Walker's Cycle of Violence: Its Traces in a Conversation

This article addresses relational violence. In case of danger, contact your local emergency number or a helpline listed on findahelpline.com.

A cycle that turns, and that holds

Psychologist Lenore Walker described, from her work with abused women, a pattern that recurs in many violent relationships: the cycle of violence, in three phases. First the rising tension (irritability, reproaches, a heavy climate); then the explosion (the violent episode — verbal, psychological, or physical); finally the honeymoon (apologies, promises, the return of tenderness). Then the cycle starts over — often tightening, the explosion becoming more frequent.

In the article that follows, I explore how to read your partner's messages. I also want you to know about ScanMyLove, a tool that analyses your conversations with your partner from a simple export of your exchanges. The results help you understand the interaction and the patterns at play in your relationship. I also wrote two books on this subject, Understanding Your Attachment Style and Together, but No Longer Talking, if you would like to go further.

🔗 Analyze your conversations with ScanMyLove — Because tension, explosion and honeymoon leave dated traces in messages, uploading your thread can help you see the cycle repeating over time — while remembering that if you are in danger, contacting your local emergency number comes first.

It's precisely the honeymoon phase that holds: it revives hope, makes you believe in change, and makes leaving so hard. These phases leave, in messages, traces the timeline reveals.

Why a message doesn't show the cycle

A tender message says nothing; a harsh one neither. The cycle of violence is recognized by the repeated alternation of the three phases over time: the rise of tension, the rupture, the intense reconciliation, and the restart. This cyclical structure only shows over many exchanges.

The written word preserves this repetition. Re-reading the history, you can spot the pattern: periods of mounting tension (increasingly accusatory, controlling messages), followed by an episode (insults, threats, an abrupt break in tone), then a wave of apology and declaration messages ("I love you so much, it won't happen again"). The regular return of this sequence is the signal — far more than any isolated message. If you would rather talk than read, Psy Lounge listens through a CBT-trained AI.

The three phases and their written traces

• Tension phase: increasingly critical, controlling, irritable messages; a climate of insecurity; you "walk on eggshells."
• Explosion phase: insults, threats, violent contempt, or an abrupt break; sometimes followed by punitive silence.
• Honeymoon phase: intense apologies, declarations of love, promises of change, gifts, idealization — the sequence that revives hope.

The most alarming marker is the repetition: the same cycle, again and again, often with honeymoons that shorten and explosions that intensify.

Reading the cycle in the history

• The cyclical alternation: does tension → explosion → reconciliation replay regularly?
• The escalation: do the episodes draw closer, intensify?
• The extreme contrast: a swing from violence to idealization, with no measured transition.
• Your adaptation: do your messages become cautious, anticipating tension (a sign of grip)?

Seeing this cycle from within is extremely hard: the honeymoon erases, each time, the memory of the explosion. The analysis from ScanMyLove can help objectify these alternations in your exchange history — the recurrence of the phases — to make visible a cycle hope makes you forget at each reconciliation.

Recognizing to protect yourself

Identifying the cycle isn't a judgment, it's protection:

• Don't read the honeymoon as proof of change. As long as the cycle repeats, the promises are part of the mechanism, not its resolution.
• Count the cycles. An episode can be an accident; a repetition is a pattern.
• Measure the escalation. If explosions draw closer or worsen, the danger grows.
• Seek support. Understanding coercive control, via a psychological test, helps leave denial; support at the practice helps; and in case of violence, specialized resources exist (find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com). You don't have to carry this alone.

The written word defeats the honeymoon's amnesia

The cycle of violence draws its strength from a cruel mechanism: the honeymoon erases the explosion, at each turn, and revives hope. The written word resists this erasure: it preserves the phases in their order, and reveals the repetition reconciliation makes you forget. Where each promise seems a fresh start, the history shows the cycle — and recognizing that it turns, again and again, is often the first step to no longer enduring it.

Gildas Garrec, CBT practitioner