530 - Why You Keep Having the Same Fight – 3 Toxic Patterns that Keep Us Stuck
Dances with demons
No, we’re not talking about actual demons dancing, but there is a demonic aspect to fight choreography, or the patterns and habits we fall into when having conflict with a partner. We want to reframe inevitable conflict as something you can begin working on to change how you act when arguing and recognize some of the habits you have. When you do that, you can start to turn the patterns around and take steps towards solving conflict in a more productive way.
Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight and founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), says there are three main “demon dialogues” that couples tend to fall into when fighting, regardless of what the fight is about. It’s almost like a ballroom dance: the music may change, but the choreography often stays the same.
Types of dances
Find the Bad Guy, aka The Bad Guy Boogie: Both partners are on the offensive in a futile attempt to pin blame or criticism on the other. Even if this may help one person “win” the fight, it still causes a lot of wounds, and who wants to be the one in the relationship with the “bad guy?”
The Protest Polka: One partner is focusing their energy in the form of demands, attacks, criticism, or raw pleas. The other partner is withdrawing, or hiding, or numbing to cope with their partner’s disapproval. Listen to episode 227 - Pursuit and Withdrawal for more information about this type of behavior.
Flight and Freeze Flashdance: Both partners turn away or withdraw, taking their respective attentions away from their partner. There is sometimes very little actual fighting in a relationship where this kind of pattern shows up often, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
Counterspells
To take steps towards breaking your choreography, you first have to recognize it. But once you do, there are a couple methods you can utilize to start changing behavior.
Meta Communication - “If you can name it, you can tame it”
Recognize that the shared dance is the first major step.
Share this information with your partner, preferably not when you’re already in the middle of a fight, and have a conversation about which patterns seem the most familiar.
Mapping the choreography. Many therapists who specialize in EFT have worksheets that can assist with this:
You and your partner sit down separately and make a list of behaviors that you know you do individually that turn your energy towards your partner during conflict, as well as the behaviors that turn it away.
Both you and your partner will sit down and separately make a list of the behaviors that you do individually that turn your energy and attention towards your partner during conflict, as well as what behaviors turn your energy and attention away from your partner during conflict.
Identify the most common behaviors and see if you can match them with your partner’s to uncover what your most used choreography or pattern is.
With your partner, come up with a name for your choreography and an agreed-upon way to let each other know when it is happening, and decide what will happen when one or both of you calls it out.
Transcript
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Dedeker: Hello, Multiamory listeners. Do you ever find yourself caught in the same argument with your partner over and over and over again? I have to say that I feel very fortunate that right now I'm at a time of my life where I'm in some of the most healthy, high-functioning relationships that I've ever had, and yet this still happens to me. There's still these arguments that can feel like they're playing out on repeat, where you could even repeat all the story beats to somebody else.
The topic maybe could change. The topic could be about the dishes one day. It could be an argument about your metamour the next day. It could be about finances another day, but somehow, the two of you end up following the same script every single time. Maybe you bring up a complaint or you express a need to your partner, and maybe they then get overwhelmed. They get overwhelmed really quickly. They tell you that, "Oh, I can't talk about this right now." They shut down the conversation, but you're tired of not having this conversation continually, and so you chase after them and you insist that, "Hey, no, we really need to dig into this."
Then they get defensive, and they pull away more, and so on and so on and so on and so on. These kinds of patterns are really common in relationships. Often, by the time that we even realize that we're playing out a pattern over and over and over again, we're already entrenched really deep in conflict, and it can feel impossible to break free. We end up feeling misunderstood, feeling alone, and often feeling further from resolution than when we started.
Today, we're bringing back one of our most popular episodes. In this particular episode, we identify three patterns that show up in relationship conflicts. We help you recognize which patterns are playing out in your conflict, and we give you tools for disrupting these patterns and creating new choreography. Also, Emily and Jase are going to give brilliant performances in these mini radio dramas that I wrote for them. They handled it beautifully.
This episode was originally released in 2020, and it was originally titled Demon Dance Battles, which, yes, I know, thank you, totally amazing title. Again, maybe a little unclear about what it's about if you're just scrolling through our back catalog. I present to you Demon Dance Battles, AKA why you keep having the same argument over and over. I hope that you enjoy.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about fight choreography. No, unfortunately, we're not talking about fake punches and sick stunts that people do on set. We're actually talking about the destructive cycles and patterns that are easy to fall into with a partner when you're in conflict, like these patterns that show up when you fight.
We'll be covering three of the most common patterns, how to recognize which fight choreography shows up most frequently in your relationship, and then go over some steps to turn things around and start solving conflict more productively. Conflict, we love it. It's been a while since we've done an episode on conflict, I guess, or do we talk about it all the time? It's hard to say.
Dedeker: I know when I was writing this, I was like, "Oh, I feel like we've done like 25 kajillion episodes on conflict." Then, in reality, our last one was quite a ways back. I don't know. With Multiamory episodes, they all occur at time in the same time in my brain. It's like some sort of theory of the universe, like all points in time. recurring.
Jase: For our six-year anniversary, we actually record all of Multiamory inside a tesseract. We're existing at all times at the same time.
Emily: Wouldn't that be nice? Wow.
Dedeker: I think looking at our backlog, our last episode that we did that was probably related to fighting or conflict was our Repair Shop episode 234.
Emily: Really? That's a long time. Goodness, like 40 episodes later.
Dedeker: August of 2019.
Emily: Oh, my goodness.
Jase: If you, the listener, are in a situation where you're around the same people all the time, day in and day out, you might notice some of these fight choreography patterns coming up with those people, whether that is a romantic partner, a roommate, a best friend, a family member, something like that. It applies across all of those relationships. To start out, let's go over what are some things that we know about conflict in relationships in general.
Emily: It's going to happen. Super inevitable, and that's okay, because even healthy relationships have conflict. In fact, 69% of conflict in relationships are based on unsolvable perpetual problems. That's from the Gottman Institute. We talked about that maybe in the Repair Shop episode or something.
Dedeker: Yes, we did, in the Repair Shop episode.
Emily: Yes, exactly. That's an amazingly high number, in my opinion, of these problems are not ever going to be solved, and you have to figure out a way for that to be okay within your relationship if you're going to stay in that relationship.
Dedeker: Yes. We also know that the communication patterns that we see growing up from the adults around us, from our caregivers, combined with our past emotional baggage, our past trauma, as well as our individual attachment styles, can influence how we respond to conflict in our modern-day relationships. I said modern day, like the relationship you're in today, not a relationship of the future.
Emily: Yes, when you'll be in 2050 or something. How do we see that in our current relationships, like our family of origin, and the way maybe that we saw our parents fighting? Do we see that in our current relationships?
Jase: I'm actually just--
Dedeker: Got to open up this can of worms.
Jase: I cannot go too deep on it right away. I'm curious for the two of you, when you were young, do you have memories of your parents or parental figures fighting or fighting with people other than you regularly? Because for me, it was something that I definitely never saw when I was really young, and then saw a little bit when I was a little bit older, and my parents were on their second marriages.
For me, it was like, well, they're all fucked by now anyway. I was jaded about the whole thing at that point. For me, I definitely grew up with this association of fighting is like, because things are shitty. You've already had a divorce, clearly you don't know how to do relationships, I guess. This is my 12-year-old angry kid brain-
Dedeker: Goodness, Jase.
Jase: -upset about my life being turned upside down. What about for you?
Emily: Understandable.
Jase: What was your impression of adults fighting?
Emily: See, that's funny because I never grew up with two parents. It was only one parent, or my mother, and my grandmother. They didn't fight, but my grandmother saw my mother as such, it's almost like a parental figure, which is very backwards and weird. My grandmother, she was very submissive towards my mother.
Dedeker: I guess, for me, when I was very young, I grew up with the same thing of not having two parents in the house, really, at least for the first few years of my life. It was my mom, and then I'd see my grandparents. My grandparents' arguments, I guess, were-- I don't know. My grandparents, very much, if they really, truly had to have an argument, they would take it away from everybody else and hide behind closed doors.
I got to see those small solvable problems, the like, "Well, we should have this for dinner." "Well, I think we should have this for dinner." "Well, why do you think--" Those kind of solvable problems of like we work through it and come to a solution, but I never really got to see, at least among my grandparents, the bigger perpetual problems until my mom got remarried also. Then I saw that all the time.
Jase: I don't know if you ended up with the same association that I did of like, if you're fighting, that means it's bad, that this is a problem. Was that what it was like for you?
Dedeker: Yes. It was definitely not only if you're fighting, this is a problem, but also if you're fighting, you are going for it. Conflict is either 0 or 100, basically. I think what I got was either it's not a problem or it's a drag-out fight.
Jase: I remember then, later, once I was maybe high school, college, and beyond, hearing from other people saying that, "Oh, well, fighting or conflict is healthy in relationships." My parents always did that growing up, but it was never this vindictive, bad thing. It was like, that's how they communicate, and so that's how I grew up, and that's how my partner and I do it. To me, it still honestly is a little bit hard to wrap my brain around, but understanding that that can look very different.
I think part of the reason for that is about how we saw fighting be done. There's a vicious, tear-people-down fighting, like you were mentioning, Dedeker. Then there's the more frustrated, passive-aggressive-until-someone-yells, fighting, which is maybe what I saw more of growing up. Then there's fighting that could be heated, could be raised voices, but that isn't destructive. It's interesting to realize that there is this range, but that each of us might never experience the one that we're not part of, because we just can't go there.
Dedeker: Sometimes you may have only seen, again, those heated, really intense, destructive parts and never seen how your parents repaired or how your caregivers repaired. That's another thing is sometimes they just don't. Sometimes you can just not see what the repair process looks like at all, or it could be your parents did repair, but that was behind closed doors when you weren't around, or you didn't notice because there weren't raised voices or things like that.
Anyway, so before we dive too far deep into our own childhood traumas, I want to talk about this concept of fight choreography. Researchers and couple of counselors and therapists have been trying to get to the bottom of relationship conflict for decades, probably at least since the beginning of the 20th century, I would say. 1920s is when we first start getting people actually starting to research what causes marital conflict, and how do we resolve it?
There's a lot of different theories floating out there. There's, of course, a lot of different theories that motivate different approaches to couples therapy and couples counseling and things like that. Today, we're going to be looking at just one of them. It's a concept that was introduced by Dr. Sue Johnson. She's the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT. She's also the author of the book, Hold Me Tight, which I think a lot of people are familiar with.
I like to call this concept fight choreography. Sue Johnson calls it demon dialogues, and I'm like, "Whoa, slam on demons out of nowhere. Where did that come from, Sue?" You'll hear us referring to those two things interchangeably, either fight choreography, fight patterns, or demon dialogues, like Sue calls them.
Jase: Could we take the best of both worlds and instead call them demon battles?
Dedeker: Oh, demon battles.
Emily: I like that. My partner is playing-- what is it? Doom right now-
Jase: Lots of demons.
Emily: -and so that reminds me of Doom. Lots of demon battles with actual demons from hell.
Dedeker: Some of this content may be a little bit familiar today. We talked more about Sue Johnson's work in episode 227, specifically about pursuit and withdrawal patterns. That's going to come into play again today as we talk about these, how you say, demon battles.
Emily: Sue Johnson talks about three main demon dialogues-
Jase: Demon battles.
Emily: -that different couples fall into when fighting. Yes. Demon battles, demon dialogues, fight choreography, whatever you want to call it. They fall into these three main categories regardless of the content of the fight, which is very interesting. We don't want to say that the content of the fight never matters, but what she is saying is that the majority of the time, the important part of the conflict is the subtext and the emotions that are underlying that dialogue. Dedeker, I know you said there was a thing that happened recently.
Dedeker: Well, just the case in point. On this show, we've talked about nothing fights before, "nothing fights"-
Emily: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: -where it's about the tiniest thing. I got into a fight with Alex a few weeks ago about whether or not the window shade should be up at a particular time in the bedroom, and it was emotional. It was emotional.
Emily: Oh my.
Dedeker: There was no way in hell that it was about the window shade. It was so, so, so not about the window shade. I think these things happen a lot. It can be a fight about chores, and maybe there is an element about it that is, hey, pragmatic, we do need to figure out how to get this chore done, but often underneath it are these deeper things of like, "Hey, are you taking me for granted? Are you listening to me? Do you care about what's important to me as far as how our home is comfortable?" Stuff like that.
Now, Sue Johnson, when she talks about the demon dialogues, she likens it to couples following the steps of a ballroom dance, where the music, and in this case, the music being the content of the fight, the emotions that come up during the fight, that may change, but the choreography, the steps to the ballroom dance are ultimately the same. If you know West Coast Swing, even if the song changes, the ultimate base of the choreography does not change. It's the same set of moves, just to a different music. That's the metaphor that she uses to explain these ballroom demon battles.
Jase: It's interesting to use the analogy of something like ballroom dancing, where there's also specific types of moves that if you know them, it's one person cues it, and then the other person knows how to respond. That very much reminds me of the fight thing where it's-
Dedeker: There's the lead and follow.
Jase: -one of us does the thing that always gets that response, and then that gets the other thing, and it just falls into this rut, falls into this autopilot of like, "Yes, here we go, here we go. We're ramping up, ramping up, ramping up."
Dedeker: All right, kids, it's time. We're going to go through each of these demon battles, demon dialogues, fight choreography. We're going to go through each of them one at a time. We're going to do that with the help of some professional actors that I've brought in for the day.
Emily: Wow. I'm so excited.
Dedeker: May I introduce you to Emily, is it?
Emily: Yes. That's my name. My professional name is Emilia, but sure.
Dedeker: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes. Emilia. Emilia and Jase. Jase, I believe it is.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Jase Lindgren?
Jase: Yes, that's correct. Happy to be here.
Dedeker: Good. I'm really excited to have the two of you. These two actually are professional actors. They got a resume and everything.
Emily: You are a professional actor.
Dedeker: I know. We're all professional actors. What we're going to do, I'm going to have you two read this scene, do a dramatic reenactment. Just do what you want with it, like explore the space. Then we're going to end the scene, and then we're going to talk a little bit about what was going on-
Jase: Got it.
Dedeker: -with this particular couple, okay?
Jase: Can you set the scene for us?
Dedeker: Yes. Okay.
Emily: Interior.
Dedeker: You're a couple. Yes. Interior.
Jase: Oh, it's seven o'clock.
Emily: 9:00 PM.
Dedeker: Seven o'clock at night. Oh.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: Hey, who's the director here?
Emily: Sorry, sorry. I'll shut up.
Dedeker: You're just the talent.
Emily: You're right. Fricking spoiled talent.
Dedeker: All right. Interior. I'm going to say this couple is at home having a date night at home, and one of them has worked really hard. I'm going to say person A has worked really hard on making dinner.
Jase: You could just call us by our names. It'd probably be easier.
Dedeker: Okay. Emily has worked really hard and making dinner for date night tonight. You've just sat down, started eating dinner, and then the scene begins. And action.
Emily: You need to put your phone away when we're at dinner. Tonight is supposed to be date night, and that is really rude.
Jase: Rude. You're the one who can't even watch a movie without constantly texting your friends. I'm just taking care of work stuff.
Emily: I had to leave my own work early so that I could cook dinner for date night because you weren't willing to do it.
Jase: We can never have a date night without you bringing up some kind of problem. It's like I can't do anything right.
Dedeker: And cut. All right, well done. Well done, everybody. I love Jase. You were so in your phone, you almost didn't do your line.
Jase: I was trying to capture that-
Dedeker: You were that committed.
Jase: -sense of you got to finish the text-
Emily: Here is method acting.
Jase: -before you-- just trying to make it real.
Dedeker: He was that committed to the role. What did y'all notice was going on in that conversation? What might be the steps of the dance that these two are following? I know it's a very short snippet of a conversation. It probably, in reality, would go on for much longer, but what was going on there?
Emily: I pointed out immediately a problem. It wasn't trying to ask a question or trying to say, "Hey, I would really appreciate it if," or something along those lines. Instead, I just completely threw at him like, "You're doing something wrong."
Jase: You're being rude.
Emily: You are really rude. You're being rude.
Jase: Then the response is to completely change topics and instead be like, "But you do this other thing, so you're actually the bad one. Really, I'm just normal. You're the one who's bad."
Emily: What about as I'm-- Totally. Then I said, again, "Look at what I had to do. Look at this awesome thing that I did for you, and I'm getting no respect and no love for it. What the hell."
Jase: Then my character, at the end, basically did the same thing of like, "Well, great. We can never have a good date night because you always have to make it into a problem. We can't even enjoy this." It's just both pushing that blame.
Emily: Then I ask, why are these two people in a relationship?
Dedeker: Oh, yes, you ask that, but that happens all the time.
Jase: I feel like I've been in something like this.
Dedeker: I've been in this.
Emily: Well, sure. Totally.
Dedeker: I've been in this conversation. I do feel like this approach, this particular demon battle, this is what I saw the most of growing up.
Jase: Oh, really?
Dedeker: Yes. Was a lot of attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, and especially the, "I'm going to defend myself by bringing up something wrong that you did, even if that was completely irrelevant or from six weeks ago or whatever." Then the other person responds by, "I'm going to bring up something wrong that you did that was completely irrelevant to this conversation at six weeks ago," and then we just go back and forth.
Emily: They're almost switch-tracking.
Jase: It is a form of switch-tracking, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, that's true.
Jase: This is 100%, at least one of my parents, if not several of them, but this was their tactic was always--
Emily: Several of your like 75 different parents.
Dedeker: You've so many parents.
Jase: Mom and stepdad, and dad and stepmom.
Emily: Mom and stepdad and stepdad and dad.
Dedeker: You have three dads.
Jase: I know. Stepdad 2.0 didn't enter the picture-
Dedeker: Stop beating around the bush.
Jase: -until so recently. All my baggage was done by then. It's already been packed by then.
Emily: It's all wrapped up in a nice little bow. I didn't feel good during this. It was very sad. It's hard to constantly blame your partner because it seems so cyclical, and nobody is going to get anything done ever. Nothing is going to be resolved because you're just going back and forth.
Jase: Right. They're both right from the start, putting each other in a position where there's no way to diffuse this. There's no way to move on. It's just throwing back and forth, "Well, you're bad." It's like the only way that person could not just throw that back at you, then is to be like, "Yes, I'm terrible," and then that's weird. That leads us to the name of this Dance/Demon Battle, which is "Find the Bad Guy." I have a note. I have a note here for Sue Johnson. For Sue.
Dedeker: A note for Sue?
Jase: I appreciate that the names she's given to each of these, and you'll see as we go that they do try to make it clear what the fight is doing, but they're not good names for dances. If we're going to say this is a dance, find the bad guy. Find the bad guy. That's a terrible name for a dance.
Dedeker: Bad Guy Boogie?
Jase: That's better.
Emily: Oh, that's good.
Jase: This is what is now known as the Bad Guy Boogie, previously known as Find the Bad Guy.
Dedeker: Multiamory, just improving on other people's content since 2014.
Emily: We're not even doing much other than just changing the name, but it's an improvement, isn't it?
Jase: Bad Guy Boogie. Here's what defines it. Both partners are on the attack. They're throwing blame and criticism at each other, and it's this attempt to pin one or the other person as the real bad guy, under the false assumption that once you can get them to admit that they're the bad guy, then it's all solved. Unfortunately, as we saw, and as Emily brought up, it felt yucky even doing it pretend-wise, is that this choreography can cause a lot of wounds and hurt feelings and really dig you into a situation you can't get out of. The irony is that even if you succeed, then great. Now you're in a relationship with the bad guy. There's no good outcome here.
Dedeker: Yes. Something that Sue Johnson points out also is that this particular dynamic, the Bad Guy Boogie, at least according to her, she says, "This is hard to maintain over time." It's hard to maintain this same both of us attacking each other for a long period of time. Her theorizing being that it takes a lot of energy, and it is very harmful and wounding and really difficult to deal with.
Often this is an escalation that sometimes will occur at the end of a fantastically toxic relationship that's about to explode. Or, more often, sometimes a fight may start here, and then may adjust into the next demon battle, dialogue, dance, choreography, boogie, whatever you want to call it, which is more likely to be sustainable in a bad way over a long period of time. Let's move on to the second scene. Shall we?
Jase: Just real quick, in the spirit of renaming things to make them better, now I'm realizing that we've created a problem by calling them demon battles, but then naming them they're dances. Hear me out.
Dedeker: Here we go.
Emily: We're just going to name--
Jase: Instead of demon battle, they're going to be demon dance battles, like West Side Story style.
Dedeker: Demon dance battle? All right. No. Jase, I think the title of this episode is now Demon Dance Battles
Jase: Demon Dance. Okay, perfect.
Dedeker: I'm erasing where I called it Fight Choreography, and I'm calling it Demon Dance Battles. Done.
Jase: Everyone's going to see that in their podcast feed and go.
Emily: They're going to be like, "The hell." That's fine. What's the next dance battle?
Dedeker: Yes. Let's move on to that. Let me set the scene. The scene is, yes, the two of you are at home.
Emily: Where else would we be? Come on.
Dedeker: I know. It's the extent of my imagination these days. The two of you are at home. Emily, you are chilling out with your switch, just kicking back. Jase-
Emily: Plant some animal crossing.
Dedeker: -you've been hanging out at your computer, working on some stuff, and then you enter the room to talk to Emily. Yes. And action.
Jase: Can we talk about this credit card bill that just came in? We have to figure out if there are any of these expenses that we can cut out for next month.
Emily: Oh, the last month wasn't really a regular month for us. It's going to be better next month. I really don't think that you need to worry this much about it.
Jase: Why are you avoiding this? You can't just bury your head in the sand and expect it'll all get taken care of. You need to be responsible, too.
Emily: Okay, I really don't want to talk about this right now.
Jase: Don't walk away from me. This is important. We need to talk about it.
Dedeker: End scene. Cut. Good foley work, Jase.
Jase: Thank you. I really wanted to bring the listeners into the scene with this paper
Dedeker: Into this-- the credit card statement that you're waving around?
Emily: I know. I was like, "What's happening? What is he doing? Where is he going?" I didn't actually get up and walk away, but I did in my heart. What were we doing there? I was being super avoidant. Just avoiding you all over the place.
Jase: It's like I was trying to bring something up, and your response was to just discount it. It's not even a real concern. Don't worry about it.
Emily: Don't worry about it.
Jase: Then my response was to jump to accusations then of you can't just ignore-- you are jumping pretty far, I think to--
Emily: Yes, what the hell. You're irresponsible.
Jase: Exactly. Essentially saying, "You're irresponsible," and then that drove you all the way out the door. I'm out.
Emily: I'm like, "I'm leaving. Me and my switch are going."
Dedeker: Again, this is just a tiny snippet. It's probably likely in reality that this conversation could last a lot longer before ultimately resulting in Emily being like, "Okay, I'm out. I can't talk about this right now." Things like that. Some people who are listening may recognize this particular dynamic. It matches up to a pursuit and withdrawal pattern, which covered much more in depth in episode 227. Some therapists and researchers also call it demand withdrawal. Now, Sue Johnson-- and Jase, I feel like you're going to be upset at this, with the naming conventions, but Sue Johnson calls this the Protest Polka.
Jase: Actually, I don't mind it.
Emily: It's brilliant.
Dedeker: Really.
Jase: I'm all right with that.
Dedeker: That's the one I heard.
Emily: It works.
Jase: It's a polka.
Dedeker: It's a polka.
Jase: It's right there. It's a music, it's a dance. It's fine.
Emily: She hates it.
Dedeker: Sure. Maybe if I knew more about how a polka works, maybe it would give me a better idea in my head of--
Emily: I have no idea what a polka looks like, but it works.
Dedeker: I guess what I like about calling it Find the Bad Guy is that it gives me more of a sense of, in my brain, I'm like, "Okay, I know exactly what's going on and what the motivations are." The Protest Polka, I'm like, "I don't know how a polka works."
Jase: What did we rename?
Dedeker: Is there a lot of pursuing and then withdrawing? I don't know.
Jase: If you're trying to incorporate that into the dance part--
Emily: That's a good point.
Jase: What was our other guy-- when it was the Bad Guy Boogie, yes, it just needs to have alliteration. That's all that matters.
Dedeker: Yes, it's fine.
Jase: That bad guys are the ones who say, "Come on, let's boogie." The Protest Polka, I don't mind it, but what would you think about-- because it's a little bit weird, because it's the Protest Polka, but it seems to me like it's defined more by the withdrawing. It could be like the withdrawal waltz.
Dedeker: Maybe. I think that puts a little bit of the emphasis on the wrong place. What's going on in this pursuit withdrawal pattern is one partner is putting their energy toward their partner in the form of demands, attacks, criticisms, or pleading or prodding, things like that. The other partner is moving their energy and focus and attention away from their partner by defending, withdrawing, hiding, or numbing. It's a cyclical thing. The more the pursuer demands and attacks, the more the withdrawer wants to defend and pull away, and vice versa, the more the withdrawer pulls away, the more the pursuer pursues and demands and attacks, and it's just constant.
Something I wanted to point out in this particular dialogue is that when we think of withdrawing, we think of things like what Emily did in the scene of looking away, walking away, walking into the other room, shutting down the conversation, things like that. What also counts as a withdrawal behavior, as in behavior that takes your energy and focus and attention away from your partner, are things like getting super logical and rational. The fact that Emily pointed out, "Oh, yes last month it wasn't a regular month for us, and it's going to be better next month." Super logical, but doesn't really address Jase's concerns of like, "Hey, I'm worried about money, and I'm worried about what happened."
Combined with also the behavior of minimizing, like in the scene where Emily said, "Oh, yes, I really don't think you need to worry about this this much." That's also withdrawal behavior, because it takes your attention away from your partner's distress and worry.
Jase: You don't need to be so upset about it.
Dedeker: Exactly. I think this is so hard because I know the way that I've been in the past, the way I see a lot of clients react in the past, sometimes is that we confuse comfort with logicking someone out of their problem or their worry. I think this is why it becomes so important to talk about Triforce stuff. T two, T three, stuff like that. Sometimes you can think like, "If I just sit here and tell my partner all the reasons why they don't need to worry, maybe that will help for them."
Maybe they really are like, "I need someone to bounce off and think about and tell me that it's going to be okay." Chances are it's probably not. That's probably not what they were going for is to be told that logically they shouldn't have a problem or shouldn't have a worry.
Jase: It's interesting because in both cases, those would be Triforce three, which is looking for a solution to a problem, but it's like, I want to solve one problem and you think I'm trying to solve a different problem, which is the fact that I'm worrying as opposed to I'm trying to solve the problem of, "Hey, we're spending too much money on this credit card." That is an interesting, a different way that you can screw up and not meta-communicate effectively.
Dedeker: Definitely. It's also the kind of thing where Emily shutting down like, "I don't want to talk about this right now." On the one hand, that can be done in a healthy way, like with taking a halt, or with communicating like, "Hey, this is a bad time. Hey, can we talk about this at another time? Hey, let me go take 20 minutes."
Emily: I definitely didn't do that, though.
Dedeker: It can also be done in this very unhealthy way of like, "I'm shutting down. I don't care. I'm walking away." I find that when people have issues with halts, have a problem with incorporating it, or feel really hesitant to incorporate it, I think it's because it becomes a pursue withdrawal issue, is that it's being felt like the halt to the pursuer. The halt feels like you're withdrawing. With the withdrawal, maybe the way they're using the halt is like this escape button, panic button to get away from the pressure. That's what I suspect is often going on. What I feel like I see often with couples that I work with where halt is not working very well for them.
Jase: Something we've talked about with halt before is the importance of having a clear plan of when you're going to come back to it so that it doesn't feel like it's just this way to not have the conversation and then ignore it. This one, for me, actually, the Protest Polka, that's what it was. The Protest Polka to me is, this is the one that I think I most resonate with actually, in terms of, I've definitely been in relationships before. It's been a while, but where my reaction would be to get very tired. That was the way that my body would be trying to withdraw was like, I would suddenly be so tired.
These would usually happen in the evening, too, so that would be part of it, but it's like, that was my body just shutting down and being like, "I can't do this. I can't handle this. I don't know what to do with this." Something that I think would've been a good tool that I didn't have back then was setting a specific time to talk about it, or having something like radar, having a regular time and place to do it that's not having to dance around and wait till someone ambushes you, and then it's like, "Ah, I can't deal with this right now."
Dedeker: Definitely. Are we ready for the final scene, the final demon dance battle?
Jase: All right. Tuts.
Dedeker: Let's see. How am I going to set the scene here? Guess what? You're at home, and of course-- gosh, let's see. Emily's hanging out. She's not on her switch, though. She's in the middle of getting the dishes done.
Emily: Also, a thing that I would be doing these days every day. We don't have a dishwasher. Oh, boy, it's tough out there, being a dishwasher lady.
Dedeker: Jase walks into the room and starts the conversation.
Jase: I want to go check out that new pop-up store down the block.
Emily: It's not really my scene. I've got stuff that I need to get done around the house, but I guess we could go take a look if you really want to.
Jase: No, I should go finish cleaning up the yard.
Dedeker: Then we see them go their separate ways, and we fade to credits.
Jase: Wow.
Dedeker: End scene.
Jase: What's going on here? What's this choreography?
Emily: Wow. That was the end of the movie. Jeez.
Dedeker: Yes, it's a very short scene. What did y'all notice?
Emily: Both of us wanted to do different things. I think I was super passive-aggressively being like, "You didn't freaking help me again, and I am doing a lot of things for the house that you are not helping with, but you want to go to do something fun. I guess I can do it if you want, but I need to get stuff done."
Dedeker: I noticed Jase deflating a lot, but not really-- I don't know, making the invitation and then when it was rejected, just deflating and giving up, hence the like, "Oh, I'm not even going to go. I'll go finish cleaning up the yard," or whatever. This is a short conversation because after this, they probably don't spend the rest of the day really talking to each other, interacting with each other that much.
Jase: Right, because I got to go out to the yard and she's going to, I guess, clean more things. I don't know. It's interesting because I can relate to this feeling of whether or not you're even being that productive or have that much to do. You can get into this mind state of, I've just got so much to do. I can't see the end of it. I feel like I'm buried under a pile of stuff to do. I often feel this way, and it is hard to pull yourself out of that to do something fun or to enjoy something when you're in the middle of that way of thinking or being frustrated about life.
Dedeker: This particular demon battle is what Sue Johnson calls, flight and freeze. I'm going to upgrade that by calling it the flight and freeze flash dance.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: Cool. Cool.
Emily: We're going to throw water all over ourselves at the end.
Dedeker: Get frozen.
Emily: And a chair.
Jase: Then are frozen. Okay, got it.
Dedeker: This is characterized by both partners turning away, withdrawing. The energy with both of them is ultimately going away from their partner. There can be a lot of tension and avoidance of actually talking about topics.
Emily: Yes, but I find it really interesting that there also can be a lot of politeness surrounding this and very little what we would may deem as fighting or what normal fighting looks like to us.
Jase: You could look at this and go, "Oh, wow. Look at how civilly they manage their disagreement, and no fighting. Great."
Emily: Yes, but that doesn't actually mean that things are healthy because in reality, both partners may have emotionally withdrawn from one another long ago, and so they're like, "Not going to go there. Conflict's unproductive. It's easier to not even engage with that in the first place." There may be a lot of distancing, a lot of numbing, a lot of losing hope, again, maybe at the end of a relationship here.
Jase: I could see this one as the extension after the Protest Polka, where it's the pursuit and withdraw, and eventually the pursuer just gives up. It's not worth it, and so then it's like, "Okay, yes, never mind, I'll just do something else."
Dedeker: Sue Johnson points out that she sees this a lot in long-term marriages, where the fighting stopped years ago, but that doesn't mean that it's been a healthy, fulfilling, life-giving relationship. It's been like, "We're roommates who are figuring it out together."
The other thing you'll notice from the scene is the fact that there could have been a fight here, or a disagreement or an argument or some kind of engagement. When Jase invites Emily to go check out the new pop-up store and she refuses, it could have been like, "Oh my God, you never want to do things with me. I'm really sad. This really hurts me." It could have been something. Same with Emily of being like, "I've got stuff to get done around the house," and maybe even implying--
Emily: I could use some help.
Dedeker: -"I could use some help. Why are you leaving me right now?" Instead of her even being willing to have that fight, even is like both people are resigned. Even though there's no fight that happened, it doesn't mean that that means they resolved in a really nice way.
Jase: All right. We want to go on, and we're going to break down what's really going on here, as well as talk about some counter spells, as we like to call it. Some ways to stop the demon dance battles.
Dedeker: All right. What's going on underneath all of these various dance battles? Has anyone noticed--
Emily: So much.
Dedeker: -any common themes, though, of what happens?
Jase: None of the fights are really about the thing that they're talking about. It's really about one person wanting to engage with the other and the other not, or maybe both just wanting to feel better by blaming the other person. I guess there's different ways that go about it. They all have a pushing-away feel to them.
Emily: I was going to say that, too. It's all like, nobody's going towards each other. Everyone's just going away from each other and very upset, and people end up feeling very alone.
Dedeker: Ultimately, the end result of all of these dances is that people feel hurt and alone. A really important part of the theory that drives emotionally-focused therapy is this idea that we attach to our partners in very much the same way that we attach to our parents and caregivers when we're young. We've talked about attachment theory before on the show. If you're not familiar with attachment theory, go google it. You'll find a billion kajillion resources for talking about that.
What's interesting is Sue Johnson doesn't just make the argument of like, "Oh yes, your attachment style that you made in childhood influences your relationship." She makes the argument of like, "No, no, no, you attach to your partner and look to them for comfort and reassurance and security almost in the same exact way that you did to your parents when you were very young. The difference being that as an adult, you're not looking for them to like necessarily feed you or clothe you or things like that, but you are looking for that same sense of safety and comfort."
Emily: That means that generally, people are more anxious, attached, might be more likely to have pursuit behaviors, which makes sense. Then avoidant attached people might be more likely to have withdrawal behaviors. That's not true 100% of the time, but that tends to be the pattern that happens over and over again.
Jase: Overall, what we want, we as people, not just the three of us, but overall, what we want is to feel safe, to feel comforted, secure, when we're with our partners. Withdrawing, minimizing, attacking, blaming, and the whole host of other behaviors we were talking about that show up in these demon dance battles, can cause a break in that attachment, which leaves us not feeling safe, comforted, and secure, and then leaves us resorting to those same bad behaviors in this attempt to secure the relationship again.
Or, in the avoidant case, in this attempt to like, "I didn't need you anyway because you're bad." Some way of like, we want to regain our feeling of safety and comfort, but unfortunately, it's just bad behaviors on top of bad behaviors.
Dedeker: With the avoiding and withdrawing, that actually is a relationship-preserving tactic, because often the idea is, I need to take myself away so that my partner stops criticizing me, stops seeing how bad I am, stops going after me, and therefore I can keep the relationship intact. If I take myself out of the equation, then the relationship will still be there.
Jase: Yes, I guess I was thinking about the Bad Guy Boogie, of they're going on the attack right away. I don't know. I guess it's like, "Well, if you're going to criticize me, I've got to criticize you too, because then otherwise, maybe I'm not worthy of you," or something. I'm not quite sure what the thinking is, but I know I've been there before.
Emily: We want to move on to some counter spells. Let's talk about ways that we can avoid doing this, or if we find ourselves back in a similar loop, how we can maybe work to get out of it. The first one is something that we talk about a lot on the show, in various ways, meta communication. If you can name it, you can tame it.
Jase: Is that ours? Did we come up with that?
Dedeker: No
Jase: Did you come up with that, Dedeker?
Dedeker: I did not come up with it. I googled it, and multiple people have tried to take credit for it, but from what I've seen, it's shown up in many, many different spheres and slightly different phrasing. It's not ours, but I'm going to make the bold decision that it doesn't belong to anybody.
Emily: Cool, it belongs to everybody then.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Recognizing this shared dance style that you and your partner have is the first major step to taming this thing that you do. You can share this info with your partner, maybe not during a time where you two were in a heated conversation or in the middle of one of these fights, but talk about the patterns that you're seeing and maybe which one of these seems the most familiar, what you find yourself falling into over and over again.
Jase: I suppose if you did find yourself really going down one of these tracks into one of these demon dance battles, and you were like, "Oh my gosh, we're doing the bad guy boogie demon dance battle," that would stop the conversation, at least while they go, "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Emily: Yes, that's true. Hopefully, it would be humorous enough and fun enough that the partner that doesn't know what the heck they're talking about would be like, "Oh, okay, what? Let's elaborate here."
Jase: Yes, better to talk about this, not in a heated effect.
Dedeker: Yes, I think this could be a great episode to listen to together with a partner. You don't have a conversation afterwards about like, "Wow, which one of those felt the most familiar?" I think what's important to bear in mind is when you're meta communicating about this is something that's fundamental to this, is that you and your partner start to look at this demon dance battle as like, "Oh, this is a thing that happens that's outside of ourselves. That's the problem. Let's find ways to not do that."
As opposed to in the middle of the fight, and you're like, "You're starting up the demon dance battle. You're doing this pursuing thing. Stop that. This is all your fault." To go along with one of our favorite phrases on Multiamory, "Don't weaponize this shit."
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: You can also have a counter spell of taking this a little bit more granular, if you want. If you're listening to this and one of these particular scenes stood out to you, like, "Whoa, that totally sounds like what I go through with my partner," that's great. Start looking into that. Start doing research on this. You can also go even more in-depth.
There are a lot of EFT therapists out there who have variations on worksheets and exercises to help you find the specifics about your own custom demon dance battle. We're going to give you just a condensed version of several exercises. Of course, feel free, go out, research. There's a lot of worksheets and stuff out there. Don't google demon dance battle, google demon dialog.
Jase: Demon dialog, okay.
Dedeker: That's what it, actually, is supposed to be called.
Emily: Until we like TM, TM.
Dedeker: Exactly, until we find a way to just really rehash it and prove it enough that it's a different enough product that we can then TM, TM, TM, the hell out of.
Jase: TM, TM, TM demon dance battles, yes.
Dedeker: Step number one, generally, I call this counter spell, mapping the choreography, or mapping the demon dance battle. Step number one is that both you and your partner are going to sit down, you're both separately going to make a list of the behaviors that you do individually. You're going to make a list of your own behavior, not a list of your partner's behavior, but a list of your own behavior that turn your energy and attention towards your partner during conflict, as well as a list of what behaviors turn your energy and attention away from your partner during conflict.
This can be super simple to do. There is you can fill in the blank to this sentence, which is when things are not going right between us, I move my energy and attention towards you by, blank. That can be things like pointing out your mistakes, leveling blame on you, insisting on making my point, becoming angry and blowing up, prodding at you, or pleading, following you when you leave the room, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That can be multiple behaviors. It can maybe you can only come up with one, whatever.
Then you're also going to make this list of the behaviors that move energy away. When things are not going right between us, I move my energy and attention away from you by, blank. That can be things like zoning out, walking away, freezing, becoming hyper logical, minimizing your concerns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Both of you two are going to sit down, take a little time, fill in the blanks of that exercise, come up with a list of behaviors, and then you're going to move on to step number two.
Jase: All right. Step number two is to then take these lists and identify the most common behaviors and see if you can match them up with each other to uncover what your most used choreography is. It would look something like this, when things are not going right between us, the more I, blank, the more you, blank, and then the more I, blank, and the dance begins.
I know this is absurd, and if you're having a hard time in a relationship, this might be challenging to do, but it did make me think you could actually choreograph a little real-life dance that goes along with this to lighten the mood, where you both put in your right hands toward each other, and turn that way, so you're facing toward each other. The more I whatever, they put their hand in, and then they say the more I--
Dedeker: You make a secret handshake out of this?
Jase: Yes. Hold on, hear me out. I put out my right hand, and I say, "The more I point out your mistakes--" Then you would put your right hand against mine, and then you would say, "The more I--"
Dedeker: Get defensive.
Jase: Yes. Then I would say, "The more I--" and we go up and touch hands toward each other. It's like both of our hands are touching each other now, and we're facing each other with our hands in front of us. Then I say, "And the more I become angry and blow up." Then we both push back and do strike a pose and say, "And the demon dance battle begins." I know that without video, that's hard to convey, but I hope you get the idea.
Emily: Oh, we saw it, Jase.
Dedeker: We saw it. We got to enjoy that. What's your thinking behind, also attaching literal choreography to this?
Emily: Humor?
Jase: Humor, yes. I find humor, for something like this where it's scary to be vulnerable, it can give you a little bit of a-- and just physically moving often can help from feeling so trapped and stuck in something, in a behavior. It just says, "And the dance battle begins," at the end. The demon dance battle begins. How could you not choreograph that?
Dedeker: Provided that, then you don't actually continue the demon dance battle?
Jase: Oh, yes, right, that would be bad.
Emily: We have a step three here, and that is to, together with your partner, come up with a way to name your choreography, as well as an agreed-upon way to warn each other when it's happening. Maybe it can be what you did, what Jase just did there. By creating a silly name, it can be the hanky-panky or the hokey-pokey, or whatever you want.
That's the name of your dance. Then you can choreograph it as well, but also agree upon what will happen when one of you, or when both of you, calls out the dance. Are you going to halt it up, are you going to hug each other, take three deep breaths, go to other sides of the room for a second, whatever, but maybe agree upon doing something, just so you can get out of the habit of doing this pattern over and over again?
Jase: Yes. In our communication hacks, DLC bonus pack, whatever we call that, a while back, we talked about--
Emily: I think Triforce communication was DLC. I don’t know what--
Jase: Oh, this was the booster pack.
Emily: Booster pack, right?
Jase: Communication booster pack.
Emily: Booster pack.
Jase: Anyway, one of the things we talked about in that was micro scripts. The importance of micro script is it's something often a little bit silly, maybe it rhymes or something that you've agreed upon beforehand, so that in the moment, you can fall back onto this set phrase or this set thing, so that then it's not like, "What are you trying to do?" You're like, "Your intentions aren't getting misinterpreted?" It's like, oh yes, right, we agreed on that together, that that's our thing.
Then here it could even be a physical thing, like Emily mentioned, a hug. It could be that, like, "Whoa, we're fighting, and you just gave me a hug." Oh, right, that's our cue to remember-
Emily: We love each other.
Jase: -we want to be in this together. Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Something important to bear in mind is that I think that at this point, it can be really easy to also fall into, we recognize our demon dance battle, and we know how to call it out, but then we can still level blame at each other of like, "Well, you started it this time." You're like, "Well, I wouldn't have gone to the other room if you hadn't started up by doing this."
Something that Sue Johnson points out that I think is really clever and important is that this is a circle, and if you look at a circle, there's no single point on a circle where you can point to and be like, "Oh, yes, that's where the circle started." Just bear that in mind, too. If you do get into a habit with your partner of being able to call it out, or being able to be like, "Oh, hey, we're doing this thing again," to hopefully avoid the temptation to be like, "Oh, and it's your fault," because then you're just back in the dance again.
Jase: The dance battle begins.
Emily: Totally. Yes.
Jase: All right. Let's review the three main demon dance battle choreographies that we talked about. The first one is the find the Bad Guy Boogie. This is the one where you're both just leveling attacks or accusations at each other, trying to convince the other one that they're the bad guy. The next one is the Protest Polka. Congratulations, Sue Johnson, you got one of your names to stick. Protest polka-
Dedeker: Well done
Jase: -which is the pursuit and withdraw pattern, where one is coming after the other for engagement about something, and the other is just trying to minimize it, or discount it, or leave, or just not have the conversation. Then the third one is the freeze and flee flash dance. That's a tricky one to say. The freeze and flee flash dance. This one is the mutual withdrawing. This is the, "Oh, we tried to engage--" "No, no, this--" "Okay, no." Then we walk away, often in an attempt to avoid getting into a fight, but we're not engaging either.
Dedeker: I have a note that I completely forgot to put in at the beginning of all this. That's the fact that you probably have experienced all three of these patterns, maybe even in one relationship, or they could change depending on the topic, depending on the circumstances, or depending on the partner. You may have a particular pattern or demon dance battle that you do with one partner that's totally different with another partner. Chances are, there's one pattern that you find yourself defaulting to more often than others, but just bear that in mind as well, is that it may not always be the same exact one.