Ending Negative Cycles of Conflict in Relationships Part 2

We all desire to be in relationships with peace and stability. Achieving stability demands we learn to interrupt negative cycles and handle conflict well. In a previous article, we discussed the importance of understanding our attachment development and style, triggers, and vulnerable feelings and needs. Accountability for our healing and role in conflict is the gateway to better communication, allowing us to feel seen, understood, respected, and loved well. However, it takes “two to tango”, so it is important to look at how we can best support each other and the relationship environment. 

As we begin to understand attachment, triggers, and vulnerabilities, it is easy to fall into “diagnosing” or trying to “fix” the other person as a strategy for change. Believing the relationship will change if we can get the other person to change can create more conflict. Change must come from within, and the other person must desire to experience change. The primary focus should be on allowing the changes you make within yourself to impact the relationship environment and the other person over time.

Influencing Change

So you’ve been focusing on understanding yourself and healing wounds of the past and still find yourself getting triggered while your protectors respond in ways that keep you in conflict. Frustrating! It’s ok. Stay committed to being conscious and curious of the feelings in your body and your protective emotions and responses. You may need to see yourself through the stages of the trigger, break it down, and allow for incremental changes in how you respond.

Getting in touch with feelings can easily become overwhelming, especially if you are new to experiencing them. Developing a practice that helps you contain emotions as a way to self-regulate will support your effective communication. Slowing down and becoming more conscious of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and reactive actions will create space for you to offer your protective parts some compassion and validation. An opportunity will arise for you to build confidence and security in yourself to respond vulnerably. Responding from a place of security creates an environment of interdependence, where value is placed on vulnerability and emotional intimacy while maintaining a sense of self amidst navigating the relationship's attachment dynamics. 

Attachment Dynamics

The most common relationship dynamic is the anxious/avoidant relationship. They will often have long-term relationships, but the relationship won't feel healthy, strong, or close. Cycles of conflict often start with the anxious partner bringing up a concern or a hurt and lead to the avoidant partner feeling blamed or misunderstood. The avoidant partner gets defensive and rationalizes leaving the anxious partner frustrated and misunderstood. The anxious partner reacts with protective responses of anger and the avoidant partner feels overwhelmed and goes into shutdown. This cycle may repeat itself a few times before the avoidant withdraws and creates space, and after time the couple comes back together after they have regulated. However, there is usually no repair or reconciliation, leaving each partner resentful and disconnected. This cycle can feel sustainable for most couples because they stay in this “false” sense of security, however, their protectors keep them distant and disconnected, and over time as resentfulness builds over time the couple is faced with having to undo the negative cycles and repair the hurt inflicted on to one another.  

Less common pairings of relationships are anxious/anxious and avoidant/avoidant dynamics. Similar to the anxious/avoidant couples these pairings end up experiencing immense amounts of resentment and disconnection, however through different cycles of conflict. The anxious/anxious couple can be described as a high-conflict couple, experiencing constant and intensified cycles of conflict. Whereas, avoidant/avoidant couples have fewer cycles of conflict, however, they sacrifice repair because of fear of creating conflict and uncomfortable emotions. The lack of repair contributes to an increase in resentment and contempt and the ending of the relationship.

It isn't about trying to eliminate conflict, it is about learning to manage conflict well and developing a secure environment. Secure attachment is cultivated when one partner moves out of their anxious or avoidant tendencies to create a secure environment for the relationship.

Listen with an Open Heart

To create an environment of repair and emotional intimacy we must be open to understanding the other person with the same depth and value of understanding ourselves in relationships. Listening with an open heart creates an environment of security and repair where we stay self-contained and committed to finding new communication that offers our partner curiosity, compassion, and validation. All of which contain the emotions of our partner leading to new ways of co-regulation.  

When your partner starts to bring something up there is no doubt it will trigger feelings within you. This is when self-containment becomes crucial. Often we get caught in a power struggle of whose feelings are more important. Both of your feelings are valid and important, however, in the heat of the moment, it is helpful to make space for one person/concern at a time. Your sense of security within will help you stay contained enough to communicate your side of things when appropriate, sometimes immediately after your partner is “heard” or perhaps at a later time or day.

If you are still building your sense of security and find yourself overwhelmed when your partner's expresses themself, it may be helpful to have agreed-upon boundaries. Overwhelm will lead to protective responses, to interrupt the cycle before it begins, it can be supportive to have agreed-upon requests to pause the conflict. However, if one requests a pause to allow both to self-regulate, both must agree upon who will re-engage, and set a time frame for when to pick the conversation back up. This holds the avoidant partner accountable for working through the conflict while providing the anxious partner reassurance it will get addressed. 

It’s important to remember that the enemy is not the other person, the enemy is the cycle of conflict and old ways of communication. Listening with an open heart and a relationship environment of containment, accountability, vulnerability, curiosity, compassion, and validation leads to secure attachment dynamics of interdependence, co-regulation, emotional intimacy, respect, trust, and healthy boundaries.