The Marriage Essentials Podcast

Seeing Snakes

• Brett • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Ever wondered why small misunderstandings can blow up into major conflicts in your relationship? Join me, Brett, as we uncover the secrets behind the conflict cycle in our latest episode of the Marriage Essentials Podcast. Using a vivid story from a hiking trip in Arizona, we explore how our immediate, fear-based reactions to perceived threats can escalate conflicts with our partners. By recognizing the pattern and understanding its mechanisms, you'll gain practical tools to manage your responses more effectively, improving communication and strengthening your bond.

But that's not all – we delve into how our perceptions and past experiences can distort our understanding of our partner's intentions. Imagine mistaking a harmless stick for a dangerous snake – this episode unpacks how such misinterpretations happen in our relationships and how to address them confidently. We'll discuss how to navigate insecurities, regulate emotional responses, and return to the root of our issues with clarity. Whether facing real problems or perceived threats, you'll learn strategies to approach conflicts with a calm and clear mind, fostering a healthier and more resilient relationship. Don't miss out on these essential insights!

Speaker 1:

Episode number 10, seeing Snakes. Welcome to the Marriage Essentials Podcast, where we dive deep into the art and science of building a strong, loving and lasting marriage. I'm Brett, your host, and each week I'll bring you expert advice, heartfelt stories and practical tips to help you nurture and grow your relationship. Whether you're newlyweds or celebrating decades together, there's something here for you. So join me for a cup of coffee and let's discover the essentials of a happy marriage together. All right, welcome back to the Marriage Essentials podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today I have for you just a quick little story, but it's a story that I share with a lot of my clients and if you've followed me for any length of time, you'll know that the conflict cycle is a tool that I use with so many of my couples, and I find that the conflict cycle is this visual representation of what happens in our relationships when there's conflict. Every relationship that I've ever come across that has any sort of length of time behind it and it's a romantic type of relationship experiences conflict. This is what happens in the coming together of two people. The closer we get, the more dependent we get within that relationship, the more opportunity there is for miscommunication, for confusion, for insecurities to flare up for behaviors to take place and to come out that maybe cause hurt or worry within the relationship. All of this really is what drives the conflict cycles. Now, learning about the conflict cycle doesn't cure the conflict cycle. It really is a tool to understand what's happening so that we can do one thing, and the story that I'm gonna share is gonna help you understand why it's so important to understand the conflict cycle so that you can do this.

Speaker 1:

Now, this story, like a lot of the stories that I share, kind of comes from a collective of experiences when I'm working with my clients one-on-one. Sometimes these stories, these analogies, they just come pouring out of me and I don't necessarily know where they come from, but my clients tell me that they're helpful and so I utilize them. And this is a story that I probably share with most of my couples, and it goes something like this that one day I was out hiking with a group of people and we were on this hike and it was down in Southern United States, down in Arizona, and the group of us were going down this hike and there was a gal who was leading the charge and she was ahead of the group and as she was hiking, all of a sudden she screams at the top of her lungs. She turns around, she comes running back to the group and I often say that if that group wasn't there she would have just ran right to her car and drove back to Minnesota. She was that freaked out and yet the group was kind of there on the trail, kind of catching her like whoa, whoa, whoa, like what's what happened? And and this gal, she says, she says I saw a snake up on the up on the trail ahead. And you know, in the story I say you know, a couple of the guys in the group, the brave guys in the group, me not being one of them, went on ahead. I'm notoriously kind of a scaredy cat so I joke about that quite a bit. But a couple guys went on ahead to look where the snake might have been in the trail and they got up to where the scale had screamed in the trail and they start looking around and they're like, hey, we're not finding the snake, can you come and at least point out where you saw it?

Speaker 1:

And this gal, she finally kind of collects herself, she calms down, groups kind of around her supporting her and with the encouragement of the guys being up there where she had seen the snake, she went back and returned to the site where she saw that snake. And when she got up there, I remember seeing her as she gets to that place where she saw the snake. She's like all tense, kind of looking around for it, and then her shoulders like drop and she lets out this laugh and she's like, are you kidding me? Like honestly, I totally thought this was a snake. And she bends down and she picks up like the like a stick, like the inside of a tumbleweed, that that was kind of twisted up and looked kind of like the tail of a rattler snake.

Speaker 1:

Now there's a few things in the story that I want to highlight. First of all, she's like, I promise you guys, I thought it was a snake and I remember telling her that you know, I believe you. I think you thought it was a snake too, because your reaction was exactly that of if you had actually seen a snake, you were so good at embodying that that I knew it wasn't acting. You believed in your mind there was a snake and you were running away from it. Totally get it. The other thing I want to highlight is this that it wasn't a snake. It never was. It didn't used to be a snake, it wasn't anything remotely close to a snake. And yet her brain, when she thought she saw a snake, it ran for her life. She ran for her life. Then what do you remember? When she was right, she ran to the group and the group kind of caught her. The group regulated her enough to turn around and return to the site of where she saw the snake so important. Because when she returned back to that location, what did she find? She found that there was never a snake there. Okay, and one other thing that is important to mention here is she had told us afterwards that when she was coming down to Arizona, her father had told her that if you go hiking, watch out for snakes. So her brain was already cued in to this idea that there were going to be snakes. It was already looking for snakes. No surprise that she was the only one in the group that saw a snake. So what does this have to do?

Speaker 1:

Regarding relationships? Right, it has nothing to do with relationships Wrong, this is a great analogy of what the conflict cycle is all about. The conflict cycle is kind of like that group of people. When we're in relationships. Oftentimes we come across something that seems to be true and typically the thing that we come across that seems to be true is this idea that our spouse, our partner, isn't into us, they don't like us, they don't care about us, they're not interested in us, they aren't paying attention to us, they don't desire us, they don't like us, they don't care about us, they're not interested in us, they aren't paying attention to us, they don't desire us, they don't want us, they're rejecting us. Like all of these things that happen in moments within our relationship are those moments where we see snakes, because so oftentimes our brain is telling us our spouse doesn't care. And it's not true. Our spouse is often, you know, dysregulated within themselves. They're just, you know, not paying attention, they're making mistakes, they're human, right. So it's not the fact that they don't care about you, it has a lot to do with, you know, just their own humanness. There's also this piece remember this gal. She had seen the snake because she was already cued into this idea that there's snakes on the trail.

Speaker 1:

We have our own insecurities, right, our own relationship longings, and these are like those cues that are telling us, like this father saying watch out for snakes. Our brain has these cues within us like watch out for the partner who doesn't want you that. Watch out for the. Our brain has these cues within us like watch out for, you know, the partner who doesn't want you to. Watch out for the partner who isn't into you. Watch out for the partner who doesn't care about you. Watch out for the partner who doesn't want to spend time with you. Watch out for the partner who you know doesn't want to connect with you.

Speaker 1:

Whatever these things are right, those are those insecurities that are planted within us, just like the insecurity around snakes was planted into this girl by her father. And when we have those insecurities within us, it's no surprise that we tend to see those things when they don't actually exist. We're so cued into them, we're so kind of amped up to experience them, that just the slightest shadow of something that looks like that moves us into this belief that it's happening, it has happened. These things are taking place within our relationship. Along with that, you know, I think that Even if this gal had witnessed a snake, that there was actually a snake within the trail, it wouldn't mean that we would abandon the hike necessarily, right? So there might be moments where what you think is happening within the relationship actually is happening in the relationship.

Speaker 1:

And still, if we are able to, you know, regulate ourselves, right, because what happens in a relationship is we're like, oh no, our spouse doesn't care about us, we run away from the relationship or we, you know, attack the relationship, we become dysregulated, we move into our fight, flight, freeze, response, and the conflict cycle is like this group of people, it kind of catches us. It's like, oh, you know what, hold on, let's calm down, let's take a breath here, let's think about this a little bit. It might be that we are confused, right, we can kind of regulate ourselves and we can return back to the relationship and we can be like, okay, I thought this is what I was experiencing, that you didn't care about me, right, and so often what we'll find is when we can turn back to the relationship, we can talk about it, we can really, you know, look and be curious and be intentional about talking about these things that we're afraid of. We'll find that they're not actually present within the relationship, that we're confused, that, you know, we're seeing these shadows and these and these, and there's miscommunication and all kinds of things like that. You know, the snake isn't real, it's. It's the stick, right? This happens within our relationship, but let's say that there actually was a snake there, that there actually is a spouse who isn't caring, right? That doesn't mean we have to disband the hike.

Speaker 1:

We can learn how to navigate through those situations, right. Maybe they're. I'm not actually an experienced rattlesnake expert or anything like that, but maybe there's a way that you can, like, navigate through these places where snakes are on the trail and stay safe. The conflict cycle allows for you to do that as well. It allows for you to navigate through these moments where maybe your spouse doesn't care or doesn't desire you or doesn't want you or isn't interested in you, and you can navigate through it with confidence that you can remain safe. The conflict cycle allows for us to do that as well. And so in this way, when we can return back to it in a regulated way, right, we can learn how to navigate through these moments and remain safe and regulated and keep our mind engaged on how we want to navigate through it.

Speaker 1:

We can navigate through those moments intentionally instead of reactively, and we're going to stay much safer. We're going to go, you know, in the direction that we want to go. We're going to be able to stay on the hike. We're going to be able to stay in the relationship if we want to and and you know honestly if, if there are, there are realities that are happening within the relationship when you return back to it and you find out that these things are true and it requires you know some real boundaries within the relationship. We have clarity to intentionally make those decisions as well and we can move with confidence that you confidence that we aren't confused or we're not in this reactive fight flight freeze response. But we've confirmed it, we've assessed it and we're intentionally making a decision to place boundaries around this relationship to keep us safe.

Speaker 1:

If there is a true safety concern in some way, or you know, if we're dating or something like that, and we find out that this isn't the relationship that we want, we can go, you know, return to these moments and we can confirm them and we can be like, okay, this isn't the relationship that I want and we can move in a new direction. So that is, that is, you know, the reason why we spend so much time on the conflict cycle because it acts like this group of people that catches us. It allows for us to regulate. It allows for us to return back safe and to really move forward, no matter what is happening within the relationship, no matter what your spouse or your partner is doing. The conflict cycle gives you a map to do that. So I hope this story helps you understand why it's so important to learn about the conflict cycle.

Speaker 1:

We're going to be talking much more in this podcast about the conflict cycle. It's a core tool that I use to help my couples, help my clients, understand why their relationship is struggling, and for that reason, I talk about it a ton in my work, on my podcast and all of my content. So that's what I have for this week Watch for those snakes in your relationship, but confirm if there are snakes or not and you know what. I would even say this that assume, when you see a snake, that there's confusion, that it's not reality, and really assess. Be very intentional about assessing the worries and the concerns that you have within the relationship from a regulated, intentional place.

Speaker 1:

Have a great week, everybody. I will talk to you all next week. Bye-bye. You have been listening to the Marriage Essentials podcast. I hope that you found some valuable insights and inspiration to apply to your relationship. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at marriage underscore essentials for more content like this. Until next time, keep nurturing your love and remember that a happy marriage really is a journey. It's not a destination. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode.