The creative power is what allows you to build relationships, problem-solve, organize, paint, write, make music, transform your house into a home, share loving feelings, create harmony, make love and so much more. In this article, we shall discuss the ways to adjust negative relationship cycle.
Without exception, everyone has access to creativity, but in many women it’s largely untapped and needs to be drawn out.
In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), the first step for couples to change negative relationship dance is to see it and own it. Susan Johnson writes, “You have to see the how of the dance between you and your partner and what it says about the relationship, not simply the content of the argument. You also have to see the whole dance. If you just focus on specific steps, especially the other person’s, as in ‘Hey, you just attacked me,’ you will be lost. You have to step back and see the entire picture.”
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Understand How You Affect Your Partner
The second step for couples to change their destructive dance is to have both partners understand how their moves in the dance pull the other deeper into the cycle. The dance traps both partners into a loop that unknowingly keeps the conflict going. One partner attacks the other and that partner gets defensive and retreats. Instead, he can own his retreating, “If I stay detached and isolate, I leave you feeling alone and abandoned and pull you into pursuing and pushing for connection.”
Polka Dance Is About Attachment Needs
Third, the polka dance is about attachment anxiety and cannot be intellectually solved in the moment nor can improving communication skills fix it. Rather, both partners must know the nature of the dance and how it triggers attachment fears. The retreating partner must recognize the other partner’s calls for connection and how her need for connection comes out as demanding, criticizing, and poking for him to respond. He also owns his response of freezing up, stonewalling, and only hearing how he has failed her. He works on hearing instead her need for connection.
Partners Need Connection
Fourth, both partners begin to understand that they both desire to be loved and connected but the protests and distress keep the polka dance going. The partners put the blame on the polka dance rather on each other.
Agree To Work Together
Fifth, the partners agree to be on the same team and work together to stand against the true enemy. They slow the dance down and learn how to “step to the side” and create enough safety to talk about attachment emotions and needs.
Create Hope For Change
When couples do these five steps, they begin to create hope for their marriage. Instead of the automatic cycle of conflicts, they talk about the spiral and both agree that they don’t want to get sucked into it. They share their feelings in the here and now. “I am feeling more and more angry and anxious. I see that you are beginning to freeze up and withdraw. This is when I become critical and you get defensive. Correct? We don’t have to do this. Lets calm down and let our defenses down. Please let me hug you.”
Your partner is not the enemy but rather deeply desires to connect and she is fighting for the relationship. The enemy is the polka dance cycle that puts both partners into a blind loop.
In summary, I encourage you to begin emotionally focused couples counseling, this would go a very long way to help. As Susan Johnson writes, “Being able to recognize and accept protests about separation and exit the Protest Polka is crucial to a healthy relationships. If a safe, loving bond is to stay strong and grow, couples have to be able to repair moments of disconnection and step out of common dead-end ways of dealing with them, ways that actually exacerbate disconnection by destroying trust and safety.” I hope you find this article helpful.
