#6: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 4 - The Cascade)

As I mentioned in Part 2, there was a reason for my presenting the four horsemen the way that I did (speaking of the visual layout of the chart). In case you forgot, let me refresh your memory.


On this chart, the horsemen resemble a staircase; we can imagine a person descending the stairs from left to right. But, if you will give me a little leeway here (and believe me, I know this chart is further from art than simply the letters "ch" and that what I am about to say is a bit of a stretch), I'd like to suggest that their configuration somewhat resembles a waterfall. [For a clip of a real waterfall, or actually multiple real waterfalls, click this link. You'll see Niagara Falls, which we talked specifically about in class.]

As we said earlier, the horsemen tend to appear in this order. In class we used the metaphor of going over a waterfall and crashing onto the rocks (stonewalling, eh? ... bah dum, ching!) at the bottom to describe their becoming pervasive in our interactions. Now, suppose you saw that your partner was about to go over the edge of this waterfall or had even started to fall already. What would you do? If there was any way that you could throw your partner a lifeline or something to hold on to, would you do it? Would you save your partner's life? If you cared at all about your partner or even had a shred of human decency, the obvious answer would be "Yes."

Luckily for us as partners, we don't have to watch in horror as our partners and our relationships plunge to almost certain destruction on the stones at the bottom of the cascade. We can help. We can pull our partners back to safety, if they choose to let us. We can save the lives of our relationships. In the next post, we'll talk about how.