I'm assuming you're using the Microchip hardware implementation.
Microchip's data sheet & App Note on this is notoriously horrible. It looks nice on the surface but once you start trying to implement it and ask hard questions the datasheet is very short on real information.
In particular, how to read states is not clear, and how to accomodate link problems and reset the state machine is totally left out. In fact, a discussion of the state machine as a whole is far too vague. So look to working examples.