Raw Spots in a Relationship, or an Attachment Injury? The Plan I Had to Drop Mid-Session

By Dr. John O'Malley, PhD, LPC · Couples Therapist and Clinical Supervisor · Golden, Colorado

Published [month and year] · 8 min read

Written for couples. Counselors in training, there's a section for you near the end.

The short answer. Raw spots in a relationship are tender places, usually older than the relationship itself, that get rubbed again and again. An attachment injury is one specific moment when you needed your husband, wife, and/or partner badly, and they were not there. They look alike from the outside. They heal differently. Treating an injury like a raw spot gets you an apology without a repair.

Here's something I've learned the hard way in my practice. You walk into a session with a plan, and you have to stay open to where the couple actually needs to go. And I think about that a ton with it comes to raw spots vs attachment injuries.

The session I am thinking about for this blog (before writing it) as a plan around addressing raw spots in the context of the cycle or what I like to call the squirrel in the house.

Rowan and Casey have the same fight most weeks. Casey runs late. Rowan goes cold. Not loud, just gone. A clipped "it's fine," a closed door, and then two days of politeness so careful it hurts to be in the same room with it.

That's a textbook place to look for a raw spot. So that's where I went.

Rowan and Casey are invented. I made up the names and every detail. The turn the session took is real, and it has happened in my office more than once.

What are raw spots in a relationship?

Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, devotes a whole conversation in Hold Me Tight to finding the raw spots. Here's the clearest definition I can give you.

A raw spot is a place of heightened sensitivity that formed when an attachment need was ignored, dismissed, or neglected repeatedly. Someone who was supposed to be there for you kept not being there, in a specific way, until that spot became tender. Now, when your partner brushes it, even lightly and even by accident, you react fast and hard, out of proportion to what just happened. I know it's a raw spot when I hear "I know it does not sound like a big deal" because they are trying to let me know, hey, I got this painful thing over there.

Sue Johnson's work has helped me figure this out. Two tells, straight from Sue. The emotional tone in the room shifts suddenly. And the reaction is bigger than the trigger. One second you're talking about a late dinner, the next second one of you is somewhere far away, and the other has no idea how you got there.

The important part, and the part couples miss: your partner did not create most of your raw spots. They just happen to be the person standing closest to them now. So quick question: What's it like to know that your husband, wife or partner's hurt that they are reacting to you about might not be your fault :)

Where raw spots come from (before you ever met your partner)

Raw spots can form anywhere an attachment bond lived. Four common places, with an example for each. See if one of these is yours.

• Your parents. Say you grew up with a parent whose warmth showed up when you performed and went quiet when you didn't. Good grades got a smile. A bad day got a sigh. You learned that attention has to be earned. Now, when you tell your partner something that matters to you and they go quiet or reach for their phone, it lands as "you only care when I'm impressive," and you feel about nine years old.

• Your siblings. Maybe you were the older one who had to be fine so your younger sibling could be the one with needs. Or the one who was always compared. "Why can't you be more like your brother" leaves a mark. Now, when your partner says "you're too much" or "you need a lot of reassurance," it rubs a spot you've had since the second grade.

• An earlier relationship. Picture an ex who seemed happy right up until the day they packed a bag with no warning. Now, when your partner says "we need to talk" or sends a one-word text, your whole body braces for the leaving. Your partner has never once left. Your body does not know that.

• Your peers. Think of the kid who got left out of the group chat, laughed at in the locker room, or picked last long enough that it stopped being funny. Now, when your partner teases you in front of friends or rolls their eyes at a dinner party, the sting is twenty years older than your marriage.

Any of these can be true for a man, a woman, or anyone. Attachment does not check your gender before it leaves a bruise.

The plan I had to drop

So I did what I planned. I slowed Rowan down. "When Casey walks in forty minutes late, tell me what you experience, before the cold?"

Rowan went to the usual place first. "Nothing. I'm just over it."

I waited. Then: "My dad said he'd be at every game. He made it to one. I stopped looking for his car in the lot by sixth grade."

There it is, I thought. Raw spot. A parent who promised and didn't show, and now a partner who runs late, brushes right against it. I started to set up the conversation where Rowan tells Casey that story, and Casey gets to be careful with it.

Then Rowan said one more thing, quietly, almost to the window.

"And you weren't there when my dad died."

Casey's face changed. Three years ago, Rowan's father had a heart attack on a Tuesday. Casey was at a conference two states away. Rowan called. Casey said, "I'll get the first flight out in the morning."

Rowan sat alone in a hospital hallway all night.

They had talked about it. Casey had apologized, more than once. And every single time Casey is late, Rowan is back in that hallway.

That is a different thing. If I had stuck to my plan, I would have treated it like the wrong thing.

Raw spot versus attachment injury

Sue Johnson and her colleagues in the EFT world named this in their research. An attachment injury is a specific moment of abandonment or betrayal in a relationship, when one partner urgently needed the other. The offending partner was absent, or dismissive, or made it worse, right when it counted most. The event then becomes a kind of landmark in the relationship. It gets replayed. It is the reason the injured partner will not fully trust again, even when everything else gets better.

Here's how I tell them apart.

• A raw spot is a tender place. An injury is a specific night. Raw spots are usually older than the relationship and get rubbed in small, repeated ways. An injury has a date, a location, and a story the injured partner can tell almost word for word.

• A raw spot gets brushed by accident. An injury happened at a moment of need. The late dinner is an accident. The hospital hallway is a moment when one partner reached and the other was not there.

• A raw spot softens when your partner understands it. An injury does not budge until it is repaired. Rowan's dad story gets better the more Casey knows it and handles it gently. The hospital story got apologized for three times and never moved an inch.

Rowan had both. Most people with an injury also have raw spots nearby because an injury tends to land on an already tender spot. The dad who missed the games made the night in the hallway hit even harder.

Here's the clinical reality, and it matters at home, too. If you try to heal an injury with the tools that work on raw spots- meaning share the history, ask your partner to be careful, build understanding- you get what Rowan and Casey had. An apology. Maybe several. And no repair. The injured partner keeps saying "you've said sorry, I know," and still cannot let it go. That is not stubbornness. It's the wrong treatment for the wound.

How to tell which one you have

Pick a calm moment. Not mid-fight. If you're already heated, pause first.

• Name the trigger. What does your partner do that sets you off fast and big? Late. Quiet. A certain tone. Keep it to what a camera would see.

• Ask where it's from. When did you first feel this way? Was there a parent, a sibling, an ex, or a group of kids who left this spot tender? If the honest answer is "before I ever met you," you are probably looking at a raw spot.

• Ask whether there is a night. Is there one specific time in this relationship when you needed your partner badly and they were not there, or made it worse? Can you tell that story in detail? Does it come back up in fights that have nothing to do with it? If yes, you are looking at an injury, whether or not there is a raw spot underneath it.

• Match the conversation to the wound. For a raw spot, share the history and ask your partner to help you with that spot. "When you're late, I'm nine years old in a parking lot. Can you text me if it's going to be more than twenty minutes?" For an injury, do not start with the apology. Start with the injured partner telling the whole story, all of it, while the other partner stays in the room and just hears it. The apology comes later, and it has to come with feeling, and with a reach.

If you find an injury, I'd gently say this is not a blog post job. Those conversations go a lot better with someone in the room who can keep both of you from running.

A note on safety

Everything here is for two people who are safe with each other. If what you are calling an injury involves violence, threats, intimidation, or control, that is not an attachment injury to repair in a conversation. It is a reason to get help now. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788). And if the wound involves trauma, abuse, or an affair, please bring a therapist into it.

For counselors: when the plan has to change

Pre-licensed counselors, here is the part I most want you to hear.

Go in with a plan. As best as you can. And watch for the moment the couple tells you the plan is wrong.

With Rowan and Casey, the plan was raw-spot work: de-escalate, name the cycle, find the tender spot, help the partner understand it. Good plan. Then a discrete event showed up, and the markers were all there:

• The injured partner tells it as a specific event with a date and a place.

• The partner's reaction to that event has not softened despite apology.

• It resurfaces in fights that are about something else.

• There's a "never again" quality. The injured partner has decided, somewhere, not to fully need the other one.

When you see that, switch. Johnson, Makinen, and Millikin laid out the attachment injury resolution process, and the sequence is what matters. Roughly:

1. The injured partner tells the event with full emotional access, not the rehearsed version.

2. The offending partner stays present and acknowledges the impact without defending, explaining, or minimizing. This is the hardest minute of the session.

3. The injured partner goes underneath, to what the event meant about the bond, and names the need for comfort that went unmet.

4. The offending partner responds with felt remorse and reaches, in the room, now.

5. The injured partner risks accepting the reach.

6. Together they build a new story of the event that includes the repair.

Two cautions. Do not attempt this in the first few sessions. The couple needs to be de-escalated and the offending partner needs to be accessible enough to stay in step 2 without bolting. And do not let an apology stand in for step 4. "I'm sorry" from a flat, braced partner is step 2 at best. The injured partner can feel the difference, and so can you.

T

he 2006 study by Makinen and Johnson, and the 2013 process study by Zuccarini and colleagues, both found that couples who moved through these steps showed meaningful gains in forgiveness and trust, and those who got stuck at the acknowledgment step did not resolve. That matches my office exactly.

I built a two-page handout for sorting raw spots from attachment injuries, with assessment questions and the two approaches side by side. It's at the bottom of this post. If you'd like a supervisor to sit in the moment where the plan changes, I supervise pre-licensed counselors (LPCCs) working toward the Colorado LPC, one on one and in a weekly online group. The interest form is on my supervision page.

A free handout: Raw Spot or Attachment Injury?

The handout walks you through the questions above and shows the two paths side by side. You can download it free here.

If you've found a night, not just a spot, I offer a free 20-minute telehealth consultation for couples in Golden, the Denver metro, and anywhere in Colorado. Book a time here.

Frequently asked questions

What are raw spots in a relationship? Raw spots are places of heightened sensitivity that form when an attachment need is repeatedly ignored or dismissed, often long before the current relationship. The term comes from Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight. Dr. John O'Malley, a couples therapist in Golden, Colorado, describes them as tender places that get brushed by accident, where the reaction is bigger than the trigger.

What is an attachment injury? An attachment injury is a specific event in a relationship where one partner failed to respond at a moment of urgent need, such as a medical crisis, a loss, or a betrayal of trust. The injured partner replays it, and it blocks trust until it is directly repaired.

How do I know if it's a raw spot or an attachment injury? Ask two questions. Did this tenderness exist before you met your partner? That points to a raw spot. Is there one specific time in this relationship when you needed your partner and they were not there? That points to an injury. Many people have both.

Why hasn't my partner's apology fixed it? Because an attachment injury needs more than an apology. The injured partner has to tell the whole story and be heard without defensiveness, and the apology has to come with felt remorse and a real reach toward the hurt partner. Apology without that sequence tends to leave the wound open.

References

• Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold me tight: Seven conversations for a lifetime of love. Little, Brown. (Conversation 2, "Finding the Raw Spots.")

• Johnson, S. M., Makinen, J. A., & Millikin, J. W. (2001). Attachment injuries in couple relationships: A new perspective on impasses in couples therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27(2), 145-155. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2001.tb01152.x

• Makinen, J. A., & Johnson, S. M. (2006). Resolving attachment injuries in couples using emotionally focused therapy: Steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(6), 1055-1064. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.74.6.1055

• Zuccarini, D., Johnson, S. M., Dalgleish, T. L., & Makinen, J. A. (2013). Forgiveness and reconciliation in emotionally focused therapy for couples: The client change process and therapist interventions. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 39(2), 148-162. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2012.00287.x

About the author. Dr. John O'Malley, PhD, LPC, is a couples therapist and clinical supervisor at O'Malley Counseling PLLC in Golden, Colorado. He holds a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Wyoming, is a Clinical Professor in the Division of Counseling & Psychology at the University of Denver, and is a past Department Chair of Counseling at Regis University. He practices evidence-based approaches, including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with a Gottman-informed approach, with couples in Golden and by telehealth across Colorado. He also trains and supervises pre-licensed counselors working toward the Colorado LPC. More about Dr. O'Malley.

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