Naming the Negative Cycle in Your Relationship: Why Individual Awareness Comes First (and a Free Workbook for When You're Both Ready)"
- 11 hours ago
- 10 min read
When couples come into my office in Golden, Colorado, they almost always say some version of the same thing: "We keep having the same fight. Different topic, same fight."
That repeating pattern has a name in the couples therapy world. We call it the negative cycle. It's the central concept in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the model developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, and it's one of the most powerful concepts I work with. Once a couple can name their cycle — see it as a third thing in the room rather than a problem inside each other — most of the heat between them starts to come down.
But there's a step before you can do that work together. And it's the step most couples skip, which is why they stay stuck even after reading every Sue Johnson book and listening to every Esther Perel podcast.
That step is getting the squirrel out of the house first.
Let me explain.
The Squirrel in the House: Why Individual Work Comes First
Picture this. There's a squirrel loose in your house. It's running around, knocking things over, panicking, panicking you. Now imagine you and your partner are trying to have a productive conversation about how to redecorate the living room — while the squirrel is still in the house.
You can't. Neither of you can think. The squirrel is doing all the talking.
A negative cycle is the squirrel. It's the thing running around inside your relationship, knocking over your good intentions, making both of you reactive, making real conversation impossible. And the mistake most couples make is trying to talk about the content of their fights (money, sex, the in-laws, who unloads the dishwasher) while the squirrel is still tearing through the house.
The first job isn't to solve the fight. The first job is to get the squirrel out.
That happens through individual awareness. Each of you, separately, learning to recognize your own moves in the cycle. What you do when you feel disconnected. What you tell yourself about your partner in those moments. What you actually feel underneath the reactive layer. What you're longing for that the cycle is hiding.
This is hard work, and it's mostly internal. It's not couples conversation yet. It's each of you, on your own, starting to see your own part in the dance. I work with clients on this in individual moments — sometimes in solo sessions, sometimes through homework between couples sessions, sometimes just through what they notice on their own driving to work.
When both partners have done some of this individual work — when each of you can describe your own move in the cycle without flinching and without blaming — then you're ready for the next step.
You're ready to put it on the table together.
Every Action, Equal and Opposite: The Physics of a Couple's Cycle
Now I have to confess something. I got a D in physics in undergrad. I was thrilled it counted as my science elective. So I'm not exactly Neil deGrasse Tyson over here.
But there's one thing from that class I never forgot, and it turns out to be the most useful physics lesson I ever got: every action has an equal and opposite reaction (and, I think I heard this before that class as well).
And, that physics lesson also applys to couples.
In a negative cycle, what one of you does triggers what the other one feels. What the other one feels then drives what they do. What they do then triggers what you feel. And so on, forever, until somebody names it or somebody leaves.
This is what we call circular causality in systems theory, and it's the heart of how EFT understands couples' distress. Couples aren't two people with two separate problems. They're a system. The cycle lives between you, not inside either one of you.
Here's what this means practically: you cannot fully understand your own cycle in isolation. Individual awareness is necessary, but it's not sufficient. At some point, you have to look at it together. You have to see how your move hooks into your partner's move, and how their move hooks into yours.
That's the work I want to talk about today.
My Favorite Question: "What Is Your Role in This?"
When a couple has done enough individual work to come back to the table with some grounding, I have a favorite question I like to ask. It's not original to me — versions of it show up across systemic family therapy — but I use it constantly.
The question is: "What is your role in this?"
Not "whose fault is this." Not "who started it." Just — what's your part in keeping this pattern alive? What do you do, that contributes?
Here's an example I see all the time. One partner says, "I'm exhausted from having to remind them about everything. The trash, the kids' permission slips, the oil change, all of it. I'm the household manager and I never asked to be."
That's a real frustration. I'm not minimizing it. But here's the question I'd ask the partner who's frustrated:
What is your role in them needing to remind you?
Wait — I asked it wrong. Let me reverse it. To the partner who's being reminded:
What is your role in them needing to remind you?
That's the harder question. Not "why don't they trust me." Not "they're so controlling." Just — what about how I show up makes them feel like they have to carry the mental load? Do I follow through when I say I will? Do I notice the things that need noticing? Do I make it easy to trust me with logistics, or do I make it expensive?
And then to the other partner — the one who's reminding:
What is your role in this dynamic? What about how you raise things makes it hard for them to hear you? Are you delivering it as information or as a complaint? Are you giving them room to fail without consequence, or does every missed task become evidence of a bigger pattern?
Both questions are real. Both have honest answers. And when both partners can sit with their own role — not the other's role, their own — the cycle starts to lose its grip. This is what I mean by talking about the cycle from a grounded place. Not from defensiveness. Not from blame. From honest curiosity about your own contribution.
A Critical Pause: When This Work Is Not Appropriate
Before I go any further, I need to be direct about something.
Everything I just wrote — the question "what is your role," the language of mutual contribution, the idea that both partners participate in the cycle — does not apply in situations of abuse, coercion, or domestic violence.
If there is physical violence in your relationship, or one partner is using intimidation, isolation, financial control, threats, or coercive control to dominate the other, the framework of "both partners contribute to the cycle" is not just wrong, it can be dangerous. It can be weaponized by the abusive partner to make the partner being harmed feel responsible for the abuse.
If that's your situation, please don't use my workbook. Please don't try to work on your "cycle" together. The right next step is reaching out to someone who specializes in domestic violence — the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or in Colorado, Violence Free Colorado. They can help you think through safety, options, and resources. There's no shame in needing that kind of help, and a couples therapist (including me) is not the right first call.
Everything that follows is for couples where both partners are safe, both can speak honestly without fear, and the issue is a pattern of disconnection — not a power imbalance maintained through harm.
The Naming Our Cycle Workbook: A Resource for Couples Ready to Do This Work Together
Once couples in my practice have done enough individual work to come back to the table — once the squirrel is mostly out of the house, even if it's still scratching at the door — I often give them homework.
The homework is a workbook I've been refining for several years and just released publicly. It's called Naming Our Cycle: A Couples Workbook, and it's designed to help couples do the structured work of seeing their cycle together, in their own home, between therapy sessions.
It walks the two of you through ten pages of guided conversation, integrating the two most evidence-based frameworks in couples therapy:
Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) — which shows that couples' fights are usually about attachment fears underneath, not the surface topic
John Gottman's Four Horsemen — the four behavior patterns (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling) that decades of longitudinal research have identified as the most damaging to long-term relationships
The workbook is built around three movements:
STUDY what happened — pick one moment of disconnection from the last few weeks. Each of you, on your own, describes what happened from a neutral observer's perspective, then goes underneath to name the softer truth driving your reactive behavior.
SEE the cycle together — using a guided four-round conversation, share what you each found. Then fill in your shared cycle on the infinity loop diagram (adapted from Dr. Scott R. Woolley's classic EFT visualization). You'll end up with one shared name for your cycle — The 8pm Storm. The Quiet Roast. The Drift. Whatever fits.
PRACTICE the way out — build one shared signal you can use when the cycle starts to show up, and a two-week scaffold for keeping the cycle visible in your day-to-day life.
It's not a substitute for therapy. It's between-session work, or pre-therapy preparation work, or for couples who are doing okay but want to deepen their understanding of how they hook into each other.
How Do You Know if You're Ready for This Workbook?
A few honest qualifiers — because not every couple should reach for this, and I'd rather you wait than do this wrong.
You're probably ready if:
You both want to work on the relationship (not just one of you trying to fix it)
You've had enough recovery time from your last big fight that you can talk without it immediately re-igniting
You can sit with the idea that you might have a role in the pattern, even if you also feel hurt by your partner
You have a couples therapist you can debrief with, or you're considering finding one
You can both set aside about 90 minutes without interruption to do the work
Probably not the right moment if:
You're in active crisis (a recent affair, separation conversation, or major rupture not yet processed with a therapist)
One or both of you is in an untreated mental health crisis (active suicidal ideation, severe depression, untreated PTSD, active substance dependence, psychosis)
There's any element of abuse, coercion, or fear in the relationship (see the section above)
One partner is bringing the workbook home to "make" the other partner see something
That last one is important. This workbook only works if both of you are genuinely curious. If you're using it as ammunition to prove a point, it'll backfire.
What Happens Next
f you do the workbook and find it useful, you might find yourselves wanting more support — someone in the room to help you go deeper than you can on your own. That's what I do for a living. I'm a licensed couples therapist in Golden, Colorado, specializing in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and I work with couples across the Denver metro area both in person and virtually for clients throughout Colorado. I also teach counseling psychology at the University of Denver — which means a real chunk of my week is spent thinking about how to train the next generation of therapists to do this work well. The frameworks in this workbook are the same ones I teach my graduate students.
If you'd like to talk about whether working together might be a fit, I offer a free 20-minute consultation. You can book a time on my website or send me a message directly.
If you do the workbook and have feedback — what worked, what didn't, what was confusing, what landed — I'd genuinely love to hear from you. This workbook is a living document, and the couples who use it are who I'm building it for.
But mostly, I just hope it helps. Naming the cycle is the beginning of getting your relationship back. Most couples can do more of this work than they think.
Get the squirrel out of the house. Then look at it together.
Dr. John O'Malley is a couples therapist in Golden, Colorado, specializing in Emotionally Focused Therapy, Gottman-informed work, and ACT-based approaches to relationship distress. He holds a PhD from the University of Wyoming and a Master's degree in Community Counseling from the University of Nebraska–Kearney. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Colorado and a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). Dr. O'Malley is a Teaching Professor teaching courses in the Counseling Psychology Department at the University of Denver, where he trains future therapists, and previously served as Department Chair of the Counseling Department at Regis University. He works with couples across the Denver metro area in person and virtually with clients throughout Colorado.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a negative cycle in a relationship? A negative cycle is the repeating pattern of disconnection that almost every couple has — the same fight, the same wall, the same drift, in different outfits. In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the negative cycle is understood as a circular pattern where one partner's reactive behavior triggers the other partner's protective response, which then triggers the first partner's reactive behavior, and so on. Naming the cycle is the first major change event in EFT.
Is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) evidence-based? Yes. EFT, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, has more than 30 years of outcome research and is considered one of the most empirically validated couples therapy approaches available. Studies consistently show that around 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and improvements tend to be maintained over time.
Can we do this workbook on our own without a therapist? The workbook is designed to be used between therapy sessions or as pre-therapy preparation. It's most useful when you have a therapist to debrief with afterward, but couples without a current therapist can still benefit from it if they're emotionally stable and not in active crisis. See the qualifiers section above.
Do you work with couples outside of Golden, Colorado? Yes. I see couples in person at my office in Golden, and virtually for clients anywhere in Colorado. The Denver metro area, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs — all manageable for virtual work.
What's the difference between Sue Johnson's EFT and John Gottman's approach? They're complementary, not competing. EFT focuses on the emotional and attachment underpinnings of couples' fights — what's happening underneath. Gottman's research focuses on observable behavioral patterns and what specifically predicts relationship distress over time. In my practice, I integrate both. The workbook uses EFT as its structural backbone and weaves in Gottman's Four Horsemen as a behavioral lens.