Replaying the Same Old Dialogue
Hot Buttons and CD Players
When you and your partner sit down to discuss things, what happens? If you are like many couples who have problems, one of you pushes the other’s hot button and you both are off and running with attacks and blame. Soon you are in a familiar dialogue and you can almost predict what the other will say and have already lined up your argument against that point.
Many couples recognize that they could insert the CD of their last dialogue and leave the room and the same things would be said. Intuitively you know that if you both keep engaging the same dialogue in the same old way you will, you will get the same old results.
But the path to something different seems impossible to find. In fact slipping into that song and dance seems almost like bowling when the ball keeps slipping over into the alley
Let me make some suggestions. First see if you both can agree on a name for the CD. Call it the no-win honky-tonk boogie. Or you may like the Grande Reppito Aria. Find your own name that somehow seems to capture your fancy so that you both can laugh when your realize you are using the same script again.
I hope you will begin to share the responsibility for maintaining the dialogue. Either of you, once you recognize you’re replaying the CD, can say, I’ve got a hunch that we’re in the alley again. See if you both can smile with this awareness and let go of the pattern that’s about to take over.
You know the outcome, if you continue. You won’t feel closer and you both will feel completely justified in the clarity that you have arrived at: that the other is completely responsible for what is wrong in your relationship.
However, if you do catch it in time and divert yourselves toward a dance that helps you remember why you became close in the first place, you will begin to feel hope again. Your team effort to head the familiar dialogue off at the pass will engender a sense that now we can begin some healing.
