Does this sound familiar? Something is said or done to rub an emotional raw spot, making one of you get angry and lash out, which causes the other to shut down. In response, the angry partner gets louder and more insistent, which causes the other to leave. This cycle of conflict happens in marriages across the globe every day. In Emotionally Focused Therapy, it’s called “The Negative Cycle.” In an ever-escalating cycle of conflict, one partner stridently pursues and the other partner avoidantly withdraws. It’s a script written in the subconscious mind by past experiences that when certain things happen, we are not safe and must either push in or pull away to find safety. This “push-pull” is at the heart of all relational conflict. To break that cycle of conflict so that you can stop fighting and start loving, first you must understand your role in it. You are either the pursuer or the withdrawer.
to stop fighting and start loving,
identify The Pursuer
All human beings are wired for connection. We seek it and need it more than oxygen. When it is threatened or damaged, we instantly revert to strategies we learned in the earliest years of life for re-connecting. Some people’s strategy is to move towards their partner for connection. They usually do this by trying to talk about the problem, analyze the problem, complain about the problem, assign blame for the problem, etc., etc., ad infinitim and try to fix it right now. They are driven by strong emotions in the moment and have a hard time being objective and/or giving time for emotions to cool down. If they don’t sense that their partner is hearing them or cooperating, they become more strident and insistent.
If you want to stop fighting and start loving, you need to figure out which of you is the pursuer. It can be either a male or a female. It has more to do with the attachment style they learned from their earliest childhood than gender. Underneath all of the emotions, words, and attacks is a frightened, anxious, wounded child who feels unsafe and disconnected, desperately trying to claw his or her way back to safety and connection. Ironically, the strategies the pursuer uses to re-establish connection actually push their partner away. That’s why we say that disconnection always causes dysfunction.
to stop fighting and start loving,
identify the The Withdrawer
While some people’s attachment strategy causes them to respond to a threat to their connection with a “fight” response to regain the connection, other people respond with a “flight” response and move away from their partner to protect the connection. To stop fighting and start loving, you need to ask yourself whether you are the withdrawer. When the withdrawer’s partner becomes angry and lashes out, they step back from their partner by minimizing, dismissing, deflecting, defending, shutting down, or leaving. Is this you? While the pursuer has learned from earliest years to engage when connection is threatened, the withdrawer has learned that engagement only makes it worse. So, they shut down, go silent, and flee in order to prevent that. To their pursuing partner, they appear to not care about the relationship, but the reality is that they care very much and are desperately trying to protect it and themselves from any further damage from the escalating conflict.
During the negative cycle, both partners experience strong emotions, which send messages to the brain. The pursuer’s messages are things like, “I’m not important…My partner isn’t there for me…I’m alone like always.” The withdrawer’s messages are things like, “I’m not good enough…I can never get it right with him/her.” Going silent and shutting down is the only way the withdrawer knows to deal with these emotions and messages. However, like the pursuer, the strategies the withdrawer uses to protect the connection, only cause more disconnection.
to stop fighting and start loving,
identify The Real Enemy
It is typical for partners trapped in the negative cycle to try to find the bad guy and assign blame to the other partner for causing the conflict. The truth is that neither partner is the bad guy. One is a pursuer and one is a withdrawer. They can’t help that. It’s the attachment style that their upbringing and first relationships caused them to adopt. We have a saying as therapists: “What went wrong in childhood will show up in the intimate relationship.” That’s no one’s fault; it’s just how human beings are. We are driven by a need for attachment, and most people do not have a secure attachment style. Most people are either pursuers or withdrawers.
The “bad guy” is not the pursuer or the withdrawer. The bad guy is the negative cycle itself. The root cause of the conflict cycle are the emotions that get triggered and drive the partners to the pursuing or withdrawing behaviors. If only each partner could see what is happening inside their partner that drives their dysfunctional coping strategies, it would actually soften them toward one another and help them find the connection they so desperately seek. What they need is to get down to the primary emotions, the soft, vulnerable emotions under the anger or fear that cause them to stridently pursue or avoidantly withdraw. This lack of awareness of the true, deep emotions that have been scraped is what is leaving the pursuer feeling unheard, unimportant, and lonely and the withdrawer feeling attacked, misunderstood, and inadequate.
The Solution That
stops fighting and starts loving
If you recognize yourself as the pursuer or the withdrawer, and you know all to well the negative cycle in your relationship, we can help you break free from the cycle so that you stop the fighting and start the loving. We use Emotionally Focused Therapy to help you identify your negative cycle and your role in it. With this powerful tool, we can help you get unstuck so that you can repair and reconnect and avoid the negative cycle going forward. 92% of couples who go through Emotionally Focused Therapy see significant change in their relationship.
I encourage you to read more about Couples Counseling and then reach out to us at SoulCare Counseling for a free thirty-minute consultation to get you started on the way to reconnection.
Kelly Heard is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - Associate at SoulCare Counseling. She is under the supervision of Shaun Burrow, Ph.D., LMFT - Supervisor and LPC - Supervisor. She holds a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and is a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.