What to Do When Your Partner Cries, According to a Therapist

By Rachael Maher, MS, LCPC, LMFT

There’s a quiet moment that happens in a lot of relationships. One person starts to cry, and the other person freezes — or shuts down, or gets frustrated, or tries to make it stop as fast as possible. And suddenly, instead of feeling closer, both people feel more alone.

What’s Actually Happening

When someone cries in a relationship, they’re usually not trying to be dramatic. They’re trying to be reached. Underneath the tears is almost always something softer: Do I matter to you right now? Are you still here with me? I don’t want to feel alone in this.

But that’s not always how it lands on the other side. The partner receiving it might feel overwhelmed, unsure what to do, or like they’re somehow failing — even pressured to fix something they can’t name. So they pull back, and now both people are stranded in a painful moment neither of them wanted.

Why Tears Can Feel So Hard to Sit With

For some people, tears naturally pull them closer. For others, they feel intense or even a little threatening — particularly if emotions weren’t handled safely or steadily in the homes they grew up in. So instead of moving toward their partner, they move away. Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know how to stay.

The Loop Couples Get Stuck In

Here’s where things spiral. One partner gets emotional and reaches for connection. The other feels overwhelmed and pulls back. The first partner feels more alone, so the emotions get bigger, and the second partner shuts down further. Both people end up stuck in a loop that feels awful — and neither of them chose it.

The problem isn’t the tears. It’s that the message inside the tears isn’t getting through.

What Actually Helps

Tears don’t need to be fixed. They need to be met. Sometimes the most powerful shift is surprisingly simple — rather than “Why are you crying?” or “Calm down” or “What do you want me to do?“, try something like: “Hey, I can see this is really hitting something” or “I’m here — you don’t have to go through this alone” or “Help me understand what’s coming up for you.”

You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to stay.

The Truth About Tears

Tears aren’t a sign that something is going wrong in your relationship. Most of the time, they’re a sign that something important is trying to come closer. And when those moments are met with care instead of distance, something shifts — people soften, walls come down, and connection starts to rebuild, not despite the hard moment, but sometimes because of it.

8 Ways Parents Accidentally Disconnect From Their Adult Children (And What to Do Instead)

By Rachael Maher, MS, LCPC, LMFT

Most parents deeply love their kids — and that doesn’t change when those kids grow up.

But love alone doesn’t always create connection. Some of the most well-intentioned responses can leave adult children feeling unseen or alone, not because their parents don’t care, but because the response missed what was actually needed in the moment.

There’s a phrase that comes up often in therapy: connect before you correct. And this is usually where things go off track.

1. Jumping Straight to Advice

When your adult child brings you a problem, the instinct to fix it is strong — and it comes from love. But more often than not, they’re not looking for solutions yet. They’re looking to feel understood first.

When a child says “Work has been so overwhelming lately,” a response like “Maybe you should start applying for other jobs” is technically helpful. But what they may have needed to hear first was simply: “That sounds like a lot to carry.”

2. Trying to Turn It Positive Too Quickly

Offering perspective isn’t wrong — but timing matters enormously. When someone hasn’t felt heard yet, a silver lining lands as dismissal, not encouragement.

“I’m really struggling being home with the baby all day” followed by “Well, at least you get to be home with your baby” doesn’t feel supportive — it feels like their experience is being redirected away. Connection starts with joining someone in what they’re feeling, not moving them out of it.

3. Minimizing Through Comparison

Comparing struggles often comes from genuine experience — parents have lived through hard things and want to offer perspective. But it can unintentionally communicate that what your child is going through doesn’t quite measure up.

“I’m stressed about money” met with “Trust me, you have it way easier than we did” doesn’t land as reassurance. It lands as: your stress doesn’t count.

4. Making It About You

This one is deeply human — and it still gets in the way. When a parent’s own feelings take over the conversation, the adult child quietly shifts from being supported to doing the supporting.

If your child says “I’m thinking about ending my relationship” and the response is “Oh no — I really liked them. This is so hard for me,” they’re now managing your emotions instead of being held through their own.

5. Using Humor to Deflect

Humor can absolutely be connective — but not before pain has been acknowledged. Light joking too early in a hard conversation can feel like avoidance, even when it’s meant with warmth.

“I feel like I’m failing at everything lately” followed by “Well, at least you’re consistent!” — even said gently — can close a door that the other person was trying to open.

6. Seeing Them Through an Outdated Lens

This is one of the more nuanced challenges of parenting adult children. You have a long history with them, and a mental file of who they’ve been across their whole life. But part of the work now is updating that file.

What reads as “they’ve always been so sensitive” may actually be “they feel anxious when things are chaotic” — a different story, one that belongs to who they are now rather than who they were at twelve.

Adult children often feel the pain of being seen through an old version of themselves. Connection in this season means genuine curiosity about who they’re becoming.

7. Shutting Down or Changing the Subject

Sometimes a parent goes quiet, or pivots, not because they don’t care — but because they don’t know what to do with what they’re hearing.

“I’ve been feeling really depressed lately” followed by “...Did you see that new restaurant opened downtown?” isn’t indifference. But it can feel like it. The message received is often: you’re on your own with this.

8. Letting Your Anxiety Drive the Conversation

When your child is struggling, it can bring up real fear, urgency, and helplessness. Those feelings make sense. But when they take over, the conversation shifts in a way that isn’t helpful to either person.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing with my career” met with “Okay, but what’s your plan? You need a plan. This is stressing me out” means your child ends up reassuring you — and their actual need quietly disappears.

Parents and Children Move Through Different Chapters

Something that doesn’t come up enough: children move through distinct developmental stages, and parents don’t show up equally well in all of them. Some parents are extraordinary with young children. Some really come alive with teenagers. Some do their most connected, meaningful parenting once their kids are adults.

And some parents struggle in certain seasons — not from lack of love, but because the skills that chapter requires don’t come naturally to them.

I worked with a couple where the husband’s mother was repeatedly crossing boundaries — reorganizing their home, rearranging furniture, even inviting people over without asking while she was visiting. It was embarrassing for him and deeply frustrating for his partner, who felt invisible in her own home.

From the outside, the path forward looked obvious: set firmer limits.

But he had a genuinely hard time getting there. As we talked, he remembered that between the ages of six and eleven, his mother had actually been an exceptional parent — present, attuned, consistent. In that chapter of his life, she really showed up.

In his adult life, and especially in his partnered life, she wasn’t showing up the same way.

Both of those things were true at once.

Holding that complexity — she was good in some chapters and she’s struggling in this one — helped him move toward clearer boundaries, not from a place of anger, but from something more grounded.

The Bigger Picture

If you’re a parent reading this, none of it is about being perfect.

It’s about slowing down just enough to remember that connection comes first. Correction, guidance, and perspective all land better — and are actually received — after your child feels seen, understood, and emotionally met.

You don’t have to say the perfect thing. You just have to show up in a way that tells them: I’m here with you.

Why Fighting About Money Might Actually Help Your Relationship

Money stress doesn’t break relationships. Disconnection does. Here’s how to have the conversations that actually bring you closer.

By Rachael Maher, MS, LCPC, LMFT

Money fights have a bad reputation. But here’s what I’ve noticed — avoiding them doesn’t make your relationship healthier. It usually just makes things quieter and more disconnected. When couples learn to move through financial tension rather than around it, something shifts. The conflict stops being a threat to the relationship and starts becoming a place where real understanding gets built.

First — Let’s Redefine “Fighting”

Not every hard conversation is a fight. Sometimes what we’re calling “fighting” is really just vulnerability — the exposure that comes with talking about things that actually matter. That discomfort is often a sign you’re getting close to something important, not a sign that something is wrong.

The goal isn’t to eliminate disagreement. It’s to stay connected inside it.

What Money Conflict Is Really About

Most couples think they’re arguing about numbers. They’re not. They’re arguing about fairness — I feel like I’m carrying more of the load. About trust — Can I actually rely on you?  About whether they’re truly in this together.

And underneath all of that is attachment. These aren’t always conscious questions, but they’re almost always present, driving the conversation long after the original topic has been forgotten.

Your Money Story Is an Attachment Story

How you relate to money didn’t start in your relationship. It started much earlier than that. For some people, money felt scarce growing up — so they learned to save, plan, and hold tightly. For others, spending felt like a way to finally have something, something that felt relieving or even regulating. Neither approach is wrong. But when couples don’t understand each other’s emotional relationship to money, it’s easy to misread a partner who saves as controlling, or a partner who spends as careless — when really, both people are just trying to feel safe in the ways they learned how.

When Money Gets Tied to Power

There’s another dynamic that tends to quietly take root, and it’s a harder one to name: entitlement. It can sound like I’m the one earning, so I should get to decide how it’s spent, or I contributed more, so I have more say. Sometimes it even crosses generations — We helped you buy that house, so we should be able to come whenever we want. On the surface, these feel logical. But underneath, they create a power imbalance. Money stops being a shared resource and starts becoming a way of establishing control or authority over another person.

Most people who fall into this pattern aren’t trying to be controlling. There’s usually something real underneath it — a fear of being taken advantage of, a belief that contribution equals worth, or simply patterns absorbed from watching how their own family handled money. But when entitlement leads, the other person ends up feeling small, managed, like they have to earn their place. That’s a hard place to stay connected from. The shift that matters is moving from who gets to decide to how do we make this feel fair to both of us — honoring what each person brings, even when those contributions don’t look the same.

When “Equal” Stops Feeling Fair

My husband and I started with a 50/50 split. We were roommates before we were a couple, and it made sense — everything was clean, straightforward, no one had to think much about how their choices affected the other person. Then we became a couple, and without really naming it, things changed. It started feeling less like my money and his money and more like our life. But we never actually updated the system to match that shift.

At the same time, our financial reality had changed — not because either of us was trying less, but because we had different jobs, different training, different earning potential. Suddenly 50/50 created this quiet, low-grade tension. Part of why we avoided addressing it was that we both liked the independence. He didn’t come to me before buying a new snowboard — he just bought it. For a long time, I was fine with that. Until I wasn’t. Because here’s what most couples eventually have to reckon with: what feels equal isn’t always what feels fair.

The Chart on the Fridge

One of the biggest turning points in our relationship came from something small, but genuinely vulnerable. I came into our relationship with debt — student loans, a car payment. He didn’t. So while I could split things 50/50, I was barely making it month to month while he had a lot more financial flexibility. That gap showed up in subtle ways, like when he wanted to go to a concert. For him, it was just fun money. For me, it might have been my only spending money that month.

So I did something that felt really exposing: I put a chart on the fridge showing my debt and updated it every week. It made him uncomfortable. He asked me to take it down. I kept it up — because I’d realized that if he couldn’t see the pressure I was under, he couldn’t fully understand how it was affecting me, or us. That visibility created context. And context created empathy.

Independence vs. Transparency

Every couple has to find their own system — combined finances, separate accounts, or some version of both. I value independence, and I also grew up watching a dynamic where one person held most of the financial control, even when it looked fine from the outside, while the other felt out of the loop and pushed back on spending. That dynamic quietly wore on both of them. So in my own relationship, the structure matters less to me than the principle underneath it: transparency over control. You don’t have to share accounts to share awareness.

Practical Ways to Build Money Connection

If you’re wanting to shift how you handle money as a couple, a few things actually help.

Creating some kind of shared visibility — whether that’s a dashboard, a weekly check-in, or just sitting down together to look at the numbers — makes a real difference. (I like the Empower app for this; it lets you see your full financial picture in one place without requiring combined accounts.) It also helps to talk about impact rather than just logistics.

Instead of we can afford this, try here’s what this actually means for me right now. And if you hit a place of tension, get curious before you get defensive — what does money represent to each of you? What feels scary? What would help you feel more secure? Those questions open up a different kind of conversation than arguing over line items.

Why the Small Conversations Matter

Couples who talk regularly about everyday money — groceries, subscriptions, small decisions — tend to handle big financial stress much better. Not because they’ve found some perfect system, but because they’ve built the muscle. They’ve practiced staying engaged when it’s uncomfortable, navigating tension without shutting down, and repairing when the conversation goes sideways. That capacity doesn’t appear out of nowhere when the stakes are high. It gets built in the smaller moments.

The Real Goal

The goal isn’t to never disagree about money. It’s to become a couple who can stay connected when you do — who can understand each other’s emotional worlds, make decisions together, and keep moving forward even when things aren’t perfectly equal. The strongest relationships aren’t the ones without financial tension. They’re the ones where both people know how to move through it together.

If This Keeps Coming Up for You

Money is rarely just about money. It’s about safety, trust, and feeling like you matter in your relationship. If you and your partner are stuck in the same conversations — or quietly avoiding them altogether — couples therapy can help you slow things down and understand what’s really underneath.

At Little Bear Counseling, we help couples move from tension and disconnection to clarity, teamwork, and real partnership.