The Purple Light: Leaving the Cycle of Conflict

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Leaving the Cycle of Conflict

There is No Greater Gift than Listening

Vol. 3 Leaving the Cycle of Conflict

By Steve Beckow

Posted on March 30, 2024

Credit: verywell.com

I’m reissuing Leaving the Cycle of Conflict as a volume in the There is No Greater Gift than Listening series.

Let me post one of my favorite chapters from that book.

I have to say that the cycle of conflict, in my estimation, is the greatest affliction of relationship that I’m aware of and it’s a hidden killer because very few people see what they’re doing.

Bringing this pattern of behavior to public attention fulfills a childhood promise to myself. I wanted the world to know about the domestic abuse happening in my home. And now it does.

And here’s the solution – in this and the other books on listening. The parts I haven’t covered I know others will.

Notice when you read it: how people rejoice when a couple gets back together again but no one focuses on what’s causing the splits; how we “become” our parents; and how we never seem to learn and nothing seems to change.

I was talking yesterday about the cycle of conflict and breaking free from it. Let me pick up there again and start with some background.

Carousel of Tears

I spent my first fourteen formative years on this carousel of tears I call a cycle of conflict.

It was a never-ending loop which usually ended in divorce. I’ve seen very few people trapped in the cycle of conflict who emerged with their relationship intact. And they don’t know why because they “always got back together again.”

Back then, we not only had no insights into how to end the conflict; we couldn’t even see its cyclical nature.

Becoming Our Parents

Having seen the cost to my family of the cycle of conflict, I made myself a promise that I would stop the family inheritance, the intergenerational transfer that Michael once called “legacy behavior.”

But I mentioned to you earlier that the legacy behavior was the only movie I had in my head.

When we “become our Father,” what really is happening is that we’re reaching back into our memory banks and bringing forward as our mode of behavior the only movie all of us have – what our Dad or Mom did.

And we don’t see what we’re doing for the same reason we may not pay attention to what’s happening in our world. We’re busy doing other things.

That’s how we become our parent.

Just that one matter alone – not becoming our parents – takes a high degree of awareness and an unwillingness to respond automatically in order to break the pattern. And, no, I’m still down here in the trenches on these matters, working away with everyone else.

Never Seem to Learn and Nothing Changes

Another feature of the cycle of conflict is that we never seem to learn. Instead, we seem to focus on and congratulate ourselves for getting back together again.

For me, getting back together again is a significant event but it’s not the significant event.

The significant event is recognizing that we’re caught in a cycle of conflict that only ever brings heartache and resolving to exit it.

So long as we fool ourselves that reconciliation is the big win, we may not do the work to break the cycle.

Everyone promises not to do it again and off we go, not communicating or communicating unproductively. The same issues arise. The frustration begins and is worse because we thought we had the issue handled. All it takes is a spark.

Is this not the theme of countless Hollywood movies?

Download No Greater Gift than Listening V3 Leaving the Cycle of Conflict here: https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/There-is-No-Greater-Gift-than-Listening-V3-Leaving-the-Cycle-of-Conflict-R3.pdf

“Right/Wrong Not a Way Out,” Aug. 19, 2023, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2023/08/19/347152/

Steve Beckow