ARE YOU IN A TORNADO MARRIAGE? (MARRIAGE WEEK) BY DAVE WILLIS.

Have you ever felt like your marriage was stuck in a cycle of negativity? Without meaning to, you and your spouse seem to keep falling back into the same rut of negativity and criticism, and you’re not sure how to get out of it. You keep letting the same topics trigger you into a rut of rehashing the same arguments over and over with no resolution in sight. This cycle of negativity can create feelings of desperation and hopelessness.

Most marriages experience seasons with storms of frustration or conflict, but when those seasons turn into the status quo, the marriage’s survival is at risk. There are so many factors that lead to this negative cycle. It can be set into motion by stress or exhaustion or miscommunication or a myriad of other things. How it starts isn’t nearly as important as how to break out of it, because if you allow the negative cycle to continue, it can devastate your marriage.

I refer to this negative cycle as the “F5 Marriage Tornado.” An F5 tornado is the most powerful storm on earth; and being in the centre of an “F5 Marriage Tornado,” is just as dangerous. 

Here’s how it work. There are five factors in this storm of marital conflict, and they all start with the letter “f” (hence the “F5” reference). Each of these factors leads in a cycle to the next one on the list, and with each rotation around all five, the storm grows in ferocity. Here’s how the F5 Marriage Tornado works:

Fantasizing – Frustration – False Assumptions – Fighting – Fatigue – Fantasizing (repeat)

The storm always starts with FRUSTRATION:We’re all prone to frustrations at times, and these frustrations might not have anything to do with your spouse, but how you deal with the frustration can have a tremendous impact on how you communicate to your spouse. When you’re caught in this storm, frustration always leads to false assumptions.

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS occur when you believe lies that your spouse is against you or they don’t care as much as you do about the issue. Once these false assumptions fester, they inevitably lead to fighting, which can be a war of words or a war of non-verbal shots.

The fighting eventually leads to *fatigue,* and this is dangerous because we tend to make our worst decisions when we’re tired. Fatigue blurs our vision and keeps us from seeing the situation clearly. Fatigue also makes us susceptible to the fifth step in this cyclone, which is fantasizing. When we grow weary from the whole cycle, we can slip into the toxic trap of fantasy in the form of escaping into pornography or romance novels or looking up old flames on social media or just imagining a better life without your spouse.

This process will lead you right back to the start of the storm with more frustration, and the cycle continues to repeat itself until one or both spouses either give up on the marriage or decides to fight for peace.

If you find yourself in this storm that has been the end of far too many marriages, please don’t give up. Your marriage CAN get out of this exhausting cycle of negativity and conflict. 

To be continued…

BLESSINGS

DAVE WILLIS.