"Negative interactions in love relationships are especially hurtful when they feel like betrayal. A promise embedded in the formation of emotional bonds is that your loved one will care how you feel and never intentionally hurt you. In my long clinical experience with clients suffering from chronic resentment, anger, or emotional abuse, I've learned that hurtful exchanges between partners occur in six stages. Adrenaline increases with each, making de-escalation more difficult."
"To prevent hurtful exchanges, partners must become aware of their implicit judgments and systematically soften them. (Left on autopilot, they lead inevitably to hurtful exchanges.) We can infer them from our explicit complaints. For example, why do I think my partner is irritating or offending me? Because she's controlling, selfish, irresponsible, critical, defensive, stonewalling, hateful. To have any chance of changing our partner's negative judgments of us, we must soften our implicit judgments of them."
Negative interactions in love relationships escalate through six stages: negative implicit judgment; impulse to blame; overt blaming and shaming; impulse to retaliate; retaliation; and reaction to the partner's retaliation. Adrenaline increases at each stage, which reduces the ability to de-escalate. Implicit negative judgments arise as rigid lenses lacking compassion and tolerance and often mirror reciprocal judgments between partners. Partners can infer these tacit judgments from explicit complaints and must become aware of and systematically soften them to prevent cycles of hurt. Softening implicit judgments creates the best chance to change mutual negative perceptions and interrupt recurring hurtful exchanges.
Read at Psychology Today
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