Functional Dissociation in Couples: When Love Goes on Autopilot
Saturday, June 28, 2025
So the two of you aren’t fighting. You’re not flirting either.
You’re managing schedules. Paying bills.
Swapping logistical texts about Trader Joe’s runs and whose turn it is to get the kid with strep. You share a bed, but not a nervous system.
Welcome to functional dissociation—the quiet purgatory where many modern couples live.
No shouting matches. No passion. Just… performance.
And therapists are finally catching up.
What Is Functional Dissociation?
In trauma theory, dissociation describes a disconnection from the self—thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations. It’s how the brain says, “Too much.”
But we’re now seeing that this coping style doesn’t stay locked in individual experience. It becomes the ambient weather system in a relationship.
Functional dissociation in couples is the mutual, adaptive numbing that lets a relationship survive—but not thrive. It's not classic avoidant attachment.
It's not stonewalling. It's more like… ghosting, only together.
The Couple That Drove Itself Into the Ground (And Still Carpooled)
They still showed up to their daughter’s dance recital. Still did Sunday laundry. Still texted: “Can you pick up oat milk?”
But emotionally? Absent.
This is the slow erosion that couples therapists are beginning to treat not as detachment, but as co-dissociation—a trauma-bonded arrangement of numb cooperation.
Inspired by Janina Fisher’s (2017) work on structural dissociation and Pat Ogden’s sensorimotor lens (Ogden et al., 2006), therapists now see these couples not as unmotivated—but as neurologically split. The thinking brain does the talking, while the feeling brain hides in the basement.
How We Got Here: The Cultural Engine Behind Numb Partnerships
It’s not just personal trauma. Cultural trauma matters too.
We live in what Bessel van der Kolk (2014) might call a hyperfunctional culture—rewarding productivity over presence.
Couples who are functionally dissociated often excel at survival: they raise children, earn income, avoid blowups. But they’ve quietly amputated their relational nervous systems to do so.
This isn’t "falling out of love." It’s falling out of a felt sense.
Is This You? Signs of a Functionally Dissociated Relationship
You don’t fight—but you don’t connect.
Conversations are administrative, not emotional.
You touch each other less… or only mechanically.
You feel vaguely “not here” when you’re together.
Emotional bids are missed, ignored, or misunderstood.
This isn't coldness. It's conservation.
The Neurobiology Behind It
According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (2011), safety is the foundation of relational engagement. If one or both partners carry unresolved trauma or chronic stress, the nervous system defaults to dorsal vagal shutdown: freeze mode.
Couples get stuck here together—what somatic therapist Peter Levine (1997) might call a “functional freeze.” They’re not leaving. They’re not living. They’re buffering.
When Couples Become Two Nervous Systems in Separate Rooms
This is the somatic opposite of attunement. In secure attachment, one partner’s nervous system helps co-regulate the other.
In functional dissociation, both systems go offline. There’s no co-regulation, only parallel shutdowns. It’s a relational stillbirth, with tax returns.
Wrap-Up: Is Functional Dissociation the New Divorce?
Not quite. But it is a kind of separation—one that often flies under the radar until one partner finally says, “I can’t do this anymore. I feel nothing.”
Functional dissociation is the ghost in the marriage machine. It’s not about hatred. It’s about hollowing out.
And contemporary couples therapy must evolve to meet it.
They’re not yelling. They’re not even talking.
They show up to therapy like two respectable coworkers who once got drunk, and hooked up after the holiday party and never mentioned it again.
But now, the energy is flat. Eye contact is rare. Touch feels choreographed.
You can’t emotionally coach people who have unplugged their nervous systems.
Welcome to the clinical frontier of functional dissociation in couples.
Why Traditional Talk Therapy Sometimes Fails Here
Cognitive interventions assume there's a self available to do the work.
But in functionally dissociated couples, neither partner has access to their emotional core. It’s not resistance—it’s absence.
You can ask them what they feel, and they’ll look at you like you just asked them to breathe underwater.
This is where trauma-informed, body-based approaches matter.
A New Therapeutic Map: From Fight/Flight to Freeze/Fawn
Couples in conflict often get stuck in fight/flight cycles. But functionally dissociated couples live in freeze or fawn.
Freeze: emotional withdrawal, shutdown, low energy
Fawn: compliance, overfunctioning, people-pleasing
These states are adaptive, not pathological. But they block intimacy. The nervous system, not the partner, becomes the enemy.
Key Clinical Interventions:
Sensorimotor and Somatic Tracking
Borrowing from Ogden’s sensorimotor psychotherapy, I like to track what happens in the body before, during, and after a moment of blankness. The freeze can’t be argued out of. It must be felt through..
Try: “What’s happening in your body right now as you sit next to them?”
Micro-Attunement Practice
Small, shared, bodily experiences: hand-holding, synchronized breathing, side-by-side walking. These rebuild co-regulation in the limbic system without requiring cognitive intimacy first.
Polyvagal-Informed Rituals
Use rhythm, predictability, and gentle eye contact to coax the ventral vagal system back online. Think: daily check-ins, five-minute mirroring games, or shared music that invites a nervous system shift.
Narrative Integration (Later Stage)
Only after somatic safety returns can narrative processing begin. Here, trauma-informed dialogue tools can help reconstruct the emotional scaffolding of the relationship.
When One Partner Dissociates and the Other Doesn't
This is harder. Often, one partner "goes numb" while the other chases connection, which creates a pursuer-distancer cycle.
But instead of labeling it avoidant, consider: Is it dorsal vagal collapse?
Teach the attuned partner to offer co-regulation, not criticism.
Think: “I can see you’re overwhelmed. Can I just sit with you?”
Cultural Translation: Treating Numbness in the Age of Hyperfunction
In Western culture, emotional self-sufficiency is prized.
Many couples interpret numbness as a personal failure or a sign the relationship is over. But what if it’s just the nervous system begging for help?
Functional dissociation just might be the most invisible epidemic in couples therapy today.
Final Thoughts: Reviving the Relational Nervous System
You can’t fix functional dissociation with date nights and gratitude lists.
This is limbic damage.
The good news? The nervous system is plastic. It can learn safety again.
But only if the therapy stops asking, “How do you feel?” and starts asking, “Where are you now—in your body, in your breath, in your self?”
That is, perhaps , a new clinical beginning.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
Sources (APA Style):
Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors: Overcoming internal self-alienation. Routledge.
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.