Doesn’t look or sound good! Unfortunately this is what Dr Sue Johnson calls the stuck dialogues when a couple gets into an argument.  The fact is that when our relationship with our partner doesn’t feel emotionally safe, when emotional bids for connection fails, we often get stuck in this repeated patterns call “Demon Dialogues.”  Johnson says there are 3.

THE PROTEST POLKA

Dr Johnson says that this is the most common dialogue. At the center or the heart of this pattern is the miscommunicated, misconnected, misunderstood  bid for connection. When one partner attempts to move towards the other, the other steps back and away. The protest polka continues as one tries to connect and the other withdraws. With each failed connection attempt the pursuer makes the more the “emotional music” gets more desperate and more louder or more aggressive.  The withdrawing partner retreats more and more (which increases the desperation and the protests of the partner trying to connect) The pursuing partners cry (within and without) is that “I want to connect” and fits and protests against the emotional distance he or she feels. For the withdrawing partner, they attempt to connect (usually misguided attempts) and the result is that they feel hopeless, helpless or like a failure.  They may feel that they can’t do anything right or “what I do isn’t enough” with the result of “giving up or closing off”

FIND THE BAD GUY

This is the fight part in the flight or flight response when we are triggered. In this dialogue we lash out at our partner placing blame on her or him for anything. Sometimes these attack according to Johnson, “are preemptive” a sign that this well-known dance between you and your partner…it’s a familiar attack. So we are ready for the first blow and we respond in kind. This can be a dangerous dialogue; for the more we attack our partner, the more they attack back and not only do the defenses go up but the dialogue can lead to escalation.  The result can be that as the attacks get bigger, than our walls go higher and thicker and eventually we have hardened completely towards the other. The roots of bitterness are now firmly planted.

Freeze and Flee

This is the “Silent but Deadly” approach. The highlight of this approach is “Silent Tension” or what I like to call “Cold Anger”. It’s not loud like “Find the Bad Guy”, no back and forth; it’s not like the “Protest Polka” where one partner is doing most of the talking and the other one is silent.  No this is all about the pattern of silent tension. Partners become mono-syllabic; “we’re worn out” “Wearied”. It could be the result of the long lasting Protest Polka where one couple pursues and the other withdraws; NOPE, this is shut down mode.  “We’re no longer husband and wife, we’re just ‘roommates now’ “.  From the roots of bitterness what grows is hopelessness and learned helplessness.

HOPE AND HEALING IS ON THE WAY!!!

Depressing right? But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story, the end of the relationship. No couple’s work can lead to not only becoming aware of the cycle, of what keeps couples stuck but it also provides the opportunity for hope. To move from focusing on the personal pain to the POTENTIAL HOPE.  It moves us from being relational fatalists to people who believe in new beginnings. It begins by explore each other’s unmet attachment needs. It encourages couples to not meet the needs of their partners by expressing their attachment needs in a clear way. Couple’s therapy offers the potential for Hope and Healing.