Brian Yang (11:06)
Yeah. So there are three stages to our relationships. At least the way I broke have breaking it down. The first stage is very obvious. This is the easy one. This is where it's fun. The honeymoon stage, right? So this is where you're having the most fun. This is where you're having the, the most sex, the most dates. It's a good time. It's like the best high, right? That beginning part of a relationship where you're so attracted to them and they're attracted to you and at the same time you're only really sharing a very filtered version of yourself to them. It's not even fully conscious. But you know, you do it when you meet someone new for the first time and anyone, even a business relationship, you're trying to put on your best foot forward. It's just natural instinct because you want that connection so bad, right? And so that's what you're doing for each other. And so you're not really bringing all of you to it in the beginning for one. But also more importantly than that is the threat isn't fully there yet. In the beginning, the threat is not fully there. And what I mean by that is you're not fully committed to each other. You might have not quite said I love you yet, maybe you did. But you're not, you know, you still, you still have your space, you have your life, they have their life. You're not fully committed. You're not talking about crazy long term plan plans. It's just lower expectations, right? Lower expectations, lower threat. And so it's easier to be this, in this more enjoyable state with one another. And also it's new novelty, right? Fresh, new, it's exciting. And then what happens is that that stage eventually fades. And typically what ends that first stage as it, which is very natural and happens for everyone is it's just the progression of relationships is more commitment, right? More expectations of one another. Your, your, your perceived sense of well being becomes more dependent on the other person on how they're going to show up for you and vice versa. And so things like moving in together, things like getting married, right. Could also be like I said before, saying I love you, right? Just that bigger commitment that we're in this longer term that's going to push you into stage two. Natural and when you, when you get into stage two, when the expectations are higher, when you're, when you're able to, when you feel more like you're, you're threatening each other's well being is when your childhood trauma comes up to the surface. All the stuff that you never knew was even there comes boiling up to the surface. And so what that cycle is going to look like, I call it the relationship loop of doom. Stage two is a relationship loop of doom. And what happens is, I give you one example. It doesn't matter who starts it first, could be the man. Either partner, same sex marriages, same thing as well. One partner just say, is stressed at work and they are feeling like maybe they made a mistake or things are just not going according to plan and they're stressed, they're maybe feeling not good enough. Maybe they're just feeling, you know, maybe shame and guilt. Just things are messing up. They're feeling these uncomfortable emotions that come up to the surface and as a result of that, that person is going to cope with that. Every, every human being copes with their pain, right? So he's going to, it's just a hit, it's a. He, he's going to cope with that pain by shutting down, isolating, maybe distracting himself with more work, just working harder. Video games, sports, porn, so many ways to distract, right? To distract, numb, suppress, withdraw, get quiet. He goes into himself, right? He does something that he learned to do from childhood, probably not even aware of it, to cope with those emotional pains. And, and, but he's trying to do that to feel better. He's not trying to hurt anybody, he's just trying to soo those pains. But the thing is, is that when he does that, it's going to have the opposite effect, which is trigger the hell out of his partner, right? His partner is going to perceive that coping mechanism as abandonment. Wow, he's leaving me, he's rejecting me. He doesn't love me, he doesn't care, right? Touching her core wounds and when she feels that pain, of course she's going to cope with her pain in the way that she learned how from her childhood. Unconsciously, it's all unconscious. And so that's going to look like getting, criticizing. That's going to look like, you know, pointing out all the things that he's doing wrong because she's feeling alone, she wants his attention, he's like disconnected. She might get controlling, she might get very emotional, like angry, right? To project emotion, to get attention, right? And so she's not doing that to hurt him. She's not trying to criticize or yell at him or do that to hurt him. She's feeling alone. It's all about the pain that she's trying to soothe. Has nothing to do with, you know, hurting him. But of course, just like him, her coping mechanism is going to do opposite. The more she does it to soo for pain, it's going to trigger his wounds even more. So now he's going to feel even more, not enough, more unsafe, more of the very pain that he's been trying to cope with. He's going to feel that pain even more and then cope with it more. And then the more he copes with it, the more she feels triggered and hurt and then she copes harder. And so it becomes literally this infinite loop of doom, right? It's just like their, their, their pains cause them to cope. Their coping cause each other pain and they cope more. And so they're in this vicious cycle of being hurt, coping and feeling more of the pain, and it becomes like a downward spiral. And relationships can be in this cycle for years, decades. You know, I got, you know, clients that have been together for like 30 years and they've just been doing this entire time, right? They do it, they have a big blowout, they sweep under a rug, pretend didn't happen until like the next fight happens. And they get into this little cycle again, right? Every. This happened. Happening to everybody. There's some, some flavor, some form of this. And so how you get out of that is what I've discovered. What you've discovered in your personal journey as well is like, is to first be aware that you're even in it to begin with. Like, oh, this is more than just, I'm not, this is not real. It's just we're playing out this phantom, you know, game of running away from these old childhood wounds and doing a coping mechanism that we don't have to do, but I learned to do it. That's what's happening, right? It kind of creates some separation. Like, okay, then, okay, I'm aware I'm doing this stuff and what do I do about this stuff, right? Like, okay, I can do some trauma work, I could do some inner child work and can do some somatic work, connect instead of coping, connecting to the pain of not feeling good enough, feeling it instead of coping. And then through that, you can connect to the little boy inside and start to repair that part of yourself, right? To create healing, to allow healing to happen. So you're not just managing the pain, but you're actually dealing with it, and you're healing it. You're going. You're just going to the root of it. And the same thing for the partner. She gets to address her pain of abandonment.
