Reading Gottman's science of trust book right now.

I can see we are at that point where it would be about to go into that so-called absorbing state of negativity, mutually. (I think I did absorb too much negative before anyway but it wasn't mutual or leading to escalating drama....)

It's supposed to be a state or phase in the relationship where you both start absorbing the negative in the conflict and it'll all escalate and not get fixed, and parties are stuck in it, in the bad drama like that.

Then eventually there can be a point of no return, with too much lost trust and rewritten narrative of the entire relationship story.

It does mention self-regulation (self-soothing) and co-regulation as well and how I see it is, if you can't co-regulate your partner and he/she can't co-regulate you either, and you can't calm down on your own either, when away on your own, then it's bad.

And it mentions that mostly for men, if they suppress the expression of negative emotion during the conflict, they'll find it hard to calm down. Unfortunately, while not a man, that's part of my problem here.

In those recent, worse conflicts, we did co-regulate each other some, with rational approaches too, the problem is that I did not ask for it or express any emotion for one problem that I'm hung up on.

I still have not been able to talk about it with anyone. But I feel closer to being able to now, but it's still impossible for me to imagine talking about it.

I've oriented myself about what he really was doing with *that*. I sorta get it now. I still do not know however how to orient about it inside myself. Other problems in life have taken my focus off it for now so that's helped but I will still have to deal with this.

Right now the plan is, I've been given a reference to a couples therapy site, and it looks great because it says the work starts with laying down the foundations for each party separately before working together.

That's exactly what's needed here.

I just don't know if I could talk about "the problem" there either. If I can trust they keep it confidential in a one-on-one talk, then maybe.