Your Relationship Gets Better. Then You Fall Back Into Old Patterns.

Dealing With A Relationship Setback

You've made so much progress in your relationship. You've broken free from your unhealthy patterns. You've learned to respond instead of react. You and your partner are in a new era of communication and connection instead of rupture and despair.

And then, your old dynamic reaches up from beneath the surface and give you a good hard yank.

When you've worked together to build a healthier relationship, slipping backward feels devastating. And yet, it's inevitable. No matter how much truly meaningful work you do, shadows of your previous patterns will reemerge sometimes.

Relational Ups and Downs vs. a Cycle of Abuse

Differentiating Between a Coercive Pattern and the Inevitable Seasons of Long Term Love In abusive relationships, partners often go through a characteristic cycle of escalation. Tension builds. An incident of abuse occurs. There is a reconciliation in which the abusive partner might apologize or deny their behavior—or in which

Love Notes for Real LifeMarina Rosenthal

In those moments, you have a choice. You can let those shadows destabilize you and drag you right back into the cycle that you thought you'd left behind. You can succumb to their gravitational pull. Or...maybe you can spot what's happening, name it, and reset.

Couples who sustain their healing (instead of peaking and crashing out) learn how to do just that. They learn how to get knocked down by a moment of old ways and then get back up, skillfully this time.

So today, let's talk about how you can become that couple. The couple who is not totally derailed by a glimmer of your historical dynamic, because you know it's part of the picture and always will be but it doesn't have to be the whole story.