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Maria and Lars felt trapped.
They had been happily married for two years, a middle-class couple in their 30s and living in a large city in the Midwest part of the United States. Maria’s family had emigrated from Central America, and Lars’s parents were from Finland. Beyond her beauty, Lars had been attracted to Maria’s vibrancy and her ability to express her feelings and her joy of life. Maria had always loved Lars for his stability and the way he loved his family. He always worked hard to make a good life for them.
Last year, Maria gave birth to their first child, and that seemed to mark a turn in their relationship. While the baby created more demands on the couple, Lars’s business was taking a downturn at the same time. They came to therapy with what they called “communication problems” resulting in constant quarrels. Each felt at their wit's end.
The Vicious Cycle Evolves
Maria complained that she felt overwhelmed with the baby and she couldn’t get Lars to help. He seemed to be spending more time at work, and when he came home, he retreated to his home office right after dinner, often not coming to bed until the middle of the night. Maria would often cry herself to sleep. The more she asked him for his help, the more he said he just couldn’t afford the time if his business was to survive and he was to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Lars said that Maria simply would not understand, and lately, she was nagging more and more and seemed to explode at him. He had to stay calm and centered to keep the business and their family from coming apart. Maria saw Lars becoming so cold that she feared he would leave her. The more she tried to engage him, the more he seemed to shut down.
Making Sense of the Cycle
Each partner had their own family history that created some differences. Maria’s culture and her family supported the rich expression of their emotions. In many ways, they showed their connections with each other by hugging, laughing, and quarreling to sort out their differences. It also seemed that Maria’s family had a long history of husbands abandoning their wives. Lars, however, took pride in stoicism in the face of adversity. To show emotion was to admit you were out of control. He admired the strength of his father, yet always pushed back against his mother’s attempts to guide his future. They were now afraid they might split up over their growing distance and distress.
The Trap
Maria and Lars were trapped in an escalating, vicious cycle. Both seemed to have goodwill for each other and for the future of their young family. Yet they were becoming polarized and now discouraged about the future of their marriage. Their solutions had become a problem.[1]
The Four Steps of a Vicious Cycle:
This couple’s problem followed four classic steps in escalating vicious cycles:
- The Trigger: All vicious cycles start with some trigger or a noticeable difference from normal that draws attention. In this case, there were two linked triggers in the birth of the couple’s first child and a downturn in Lars’s business.
- The Frame: Again, there were two intersecting frames for this couple. The first was their separate cultural traditions. The second was their individual histories and related vulnerabilities.
- The Solutions: Following from the framed trigger comes a logical and traditionally helpful set of solutions.
- The Trap: The final key to all vicious cycles is that the more a solution is repeated, the more the problem escalates—and the more the solution is applied with greater intensity and variations on the same familiar themes.
If at first you don’t succeed…
These four simple elements of vicious cycles seem so obvious that all of us might assume that they are easily seen by those involved, and just as easily corrected. Yet the opposite is true. We resolve most difficulties in life using tried-and-true solutions. They simply work. They make sense. That is why they are our go-to options. Therefore, when they seem to fail, or even to make things worse, we return to the motto shared by most of us: “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again!”
The Re-Solution Paradox
Furthermore, our commonly effective solutions make much sense in our lives that doing something different or even doing something opposite from our typical path seems paradoxical, counter-intuitive, and even dangerous. If Maria were to allow Lars to continue investing his time in his business, he might leave. If Lars were to step back from his work and start spending time with Maria and the baby, they might lose their livelihood and be out on the streets.
Vicious Cycles Everywhere
In future posts, this vicious cycle pattern, its traps, and the need for external input such as counseling and psychotherapy will become clear for not just problems of couples but for all psychological problems. When drawn into the vortex of couple problems, a sexual difficulty, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and more, it is most often very difficult to step outside the cycle and begin a new solution pattern without the support and perspective of someone outside the cycle.
The Essence of Effective Therapy
This is the essence of all effective psychotherapies, as I have discussed in all of my books and writings. This post is the first step in that direction. In a future post, I will describe two evidence-based effective couples therapy approaches and apply them to Maria and Lars. First, however, we need to look into what we mean by effective psychotherapy, how there can be so many effective treatments emerging, and how to resolve the dilemma of choosing the best treatment through “flexibility and fit.”
Adapted from: Fraser, J. S. (2018), Unifying effective psychotherapies: Tracing the process of change. Chapter 9, pp. 191-192. Washington, DC, APA books.
