When couples struggle with conflict resolution or communication issues, they tend to find themselves getting “stuck” - the conversation doesn’t go anywhere and the same things get said over and over again. It’s not uncommon for couples to find themselves here. Usually, couples get stuck because each partner has learned to cope with emotions or stress in a way that unintentionally exacerbates conflict.
The conflict pattern with your partner likely repeats no matter the topic. You might find yourselves talking about plans for the weekend, chores, or family, and the conversation escalates in a similar way each time.
The solution to getting unstuck isn’t simply learning each other's love languages or communicating more clearly - the solution is changing the pattern when conflict arises. This can be difficult for couples without intervention by a professional, but even just having an awareness of your pattern can help create change.
How to Identify Your Negative Cycle
There are multiple parts to every couple’s negative conflict cycle:
the “alarm bell”
Primary emotions
Reactive emotions
The story you tell yourself
How you cope
These parts of a negative cycle are often hard to identify in the moment, but if you take a step back, you might be able to see each part more clearly.
Picture a figure 8 - the “alarm bell” is the center - the trigger that sends you or your partner into the cycle. When you or your partner react to the trigger, you feel “reactive” emotions and then tell yourself a story about yourself, your partner, and your relationship. After internalizing this story, you react with certain behaviors to cope with the feelings, triggering your partner’s own side of the cycle. This pattern continues until one or both of you do something to change it.
Let’s Take a Deeper Look at the Parts of a Cycle
Alarm bell
The “alarm bell” or the trigger is what sends you and your partner into your cycle - it can look different for both of you. Maybe a trigger for you is when your partner feels distant and inaccessible - you’ve had a rough day at work and you want your partner to take an interest in your low mood. Instead, your partner only seems concerned with what is on their phone.
In the moment, you are looking for connection, closeness, and a sense of emotional safety with your partner and it doesn’t feel available. This can trigger fear - thoughts of “I need you right now, where are you? Do you care that I am upset?”. However, we have a hard time understanding and expressing that fear the moment we feel it. Instead, the fear triggers our “fight or flight” response. Our mind and body read the situation as being dangerous which triggers primary and then reactive emotions
Primary Emotions
Primary emotions are the initial emotions we feel when we encounter a trigger, and they include sadness, fear, surprise, joy, disgust, and sometimes anger. Typically when our “alarm bell” goes off in relation to a loved one, the primary emotion triggered is either fear or hurt / sadness. This person matters to us, so when we sense a threat to the relationship, we become scared or sad. As we will explore more in the section about changing the negative cycle, learning to recognize and communicate primary emotions is key to interrupting a negative cycle. However, often primary emotions can be replaced so quickly by reactive emotions, that we hardly recognize they are there.
Reactive Emotions
Reactive emotions are the feelings that tend to cover up the hurt or fear that was triggered by the “alarm bell”. Primary emotions like hurt and sadness are vulnerable, and when we are caught in conflict, even with someone we love, it is a natural reaction to want to protect ourself. Some reactive emotions are anger, frustration, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, or hopelessness. These emotions are the reaction to the thought “Do you care that I’m upset?”. It’s likely that anger, frustration, resentment, etc. take over and they are the emotions that get expressed to your partner.
The Story
Reactive emotions are often fueled by the story that you tell yourself. When you’re caught in a negative cycle, what thoughts do you have about yourself, your partner, and your relationship? You might have thoughts like:
“My emotional experience doesn’t matter.”
“I have too many emotions.”
“I am unworthy of love.”
“My partner doesn’t care about me or my emotions.”
“My partner is never there for me.”
“My partner doesn’t think I can do anything right.”
“Our relationship is bound to fail.”
“This is what always happens in our relationship.”
“If our relationship is always going to be like this, maybe we should break up.”
We all enter relationships with a narrative about ourselves and about others. The stories we tell ourselves usually come from previous relationships with a significant other, our relationship with our parents, and even what we believe society says about us and our identities.
How You Cope
Lastly, we try to cope - which is usually the protective, reactive, or defensive behavior that our partner sees. This could look like passive aggression, verbal insults, raised voices, using a certain tone of voice, reaching for your partner, and even withdrawing from your partner. These behaviors are used to protect or defend ourselves from the hurt we feel from our partners.
If you are searching for your partner’s support but they feel inaccessible, you might try to reach for them by making sarcastic comments about them “always being on their phone”. It could continue to escalate and eventually, you find yourself yelling at your partner about how they never do the chores you’ve asked them to do because they’re too busy on their phone.
The way you behave when you’re trying to cope with your emotions often triggers your partner’s own side of the cycle. And because both of your deeper, primary emotions (pain, hurt, fear) are going unacknowledged and unexpressed, the conflict continues to escalate and often goes unresolved when one or both of you decide to pull away.
So How Do We Change this Cycle?
The cycle can be difficult to identify and change. You and your partner may have years of experience with this cycle and it has become the only way you know how to handle conflict. Know that this will not change overnight - it takes awareness and practice.
Sit down with your partner and try to identify each of your parts in the cycle. Some important things to consider are:
What does my partner do that makes me feel they are emotionally unavailable? (When does the alarm bell go off for me?)
When my alarm bell goes off, I feel _________.
The story I tell myself is ____________.
When I feel ________ and I’ve told myself __________, I cope by __________.
I cope this way because my partner's emotional availability is so important to me.
When I behave by _________ it triggers my partner to feel ________.
Once you have an idea of the cycle, try to become aware of it when it happens in the moment. Call attention to it when you know it’s happening and attempt to try something different: take a step back, take a deep breath, and notice what is happening for you emotionally. See if you can notice the primary emotion like fear or sadness that is being triggered, and share this with your partner. Remember that the reason we feel scared or sad in a negative cycle is because our partner and the relationship matter to us. When you can step out of reactive emotions and sharing your stories, and speak directly about your more vulnerable emotional experience, it helps both you and your partner to get out of “fight or flight,” and sends a signal to your partner that you are looking for closeness, not attacking.
If this feels impossible in your relationship, a professional can help you in identifying your cycle and creating change. Our therapists at Colorado Therapy Collective specialize in understanding negative conflict patterns and helping couples find emotional security with one another. If you’re interested in our services, reach out to one of our therapists today for more information! We offer a complimentary 20-minute consultation for you and your partner to learn more about our services and make sure you find a therapist that feels like a good fit for you. Click here to schedule a consultation or initial session today!
