreat further into themselves, especially when their partner tries to reach them. The more their partner pursues, the more they shut down. In relationships, this stance might look like withdrawing when feeling criticized, saying, “it doesn’t matter,” or, “I’m fine,” when it’s not true, avoiding eye contact or physical closeness, and/or feeling unseen but unable to speak up for needs. People in this quadrant are often silently longing for connection but fear rejection or failure. Their wall becomes both a shield and a prison.

3. One-Up and Boundaryless

This stance combines a sense of superiority with emotional intrusion. The person may believe they know best and expect their partner to meet their needs on demand. When things don’t go their way, they can become controlling, demanding, or angry. They often struggle to tolerate shame or self-reflection, so instead of looking inward, they project blame outward.

In relationships, this stance might look like criticizing or correcting a partner, expressing anger as a way to regain control, feeling justified in emotional outbursts, and/or believing, “If you’d just listen to me, everything would be fine.”  At its core, this stance is often a defense against vulnerability. Anger feels safer than admitting fear, disappointment, or hurt.

4. One-Down and Boundaryless

This stance blends low self-worth with emotional dependence. People in this quadrant often seem needy, anxious, or overly expressive. They rely heavily on their partner for reassurance and validation. Their emotional state may rise and fall based on how much love or attention they receive. Because they feel unsafe when disconnected, they may pursue their partner relentlessly, sometimes overwhelming them in the process.

In relationships, this stance might look like constantly seeking reassurance or closeness, taking a partner’s mood personally, oversharing feelings in an attempt to connect, and/or fearing abandonment or rejection. This pattern can create a painful loop: the more they cling, the more their partner pulls away, which increases anxiety and deepens the one-down feeling.

Where Our Relationship Patterns Come From

Relational stances don’t appear out of nowhere. They often have deep roots in childhood experiences and family systems.

Specifically, one-up behaviors often develop as a shield against shame. If admitting fault or vulnerability once led to humiliation, superiority feels safer. Some people also learn this from early modeling, as they watched caregivers or others equate dominance with strength.

One-Down patterns emerge when a child is repeatedly belittled or disempowered. They internalize the belief that they are less-than or unworthy of care. Walled-Off boundaries often form in homes where emotional expression felt unsafe or intrusive. The message was, “keep it in, don’t feel too much, and don’t need anyone.” Boundaryless tendencies can arise from inconsistent caregiving or emotional abandonment. When connection was unreliable, the child learned to over-pursue it or fuse with others to feel secure.

Understanding the origin of your quadrant explains the behavior, but doesn’t excuse it. It helps couples see that what looks like stubbornness or neediness today often began as a survival strategy long ago.

The Goal: Moving Toward the Center

The Relationship Grid is not about labeling ourselves or our partners. It’s about locating where we are so we can aim to move toward the center, a place of balance between self-esteem and boundaries.

In the center, we can hold our own worth while staying open to our partners. We neither collapse into shame nor inflate into superiority. We can connect without losing ourselves – and protect without disconnecting.

This is what Relational Life Therapy calls the stance of the “Wise Adult.” From this position, we can say things like, “I was wrong. I’m sorry,”“That hurt me, but I still want to understand you,” or “Let’s take a break and come back when we’re calm.” From the center, love becomes a practice of honesty, respect, and repair.

How Couples Use the Relationship Grid in Therapy

In Relational Life Therapy, the Relationship Grid is used as both a mirror and a map. As a mirror, it can help each partner see their own relational stance clearly. Many couples are shocked to realize how automatic their reactions are and how quickly they move into criticism, withdrawal, or pursuit when they feel hurt. 

Once we can name the stance, we can find our way back to the center. The therapist helps each partner practice new relational moves, such as asserting needs without attack, expressing hurt without collapsing, or setting boundaries without shutting down.

Through guided dialogue, couples begin to understand that both partners’ defenses make sense in context. The real enemy is the pattern that takes over when shame, fear, or grandiosity is triggered.

Finding Ourselves on the Grid

To more clearly identify where we typically are on the grid, we can ask ourselves the following questions: 

1. When I feel hurt or criticized, do I tend to pull away or lean in too hard?
2. Do I usually feel one-up (superior, right, controlling) or one-down (guilty, wrong, apologetic)?
3. Do I try to protect myself by building walls or by over-connecting?
4. How might my childhood or cultural background have shaped these tendencies?
5. What would it look like to move one step closer to the center?

Simply noticing our stance is the first act of change. We can’t shift what we can’t see.

Common Pairings in Couples

Interestingly enough, certain combinations of stances are common among couples. 

For example, One-Up & One-Down, with the “pursuer-distancer” pattern, where one criticizes and the other withdraws. Boundaryless & Walled-Off, where the more one reaches, the more the other retreats. Two One-Ups together, which leads to power struggles, constant debate, and little vulnerability. Finally, Two One-Downs, which can bring emotional paralysis, avoidance, or a lack of direction.

Recognizing these dynamics can help couples stop fighting or avoiding each other and start collaborating against the shared pattern.

Healing Through Awareness and Repair

In Relational Life Therapy, awareness is only the beginning. True healing comes through relational repair, which is the process of owning our part, making amends, and restoring trust. The RLT therapist guides couples through structured conversations where each partner learns to speak from accountability rather than blame. Partners learn to say, “Here’s how I went one-up,” or “I see that I got boundaryless when I felt scared.”

These honest, repair-focused moments often become turning points in therapy, transforming conflict into intimacy.

Why We Appreciate The Relationship Grid

We like how the Relationship Grid is about patterns as opposed to blame. When partners see their behaviors as learned stances, defensiveness softens. It promotes compassion simply by allowing one partner to understand the other’s quadrant and the vulnerability beneath the behavior. 

The grid also provides a roadmap. Instead of feeling stuck in endless conflict, couples gain very useful language and a clear direction for growth.  Ultimately, by practicing centering together, partners can create lasting change, rooted in respect, balance, and care. 

Final Thoughts

The Relationship Grid is not just a psychological diagram. It’s a compassionate framework for understanding how we protect ourselves and how those protections can block the very closeness we crave.

Through Relational Life Therapy, couples learn that every conflict is an invitation to grow closer, not farther apart. By learning to recognize when we go one-up, one-down, walled-off, or boundaryless, we can begin to move toward the center, where we can find more mutual respect, healthy boundaries, and deeper connection.

Ready to Experience Relational Life Therapy?

If you and your partner are ready to break old patterns and create new ones, Relational Life Therapy (RLT) can help. Mark Simpson, PhD, at Nashville Psych offers compassionate, evidence-based couples therapy designed to help you communicate more effectively, repair after conflict, and build lasting intimacy. We invite you to reach out to our client care team via phone, email or schedule a free consultation to learn more.