We’re Trapped In Vicious Cycle

“When I’m mad at Larry, I can’t sleep with him, and for the last three years I’ve been angry all the time,” says Maria, 37.

“I know we’re caught in a vicious cycle, but knowing that doesn’t seem to make a difference,” she continues. And if this realization hasn’t made a difference in 12 years, she’s highly doubtful it can now.

Money is just about the only thing these two don’t fight about. Larry is a well-payed aeronautical engineer and Maria is a registered nurse.

Larry’s after-work routine is to stop off for drinks with some men from the firm, which bothers Maria.

“Larry can’t handle alcohol,” Maria says, “One glass of wine makes him so tipsy I’m afraid every time he gets behind the wheel.” Many nights, she’s already asleep by the time Larry turns the lock. On weekends he stays in bed late, trying to catch up on lost sleep, “which leaves me with everything - on top of my full-time job - and I can’t handle it,” she complains.

Their two sons fight constantly. Says Maria, “I feel helpless, alone and completely incapable of deciding whether the way I’m disciplining them is fair or not. Why should Larry escape all the family problems and pressures that weigh me down?” Adding to the frustration is that Maria’s mother, who lives with them, can’t handle the boys.

Most amazing to Maria is that, despite the constant warfare and their total inability to say a decent word to each other, Larry still expects lovemaking.

Maria says their once tender and natural lovemaking has become an ordeal.

The way Larry speaks to her - with such disgust in his voice - she’s sure he feels the same way about her.

As a matter of fact, he does. Larry, 37, thinks he deserves more patience, understanding and respect than he’s gotten from Maria in a long time. “Before we married, my wife was sweet and loving, but she changed a long time ago,” he snaps. “It’s been three years since she first rejected me sexually. I’ve pleaded and cajoled, but nothing dents that icy exterior.”

At the end of a long day at a job he despises, Larry wants to relax. Rather than going straight to a “chaotic and nervewracking” home, he says he drinks to avoid it. With the boys’ squabbling, and Maria and her mother constantly at loggerheads, it’s a miracle that he comes home at all, he says.

Learning to switch your personal M.O.

“Many couples, like these two, become locked in unbreakable cycles of anger and blame that in time become self-perpetuating,” notes Michelle Weiner-Davis, M.S.W., a marriage therapist in Woodstock, Ill., and author of the 1992 best-seller, “Divorce Busting (Summit Books).” As Maria discovered, both spouses often know exactly what they are doing to trigger or exacerbate a problem - yet, creatures of habit, they continue to do it anyway.

Invariably, most couples can predict with uncanny accuracy just how a partner will respond or what direction an argument will take. Do you feel trapped on a treadmill of despair? Then you need to do something - anything - that’s different. Doing something different breaks the sequence of events that automatically leads to the same old problems.

Here’s how to do it: Think about one issue, problem or scenario that inevitably triggers conflict between the two of you. Write down the sequence of events in detail. Then, try to change one thing in that sequence. For instance, you might change what you usually do to solve a problem; when or where you try to solve it; or who usually handles it.

Another way to figure out what to do differently is to ask yourself what your partner would say you do most often that upsets him or makes a bad situation worse.

At first it may seem simplistic to reduce a longstanding cycle of anger to a simple change. But many times, Weiner-Davis insists, that’s all people need to do to ease the tension and create a more loving environment that is conducive to open communication..

Maria, for instance, realized that every time Larry comes home from work she greets him with, “Well, it’s about time!” When one evening she forced herself to say a simple hello, pleasantly, he was shocked - but he responded in kind. That night they had one of the first civil conversations over dinner that they’ve had in months. “We have a long way to go,” she admits, “but the fact that we got this far is, in my book, a small miracle.”