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What does a long term relationship or even marriage truly look like with an unhealed fearful avoidant? You know, if you've been watching this channel, I talk so much about how fearful avoidance. When they heal, they usually keep all of these beautiful characteristics and traits that they have. Their generosity, their depth, their passion, their intensity for life. But if they don't actually do the healing work, they also keep a lot of the relational challenges alive. The hot and cold, the mixed signals, the back and forth. So in today's video, I'm going to break down the culmination of what that actually looks like as a whole. If somebody doesn't do the work work. What does your future relationship life look like if you're a fearful avoidant? And if you're dating a fearful avoidant, what are the things that you should expect so you know how to choose accordingly. If you're new here. Hello and welcome. This is a channel where I put daily content out. We often share lots of free gifts or free courses or exciting things here. But it's all about the subconscious mind, how we can actually rewire at the subconscious level to create huge new shifts in our patterns to go from insecurely attached to securely attached, rewire our nervous system, build the best relationships of our life accordingly. And we talk a lot about relationships in general on this channel. And I'm very glad you stopped by. So I want to share a little bit about my own personal journey first because I want to be mindful that, like, you know, if you're watching this video a, you're probably doing some degree of work and that's why you landed here. And maybe you're in it, maybe you're doing a lot of self work and really diving in, or maybe you're in the PDS courses already and learning how to rewire and reprogram your actual attachment style and nervous system patterns through that. Or maybe you're in therapy. You know, there could be a number of things, but this video is going to be really about, you know, people who literally don't know anything about attachment styles aren't really trying to grow or show up. And I think that it also will hopefully share sort of a reflection into what patterns may be left in somebody. And I'm going to speak a lot from my own personal experience here too. Just so you know that there's no like judgment or, or, you know, me giving a hard time to anybody. I was a fearful avoidant. That's how I arrived at this work. Because being a fearful avoidant, attachment style is very Hard, it's not easy. And it's obviously not easy on the romantic relations relationships around you. So let's dive in here and just unpack everything, first things first. And we'll talk about this in sort of the six stages of relationship. So the dating stage is that first stage of relationships. It usually lasts about zero to six months, depending on a number of factors. Are you long distance, are you with somebody more anxious or more dismissive, et cetera. But in this stage, fearful avoidance show up exceptionally well. And this is because fearful avoidance, much like dismissive avoidance, are operating their feelings minus their fears. So when they have feelings for somebody but don't have a lot of commitment fears yet, don't haven't really deeply attached to somebody, a lot of their attachment wounds are still dormant because really a lot of deep vulnerability and feelings usually trigger our attachment style to really come online. And that doesn't usually happen until, you know, towards the end of the dating stage or at least further down into that six months. You know, maybe you date and move into the honeymoon stage at four months, usually around three, four months, a month or two leading up to when you make a commitment to move into the honeymoon stage, which is literally what moving into the honeymoon stage is character characterized by some degree of commitment, usually close. Until that point, your attachment style is not that that activated. And so this is where fearful avoidants show what I like to think of as more of their true selves. They're very generous, they're very thoughtful, they're very insightful, they're super conscientious, they're very deep, they're empathetic, they, they don't do well on the surface. They like to really go deep and know somebody. They usually are a little spontaneous or like to try new things. And you know, a lot of those things are very refreshing to people. They're usually very good at making people feel deeply seen and understood. And so they have this great ability to bond to somebo, to make that person feel special. At the same time, once their fears start to rise up, the fearful avoidant is essentially met with this very difficult dilemma. Because when you start falling for somebody or developing feelings or deeply attaching, it's triggering at the same time for a fearful avoidant, very unlike a secure attachment style, who's very comfortable in that, who can go with the flow and falling in love, their feelings don't scare them. But for fearful avoidance, the more they feel, the more they tend to become afraid simultaneously. And it's really this bittersweet experience that they tend to have. And so much of this is largely because they have deep beliefs. You know, I personally, when I was fearful avoidant, used to believe, like fully believe unquestioned that, you know, everybody eventually is going to change their feelings about you. People are going to eventually betray you. Nobody stays around forever. I didn't even trust, you know, or people are going to trap you and make you feel like confined or try to control you. I didn't even trust myself to keep feelings long term. I was like, how can I know that my own feelings won't change for somebody in like five, ten years? Like, how is that possible? And I used to really think that like, no matter how much you cared for somebody, the more you cared, the more hurt was going to be. What took place in the end because ultimately everything was going to end in shambles. And that wasn't like a thought process or like a haha, that you know, tongue in cheek thing. That was something I genuinely believed at a subconscious level. That was what I stored. I saw really challenging relationships around me growing up. So I. That was my model for, for what relationships were. It was like, relationships look like this and that's hard. And so everything about relationships is going to be really hard. And so when you feel for somebody and you develop feelings, oh my gosh, it makes it so hard. And because I believed that the more I would care, the more I would feel the need to push somebody away. But I didn't want to lose them because I usually, at that point that I'm pushing somebody away, cared deeply enough to want them to be close and to stay. And so all of a sudden I'd be in this push, pull dynamic and that would begin an early, you know, in, in smaller ways in the honeymoon stage. I just want to pop in here and let you know we are doing a seven day free trial to the All Access membership pass at PDF, which means you get access to literally everything inside of the school. And this includes the four live webinars I do with our students every single week. And on top of that, you get access to all of our different courses. We have over 55 different courses on relationships, communication, boundaries, Emotional mastery, guilt and shame. Learning your needs. So many different facets that are really important, master our lives and feel really good about our lives going forward. And last but not least, there's a daily community event. We have trained facilitators and coaches who are in there doing that work, showing up to support you on your journey every single day. Please join me on the other side. Come check it out. See if it's a fit for you. I'd love to see you there. Go ahead and sign up by clicking the link in the description box below. So the honeymoon stage is your next stage of relationships. And that stage of relationships lasts after the dating stage. Zero to six months, about another year to year and a half. So you're sort of sitting at like a year and a half to two years total. And fearful avoidance, unique from other attachment styles. When they get in the honeymoon stage. Now, there's something that can be broken. Trust can be broken. There can be something painful here that, you know, you could hurt me. We've committed to each other in some way now you could really hurt me. And it's in that stage in particular that I like to think of them as sort of having like, one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat. And for me, I know in the honeymoon stage, I would start being afraid. I would always transition into going from, like, on, you know, my best self, not fearing anything. So then once there was a commitment. And commitment would scare me, and it would scare me because I knew that it was going to make me feel chaos inside. It was going to make me feel like as soon as I was committed, oh, my gosh, now you could really hurt me. This could now end. Because if you violate the commitment or hurt it or don't show up, as I think that we should in a commitment, then, like, that's going to be the end. I knew I wasn't forgiving of things and had no capacity for forgiveness. But. And it wasn't coming from, like, having healthy standards. It was coming from, like, fear. Fear and extreme expectation. And, you know, for me, that meant, like, okay, now there's all this pressure. Like, okay, we've now entered into the honeymoon stage. We've now entered into the pressure cooker. And I also felt like commitment meant that I had to give myself away. Like, I couldn't have my own hobbies or interests or needs. Like, the relationship now had to be at the. The center point of my reality. And I just assumed that that's the way it was supposed to be. So you can think of it as like a pendulum swinging. I would start, like, questioning things. Doubting things is going to work long term. I would maybe be testing a little bit and test somebody a little bit more. So, for example, I remember one time I was dating somebody and they had told me, like, yeah, I went out with my friends in the evening and I, you know, came home really early and went to bed early. And then, you know, learning. And I said, what time did you go to bed? Did you sleep well? Da da da. And didn't think too much of it, but in hindsight too, like as a fearful boy and I was storing all information all the time. And then it was something like they said, yeah, I owe was back around 9ish. And then I heard from their friend that they were back at like 10 or 9:45, like it wasn't even a huge discrepancy. And I remember thinking like they lied. This is terrible. Like they're now a liar. And, and you know, in my mind rather than, you know, seeing it from this like secure space of like okay, well you know, there's like a 45 minute discrepancy. They said ish. They didn't say like at 9 o' clock sharp I was home. It's not like they were out like partying, doing something crazy in some sort of crazy place that I should feel, you know, some sort of way about. I like knew the friends that they were with all these things rather than like feeling like oh yeah, like no big deal, like they just didn't get us in detail in the story here. I remember thinking like they lied, they're a liar, I can't trust them. I didn't know how to be vulnerable or say like hey, you know, can you shut some context on that or some light on it. I didn't know how to be vulnerable because I didn't ever want to come across as like controlling or weak. You know, a lot of these fears that I had. So what I would do in my mind is just like slowly like, you know, hold on to that and put a wall up and be like, okay, well now I'm not sure about you. And I would keep doing this, right? And then some days I would really get stressed about those things. I'd have a few walls I put up from collecting, you know, ideas about things and people and situations. And I really had no capacity to communicate through things because I just didn't know how that worked or what that looked like. And so everything would just build a wall. And then, you know, I have really strong feelings and on some days and other days I would feel really threatened and confused about a relationship and I would flip flop in my mind because I didn't have a capacity to address things. And I would jump to worst case scenario conclusions because I had a lot of my own core wounds. Betrayal, core wounds, abandonment, core wounds. Feeling so afraid of being trapped or helpless. Like, you know, a lot of these things controlled and so, you know, that led me to start entering into the power struggle stage a little bit early. Now, this is statistically the stage that most people break up from. And this does not have a timeline like the other stages. People can spend a whole marriage in the power struggle stage and have never left, but you know, securely attached people, they usually move through it pretty gracefully. Every, every attachment style goes through this. They usually move through it in like three or four months. And it's marked by slightly more arguments, disagreements. Now if you're good at working through disagreements, right, if you're good at communicating through disagreements and solving for them, then you, you move through these things, all of the things that were causing disagreements, you learn about each other around you learn what each other needs, you show up for it, and you come out of the power struggle stage much closer together. And then that ends up moving you into the stability, commitment, and eventually bliss stage, which is like the honeymoon stage, but you know, somebody much more deeply. Right. It's not like the mask is on and you're still getting to know somebody and you're on your best behavior. Yes, people often present themselves in the dating stage, more so that way. And so you'll see that, that real shift and change. Now, what does this mean for a fearful avoidant? Well, fearful avoidance, you know, this is where it gets into the long term relationship. If they don't heal, they stay in the power struggle stage. And what you'll see is, you can imagine, imagine a pendulum swinging and it starts to pick up steam, and pick up steam, or almost like the roller coaster starts small and then you get to the big loops in the roller coaster. You know, fearful of winds, with starts as this frustration and maybe pulling away often ends up with, you know, larger arguments, much more fighting, you know, sometimes saying things that really hit below the belt. Like I think of like the volcano erupting, you know, And I would experience this, like I would hold things and hold things in. I never knew how to talk about things directly because it felt way too vulnerable. So if somebody hurt me, I couldn't show them. I couldn't say, like, oh, this hurt me. Can we work on it? No way. Like that was not gonna happen because I was too scared to express my feelings. I felt like that made me weak and that, like, I don't want to rely on somebody. So what I do is I would get really mad about unrelated things. So let's say somebody, you know, hurt my feelings or I felt like something bothered me, I would hold it and hold it in and then like if the dishwasher was left open or something, I'd be like, like, you know, so mad about that. Make unhealthy comments, you know, hit below the belt with comments. Sometimes things that I feel terrible about, things I actually called my exes in the past and said sorry for like and, and just, and you know, not things that are like evil, but just things that are like we're just unfair, you know. And I'm sure that that made people feel confused because they'd be like, why are you so mad about this thing over here when you know, like it's not that big of a deal. But really what was happening is I would like be so warm one day and then so cold another day and then four days later maybe get really mad about something small that was like, for what? Because I wasn't sharing the big things or the things I was afraid about. And this is very common for fearful avoidance. And so, you know, long term in a relationship, unless if you're avoidant does the work, it's almost impossible for them to leave the power struggle stage of dating. Which means if you are fearful, avoidant, you'll see like your, your life line of relationships, the life cycle of relationships, those dating stage, honeymoon stage, power struggle, breakup. And then that further seems to reinforce this idea that relationships are just like dating honeymoon. Like they're either really good infatuation or lots of fighting and there's no in between. When in reality like in a longer term relationship, you know, you're dating honeymoon, power struggle, that might only make up the first like three years of your relationship before you break up. And relationships go so much further beyond that. And, and that ends up being a small portion of the whole life cycle of a relationship. Right? That's the first three years. Like for me now I'm going on like the 11th year with my husband. And like that's, that's a very small thing in retrospect. First three years, right? It was. So you'll see like as you learn to navigate these things, those actually are not what a relationship looks like. It's just what, you know. What has to happen to get there is that you have to be able to, number one, remove, really work through those core wounds, the fear of being abandoned and trapped and betrayed and all these things that come up feeling unworthy, you know, you have to work through those things. Those are things that you are not born with. Those are conditioned ideas. You can recondition them using neuroplasticity and subconscious rewiring tools, all of which we have in PDS in an enormous amount of detail, by the way, and the other things that are important. So rewiring your wounds, learning your needs huge and regulating your nervous system. We have a lot of work in PDS about somatic processing. We have, you know, being in parasympathetic nervous system state, what it's like to get there, going through somatic release techniques. I mean, all those things are extremely important in the healing journey. Last but not least, being able to actually communicate and share your boundaries with other individuals. Because if you don't, you're going to think you're good at setting boundaries, but you'll set them from anger. And if you're setting them from anger, it means a lot of things had to go wrong first. So there's so much more I could say about this video. But I would say in general, you know, a relationship long term will look like staying in the power struggle stage. You'll have these moments of seeing the fearful avoidant again and they're like beauty, you know, and they're like generosity and kindness and care and empathy. But you might also just feel like there's this touch and go where you're feeling like confused and in this push, pull, dynamic and feeling like, wait, we're so good and then they pull away so much. And that can feel very difficult and, and hard to understand and hard to interpret and wonder like, is it my fault and what's going on here? So just wanted to share some of this and also in hopes that if any fearful avoidant listing knows that you can heal, you can change and those are some of the really important stuff to do. So, so that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please subscribe if you are enjoying these videos. We do free giveaways, free courses on this channel all the time. So that way you won't miss any. And thank you for stopping by and I will see you next time.