Why Understanding Your Conflict Cycle is Vital In Your Relationship
Disclaimer: we are Amazon Associates, which means that when you click on a link to a product and make a purchase, we gain a small commission. This does not alter the price of the product you are purchasing, but it does support us, so thank you!
Jump to:
How can EFT help me?
Have you ever noticed that the same fight keep popping up in your marriage?
Jarrod’s 29th birthday celebrated in Temecula, CA
This is because of a cycle. All couples have a conflict cycle and it’s important to understand what that is. Jarrod and I discovered our conflict cycle while in couples therapy…specifically with an emotionally focused trained therapist. In episode 15, “Marriage Conflict Unplugged: Listen to us resolve and repair LIVE,” we talk heavily about the conflict cycle we tend to get into.
In this episode, we share a candid conversation about conflict, specifically addressing a disagreement about money. We dissect our individual conflict styles, shaped by personal beliefs and childhood experiences, and explore the therapeutic tools and vulnerability that guide us through challenging moments.Don't miss this insightful discussion on how couples navigate conflicts and find resolution. Click here to listen now!
In today’s blog post I will be sharing about our experience with conflict, our personal conflict cycles and what steps and tools have been most helpful in your marriage- including: emotionally focused therapy & some Gottman therapy principals.
What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a humanistic psychotherapy that is aimed to help support couple relationships by reconnecting the physical and emotional bond that tends to break overtime. EFT is rooted in the science of emotions & attachment. Dr. Sue Johnson the pioneer of EFT and held the title, “the best couples therapist in the world.” Dr. Johnson described a couple’s cycle as an infinity loop with no start and no end and where each partner’s actions, emotions, and thoughts trigger and feed off the other partner’s.
In our particular situation our cycle is quite simple. I react strongly and Jarrod retreats. I then feel unheard, undervalued and rejected and he feels attacked, not accepted or loved. These stories are based in our childhood traumas and our attachment needs.
Understanding Your Conflict Cycles
Engagement photos April 2015
Beyond the actual cycle we get into couples tend to have the same fights over and over again. This can be for several reasons for us it’s because we talk, we patch, we move forward but we don’t typically make a true resolve of the situation. It’s a lot of work to make true change in relationships and once you’re out of the heat of the moment it can be challenging to stay focused on the reason you got into the fight in the first place. Within the podcast episode we discussed how this topic specifically continues to come up for us in our marriage. Money and marriage is one of the top reasons couples argue. We talked about this in greater detail on episode 8 on Over Dinner podcast and on the navigating money matters blog post. Money is often cited as one of the top reasons couples argue. Finances were the main reason for relationship conflict in 40% of disagreements reported in long-term relationships and are usually the most destructive type of conflict (Meyer & Sledge, 2022).
The reason that this problem keeps popping up is because we haven’t found a solution to our problem: managing money in the way we’d like. That’s because we are on one income at the moment and have to be mindful as we spend. We’ve tried a few different ways to budget but it doesn’t seem to stick which then results in frustration and confusion on my end and Jarrod feeling disrespected and hurt that I’m not putting in more effort.
Within this particular argument Jarrod and I fought over the price of fire pit chairs. He had felt that we had agreed on getting inexpensive chairs and then I continued to send him more chairs. Now thinking about it—I think I sent him more chairs because I wasn’t totally sold on the ones we agreed upon and found some that were better for just in my opinion a few more dollars. I thought that if we cut back somewhere else we could buy the chairs where he felt that we just didn’t need to buy a more expensive set at all and save the money all together.
Conflict tends to arise when a couple has different values about a decision to be made. In this instance Jarrod and I have different money stories. We also have different perspectives about the backyard in general. Being a stay at home mom the house is my live, work, breathe environment where he is at his office 5 days a week and didn’t see the importance in the same way. Sure he wants a nice backyard but it doesn’t have the same level of need that it does for me especially when it’s something I’m using daily.
How EFT has helped our marriage
The biggest change in our conflict is by far our communication. And not just the words we use or how we say them. It has more to do with the fact that we are open to being vulnerable & open to receiving what the other has to say.
If we had any advice on the subject of conflict. It would be to do your own personal work first. In our most recent episode that went live on Tuesday, July 2nd we spoke heavily about the importance of individual therapy and it’s benefits. In many ways we would not have been ready for couples therapy without us both starting with individual therapy along with personal development work.
Couples Therapy
There are many different types of therapy and this also includes for couples therapy.
Here are some of the other types:
Will EFT work for us?
Vancouver, Canada
As mentioned above, Jarrod and I, EFT has been very effective for us in our partnership. “EFT operates on the evidence that emotions are not accessories to human experience but organizing principles of our lives. The expression of longing and sadness over isolation is a powerful tool for eliciting the lost contact and responsiveness of a partner.”
EFT is very useful when couples are arriving in therapy in emotional distress or feeling alienated from one another. It is also helpful when learning how to identifying emotions and sharing them with one another.
When working with an EFT therapist they will most likely encourage a bulk of sessions in order to go through stages of the EFT model. We committed to 6 months of weekly sessions— and I am so glad we did!
Our therapist walked us through what to expect which would be that she would be doing a few individual sessions in order to learn more about our history and couples sessions so she could learn the cycle we continually find ourselves in. This is the first stage of the EFT process.
The second stage is dedicated to restoring the bonds between patterns. At this point we were able to describe our challenges to one another while also using the correct language & feelings. While we are explaining our feelings to one another our therapist is able to gently get involved and facilitate us through the process while also having us 1) dig a little deeper 2) provide connections.
Conclusion
If you and your partner find yourself in the same cycles of conflict and continue to have the same argument perhaps it’s time to go to therapy and get to the root of the issue. I like to relate to the idea of when you go to the doctor. When something hurts or feels off you go to the doctor. They provide medication or short term solution- sometimes it fixes the problem sometimes it’s just a patch. But until you actually get to the root issue things will continue to pop up. It’s not an easy thing to own and accept your part within the conflict. But it is an essential part of the process. Within EFT therapy we have learned communication techniques, supportive tools to use within conflict, and how to label our feelings correctly and of course much more.