Book excerpt: Love Cycles, Fear Cycles teaches readers the most important idea in all of couples therapy. This idea gives readers a new understanding of what’s been going wrong in their marriage – and a new way to make things right. The key idea is changing a couple’s negative cycle back into their positive cycle. Most relationships start in a positive cycle, where both people feel wonderful and respond lovingly. There are four words that describe each couple’s positive cycle – one for each person’s good feeling, and one for each person’s loving response. However, as challenges arise, people instinctively respond with some type of fight or flight. Over time, these responses spiral together into a negative cycle where each person feels bad and responds defensively. There are four words for each couple’s negative cycle – one for each person’s worst feeling, and one for each person’s defensive reaction. Many couples get trapped in their negative cycle and their relationship spirals deeper into hurt and loneliness. To have a good marriage, a couple needs to find a way out of their negative cycle and back into their positive cycle. Love Cycles, Fear Cycles teaches readers how to do that. From his decades as a couples therapist, Dr. Woodsfellow has distilled this one most-essential component of all successful marriage counseling. He now presents this to the general public in a way that is easy to understand and easy to use.