Anyone who has been married for a long time or in a long-term relationship knows that it’s not all fairy tales, rom-coms, sunshine, hearts, and flowers.
After a few years when the honeymoon is over, the boxing gloves now start to come out.
This is a natural progression of the maturity of a relationship once your once-perfect person starts showing some signs of their flaws and imperfections.
We start having more tension and more conflicts and disagreements once we are more comfortable in our relationship.
But nobody enjoys arguing and fighting with their spouse or partner!
It’s exhausting!
Is this just how it is, after years of being with the same person?
When emotions are running high, try this to help your relationship.
Avoid the victim, rescuer, persecutor trap, otherwise known as the drama triangle, coined by Stephen Karpman
What is this all about?
When we get into an argument or situation where we do not see eye to eye with our spouse or partner, we tend to pick a role we are going to play — either the victim, rescuer, or persecutor.
The Victim
When we act in the role of victim we are in this “poor me this always happens to me” mentality. We act like we are the blameless one in this relationship it’s all the other person’s fault mentality.
We take no responsibility and act powerless and helpless. We point blame at our spouse or partner and take no accountability that we did anything wrong. It’s always the other person’s fault and we are completely blameless.
The Rescuer
In the role of rescuer we feel like it is solely our job to save the other person and they need us and completely depend on us. We feel like we have no value in the relationship unless we are rescuing them.
The problem here is that we eventually become resentful of all of responsibilities we feel we “have” to take on. In our mind the other person cannot function at all without us and nothing will get done if we don’t take it all upon ourselves. This becomes a bad dynamic for relationships because no one wants their mother (or father) “saving” them and doing everything for them as a grown man (or woman).
The Persecutor
When we are in this role we act like a bully and point blame at our spouse or partner. We think “Well, I’m always right and they’re wrong, they need to change.”
We produce a long litany of complaints of everything they’ve done wrong to us. We act very critical of our spouse or partner.
…
Depending on the situation we can move between all of these roles at different times. We don’t just play one role.
One day we’re the persecutor, the next day we’re playing the victim, and it the cycle continues.
What do we do instead?
In each of these roles we can change the dynamic and free ourselves of the drama triangle in our relationship.
- Victim – We should work on ourselves and try be more vulnerable instead of acting helpless. We can focus on problem-solving and think about what we can do to improve or work on the issue together productively without blaming our partner
- Rescuer — Try to think of yourself as a teacher or a coach instead. You cannot fix people or control them, they have to figure it out and do it for themselves. We should give our partner some space to work things out on their own and stop jumping in to solve the issues unless they ask us for help
- Persecutor — Instead of a being aggressive, we should be assertive instead and direct in our communication. Instead of using you statements which come across as accusatory, we should employ “I feel” statements which are direct and vulnerable, without putting our person on the defensive and blaming them for everything.
Relationships aren’t easy like they look in the rom-coms, we have to put in the work. If we can think about the role we are playing at times, we can work towards a more harmonious and loving relationship.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Hector Reyes on Unsplash
