Reflections on Couples, Bridges, and the Paradox of Connections
Dr. Ofra Ayalon
NORD CENTER January 2026
Abstract:
Bridges of Connection: EFT and the BASIC Ph Model
Dr. Ofra Ayalon explores the complex dynamics of romantic partnerships by viewing relationships as evolving paths rather than static goals. The text integrates Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) with the BASIC Ph model to explain how couples can bridge emotional divides caused by fear and routine. While attachment theory highlights the universal human need for security and belonging, the BASIC Ph framework identifies the diverse ways individuals process stress through belief, emotion, social interaction, imagination, cognition, or physical activity. Conflict often arises because partners speak different coping languages, leading to feelings of abandonment or being overwhelmed. By fostering genuine curiosity and recognizing these distinct regulatory styles, couples can transform their relationship from a state of erosion into a living bridge of continuous discovery. Through various life stages and crises, the author emphasizes that maintaining a vibrant connection requires both a safe foundation and a willingness to see one’s partner with fresh eyes.
Reflections on Couples, Bridges, and the Paradox of Connections
Dr. Ofra Ayalon
NORD CENTER January 2026
After many years of working with couples, I have come to realize something that is both simple and complex: most people do not enter a relationship with the intention of fighting. They come to find a home. Still, I meet couples who find themselves standing on opposite sides of the abyss, loving, hurt, tired, and don’t always know how to really meet again.
“A Bridge” is a powerful metaphor. A bridge connects two ends of a road across an abyss, but it is not just a technical structure that allows for safe passage. A living bridge invites walking: step by step, sometimes confidently, sometimes hesitantly. It connects the familiar with the unknown, the past and the future, loneliness and connection, fear and courage.
This is how I see a relationship: not as a static situation, not as a destination that you reach and stay in, but as a path. A path that has periods of closeness and distance, of certainty and confusion, of joy and fatigue. A path that requires not only love, but also a willingness to keep going.
Many start a couple relationship with great hopes: “It won’t happen to us”, “We’ll be different”, “Love will be enough”. At some point, almost unwittingly, they discover the gap between the dream and everyday life: overload, burnout, silences, recurring fights, and nameless fears. More than once, I heard these words in my therapy clinic: “Something has been broken between us,” and I think to myself that it is not necessarily broken, but has just worn out. What wears out, many times, is not only trust or desire. What eroded is the curious look to see each other beyond daily routine, the ability to see the partner not only through familiar lenses but through what can still be discovered.
I see how bitter fights aren’t really about the dishes in the sink, about money, or about an interest in someone else. Beneath the surface, there is almost always a simpler and much more painful question: “Am I important to you?” Are you there for me when it’s hard? “Am I alone here, or do we have a ‘we’ to lean on?”
If we look on couple relationship through Sue Johnson’s Emotion-Focused Couple Theory-EFT (2004), we find out that usually partners are expecting each other to be anchors of security. EFT is designed to help partners understand and express emotions and strengthen emotional bonds. When this sense of security is undermined, primordial fears arise: fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of being insignificant, fear of being left alone. Regretfully, such fears are not usually expressed as a candid request for closeness. They turn into anger, criticism, morbid silence, or estrangement. Even when both partners are scared and desperately wish to regain the lost sense of security, their communication fails because they use different ways to express it.
This is where the BASIC Ph model (Ayalon & Lahad, 2000) comes into play. This model proposes to identify six universal channels of regulating distress: Belief/meaning system, Affect – emotional awareness, Social and family ties, Imagination, Cognition, and Physical activity.
Some rely on faith or meaning (Belief system).
Some need to speak and express emotions (Affect).
Some need people around them (Society and family).
Some find solace in imagination, in creativity (imagination).
Some turn to thinking, analysis, and planning (Cognition).
Some relax through movement or action (Physical activity).
When partners are convinced that their path is “the only right one”, a painful cycle is created: one feels abandoned, the other feels overwhelmed or attacked, and they both feel that they are not being seen.
There is no one right way to cope with stress. Each person builds a unique mix of coping methods throughout their life. But in stressful situations, especially when the relationship itself feels threatened, most of us tend to cling to what we are most familiar with and sometimes get stuck there.
This is often the root of marital tragedy: From the point of view of attachment, they are basically asking for the same thing: to be confident in the relationship. From the point of view of BASIC Ph coping resources, they do this in completely different ways. When each is convinced that their path is the “right one”, a vicious cycle is created: one feels abandoned, the other feels attacked, and they both feel that they are not really being seen.
A relationship in distress is almost always a twofold situation: on the one hand, it is a threat to the security of the relationship; on the other hand, it is perceived as a burden. Both partners experience overload and erosion of their regulatory systems and personal resources.
This is exactly the healing power in connecting the two approaches:
The EFT approach helps us understand what we are really fighting for: our relationship, security, and our place in the heart of the other.
The BASIC Ph approach helps us understand how each partner aspires for meaning: by using the body, applying cognitive strategies, trying to express emotions, turning to faith or religion, asking for help from others, or flight into imagination.
When these two methods are combined, deep couple therapeutic work is possible: Not just asking, “How do you feel about me?” But also: “How do you try to hold yourself in tough times?” Not only: “What are you afraid of in a relationship?” But also: “What resources do you have, and where are they stuck now?” Instead of seeing the differences between the partners as a problem, we can start to see a map of different ways to cope, a map of needs, and a map of possibilities for mutual growth.
Here, curiosity is key: not curiosity about “who’s to blame,” but curiosity about how each of us sees the world, and how we can build a bridge between us that respects both languages.
The question recurs over and over again: What makes it possible to get out of this cycle? What brings movement back into the relationship? The answer is not a technique but a mental attitude: the ability to remain curious, not an intrusive vein of curiosity, but genuine curiosity, the kind that agrees to say, “I don’t know everything about you, I don’t know everything about us. Maybe there’s something else here that I haven’t seen yet.” When there is no curiosity, confidence becomes stagnant. And when there is only curiosity without security, there is no home. A living relationship needs both.
Three scenes from Life as a Couple
She’s Fighting, He’s Gone
They’ve been married for twelve years. They have two children. When they enter the room, you can almost feel the tension in the air even before they even sit down. She speaks quickly, in a charged voice:
“I feel like I’m alone in all this. I ask, I beg, I get angry, and nothing moves.”
He sits squeezed slightly, looking aside:
“I don’t have the strength to fight all the time.
Everything I do is never enough.”
From the point of view of attachment, this is a familiar dance: she fights for closeness, he withdraws to protect himself. The more she increases the pressure, the farther away he goes. The farther he goes, the stronger she fights. Both of them, each in their own way, try not to lose the connection.
In the lenses of BASIC Ph, an encounter between two different regulating styles is revealed: She operates mainly through emotion and speech; he operates through silence. Each of them is stuck in a channel that is familiar to them, and each of them experiences the other as impossible.
Instead of starting another conversation about “who’s right”, they’re asked to do a simple exercise: stand in front of each other, and move together in the room at a very slow pace, without talking. Just pay attention to each other, who’s leading, who’s following, who’s in a hurry, who’s stopping. It is embarrassing at the start, then it’s a little funny, and then, slowly, something changes. He discovers that he tends to slow down and wait. She discovers that she tends to pull forward. For a moment, without words, they meet their familiar pattern, not through struggle, but through a shared experience.
A new question appears:
Not “Why do you always run away?”
but rather: “What happens to your face when I start pushing?”
Not “Why do you always attack?”
but rather: “What are you afraid of at these moments?”
This is not a dramatic breakthrough. This is the beginning of a movement.
“We’re doing well, but something is dead.”
They sit next to each other, neat, polite. There is no overt anger between them. They speak the language of “management”: who picks up the children, who is in charge of the bills, who remembers to make an appointment with the doctor. Everything works. Still, something in the room feels empty. “We hardly fight,” she says, “but hardly touch”. “We’re a good team,” he adds, “just… there’s nothing there.” There was no big crisis. No betrayal. No drama. It happened slowly, like a color that faded without you noticing. There is no storm here, but there is no life either. The relationship is safe but distant. There is no risk, and therefore there is no renewal. In terms of BASIC Ph, there is a clear dominance of the channel of thinking and functioning, and a gradual blocking of the channels of emotion, imagination, and play. Both are responsible, functioning people, and both have learned, each in his or her own way, that there is no need to feel too much.
The work starts with small things: a short writing about a good memory from the beginning of the relationship. Choosing a metaphoric Tandoo card that represents how each feel today leads to a conversation about who we were when we fell in love. At first, it feels strange, almost artificial. And then, slowly, something opens. She discovers that she misses being “not just a mother and a housekeeper.” He discovers that he misses her, but is afraid to request more closeness. And here the curiosity is quiet and gentle: what else is there in you that I haven’t seen in a long time?” What else is alive in me that I forgot to bring out?” And sometimes that’s all it takes to start bringing life back:
Not everything is dead. Sometimes it just has fallen asleep.
After the Birth of the First Child
They arrive tired, very tired. The body is heavy, sleep is lacking, and patience is short. They both love their baby endlessly, and both feel lost.
“‘I feel transparent,” she says. “I feel like I don’t have a place,” he says.
This is a classic moment of a double crisis: a crisis of communication, as the focus of the relationship has changed, and a crisis of coping resources, because the body and mind are under great strain. It is easy to start talking about “who is doing more“, but underneath lurks deeper questions: “Am I still important to you? ” Are we still ‘us’?”, “Who am I now in the midst of all this?”
The work here is not to restore the relationship to what it was, because it is no longer possible. But rather to build a new relationship, suitable for this stage of life, a new marital contract, a new definition of who we are now. When it starts to happen, even a little, a renewed sense of partnership is born within the common fatigue.
Intimacy as an Ongoing Discovery
Many people think that intimacy means “getting to know your partner deeply”. But perhaps the deeper truth is that intimacy is not a state of knowing but an attitude of openness. Because people change, and life changes us. If we cling to an old image of the person in front of us, without noticing, we stop really meeting them.
It can be said: love needs security, but a living relationship also needs curiosity. Without security, there is no home, but without curiosity, the house becomes a place where doors are closed.
The attachment approach teaches us how to build confidence. The language of resources teaches us how humans sustain themselves in the world. This workshop aims to enlighten something simple and profound: to remind us that a relationship is a journey of continuous discovery. Not a pursuit after thrills, not to destabilize the situation, but rather to allow two people to remain alive for each other.
Maybe that is the essence: a good relationship is not a place where we “arrived.” It’s a place where we continue to walk together, sometimes slowly, sometimes tired, sometimes happily.
As long as there is movement, and as long as there is a willingness to meet, the bridge remains alive.
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