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Beyond the Honeymoon Excerpt from Relationship Tools
for Positive Change Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | The Vicious Circle I call it the Vicious Circle. It starts when a person says or does something, and the other person gets upset. Then that person says or does something in return, and the first person gets upset. Continuing around the circle, they repeat the process. In a matter of minutes emotions can heat. It can take days or weeks to recover.
Here's an example. This was the defining moment when Sarah and Michael knew their honeymoon was over. They were driving to a meeting that was going to challenge her. She was unusually quiet and inward. Noticing this, Michael wanted to lighten things up and relieve the tension. He tried to inject a little humor the way he normally did with his friends, by lightly teasing her. Sarah remained quiet, so he continued to try to draw her out by teasing. Suddenly, she blew up and called him insensitive. Michael reacted with sarcasm, which was not received any better than the teasing had been. He said she was ruining the trip and blamed her for not responding to his good intentions like his friends would have. This gave evidence to the old saying that the road to the Hole is paved with good intentions. Only minutes had passed and they were going around the Vicious Circle with increasing speed. This was their first fight. They stayed upset over it for a week.
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