Looking into the Cycle of Conflict
“Here We Go Again”
By Steve Beckow
Posted on April 8, 2024
A cycle of conflict is a repetitive argument whose constituents are complaints that go ignored or otherwise unattended to.
If serious enough and left undealt with, it can escalate in intensity while the feelings for one another may decrease proportionately, until the couple separates.
It’s my current belief that, unless people find a way out of a cycle of conflict, which seems to always escalate, they, sooner or later, will see their relationship fail.
And the longer the conflict goes on, the worse they’ll feel about each other when they do separate.
Exiting the cycle doesn’t mean leaving the person. It means exiting the pattern of behavior.
The cycle usually escalates because our frustration rises over time at not being heard or not having our demands met or in some cases acknowledged. Anger builds and, if it has nowhere to go, when triggered, we explode.
So I’d like to keep pressing into the subject because for us to understand, recognize, and exit the cycle of conflict would be, I think, an immense step forward for Planet Earth in the area of relationships.
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I’d like to start by sharing two misconceptions.
The first occurs when we explode. We explode because there’s so much water behind the dam that we can’t easily hold it back. A little thing becomes a big thing and sets us off.
The misconception on the other person’s part is that it’s the present incident that caused the blow-up (“What’s the big deal?”) when it’s the pressure of the water behind the dam.
A second misconception is our misplaced emphasis on reconciliation. When the couple gets back together again, we rejoice.
But if nothing has changed, all the same issues will still be there. And so disagreements likely begin again. If the communication is not cooperative and transparent, withholds pile up; and then an explosion occurs. Here we go again.
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The first thing we need to do to exit the cycle of conflict is to know what it is. The diagram at the top of the page illustrates it.
Let me illustrate the cycle from my family. Let me start as a brief honeymoon ensues.
The family have gotten back together again after one of our regular fights and we’re having an all-too-brief honeymoon.
We plan to travel to Bellingham, across the border, to celebrate our reuniting. But, having left the house and travelled across town, Dad or Mom remember they forgot their passport.
Perhaps something about it makes it egregious: say, Mom told Dad to remember to bring it. Whatever the occasion, the pot was already full and these people don’t discuss how to get out of the trap.
Instead they “start in” blaming each other. “You always do this. You never do that. Last week you did this. Last year you did that.” And away they go.
How serious it is depends on who raises their voice the loudest. It’s purely law of the jungle in here, held in sway by reflecting on whether one really wants to cause the death of the relationship.
Dad had his social position to consider. Mom had the fate of a “detached pirate” (divorced woman) in the society of the times to reflect on. And then there’s the children….
However I can tell you that the cycle intensified in my family until it reached the stage where Dad came at Mom with a knife. My older brother, who was a football player, got the knife out of Dad’s hand and pushed Dad down the stairs to the basement. That was the end of that.
This build-up of angry energy over time, in a man (or woman), by the way, who was regarded as mild-mannered otherwise, is a not an uncommon feature of the cycle of conflict.
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I can think of very few relationships where the two are trapped in the cycle of conflict and the relationship has survived. The willingness to do the work necessary to get out of it so often just doesn’t seem to be there.
After Ascension, communication will be easy and straightforward. If we use words at all, we’ll be immersed in an atmosphere of such love that negative thoughts will not occur to us and, if they did, we’d be like teflon from which they roll off effortlessly.
So it’s just the time between now and then that we have to worry about.
Let me stop here and pick up in another article.
Steve Beckow
