Once the "love" was strong. You thought and spoke of it with spiritual connotations and platitudes. His/her touch caused oxytocin levels to rise (the warm-fuzzy feel of the "love drug") and dopamine rose in parallel (the seek out/motivational drug) causing even brief moments of separation to seem like an eternity.
Yet, somehow, gradually, over time...
...communication turned violent, with criticism, judgment, blame, labeling, diagnosing and anger. All the mutual attempts at controlling each other merely provoke resistance (yet, mired in self-centered righteous condemnation, you both become 'ego-centrically' blind to your own actions). When change is not forthcoming, you both simply intensify your efforts, in a self-perpetuating negative feedback loop, repeated unconsciously, ad infinitum. All attempts to change him/her, merely magnifies his/her defenses/resistance, demanding you increase your offensive counter attacks to destroy his/her defenses, which merely results in his/her reinforcing their defenses by attacking your own.
As the walls grow thicker, the weapons become more advanced. When rocket launchers, tanks and Howitzers fail to secure a momentary victory, the nuclear option is always available and threats of divorce are tossed back and forth like grenades.
Over time, repetitive responses become neurally hard-wired (as with any habitualized thought/behavior) and you each become literally addicted to your reactive, knee-jerk patterned responses.
Regardless of the fact that you forgot the cause of the fight, you cannot forget how intensely you fought, magnifying memory circuits and the automatic behaviors those circuits provoke.
This keeps you always in a heightened state of preparedness for attack, requiring a constant vigilant surveillance of the others intentions and actions, thereby, resulting in persistent assumptions as to what his/her intentions actually are without even asking (honest communication is dead) further resulting in a high degree of abject error, demanding your behaviors conform to erroneous assumptions that may have no actual connection to the others internal reality (interpretations and assumptions about you).
Nevertheless, you prevail in your faulty assumptions, even though such daily vigilance results in chronic stress and repetitive anger, thereby, synaptically signaling instinctual fight or flight mechanisms provoking high levels of adrenaline and cortisol.
Years of chronic relational stress eventually result in dysthymic mood and even major depression.
There can be NO honest communication for warring parties and any detente or peace accords is brief, fragile and wrought with distrust, both waiting for a line to be crossed so another strike can be justified.
When honest communication is absent, intimate pair-bonds become estranged and there can be No real intimacy between strangers.
Strategy becomes key to winning, even though you have NO idea what the prize of victory is when, ironically, your individual success will in the end be defined by mutual defeat.
Drowning in your righteousness, you can't see beyond your own nose and any attempt at exploring your role in maintaining the battle becomes absolutely unavailable to the righteous indignation of the ego-self (the 'I-me' identity you cherish as "you" and allows you to adopt the perspective of righteous indignation about the other)
Nevertheless, guilt is the chief weapon in your armament and you will brandish it with a fury. The experience of guilt results in cognitive dissonance and demands relief, requiring you deny your actions and desperately close in on the actions of the other. If you can magnify his/her transgressions as worse than your own, your's will naturally pale in comparison (or so the story goes...)
The key in any war is to establish and maintain your innocence, thereby, allowing your attacks to be justified. Yet, every battle won brings you both that much closer to mutually assured destruction.
The key to peace is simply to lay down your arms....
Chronic relationship conflict is like a choreographed dance. You both know the steps by heart and so, the dance unfolds naturally.
All it takes is one person to change the steps and the entire dance must change...
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