Episode 261: Breaking Negative Cycles In Relationships

[Music] You're listening to The Sex and Psychology Podcast. The sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Lameller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book Tell Me What You Want, the Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. What do you want to do for dinner tonight? This is a seemingly innocuous question, yet somehow it's the kind of thing that can trigger a fight. Your partner tells you what sounds good, but then you say, "No, not that." Then they offer another suggestion and you turn that one down too. And then the next thing you know, just talking about dinner plans has turned into a full blown argument and you're fighting about something that has nothing to do with food anymore. This is an example of a negative cycle. And in the last episode, we talked all about how these negative cycles begin and how to identify the negative cycles in your relationship. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to break these cycles and resolve them in positive ways. We're going to talk about things you should and shouldn't say in these situations, including why telling your partner to calm down is likely only going to fuel the fire. We're also going to explore how to create an attachment-friendly environment, how to co-regulate in relationships, how to repair after a negative cycle, and so much more. I am joined once again by Julie Monano, a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in emotionally focused therapy for couples. She also provides insight and advice for couples at the secure relationship on Instagram, which has over 1 million followers. Julie's latest book is titled "Secure Love," create a relationship that lasts a lifetime. This is going to be a fascinating and really important conversation that will give you some helpful relationship tools. Click around and we're going to jump in right after the break. What do you remember about the first time you met your partner? I was recently prompted to answer this question by paired, which is a relationship app for couples. My partner and I just started using this app and one of the features of it is a daily question where you and your partner are prompted to share something with one another. And it just so happened that our first question took us back to the beginning and got us to share some memories about our first date. Which we really hadn't thought about for a long time, but was a lot of fun to do. We talked about how nervous we were beforehand, but how we immediately made each other comfortable, and how what was initially just supposed to be dinner and drinks turned into spending an entire weekend together. We've been having a lot of fun with this app and have found that it's a great way to stay connected and to have deeper conversations. In addition to the daily question, there are quizzes, games, exercises, and even answers from relationship experts. It's a great way to learn new things about your partner and it's simple and easy to use. All you have to do is download the app and pair your accounts, and that's it. The activities are fun and sometimes they're pretty funny. Whether you're just a few dates in or you've been together a long time, it's time to lighten the mood and have fun with your partner by using paired. Head over to paired.com/justin to get a 7 day free trial and 25% off if you sign up for a subscription. Let's go to p-a-i-r-e-d.com/justin to sign up today. Connect with your partner every day using paired. A happier relationship starts here. Have you ever wondered how sex differs around the world? The sexual health alliance can help you to expand your knowledge through their study abroad programs. Join Shaw in exploring different cultures, engaging in immersive learning experiences, and collaborating with international experts in the field of sexuality will also traveling to amazing places and making new friends. Whether you join them for an online conference, enroll in a certification program, or embark on a transformative study abroad adventure, Shaw provides a platform to elevate your career. You might even get the chance to study in a foreign country with yours truly. Come meet amazing people, gain valuable insights, and be at the forefront of sexual health education. Visit sexualhealthaliance.com to learn more in Secure Your Spot Today. Okay Julie, let's talk about breaking negative cycles in relationships. So you do a deep dive into this topic in your book, but I think the starting point is learning to recognize when you're in a negative cycle or when one is just about to start. So how do you do an anatomy of the negative cycles that occur in your relationship? So how do you know when a fight you're having isn't about that little thing like the laundry or the dishes or something like that, and instead it's about something much deeper? One way to know is if it's not getting resolved, it's something deeper is going on because there's something blocking the resolution, right? That's kind of a big picture answer, but how do you know kind of in the moment? Well, this is where it becomes so important for people to have somatic awareness. And somatic means bodily emotions, we think of them as in our head, right? But they're really not in our head. What's in our head are the thoughts and the meanings that we're making that contribute to these emotions. Emotions exist in our bodies because they are a way to communicate to our bodies that we need to take action. Something needs to happen energetically. We need to either take action to keep ourselves safe. You need to get out of this situation as kind of that fight or flight thing. We need to grieve, you know, create tears to process some of this stuff through our bodies. And so when people are walking around without that somatic awareness, they just don't recognize when they're triggered a lot of the time. They might feel the emotional overwhelm, but it's not sort of this intentional conscious awareness. Or they might, you know, as in the case with avoidant attachment, they might just kind of be so trained from such a young age to just shut it out that they have no connection to that trigger. Whereas an anxious partner, they just get overwhelmed with the energy. Both are at a disadvantage for kind of checking in and going, okay, hold on. Let me kind of balance my head and heart. What's happening? My stomach is starting to clinch up. My chest is starting to tingle. My arms are starting to feel weird. Something's happening with me. What's going on, right? And if you're triggered, your body is in that state because something your partner has set or done or something that you have thought about that your partner has set or done causes that alarm bell to go off in your body. If you're not aware of it and you're not managing it, you're not sitting with it. If you're not sitting with the feeling or you're not talking about the feeling. So sitting with it would be, I'm going to help myself in this place. Talking about it is, I'm going to reach to my partner to kind of help me with this place. Both are very important and healthy relationships. If you're not doing that, you're going to act out on it. And that acting out is going to be negative cycle behavior, protests, shutdown, getting defensive, getting logical, getting reasonable, trying to tell your partner to calm down because if they can calm down, then I don't have to feel all this yucky stuff. You know, any number of things in the book, I do go into a lot of what these different moves in acting out on these emotions look like. So the first step is really just being able to recognize when you're triggered. That's got to be first. And if you are triggered and you're not dealing with with it in a healthy way, you will be dealing with it in an unhealthy way. And that unhealthy way is going to launch a negative cycle. If your partner also doesn't know how to deal with their trigger and show up to you in a healthy way. Yeah. So we need to learn to recognize our triggers and our partners triggers to better understand when a negative cycle is likely to emerge. Now when we enter a negative cycle, we often say or do things that aren't productive. So as you just talked about, we act out in various ways that exacerbate the cycle. But instead of doing the unhelpful thing, you suggest that people get vulnerable and share their feelings. And that sounds hard. You know, that might sound scary to some folks. But what does that look like? And how can it be helpful in situations like this? Well, again, if we're not dealing with the feelings that are already there and have been tapped into, then we're either going to try to shut them out. And that's going to trigger our partner. It's a band of my fears if we just kind of try to shut it all down or we're going to start acting out on it. So yeah, we have to have a better option. And so first of all, we need to know what better options are. And that's what I'm really trying to help people within the book is like, here's some better options for you. One of those options is becoming vulnerable. I mean, actually, all of the options involve becoming vulnerable. Some ways of being vulnerable include talking about your feelings. Sometimes it's just vulnerable to interrupt the cycle or even set a boundary around some of the things that your partner is saying to you, which can feel really vulnerable, right? Vulnerability is less about how you get there and more about doing something that feels risky for the greater good. So if we kind of go down that road of getting vulnerable and talking about our deeper feelings, which can be enormously helpful, then what we might say is, hey, hold on a minute. This is one of those moments where I really want to hear what you're saying. But the way that you're coming at me right now starts to get me all scared, starts to make me wonder, do my needs matter to you? And that feels kind of devastating. And I want to go into this place where I'm sort of reacting and defending myself, but I don't want to do that to us right now. Can we just kind of start over and do this? differently. And when you hear your partner saying, I'm scared, I'm sad, I feel disconnected right now, that is going to elicit your empathy. And when empathy is elicit, empathy is regulating. And so that's going to elicit this part of us that wants to help. When we see most people when they see other human hurting, especially someone that is everything to them and their love, you know, we want to help them by being vulnerable, we're really giving each other opportunities to help and feeling helped, which is it's 50/50. We want to be able to help each other in dark places and we want to be able to get help in dark places and we cannot do that without putting words to them. And so that's what needs to be done in these negative cycles almost more than anything is starting to put words to the deeper stuff that's being triggered. Yeah, and everything you said there leads nicely into my next question because in your book you mentioned that people often ask you whether it's okay to want comfort from their partner, right? And it seems like people think that this is a bad thing because they've been taught that they're responsible for their own feelings or that asking for comfort is the sign of codependence or neediness. And so we sort of pathologize this idea of wanting to ask our partner for comfort, but we need to be able to ask our partners for help when we actually need it. So in your book, you talk about this concept of co-regulation as a way of addressing this. So what does co-regulation look like? Yeah, so co-regulation. I mean, we all need to self-regulate first of all. As adults, you know, we can't rely on someone to be there for us 24/7. So we all need to be able to tap into our deeper stuff and help ourselves in pain, but part of the beauty of the human experience and especially of relationships, you know, the defining quality of human relationships is helping each other emotionally. That might look like two dudes going to get a beer together and talking and, you know, bantering back and forth. They are helping each other emotionally. They are getting validated, getting seen, you know, connecting over however they're getting there. That's a connecting point for them. And so with partners, you know, because of the emotional stakes and the emotional closeness between typical partners, it's going to tap into our darkest stuff. You know, relationship triggers are going to attack into our deepest wounds and our deepest fears and our deepest insecurities. And we simply do not have to be alone with that in the world. We don't need to be alone with it. There's something so much more valuable and useful to feel better emotionally when you have your partner holding your hand and saying, "I get that." That's really hard. I get that that experience was super hard for you at work today. And that must have left you feeling so horrible and shamed. And I'm so sorry that you went through that. Right? Yeah, we can learn to help ourselves and deal with those feelings on our own. But why not be able to help each other in a way that doesn't come at a cost to anyone? Now, yes, can that go too far? Indicodependency, absolutely. But codependency isn't real connection and help anyway. It's just a poor substitute for it. That's actually really not healthy. Yeah. I think you described that very well. Now, your book talks about the importance of naming the negative cycle, but it also talks about naming the traps that lead you into the negative cycle in the first place. So what are some of the most common traps that lead people into these negative cycles? Well, one of the traps is who gets to hurt worse, right? So couples, someone says, "Hey, you're late again and it drives me crazy when you're late. It's so rude." And the other person says, "Well, what about you? You never call me back when I call, right? I'm hurt too." And both our have legitimate really good reasons to be hurt. But what happens is, is they get stuck and I really need you to see and validate my hurt right now. And I can't really see and validate yours until I get mine seen and validated and stuck, right? What do we do at that point? Well, what we do at that point is couples really need to learn to focus on one person's needs at a time and resolve that and process through that. The first partner who brings it up and says, "You're late all the time. We need to stay on the topic of them being late. We need for them to be able to say, "This is a problem. This is how I'm impacted," right? It not only does it lead me to kind of get anxious and being convenience, but it also feels like, "Do my needs even matter to you?" And that hurts. And I really need for us to kind of figure out a way to navigate around this. And the other person is able to say, "You know what? That makes sense to me. I get it. No, I'm really feeling right now. What it's like for you in those moments I'm late. Here's what I can do." And then maybe an hour later, maybe a day later. Now that person comes back and says, "Hey, you know, really glad that we talked about that late thing." And I noticed that I have something coming up too, which is, you know, a lot of times when I call or text, I don't get a response from you for a long time. And I know you're busy, but at the same time, you know, that's one of the ways that I feel connected and filled up throughout the day. And, you know, it would be really helpful for me if we could figure something out that. A couple of the other traps are the pursue withdraw dynamic where, again, that's more of that what I describe. One partner brings up a concern. The other one gets defensive. The first one feels invalidated. And then we have who's needs matter more, which is kind of a twist on who gets to hurt worse. But same idea, but it's more like, "My needs matter more than your needs," or, you know, the other one is kind of feeling the same way. And again, we have to really step back and deal with one at a time, you know, a good thing is as you probably know. And I know firsthand, and by working with couples, that it really is easy to get in that trap where we're talking about so much information at one time. We can't possibly really give each topic the attention it deserves. Yeah. And, you know, as you were describing that, I was thinking about how whenever the argument starts to turn into a contest or competition between the partners, you know, about how whose feelings matter more or who's being hurt worse, you know, that is a pretty good sign that you're probably about to enter or you're already very well into a negative cycle. Yes, absolutely. So when you're in a negative cycle, people often want to see it through to some resolution, right? Because we're in that fight or flight state, you know, there's all that tension, your heart might be racing, you're feeling anxious, and maybe scared or angry, or you can be feeling a lot of different things, right? So we want resolution, but we often keep doing things that just escalate the fight further. So sometimes the answer is really to just take a break and come back to it later. And that might feel really hard to do because you've got those strong feelings in the moment and you want to resolve them, but why is it worth sometimes taking a break and revisiting the issue later? And if you're going to take a break, how long should the break last? Great question. So first of all, let me just say this, you know, people who have experiences in their life where things didn't get resolved, right? Unless I get big and I demand resolution right now, these just keep being pushed under the rug, pushed under the rug. And so they don't trust that, you know, we can give it space some time and resolution will come. And so what happens is just having a problem in and of itself creates a sense of panic. Like we've got to get this resolved right now. My nervous system doesn't trust that we can hold it. And the problem is is that if we're trying to resolve problems from this kind of red light brain where we're activated and we can't really think straight, we don't have that kind of balance. Like I said, of head and heart, the resolution is probably not going to be real or it's going to not really be a good way to get you know, it's just like I want to resolve the problem more than I want to resolve it well. And so what do we do in that situation? Well, the first thing is to start to kind of explore why do I need to have this sense of urgency around solving the problem right then and there. Where does the stem from and how can I learn to start kind of being more vulnerable, taking these risks to hold things. What I'm describing is more of this anxious attachment kind of way of showing up and dealing with problems. Well, whereas the more avoided partner, they're just going to want to put them off indefinitely. Let's just, you know, I don't want to deal with the anxiety of the problem. So it's safer for me and the subconscious level to just kind of pretend it doesn't exist. So, you know, ideally couples need to do two things, right? One is if we're in that red light brain, which is either disengaged or overwhelmed with emotion, we need to put a pause on this. We're not going to get anywhere, right? We either need to find a way to reach each other and co-regulate and help each other get down and do a green light brain or we need to take some time with ourselves and help ourselves in these places. If we're not able to co-regulate and then we can come back to it with more clarity and more regulation, less fear really because fear is always going to get in the way of good resolution to problems. The second thing is sometimes we need to recognize that some problems take multiple conversations, right? We need to tap into it, talk about it, process some of it, share our feelings, share our thoughts about it, share our opinions, share how we're impacted, and then take a pause for a couple days or whatever if it's a big decision and kind of really tap in and figure out, you know, what do my partners say that makes sense and has moved me and what do I still feel really strongly about and what are my thoughts, real thoughts and feelings here? And then come back into it and over time things start start to resolve themselves with repeated safe conversations. That's a really important word. The conversations really need to be safe, to be productive. And then to circle back how long breaks, I always recommend anywhere from five minutes to a day, really depending on the topic, sometimes on lower stakes areas, like where are we gonna have dinner, and we start getting into, even that topic can start to become who's needs matter more. I want Asian and I want Italian. And so it's like five minutes just to sort of like, okay, hold on, we can do this. Like let me just kind of settle down. And a day might be something that is a bigger financial decision. We're talking about making a major move. And we need to just kind of hold it process, come back a day later, revisit it, and just keep revisiting that big decision, maybe a day later or whatever. So in that five minutes to a day is very general. We're in a bigger situation where we might need more time than that. - Yeah, I can definitely relate to the, where are we going for dinner? What are we gonna do for dinner tonight? - Right. - It comes up all the time. And it's surprising how that one little question can often lead to some big fight. It's so stupid, but it happens all the time. - Well, you know, it brings up a lot. We all have to eat multiple times a day. So it creates a lot of room for decisions. - Yep. - And again, that just kind of circles back to the fact that it really isn't just about the food. It's about, does my need for Asian food, since we've had Italian food three times in a row now, matter to you? - Yep. It's about more than just the food. So we've talked a lot about identifying the negative cycles in your relationship and some ways of dealing with them. But how can you prevent them in the first place? So in your book, you talk about the importance of creating an attachment-friendly environment. So what does that mean? What does that look like? - That means actively creating positive cycles. And that takes intention. It means that the way that we're bringing things up to each other is in a safe, gentle attachment-friendly way. Like, I'm not gonna come in hot and attack you. I'm gonna kind of come in and validate your perspective before I go into my own, which is, you have a good reason to be worried about this conversation about money. We have had a hard time talking about money. And I'm imagining the last thing you wanna do is get in a big fight when we just wanna enjoy the evening together. At the same time, I really need to know we're on top of this for my system to be settled and for me to feel safe in the world. And so we need to kind of figure out how to have this conversation. That is so much better than we need to talk about money right now. I noticed that you spend $100 on lunch with a friend and kind of coming in with that heat, that's how we bring up concerns, how we respond to our partner's concerns. If we respond positively and open, not necessarily, I'm gonna do exactly what you want here, but we're gonna have a safe conversation. Then we're constantly communicating to each other intentionally, right? Which is, I love you, I care about your needs, I care about your feelings, I can understand where you're coming from. I'm willing to understand where you're coming from. I appreciate you as a partner, I see the good that you do. Then we have a very safe environment and that, you know, in and of itself, it kind of all boils down to, we're just constantly engaging in these positive cycles where we talk about things in a way that maybe doesn't feel super good, but at least it doesn't start damaging our bond. It's sort of like we're choking out the negative cycles by filling the space up with positive ones. - Yeah, and I was gonna ask you for some tips on healthy communication about attachment needs and I think you already answered it because when we want to create this attachment friendly environment, you can't start the conversation from a point of criticism or blame, right? Because that's what's going to trigger the negative cycle. You need to find ways of bringing up issues with your partner that aren't going to put them on the defensive or trigger them at the outset because that just doesn't lead anywhere productive. - Absolutely not, especially for someone who already has an insecure attachment and is very sensitive to anything that comes across as a threat. Those who have more securely attached relationships and a lot of times it's just because they've worked toward feeling safer with each other, they can tolerate less, you know, a little more imperfection in the relationship. They're more resilient. When one partner isn't able to show up at their best self, they can kind of take the slack and be their best self in a moment, which is kind of circles back to that co-regulating place. And one way to get around the criticism and the blame is to really focus on a, speaking from self, which I talk about that a lot in the book and be validating in that, you know, I gave that example of validating a minute ago, which was I can understand where you're coming from. I can understand why you might feel triggered right now and I bring up this topic that we've historically had a hard time with. But speaking from self is instead of focusing on what the other person is doing wrong, which that doesn't mean they aren't doing something wrong. First of all, you know, behaviors can be not good. Bad behaviors exist. That doesn't make the person bad, but it's not about ignoring that, but it's about communicating from, here's how I'm impacted. I statements are a phrase that we hear a lot and there's a lot of value into I statements. I prefer saying speak from self because we can use the word you and still speak from ourselves, which is when you're chronically late, this is how I'm impacted by that. You know, I really, it does affect me and I really do need us to kind of come together and work on this instead of you're always late and you're so irresponsible. And when we're speaking from self, we're not leaving someone feeling misunderstood or like I'm just wholly bad in your eyes or you know, I'm not being seen for what I'm getting right over here. - Yeah, you always or you never statements are often a big part of this. - Yeah, if someone says you always to me, what do I want to do? What does anybody want to do? We want to start listing all the exceptions to always, right? Nobody wants to be boxed and to always or never. - Yep, and nothing is ever quite as black and white as that in relationships. Now, no matter how much care and effort you put into your relationship and try to prevent negative cycles, they're probably gonna happen from time to time. It's normal in relationships for conflict to emerge. You know, I myself am celebrating my 25th anniversary this year, which is hard to believe it's been that long. - Impression, these ones are my gosh, that's amazing. We're celebrating 24, so we're a little behind you, but yeah. - But you know, you and I probably recognize the same thing. Like these are very long term relationships, but we still have fights and arguments in conflict. Like it's normal in relationships for these things to happen, even if you're a psychologist or therapist, right? But when a negative cycle sneaks in, can you share some tips on how to repair from that afterwards? - Yeah, and first of all, I just want to validate, you know, there's no such thing as a couple. I mean, maybe there are some out there and more power to them, that's great, that don't get caught, you know, sometimes the negative cycles. And actually, as long as you're not crossing this line where the negative cycles are really defining or being very destructive to the relationship, they're actually healthy because they help us grow. You know, when you can handle and process and manage a negative cycle in a healthy way and repair from it, you just experienced growth. You figured out how to, you know, do it even better. If you don't have them, you don't really get a chance to practice them. So repairing is just gonna look like coming together and saying, hey, you know, acknowledging the fact that it went south, each person acknowledges their part and that, you know, talks about, here's what was happening for me. You know, when I heard you say, you left the garage door open again, all of a sudden, you know, first of all, I was feeling hungry, I was feeling tired, I wasn't super-resourced. And it just, what I heard is, here we go again, I'm getting it wrong, I went to that kind of old place and my brain and then that kind of caused me to want to get defensive and I get how that left you feeling like, you know, you weren't being heard and tapped into your hard wounds. And so I apologize for my part and, you know, here's what I'm willing to do. Next time that's different and, you know, just kind of, it's really not about hard fast rules. It's more about how are we talking about it on a deeper level, validating each other, sharing how we were impacted and, you know, working through it from that place of connection and empathy instead of anger, control, protectiveness. And the book also goes to, you know, more of a detailed way about how to do repairs and also we have attachment injury repairs, which are much bigger wounds that really shake up trust. And, you know, probably the most common would be an affair or ongoing substance abuse and those do require special care, which I've put that process out in the book. Yeah, sometimes the issues are much bigger or go much deeper. Sometimes there are trauma and other issues. And so sometimes it is working with a professional, a psychologist, counselor therapist who can help you deal with some of those much bigger types of issues. But thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Julie. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work and get a copy of your new book. Absolutely. So my kind of hub is my Instagram account at the secure relationship. Be sure to look for the blue check. There are imposter accounts. You can find a lot of information. I have a start here highlight, which will kind of take you through all the most important posts, give you an idea of attachment theory and negative cycles. And what, you know, I have to offer there are tons of tips, tools, scripts on the account, just like in the book. And if you're looking for, you know, help, professional help, I have a staff of therapists slash relationship coaches that work all over the world doing this, the same type of work that I do. The book is available just really everywhere. I mean, every, all the Amazon's and all the different countries, it's multiple languages and you can't not find the book if you just look for secure love by Julie Manano. And it's audio book, ebook, hardcover. And I'll be sure to include links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you again so much for your time Julie. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you for listening to keep up with new episodes of this podcast. Visit my website [email protected] or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also follow me on the socials for daily sex research updates. I'm on Twitter and TikTok @justinlaymailer and Instagram @justinjlaymailer. Also, be sure to check out my book, tell me what you want. And if you have a question you'd like me to answer on a future episode of this show, you can leave me a podcast voicemail at speakpipe.com/sexandpsychology. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.