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So if you didn't already know, dismissive avoidants do not show their true self at the beginning of a relationship. In fact, I've been saying this for years. And this goes for all attachment styles. We don't show our attachment patterns until we've actually attached to somebody. You may see little signs or snippets that maybe somebody is a certain attachment style. And there may be some signals that are hard to miss. But in today's video, I'm going to break down why dismissive avoidants don't often even show their true self until around six months of dating, what this actually means, and how to catch these things earlier so that you can make choices accordingly. The first thing you need to understand is that there are six stages to every relationship. Every relationship starts off in the dating stage. The dating stage is basically the vetting stage of a relationship. It's what is set up for us to really ask the hard questions, get to know somebody, see what somebody's needs and interests are, and if they are aligned with ours, see if our values are aligned, our morals, what we're looking for in the future so that we can actually decide whether or not it is the right next decision to make a commitment towards a relationship. After the dating stage, if we do make some sort of commitment in the relationship dynamic, we now move into the honeymoon stage. The honeymoon stage is basically our rose colored glasses stage. It's characterized by elevated neurochemicals. We have more phenylethylalamine, the attraction neurochemical, we have more dopamine, serotonin, the motivation and wellbeing neurochemicals, even endorphins. You may see more vasopressin, which is the attachment neurochemical, skews a little bit more in terms of its impact on men than women. But, you know, all these neurochemicals are basically elevated in this stage of the relationship. And because they are, we start to get comfortable. And because we're comfortable, we start to lower our mask. You know, instead of being on our best behavior all the time, we start to really let somebody in. We feel like everything's good. We may show or share more of our fears or flaws in this stage of the relationship dynamic, which is exactly what moves us into the next stage, which is the power struggle stage. Now, the power struggle stage of a relationship is where statistically most relationships will break up. And when we enter into the power struggle stage, you'll see that what ends up taking place is we have more arguments, more disagreements, because we are not on our best behavior anymore. And we're not people pleasing the other person or trying to win them over like we do more in the earlier stages, more of our true selves. And sometimes that can feel jarring for couples because they'll feel like, wait, who was this person? I can't believe so much has changed. But the power struggle stage brings a beautiful rite of passage, which is that if in the power struggle stage we can learn to work through our issues, communicate through things, solve our fears and flaws, come to healthy compromises on our differences, we actually breed more unconditional love. At this stage of a relationship, we're not just showing ourselves with conditions like we do in the earlier stages, we are showing ourselves more unconditionally, meaning we can actually build deeper roots of more unconditional love as a consequence. And if we do that and we make it out of that stage, we moved into the stability, commitment, and eventually bliss state. And the bliss stage is like the honeymoon stage, but you know the person deeply and much, much better. So I wanted to put that out there first because that's the prerequisite to understanding why the avoidant often changes gears between the six month mark and one year mark. And it's that in the dating stage, the dismissive avoidant is slower to warm up, they're slower to move ahead, they're slower to even let themselves really develop strong feelings. And so it isn't until they start to let their guard down that they end up becoming more afraid. Now, I talk about this on this channel and have for years dismissive avoidance operate with their feelings minus their fears. In the early dating stage, they're developing feelings and there isn't much attachment yet. But as soon as the attachment bond starts to form, that's actually where we see somebody's attachment style show up more obviously. In other words, that's where you'll see their attachment wounds. Their fears of being trapped, their fears of being engulfed, their fears of being shamed or seen as defective, their fears of being unsafe, you know, in a conflict, not being able to really have those, those hard conversations at times. So, you know, the first few months where it's dating and vetting, the Smith and avoidance tend to really date and back quite slowly and once their guard is lowered because they're starting to get real feelings, that's where you start seeing, okay, I've developed these feelings. Now my fears come up, my fears of what could go wrong will start to arise. And it's at that period of time that you will start to see more of those avoidant tendencies. Show Up. So again, this starts around the six month mark, give or take. Then it builds. As the feelings build, the fears build. And so you'll start seeing feelings minus fears and there's more fears and more fears. And then you'll start to see as that attachment continues to form. We then have around the year, sometimes year and a half mark, we then move into the power struggle stage. And if you already were seeing dismissive avoidance operate from their feelings minus fears, well now in the power struggle stage that's magnified because now the dismissive avoidant will start doing things to keep themselves safe, like law finding as a strategy for self protection. In other words, trying to look at all the little flaws in the person or the relationship and, and convince themselves that, you know, maybe it's not meant to work out and to try to create space from the person so they don't have to feel vulnerable. And so we'll start to see at this period of time the relationship can get more and more chaotic. The avoidant may pull away more and it can sometimes feel like the person on the receiving end of this feels like the rug is being pulled out from underneath them. So what do you do if you find yourself getting triggered by the same types of things over and over again? Always fearing abandonment or being alone, Maybe being really triggered by being excluded or trapped or betrayed. And all of these things cause you to spiral in relationships and then sometimes even act in ways that you wish you didn't. Chances are this is because you have big core wounds. And core wounds are stored subconsciously. These core wounds are the things that wreak the most havoc on our relationships, but also our lives in general. They're the things that hold us back, they're the things that cause us to spiral and they are solvable problems. And so something I'm going to share with you as a completely free gift is if you come into PDS and check out our seven day free trial to the Personal Development school, you get our core wounds bundle as a gift. These are a series of webinars, or basically online classes that help you understand your major core wounds, how they are affecting you, and how to leverage neuroscience and neuroplasticity to rewire them so they no longer have to be a part of your life. This is literally a free gift that comes along with your seven day free trial. And I'll put a link below if you want to claim it. There's a few really important things to begin by doing and number one, it's that there needs to be a structure in a Relationship dynamic where you can talk through challenges. If discussions are not worked through, if there's a dynamic in your relationship where you have a conflict or disagreement and then it's kind of like you, you stone wall each other out for a little bit and then you just pick up from where you left off and pretend everything's okay, it's only going to magnify the str. The power struggle stage. It's only going to make their greater, greater likelihood that the relationship doesn't work. So you need to be able to actually work through conflict by communicating what you're feeling, validating each other's feelings, communicating what you need for resolution in a conflict, both parties, and for a dismissive avoidance specifically. Some tips here are that when you do start by communicating your feelings, it's going to be more effective to not communicate, you know, everything all at once. Like if you say all these feelings in a really strong way, you may even want to start just with needs. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that you have a conflict and let's say the conflict is about consistency of communication. Because the avoidant attachment style kind of falls off for a couple of days, they're not really communicating much. I wouldn't advise necessarily saying, oh my gosh, I was so scared, I was so anxious, I was so stressed and getting really emotional about it. I would suggest regulating yourself first, your nervous system, working through your fears, your stories if you're on the receiving end and then going to the avoidant and saying, hey, consistency is really something I'm looking for in a relationship dynamic. And as we continue to build and grow our connection here, I want us to be able to establish more of that. Would you be open and willing to work on having, and then insert your baseline, right, having at least a quick 15 minute phone call or a couple more text messages than we did on Thursday, Friday. So that would be my example. Okay. So when you're communicating what you need and you're framing it in a positive way, that's actually going to be best received so that you can get seen and heard and so that this avoidant attachment style, loved one of yours doesn't feel dysregulated because they are working so hard to not feel their own feelings, that if you express too many feelings, it's going to make them feel their own feelings and they often will push that person away as a subconscious strategy to push their own feelings away. Because so much of their personality and the attachment style has been built on trying to never really feel many feelings in order to stay safe. Because as a child, if they felt a lot of emotions, they were usually ignored, neglected or shamed. So they don't want to relive that. It doesn't mean that you won't get there. But by establishing that conversation that way first, where we talk about needs in as close to real time as possible, by positively framing them, sharing about them directly, once that conversation starts happening and they start following suit and communicating what they need as well, then all of a sudden we're establishing a really healthy baseline of communication that in turn we can then become more vulnerable around doing and if you can work through disagreements and arguments, you'll grow stronger during the power struggle stage, not weaker. And that's really it for today. Do you have questions for me about this? Do you have things that you want to know about in regards to the power struggle stage? In regards to why dismissive avoidance show themselves in a more, you know, show all of themselves a little bit later into the relationship? Let me know. I'd love to hear from you. And I will work really hard to read through the comments and take some of the questions away and answer them in future videos. So let me know. Please subscribe to this channel. By the way, if you visit around or you come here often, I would love for you to be here and be a subscriber. It would mean a lot to me. And thank you very, very much for even being here today, for stopping by and for watching. I really appreciate it. So have an amazing day and I'll see you soon.