Below the Waterline: Why Couples Don’t Change When You Push Them
Thursday, January 22, 2026.
Therapy is not persuasion.
Not because persuasion is unethical.
But because it operates at the wrong depth.
Most couples don’t resist change because they don’t understand.
They resist because their nervous systems are under pressure.
And pressured systems do not reorganize.
They brace.
This is the error modern couples therapy keeps repeating: treating change as a surface event, when the forces that govern it live below the waterline.
The Category Error Modern Therapy Keeps Making
Contemporary therapy increasingly treats insight as causal.
It isn’t.
Insight is correlational.
Safety is causal.
Couples often understand their patterns perfectly well. They can name the cycle, track the triggers, even anticipate the blow-up in advance. And still—nothing moves.
Why?
Because understanding does not lower threat.
And threat blocks change.
The nervous system decides what is possible long before the mind weighs in.
The Submerged Agency Framework
The Submerged Agency Framework holds that relational change occurs only when perceived pressure drops below the nervous system’s threat threshold.
Agency does not mean “getting one’s way.”
It means not being moved without consent.
Change that bypasses agency does not last. It converts briefly into compliance, then reappears later as resentment, withdrawal, or collapse under stress.
The framework rests on four principles.
1. Pressure Is Always Perceived, Even When It’s Polite
Couples know when they are being steered.
They feel it when a question has a preferred answer.
They feel it when neutrality collapses into urgency.
They feel it when therapy begins to sound like a moral argument.
At that moment, the nervous system stops exploring and starts monitoring.
What happens if I don’t agree?
What happens if I don’t move?
No insight survives that transition.
Pressure does not create momentum.
It creates drag.
2. Refusal Is a Regulatory Function, Not a Character Flaw
Resistance is not usually pathology.
It is the nervous system protecting agency.
When refusal is punished—explicitly or subtly—the system hardens.
When refusal is genuinely allowed, something unexpected happens.
People begin to think again.
Not performatively.
Not defensively.
Privately.
Which is where real decisions are made.
3. Ambivalence Is Intelligence Under Load
Most couples arrive ambivalent, not obstructive.
They want change and fear it.
They long for closeness and dread exposure.
They imagine leaving and grieve what would be lost.
Attempts to “resolve” ambivalence prematurely flatten it into either compliance or rebellion.
The submerged approach does something quieter.
It lets ambivalence breathe.
Breathing systems reorganize.
4. Movement Emerges When It Is No Longer Required
This is the paradox therapists resist most.
People move when they know they don’t have to.
Not because they were convinced.
But because the internal calculus changed once pressure was removed.
Submerged movement does not announce itself.
It shows up as a pause.
A softened tone.
A sentence that begins, “I’ve been thinking…”
That is real change crossing the waterline.
Attachment Styles Below the Waterline
Across attachment styles, resistance is not opposition to change.
It is opposition to being moved without consent.
The threat is shared.
The expression differs.
Anxious Systems: When Change Becomes a Race Against Time
Anxious partners escalate because waiting feels dangerous.
Delay reads as abandonment.
Stillness reads as loss.
When therapy amplifies urgency, anxious systems surge.
The submerged approach slows time.
It removes deadlines.
It makes non-movement survivable.
Only then can anxious partners stop managing the future long enough to feel the present.
Avoidant Systems: When Change Feels Like Capture
Avoidant partners withdraw because engagement feels like a narrowing corridor with no exit.
Persuasive therapy intensifies disappearance.
The submerged approach restores exits.
Once escape is no longer required, presence becomes possible.
Disorganized Systems: When Direction Itself Is Dangerous
For disorganized attachment, both movement and stillness can feel unsafe.
Pressure triggers panic.
Silence triggers dread.
Here, submerged work is slow, titrated, and deliberately non-directive—not because the therapist lacks skill, but because direction itself destabilizes the system.
What the Therapist Actually Does
This framework demands discipline.
The therapist relinquishes three temptations:
The urge to rescue momentum.
The urge to clarify prematurely.
The urge to become the smartest nervous system in the room.
Instead, the therapist functions as a pressure governor.
When urgency rises, the therapist slows.
When persuasion appears, the therapist withdraws it.
When asked to side, convince, or arbitrate, the therapist declines—cleanly.
This often looks like saying nothing at the exact moment persuasion is expected, and tolerating the silence that follows.
This is not passivity.
It is containment.
And containment is what allows depth.
Contraindications and Ethical Boundaries
The Submerged Agency Framework fails when it is mistaken for neutrality in the presence of harm.
It is not appropriate when:
There is ongoing abuse.
One partner is acting in bad faith.
Safety is compromised.
Accountability is being actively evaded.
Agency restoration is not indulgence.
It does not excuse harm.
It simply refuses to confuse pressure with change.
Why Persuasion Feels So Convincing to Therapists
Persuasion feels like care.
It feels active.
It feels intelligent.
It feels aligned with good intentions.
And it produces short-term compliance—which can masquerade as progress.
But compliance is brittle.
It collapses under stress.
It breeds resentment.
It fails quietly later.
Therapy that refuses persuasion may look slower.
It isn’t.
It is simply working at the depth where systems actually reorganize.
Therapist’s Note
If therapy has felt like a place where one of you is subtly on trial—
If insight has landed but nothing has shifted—
If every breakthrough evaporates by Thursday—
It may not be resistance.
It may be that agency has not yet been restored.
The most radical thing therapy can offer is not another intervention, but the disciplined refusal to push.
Final Thoughts
Compliance looks like movement until stress arrives.
Pressure creates behavior.
Safety creates choice.
Change does not happen because someone argues well.
It happens when the system no longer needs to defend itself.
And that work—always—happens below the waterline.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.