The Secret Of Lasting Love: Change Your Dance

Most counseling models have several focuses such as probing past relationships and experiences, teaching communication techniques and negotiation skills, seeking solutions for problems, etc.  In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we only have one focus: emotion.  We are like a broken record.  We play the same tune of emotion over and over.  Why?  Because emotion is the music to every couple’s dance of disconnection.  Disconnection is the enemy of lasting love.  The secret of lasting love is to change the dance of disconnection to the dance of connection.  How?  To change the dance, you must learn to change the music.

THE SECRET OF LASTING LOVE:
RECOGNIZE YOUR DISCONNECTION DANCE

If you can say, “We love each other, but we fight a lot,” it is certain that your fights are much like a dance, a dance of disconnection. Lasting love is never built on disconnection.  So, the secret of lasting love begins with recognizing your dance of disconnection, the dance that needs to change. We call this dance, this pattern of conflict that couples get locked into, the “negative cycle.” The negative cycle, the dance of disconnection, resembles one of three ballroom dances.

The Paso Doble – Attack/Attack

The Paso Doble is a ballroom dance which imitates a bullfight with partners constantly challenging and charging one another.  This is the conflict style of some couples when they “get into it” with one another.  They have a pattern of mutual blaming where each accuses the other in an attempt to find the bad guy in the relationship.  This dance is hard to maintain, so eventually the Paso Doble transitions into…

The Protest Polka – Attack/Withdraw

This is the most common dance of disconnection.  One partner pursues by attacking with criticisms, complaints, nagging, clinging while the other partner defends him or herself and eventually shuts down, goes silent, and withdraws.  This agitates the attacking partner, so he or she escalates the attacks, causing deeper withdrawal by the other.  Ironically, both partners are protesting their loss of connection with one trying to force the other closer and the other trying to mitigate the damage and keep connection from being lost altogether.  At some point, both partners feel hopeless and the Protest Polka turns into…

No More Dancing – Withdraw/Withdraw

Finally, the couple gives up and both partners shut down their emotions and all they feel is numb.  At this point, there is only distance between them.  In order to escape the pain of disconnection, they become polite roommates.  The next step is separation and/or divorce.

The Secret Of Lasting Love Is,
Change Your Dance By Changing The Music

The secret of lasting love is to stop your negative cycle and reconnect so you can have the safe, secure, close, loving relationship you had at the start. But how? You can’t stop the negative cycle you’re stuck in with mere willpower and resolve to try harder to not fight. That can only last so long until the music of disconnection starts back up and calls you to the dance floor to dance the old dance of disconnection. No, to change your dance, you must change the music. There are four steps in the new dance of disconnection that you must learn.  This new dance is the secret of lasting love.

The First Step

Most couples are so focused on their own steps in the dance - the content of their arguments – that they never see the dance and how it is keeping them disconnected.  So, the first step in changing the dance is to see that you have a dance and to see what your particular dance is.

The Second Step

The next step is to see how you are pulled into the dance.  What do each of you do that draws your partner into their moves, which then draws you into your moves?  What turns on the emotion-music and begins the dance?  It goes something like this: “I attack you, and you defend yourself; the more you defend yourself, the more I attack, and it escalates and escalates.”  The attacking makes it hard for your partner to be responsive to you, so he or she shuts down.  His or her shutting down makes you feel disconnected and alone, so you respond with more pursuing and pushing.  You both pull one another in to the dance, and you need to see how.

The Third Step

The third step is to understand what you really want.  You can’t change the dance with problem-solving skills, or with compromising, or negotiating, or communication techniques.  The only way is to what you both really want, what you are really asking for in your own clumsy ways.  You are calling for connection and you become desperate when those calls are not answered.  You respond to the disconnection by either pushing and pulling and doing anything to get a response, or you respond with going numb and shutting down so you don’t totally lose him or her. 

The Fourth Step

The fourth step is to realize that you are not the enemy and your partner is not the enemy.  There is no bad guy.  The enemy is the dance itself, the negative cycle that you are stuck in.

The Secret Of Lasting Love Is The Dance Of Connection 

Once you see the dance of disconnection that you’ve been dancing, this negative conflict cycle that traps you, as the enemy, you’re ready to work together to slow down the music and learn to step to the side, give one another enough safety to talk about your needs and feelings and yearnings for connection and closeness, forgive and create a new dance of connection that gets better and better for a lifetime of love and is the secret of lasting love.

“Dance Me To The End Of Love” by Leonard Cohen

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love…

If you and your partner are caught in an endless dance of disconnection, let us help you change the music and change the dance. I encourage you to read about couples counseling and reach out to us to schedule a free thirty-minute consultation.

 Dr. Bernis Riley holds a Doctor of Psychology degree, is a Licensed Professional Counselor – Supervisor, and is certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy. She is the Clinical Director/Supervisor at SoulCare Counseling, and is currently accepting new clients.