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Areas › Your marriage › Staying regulated in conflict
Returning fire escalates the cycle; holding a hurtful message without retaliating, even just staying quiet and steady, keeps the exchange from spiralling and leaves room to respond to the pain underneath.
If you have to respond to an attack, make your response proportionate, but it is best to stand fast (Quran 16:126). Restraint in the face of a wounding word, standing fast rather than striking back, is named as the better way.
النحل
وَإِنۡ عَاقَبۡتُمۡ فَعَاقِبُواْ بِمِثۡلِ مَا عُوقِبۡتُم بِهِۦۖ وَلَئِن صَبَرۡتُمۡ لَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لِّلصَّٰبِرِينَ
If you [believers] have to respond to an attack, make your response proportionate, but it is best to stand fast
Qur’an 16:126read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Johnson's account of the demon dialogues is that each barb pulls the answering barb and the loop runs itself. Taking a hard message without firing one back breaks that chain and leaves a pause in which something more honest can be said.
Susan M. Johnson (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown
Conversation 1, Recognising the Demon Dialogues. Johnson names three patterns, Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee, and holds that the cycle, not the partner, is the enemy: naming it out loud is the first move of de-escalation.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Not returning a hostile message breaks the automatic attack-and-counter-attack loop that keeps couples stuck.
Where this sits: EFT, Hold Me Tight Conversation 1: refusing your next move in the Protest Polka.