When people feel STARVED they tend to worry about one person, themselves. This self focused tendency is more a function of self protection than of intentionally trying to hurt their partner. They justify their actions by thinking, “If you’re not going to feed me, than I’ll feed myself. If you won’t meet my need, than someone or something will.” Selfishness in a relationship can manifest in hundreds of ways, from infidelity, to laziness, from over controlling behaviors to out right ignoring each other’s needs and wants. It usually comes in excesses and generates the impetus or cause of future ineffective relating behaviors. In the end, when people are acting selfishly and only protecting themselves, no one is protecting the relationship.

Reactivity is when we make decisions in our relationship based more on our moods, circumstances and situations instead of based on our highest values and beliefs. Reactive people create reactive relationships! Reactivity can be seen in relationships when someone is easily angered, if they worry constantly, rolls their eyes when offended, or is quick to jump to conclusions. An excellent example of what happens with reactivity in the real world is effectively demonstrated with a bottle of Coca Cola. If I shake the bottle and hand it to you to open it would you? Would you do everything to avoid it, hand it off or handle it very, very carefully? When we shake a bottle of Coca Cola, we create a reaction and that reaction creates a response that we don’t trust. The same is true in our relationships. If you are married to more reactive person, and life shakes them up a bit, it creates a situation we don’t trust and that lack of trust affects how we have to interact with each other. Reactivity must be dealt with if we really want to reverse the STARVED Spiral.

Do you notice that even the most insignificant issues and topics in your relationship can drive you and your partner into a pattern of arguing and/or withdrawing? The number one complaint of couples who are entering into marriage counseling is the fact that they can't communicate about their problems. Nothing impacts relationships more negatively than the inability to talk through your most difficult issues and concerns. What makes it even harder is the fact that when push comes to shove on issues, humans tend to defer to fight, flight or freeze patterns, instead of effective communication patterns. These patterns create polarization on every topic, leaving couples STARVED and on opposite ends of their issues. Although communication when STARVED is difficult, it can be learned and improved upon. It is important to recognize that having problems in your marriage is not a sign of a poor relationships, in fact, research shows that the healthiest couples have a healthy dose of conflict. The key is to effectively turn off the polarizing patterns and to turn toward each other and communicate through your STARVED Stuff.

The deeper couples get into the STARVED Spiral the more likely they are to start start Negative Interpreting each other. Negative interpretation is not just that your partner is a pessimist or is negative but instead means that you may have a dangerous habit of twisting anything your partner does and turning it negative. Negative interpreters only collect the negative data about their partners and tend to overlook all of the good points. For example, If you were bitten by a rattlesnake in your garden, what are you looking for every subsequent time you go to your garden? Are you looking for beautifully ripe tomatoes and the budding roses? No, you’re looking for snakes! How does your mind and body react when you see the hose on the ground? Does it react like it’s a snake? That's how powerful our minds can be in our relationships too. Once you’ve been hurt by your partner, you look at them as a threat and negative interpreting ensures you’re always looking for the data that can hurt you. Negative interpretation can become one of the biggest killers of a relationship, however it can also be reversed if you’re willing to learn how. In order to stop the STARVED Spiral you have to stop the Negative Interpreting.

After years of being in a STARVED relationship it’s natural for hopelessness to sink in. You feel like you’ve tried everything, from books, to podcasts, from Dr. Phil to your local fixes with church leaders and pastors. You’ve probably even attended some couple’s counseling sessions as well, in fact if we’re going by stats, you’ve may have tried two counselors a couple of times and in the end nothing really changes. One of the reasons that our typical responses tend to fail is because couples don’t ever really uncover their deeper STARVED Stuff. Then hopelessness settles in and you eventually start assuming that you’re either stuck and miserable or looking for hope in something or someone else. The biggest danger of being in the STARVED Spiral is the minute you give up hope that your relationship can’t be improved. It only takes one persona at first, to begin to make enormous change in the relationship and willingness to change for the better only makes that person better. Then with one person in a better place, they will have the power to stop being Selfish, Reactive, Polarizing, Negative, and Hopeless. They have then effectively stalled the STARVED Spiral and can now lead the relationship to a healthier outcome. It doesn’t always save marriages, it does however, save individuals from the negative effects of being STARVED.

At the bottom of the starved spiral you begin to look for exit strategies to leave. The term we use to describe this is “shopping alternatives” and once you’re shopping other off ramps, you’re eventually going to find one. You may not start with overt actions but subtle ones like talking to others who support your desire and need to “get out” of the vicious cycle. Perhaps past friends and family members who have already gone through divorces of their own. Don’t assume that abandonment means that you are more likely to leave, because many people feel like they can’t leave their partner because of the impact it might have on kids, the social stigma of divorce or because the vows they took. But whether or not you get out of the relationship doesn’t mean “You’re In!” Couple’s that are nearing abandoning rewrite their history and love story. When talking about how they fell in love they retell the story in a more negative light. They make comments about how young they were, how immature and how little they knew about themselves and life. The question openly if they ever were in love. This tendency, although natural for STARVED couples is a sign that they need to do something quickly to make headway or they’re rewritten stories won’t be strong enough to hold the ground of their relationship. The most important fact for anyone to remember that is in the grips of abandoning thoughts is that you too are contributing to the STARVED Spiral in your marriage and before you decide to give everything up, first make sure you’ve corrected your behaviors in the spiral