When the Bar Keeps Moving: Relationship Lessons From a Society on Edge
We often think the problems in our relationships are unique to us. But what if the same patterns we fight about at home are also shaping the way our society reacts to crises, politics, and even what we see online?
This past week reminded me of something I hear from many men in couples work: “No matter what I do, it feels like it’s never enough.” The bar keeps moving. You do the thing your partner asked for and then it’s criticized because of how you did it. Over time, that double bind — “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” leaves both people resentful, exhausted, and unheard.
And here’s the connection: that same cycle is happening at a collective level.
Emotional Reactivity and the Nervous System
Our nervous systems were never designed to process the sheer volume of shocking, violent, and emotionally loaded images we now carry in our pockets. In The Body Keeps the Score (2014), Bessel van der Kolk explains that the body responds to trauma not with logic, but with survival reflexes. Similarly, Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) notes that constant activation drains the brain’s “body budget,” leaving us primed to overreact.
That’s why many of us are walking around at an emotional baseline of 8 or 9 out of 10. From that place, even the smallest trigger — in a relationship or online — pushes us into an explosion. And when we’re activated, nuance disappears. We scan for threat, assign blame, and slap on labels that fit the story in our head.
Projection, Labeling, and the Double Bind
In couples work, labeling is one of the fastest ways to shut down connection. Instead of sharing “I felt hurt when…” we jump to “You’re selfish” or “You’re controlling.” It’s not that those words are always untrue, but they are survival strategies — shortcuts our brain takes so we don’t have to sit in discomfort.
Family systems theorist Murray Bowen (1978) called this projection: putting our anxiety onto someone else so we don’t have to face it in ourselves. John Gottman (1999) observed it in couples as gridlock: patterns that keep repeating because neither person can move beyond blame.
The same is happening socially. One group demands recognition, while simultaneously deflecting accountability. The bar keeps moving, and both sides feel trapped. It’s two wings on the same plane — flapping furiously, but going nowhere.
The Weight of Overfunctioning
Here’s where empathy comes in. Many of you reading this are carrying far too much. You’re scanning the world for every injustice that matches your values, and then carrying the weight of how others respond. That is a lot for one nervous system to hold.
In relationships, we call this overfunctioning — taking on more emotional labor, responsibility, and worry than is sustainable. Harriet Lerner (2005) describes how overfunctioners believe they’re “holding things together,” but often end up exhausted, resentful, and disconnected. The same dynamic applies when we try to hold the moral or emotional weight of an entire society.
It doesn’t matter what side you’re on; the outcome is the same. You’re left drained, angry, and bewildered by why others don’t carry the load the way you do.
Attunement and Discernment
So what’s the alternative? In couples work, the shift happens when partners practice attunement: noticing the data points of an interaction without collapsing into assumptions. For example, my partner says “good night” and shuts the door. My trauma-trained nervous system may read that as rejection but another perspective is simply, “They were tired.”
This is discernment. It doesn’t mean ignoring pain or dismissing injustice. It means slowing down long enough to separate what I saw from what I felt and what I concluded. That skill is rare, but it’s the muscle that moves us out of survival mode and into connection.
Bringing It Back to Relationships
The truth is, what we see playing out on our phones is not separate from what happens in our marriages, our families, or our friendships. The endless raising of the bar. The labeling. The gridlock. The exhaustion of overfunctioning. The inability to hold space for nuance.
But if we can practice discernment at home — noticing when we’re reacting to an old wound, slowing down to name our feelings without weaponizing them — we can also begin to shift how we show up in the world.
Because whether it’s in your living room or on your timeline, the principle is the same: projection fuels division. Attunement heals it.
References
Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice.
Feldman Barrett, L. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.
Gottman, J. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.
Lerner, H. (2005). The Dance of Anger.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.
Notice where the bar is being raised in your own relationships.
Notice when you’re carrying more than your share. And notice how those same patterns play out in the wider world. Because the change doesn’t start “out there” — it begins in how we relate to the people closest to us.