Emotional Displacement: Why We Take It Out on the People We Love
Key Points
- Emotional displacement is an unconscious process in which the emotions about one event are transferred to another.
- People with higher attachment anxiety are more likely to use emotional displacement, but not necessarily with their partner as the target.
- A study found people high in attachment anxiety are more likely than others to direct emotions away from their partner, likely because their priority is preserving closeness.
- You might be more likely to emotionally displace onto your partner when you feel safe and comfortable in the relationship.
- To stop taking things out on your partner, recognize the pattern, build emotional regulation skills, and have self-compassion.
You come home from a long day at work, looking forward to relaxing in peace – your boss yelled at you, your project was delayed, and it feels like nothing went right. You’re happy to see your partner, but when they immediately ask you to take the trash out, all those feelings come right back to the surface. You find yourself snapping at your partner the way you wish you snapped at your boss.
This is emotional displacement – your feelings about your boss and the general work day have been redirected to your partner, where they’re easier and perhaps feel safer to deal with.
If this resonates with you, you likely already know that taking things out on your partner isn’t good for your relationship. Perhaps you’re the partner things are taken out on, and you’re looking for ways to deal with your partner’s displaced aggression. In this article, we’ll explain the psychology of emotional displacement, how it plays out in your attachment styles, and what to do whether you’re the partner who’s displacing emotions or the one on the receiving end.
What Does It Mean to Displace an Emotion?
When you displace an emotion, you unconsciously redirect it from its original source onto somewhere where expressing it feels safer. For example, someone at work – your boss, a colleague, or a customer – does something that makes you feel angry, frustrated, or belittled. You can’t express it in the moment, but when you come home, you snap at your partner when they haven’t really caused the original emotion.
You can also displace emotions onto things or behaviors. For example, comfort eating to avoid feeling sad about loss. Emotional displacement is typically associated with anger and aggression1.
Since this is an unconscious process, you might not always realize it’s happening. It might feel like you forgot about the original trigger on your way home and your partner is the problem now, until you really think about the chain of events and consider whether your reaction to your partner was in proportion.
Displacement vs. Projection vs. Transference
Psychology has other terms for similar things. Displacement, projection, and transference can sometimes get mixed up.
- Displacement: Redirecting a feeling from an unsafe target to an acceptable one.
- Projection: Believing someone has certain thoughts and feelings that are actually your thoughts and feelings.
- Transference: Redirecting your feelings and experiences in one relationship onto another.
| Displacement | Projection | Transference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source of emotion | A threatening or unsafe person | Your own internal experiences. | A previous, emotionally intense relationship |
| Target of emotion | An “acceptable” person to take it out on | Anyone, possibly someone who reflects those experiences. | A different relationship – could be a partner, friendship, colleague, therapist… |
| Example | Someone at work makes you feel angry. You come home and feel angry with your partner instead. | You’re always worried people are judging you, so you’re quick to make unfair judgements about others. | Your previous partner broke your trust, but you continue to treat your new partner with suspicion. |
Emotional Displacement and Attachment
A study of avoidant versus anxious defense mechanisms found that attachment anxiety was significantly correlated with emotional displacement: the higher the attachment anxiety, the higher the displacement behavior2. No such significant correlation was found between displacement and attachment avoidance, nor was there any statistical difference between men and women.
Displacement behavior was actually able to predict whether a participant had high attachment anxiety, even when 29 other defense mechanisms are taken into account. However, this study didn’t specify whether partners were the target of displacement.
Another study suggested that emotional displacement in attachment anxiety actually displaces emotions away from the partner3. Since people high in attachment anxiety prioritize closeness in a relationship over other things, diverting negative emotions away from conflict with their partner can be a way to protect that closeness. They also found that this kind of displacement requires self-control, instead of reflecting a lack of it.
We need more studies to understand whether your attachment style might make you more likely to emotionally displace onto your partner. Theories could be reasonable in any direction: perhaps insecure partners are more likely to emotionally displace onto their partners due to their typically lower emotion regulation skills, but, perhaps secure partners are more likely to emotionally displace because they trust that it won’t threaten the relationship.
Common Examples of Emotional Displacement
To help illustrate emotional displacement in both directions, here are some emotional displacement examples:
| Displacement towards your partner | Displacement away from your partner |
|---|---|
| A customer at work makes you feel very frustrated and upset, but you can’t show it because you don’t want to cause problems at work. You come home exhausted, still carrying those emotions. You try to call your partner, but they don’t pick up – an hour later, they text to say that they’re out with friends and will call you tomorrow. The upset and frustration you felt at the customer earlier today comes back to the surface, and you have an intense emotional reaction to your partner’s text. You know it feels disproportionate, but you spiral anyway and send them an angry response that leads to conflict and confusion. | You’re hosting friends this weekend and your partner has promised to help clean up the house and buy supplies. An hour before the event, you come home and they haven’t done anything. You feel extremely let down and frustrated, but you don’t want to start an argument, especially right before the event. You go to the store yourself, but many of the food and drink items you wanted aren’t in stock. That let down and frustrated feeling resurfaces, and you angrily blame the store clerk for not doing enough to help you. You know what you’re asking for is unreasonable, but you feel so angry you can’t stop yourself from expressing it. |
Why Your Partner Becomes the Target
When your displacement targets your partner, you can feel very guilty and confused. You don’t want to hurt your partner or your relationship, so why is your displaced aggression directed at them?
Miller’s theory of displaced aggression states that the direction our anger takes depends on the power dynamics involved4. When someone with more power – be it because of their status, characteristics, or physical strength – makes us feel angry, we don’t feel safe to retaliate. Instead, our aggression comes out with people we do feel safe to take it out on.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you view your partner as less powerful than you, but it might mean that you’re so comfortable and sure in the relationship that you feel safe to take your emotions out on it without risking its status.
However, as you might have guessed, showing hostility towards your partner is not likely to make them feel safe and secure in the relationship. Anything that negatively impacts their view of the relationship also undermines your relationship as a whole, so it ultimately backfires on you too. It’s important to consider alternative ways to deal with your emotions to protect the health of your relationship.
How to Stop Displacing Emotions Onto Your Partner: 3 Steps
If you find yourself taking things out on your partner, it’s not too late to change your behavior. Consider these 3 steps:
1. Recognize and Respond to the Pattern
Is it always after the same interactions, or the same situations that you come home and displace emotions onto your partner? If so, you might be able to find other ways to cope in advance. For example, if it’s always after a particular Monday meeting, you could plan to do something reflective, relaxing, or cathartic before going home on Monday evenings, like spending time in nature or going to the gym. If it’s always after doomscrolling, maybe you can set up strategies that limit time on your phone.
2. Build Emotion Regulation Skills
Emotion regulation skills help you to cope better with intense emotions, both during and after the experience. Emotion regulation encompasses several different skills – to find out your strengths and weaknesses, and your overall emotion regulation score, take our free emotional dysregulation test.
3. Have Self-Compassion
It’s understandable that you might feel upset with yourself if you feel you’re hurting your partner. Remember that two things can be true: you can make mistakes and be trying your best to be a good partner; you can struggle with emotional regulation and still be worthy of love. It’s difficult to self-improve from a place of shame, so remember that giving yourself grace is the best thing for your partner too.
Remember, too, that it’s okay for your partner to respond to anger with boundaries. They may also decide to walk away from the relationship, even if you’re actively working on it. Compassion for your partner is just as important as compassion for yourself, and how they choose to respond to displaced emotions is entirely up to them. Try to meet them with acceptance, even if what they want isn’t what you hoped.
How to Respond When Your Partner Displaces Onto You
This section pertains to non-threatening displays of displaced anger or aggression from your partner. For example, they get annoyed with you over small things, and though their annoyance is disproportionate, it does not cause you harm.
If you feel that your partner’s anger crosses a line into verbal or emotional abuse, or you’ve ever felt physically unsafe or your physical safety has been threatened, please seek immediate support. You may wish to visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at www.thehotline.org or call them at 1-800-799-7233.
It can be tricky to spot emotional displacement, since we might not be there for the initial triggering event. If your partner regularly seems disproportionately annoyed with you and is often in a bad mood in general, these might be signs of emotional displacement. Your partner might not be able to recognize it either, since emotional displacement is an unconscious process.
If your partner has a habit of displacing anger or aggression onto you, without threatening your physical or emotional well-being, you may start by setting boundaries. These outline how you will respond to specific behaviors and why. For example:
“When you come home from work in a bad mood, I feel stressed because I have to walk on eggshells. From now on, if you come home from work in a bad mood and try to offload it onto me, I will put on my headphones or go out and take some space until you feel better.”
“I don’t like it when you raise your voice at me. From now on, if you raise your voice at me, I will end the conversation until we’re both ready to speak calmly.”
If they’re open to conversation, you might decide to talk to them about how their behavior makes you feel and how they might work on emotional regulation. The Attachment Project has lots of resources to help you and your partner to build emotional regulation and healthy relationships. If you choose to continue the relationship, proceed with patience and compassion.
You may not choose to continue the relationship – it’s understandable if anger or aggression are dealbreakers for you, even if your partner is aware and working on it. Only you can choose what feels right for you.
Conclusion
Emotional displacement is an unconscious process in which the emotions about one event are transferred to another. For example, your boss snaps at you at work, and you go home and snap at your partner for something small. Emotional displacement is usually associated with anger, but can apply to any emotion.
Undue anger and negative sentiment can be damaging to your relationship. If you think you’re resorting to emotional displacement, recognize the pattern, build emotion regulation, and approach the situation with compassion for yourself and your partner. If your partner sets boundaries, understand and respect them.
If you think you’re on the receiving end of emotional displacement, choose a time where you both feel calm and open to start a conversation with your partner. Remind them that you care about their emotions, but let them know how being on the receiving end of them hurts you and your relationship.
Our self-growth and relationship healing resources can help the displacing partner to identify patterns and learn how to change them. You can find our resources here.
FAQs About Emotional Displacement
Is emotional displacement a defense mechanism?
Emotional displacement is a defense mechanism used when we don’t feel safe to express our emotion in the moment.
Does attachment style affect emotional displacement?
People high in attachment anxiety may be more likely to use emotional displacement in general, but also more likely to use it to direct emotions away from their relationship – the way that your attachment style affects whether you target your partner with emotional displacement is not yet understood.
What causes emotional displacement?
Emotional displacement happens when we can’t express our emotion when it’s triggered, so we carry it forward and let the emotion out in a way that feels safer, such as with someone we trust.
References
- Plutchik R, Kellerman H, Conte HR. A structural theory of ego defenses and emotions. In Emotions in personality and psychopathology 1979 (pp. 227-257). Boston, MA: Springer US.
- Richardson E, Beath A, Boag S. Default defenses: The character defenses of attachment-anxiety and attachment-avoidance. Current Psychology. 2023 Nov;42(32):28755-70.
- Slotter EB, Grom JL, Tervo-Clemmens B. Don’t take it out on me: Displaced aggression after provocation by a romantic partner as a function of attachment anxiety and self-control. Psychology of Violence. 2020 Mar;10(2):232.
- Miller, N., Pedersen, W. C., Earleywine, M., & Pollock, V. E. (2003). A theoretical model of triggered displaced aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7(1), 75–97.
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