Speaker 1: Nice to meet you, very nice to meet you. I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty big fan, so, oh, thank you. You're like
Speaker 1: the holy Grail of women entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. So
Speaker 2: I found you on social media. And you do sort
Speaker 2: of like these therapy snippets on relationships in the car
Speaker 2: and you have a practice, you have patients. I do.
Speaker 3: I have clients.
Speaker 1: I'm a relationship coach and I've been running my practice
Speaker 1: now for about four years. So it's been a real
Speaker 1: blessing and a real joy. I was in academia before that.
Speaker 1: I was the director of a clinical psychology program at
Speaker 1: a university, and so I did that for a number
Speaker 1: of years and taught in psychology. So what is your training.
Speaker 1: My training is in social psychology. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people are not familiar with that because it is a
Speaker 1: smaller part of the discipline. So about thirty three percent
Speaker 1: of the discipline is clinical psychology and they deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, severe mental illness, and then we have the
Speaker 1: rest of us who are specialized in different areas of psychology.
Speaker 1: So social psychology is just really the study of human interaction.
Speaker 1: So I am basically a researcher in human behavior expert
Speaker 1: in romantic relationships, So I study relationships from kind of
Speaker 1: a scientific point of view, and then I went into coaching,
Speaker 1: which is just fundamentally kind of a different avenue than therapy.
Speaker 1: It's really focused on the science and then results, you know,
Speaker 1: and being very prescriptive and results oriented, versus kind of
Speaker 1: like processing and discovery, which is a lot more of
Speaker 1: what therapy is about.
Speaker 2: Okay, So my question is, so you talk a lot
Speaker 2: about attachment, attachment disorder, all the different attachment styles, and
Speaker 2: I think we're in the era of like a designing
Speaker 2: certain labels to people that you're in a relationship with.
Speaker 2: Because for the first time ever, I heard someone talk
Speaker 2: about personality types in order to find matches, like and
Speaker 2: there's this personality test that I thought was amazing online
Speaker 2: that I took, my friends took that was spot on.
Speaker 2: I was the protagonist, shocking someone else. I knew the
Speaker 2: woman who runs my company is the commander, which was
Speaker 2: perfect and like, but the description is really amazing, and
Speaker 2: this is going to sound like it's belittling the rest
Speaker 2: of this. But I also do now look at someone's
Speaker 2: astrological sign. I don't live in this anymore than I
Speaker 2: live in what you talk about, which is attachment styles.
Speaker 2: But I do think there's something to all of it. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think there's something to the personality types. I think
Speaker 2: there's something to the attachment styles, and I do think
Speaker 2: there's something to the astrological signs, for example, and then
Speaker 2: the love languages, like all these things. So let's just
Speaker 2: talk about all these things and how someone could sort
Speaker 2: of boil this down because, for example, let's say you're
Speaker 2: let's say you want to lose weight, and you're going
Speaker 2: to be like, I'm going to do the eat right
Speaker 2: for your type, your blood type, and to get my
Speaker 2: blood taken because someone said that, but someone else said macrobiotic,
Speaker 2: but someone else said carb and keto and look, so
Speaker 2: it's like hard to know how to be educated and
Speaker 2: then also not be debilitated by trying to figure out
Speaker 2: all these things that also could freak someone else out.
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely, I completely understand where you're coming from, and
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with you. And I think from my
Speaker 1: point of view as a scientist, I think the place
Speaker 1: that I like to look is just going to the
Speaker 1: science and seeing how credible it is and seeing how
Speaker 1: long the theory has been around, how much you know,
Speaker 1: validity and reliability you know, comes with whatever assessment you're
Speaker 1: you're taking. And the thing that I love about attachment
Speaker 1: theory is that it's been around since nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: and so far nobody's been able to falsify that theory,
Speaker 1: and so we have so much evidence that has built
Speaker 1: since that time time that attachment style is very predictive
Speaker 1: of people's behavior inside of relationships. And so when we're
Speaker 1: taking an assessment or where we're putting a label on something,
Speaker 1: my first instinct is to just go, Okay, well, what's
Speaker 1: the scientific evidence behind it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is this something that somebody just kind of like made
Speaker 1: up and it sounded good and it was clickbait on
Speaker 1: the internet, or is this something that has validity to it.
Speaker 1: And so we do have a lot of really great
Speaker 1: measurements out there for things like personality and attachment, and
Speaker 1: differentiating between those things I think as a lay person
Speaker 1: is hard because attachment really functions at the level of behavior,
Speaker 1: whereas personality is more ingrained into who you are. And
Speaker 1: so we have, you know, somebody who has say attachment
Speaker 1: wounds that's triggered by a lot of their external environment,
Speaker 1: whereas personality characteristics are inherent to the person and might
Speaker 1: be displayed across different situations, right where attachment's really just
Speaker 1: going to show up inside of the romantic relationships. So
Speaker 1: I think for everybody out there on social media, you're
Speaker 1: definitely getting hit with so many things at once, and
Speaker 1: it is hard to differentiate between, you know, what's really
Speaker 1: valid and what's just kind of maybe some kind of
Speaker 1: something that's going around TikTok right now, that's that's popular.
Speaker 2: Well, it makes sense that you are saying a personality
Speaker 2: test could talk about where you're gonna be like in business,
Speaker 2: or what you're going to be like in friendships or
Speaker 2: different situation, or if you go away on a reality
Speaker 2: show or something, what you're going to be like in
Speaker 2: that group. But an attachment style is going to present
Speaker 2: itself based on intimacy and communication and connectivity. So you're
Speaker 2: going to see that arise there. That's that's definitely interesting,
Speaker 2: and so how much you know there's the one that
Speaker 2: it seems like you talk about the most is dismissive
Speaker 2: avoidant because it seems to be a problematic one that
Speaker 2: people are bumping up against. And to back this up,
Speaker 2: years ago, it was actually Cia this musical artist who
Speaker 2: brought up attachment theory to me, and I didn't even
Speaker 2: know what she was talking about. And I understood it
Speaker 2: to be the way you attached with your parents, and
Speaker 2: it could be as young as being a toddler, but
Speaker 2: it could be older based, and it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: mean you had a dysfunctional childhood by most people's standards.
Speaker 2: You could have a life like mine, which is dysfunctional
Speaker 2: by everyone's standards. But you could be a person where
Speaker 2: your parents were together for fifty years, but they're very
Speaker 2: cold and there was no feeling and they never really
Speaker 2: gave you any kind of love, and you felt like
Speaker 2: you had to sort of there were conditions to everything,
Speaker 2: and so that can sort of translate into modern day.
Speaker 2: There could be many different shapes and sizes to this.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, you hit the nail on the head completely.
Speaker 1: A lot of the clients that I have, honestly don't
Speaker 1: recognize their own attachment trauma, so especially dismissive avoidance. A
Speaker 1: lot of the neglect that they experience looked very benevolent.
Speaker 1: So it might have been like a mom being like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're fine, calm down, you don't.
Speaker 3: Need to be so upset.
Speaker 1: You know that mom was very well meaning to just
Speaker 1: try to gain some emotional control with her child, but
Speaker 1: essentially she's also passing along the message, hey, your emotions
Speaker 1: are not welcome here, and the display of emotions when
Speaker 1: you have big emotion inside of you.
Speaker 3: Isn't like a good thing to do.
Speaker 1: So when that's repeated over and over and over again
Speaker 1: in those small benign or benevolent looking ways, it can
Speaker 1: cause someone to suppress emotion over time and to really
Speaker 1: internalize things and to cope with things within themselves or
Speaker 1: even dissociate from things, which is really what happens with
Speaker 1: the dismissive avoidant. They suppress all of their emotions, and
Speaker 1: because they're not in touch with their own emotional experience,
Speaker 1: they get very overwhelmed by other people's emotional experiences, which
Speaker 1: is a real block to intimacy.
Speaker 2: I think what you're saying is that someone is just trained.
Speaker 2: It's like a dog that's trained to do the same
Speaker 2: thing every time, and it's very hard to untrain a dog.
Speaker 2: So this is a person who's trained that there's a
Speaker 2: siren that goes off when intimacy or connectivity happens, and
Speaker 2: they literally dismiss and avoid where It might seem good
Speaker 2: in the beginning because there are no stakes, but as
Speaker 2: the stakes get higher, they dismiss and avoid. And you
Speaker 2: talk about that a lot because that is very difficult
Speaker 2: to intervene in and retrain. And so what does that mean?
Speaker 2: You just give that dog back to the breeder? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you Because I've been in relationships with people
Speaker 2: like this and you kind of do want to give
Speaker 2: that dog back to the breeder, But what do you
Speaker 2: say to that person, like that poor person who can
Speaker 2: help themselves?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the DA is just it's they're so hard because
Speaker 1: their major wound is around effectiveness, which is essentially brought
Speaker 1: up by criticism or even just perceived criticism. They don't
Speaker 1: actually have to be being criticized, they just have to
Speaker 1: perceive that they're being criticized. And so if you come
Speaker 1: to them and you're like, hey, I think you have
Speaker 1: this dismissive avoidant attachment, immediately they're going to feel defective, criticized,
Speaker 1: and that is attached to so much internal shame, and
Speaker 1: then they go into their suppression and their avoidance right
Speaker 1: to cope with that internal shame. So they're not going
Speaker 1: to age with you, and those kinds of conversations around
Speaker 1: personal growth and development. For them, that's insanely triggering, and
Speaker 1: then they use their old tactics of just suppressing and avoiding,
Speaker 1: and so it's hard to actually even engage them in
Speaker 1: conversations about hey, I think we you know, you might
Speaker 1: benefit from understanding this about yourself, or that our relationship
Speaker 1: could benefit from you understanding this about yourselves. From what
Speaker 1: I have experienced, the best way to be able to
Speaker 1: talk to a dismissible avoidant about the need for them
Speaker 1: to maybe explore emotional development is, hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: came across this really cool science about attachment, and I
Speaker 1: think I know what my attachment style is.
Speaker 3: I'm interested to see if you know what it is.
Speaker 1: And so they kind of see it as like a
Speaker 1: little bit almost of like a game of discovery, and
Speaker 1: that's when they go, oh, I think I'm a dismissible avoidant.
Speaker 3: And then we usually have two roads.
Speaker 1: We have somebody that kind of has a light bulb
Speaker 1: moment and they go, oh, well, I really want to
Speaker 1: be with you and so maybe this is something I
Speaker 1: need to work on, which is usually people with more
Speaker 1: mild dismissible avoidance. And then we have the more severe
Speaker 1: people who are like, well, you know what I am?
Speaker 3: I am who I am.
Speaker 1: That's like famous tagline for the da as I am
Speaker 1: who I am, and you can lend me like this
Speaker 1: or not or leave.
Speaker 2: Oh I've heard the middle. I haven't heard that. I've
Speaker 2: heard the well, I've heard the middle, because they go
Speaker 2: highs and lows. These people go low and then they
Speaker 2: think they can change it. But the next day it's
Speaker 2: a new day and that's over. And I've also I
Speaker 2: think this is the if this was a sign, I
Speaker 2: would call this the biggest gas lighting sign. This is
Speaker 2: a gas lighting sign because again they want to avoid
Speaker 2: and if they dump something on you, you can avoid
Speaker 2: doing it. If it's on you, they don't have to
Speaker 2: do it. So this is literally a dog I would
Speaker 2: give back to the breeder. But if you're married to
Speaker 2: this person, how do you cope with this? And then
Speaker 2: we can get into the other styles too.
Speaker 1: The only thing I have ever seen work for dismissive
Speaker 1: avoidance is really strong boundaries, because they have really strong
Speaker 1: boundaries around their behavior, their time, what they're willing to give,
Speaker 1: and so inherently they might push back against it, and
Speaker 1: on the surface they're like Ooh, I'm not getting my way.
Speaker 1: But deep down at that subconscious level, which is really
Speaker 1: driving the ship, they're like, man, I respect that, right,
Speaker 1: like I respect people who can say no, I'm not
Speaker 1: giving that or I'm not doing that right. So they
Speaker 1: kind of view people who self abandon and who are
Speaker 1: a needy as weak. Yes. And so when you hold
Speaker 1: a really strong boundary with the DA and they realize
Speaker 1: I don't get access to this person unless I give
Speaker 1: a B and C or meet their needs, that sense
Speaker 1: of loss can be what causes them to stop suppressing
Speaker 1: so much, because the pain of the loss can't be
Speaker 1: suppressed to the degree that they need it to be
Speaker 1: in order for them to sort of move on and
Speaker 1: get over it. So if they really love somebody and
Speaker 1: that person throws up some really strong boundaries, oftentimes that
Speaker 1: is what it takes for them to come out of
Speaker 1: their avoidance, start being able to access the feelings that
Speaker 1: they have for their partner, and make some decisions that
Speaker 1: they're going to honor the boundaries of their partner and
Speaker 1: making some strides towards change.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the other styles I mine. Is
Speaker 2: is there an anxious avoidant? What is the anxious anxiousness.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of terms that have been used
Speaker 1: for what moderns fearful avoidance. Yeah, and it's been called
Speaker 1: in the past anxious avoidance or disorganized attachment. So those
Speaker 1: people have both an anxious side to their attachment and
Speaker 1: an avoidance side to their attachment. Yes, me, odd's what
Speaker 1: I was too, And you know I have. I've worked
Speaker 1: really obviously, worked really hard on it, but you know,
Speaker 1: it never completely goes away. It's more of a learning
Speaker 1: to be aware, to catch, to correct, to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're sort of always on top of it. There's
Speaker 1: no like triggers completely going away for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. There are going to always be those trigger
Speaker 1: moments and you have to be able to learn to
Speaker 1: identify and cope with them. But for fearful avoidance, they
Speaker 1: really have wounds around betrayal because there was some dysfunction
Speaker 1: in their childhood. They usually had one or more parents
Speaker 1: that had enough problems going on where they looked at
Speaker 1: their parent and they were like, yeah, you can't love
Speaker 1: me in a way that feels good to me, Like
Speaker 1: you have X, y Z other problems issues deficits going on.
Speaker 1: So we usually see this in parents that maybe have
Speaker 1: a substance abuse disorder, or parents that have a mental illness,
Speaker 1: or parents that you know, go through a really awful
Speaker 1: divorce when their child is younger, or you know, something
Speaker 1: of that effect. We have parents that are highly consumed
Speaker 1: with some other issue that's causing them to behave in
Speaker 1: an emotionally dysfunctional way, and the child witnesses that, even
Speaker 1: if it's not directed towards the child, oftentimes they're witnessing
Speaker 1: it in the marital relationship of their parents, and so
Speaker 1: they really imprint this idea that love is unsafe, love
Speaker 1: is hurtful, people will betray you if you get close
Speaker 1: to them, and so ultimately they sort of develop this
Speaker 1: very disorganized strategy of trying to get intimacy where their
Speaker 1: need for connection is really strong, but it's always sort
Speaker 1: of competing with their desire to avoiding.
Speaker 2: Which one is that that's anxious attached.
Speaker 1: That's the fearful avoidance, that's like the modern term for it.
Speaker 1: But what about the disorganized one?
Speaker 3: So that's the same.
Speaker 1: So there's oh, fear several different terms attached to it
Speaker 1: over the years, and I think the most probably the
Speaker 1: most up to date term is fearful avoidance, but a
Speaker 1: lot of peop use those older terms and so it
Speaker 1: can get confusing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so fearful avoidant. So for me, it's sort of
Speaker 2: like a zero sum game. So I'm like in and
Speaker 2: I'm connected, but if I sense any sort of danger,
Speaker 2: I'm fully out. Yeah, that's sort of it. I feel
Speaker 2: safe until I don't, and that's like not a gray
Speaker 2: and the healthiest way is But that's actually you can
Speaker 2: intervene in that because I've gotten to a point over
Speaker 2: Just like learning, there are things that dating people on
Speaker 2: here have told or psychologists have told that you learn
Speaker 2: that you can like mix into the recipes. So, for example,
Speaker 2: there are a couple of things that I believe and
Speaker 2: have learned. So one is that men are equally as
Speaker 2: insecure as us, and I think that women don't really
Speaker 2: believe that. So if you believe that a man is
Speaker 2: equally as insecure, you'll then go respond to something or
Speaker 2: come reach out to someone that you normally wouldn't, thinking
Speaker 2: that there has to be some version of it, Like
Speaker 2: they reach out, you reach out back, they reach out,
Speaker 2: you reach out back. You do a little extra because
Speaker 2: you're someone said to you that they're just as insecure.
Speaker 2: And I said on a previous podcast that you know,
Speaker 2: it's been a man's world for so long, for generations,
Speaker 2: that it's not going to be a crash diet of
Speaker 2: us all of a sudden, just like believing that it's
Speaker 2: both a man and a woman's world, even though we
Speaker 2: see proof of that. So the dynamic comes up in dating,
Speaker 2: not even about fearful avoidant or any of this stuff,
Speaker 2: just in normal dating every day we believe that the
Speaker 2: men are holding the cards, short of like boobs and
Speaker 2: like you know, holding out for them, Like that's just
Speaker 2: sort of basic. I just mean, like we believe that
Speaker 2: men are holding the cards. So therefore, even if a
Speaker 2: man is not that attractive, we believe we should give
Speaker 2: them a cookie for doing something so basic because we
Speaker 2: are not we don't have an equilibrium with that. So therefore,
Speaker 2: if someone doesn't respond to you, you want to basically
Speaker 2: say in some subtle way, fuck off, like not responding
Speaker 2: like you'd have respond I'm insecure, I'm going to go retreat.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I think there's a real dynamic where in
Speaker 1: this culture too, we kind of view men as being
Speaker 1: like the ones that have all the power, and that
Speaker 1: have the power to destroy their relationship as well. Right so,
Speaker 1: because they do hold all the cards. And I think
Speaker 1: there is some truth to that, because if more men
Speaker 1: tend to be dismissive avoidant and dismissive avoidance act as
Speaker 1: dictators and relationships, they do. They dictate when you talk,
Speaker 1: how much you talk, what you talk about, what the
Speaker 1: intimacy is, you know, how much quality time you have.
Speaker 1: They dictate all of it in a relationship. And eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of dismissive avoidance are men, right so, and
Speaker 1: a man.
Speaker 2: A dismissive avoidant with money is a lethal combination because
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 1: It because a very well off dismissive avoidance, and it
Speaker 1: was a nightmare because they they because he who makes
Speaker 1: the goal makes the rules.
Speaker 2: And this is why I tell women to begin with,
Speaker 2: just to make money work, you put it in a
Speaker 2: hole and not even use it, but you have it there,
Speaker 2: and you know you have it there because it affects emotion.
Speaker 2: So a man who's a dismissive avoidant who has money
Speaker 2: is he's running the program. He who makes the gold
Speaker 2: makes the rules. And then you are just abiding by
Speaker 2: feeling powerless emotionally and financially but he then doesn't respect
Speaker 2: that you neither have money nor control. So it's a
Speaker 2: very strange Goldilocks imbalance.
Speaker 1: It is, you're very right, and so we have somebody
Speaker 1: who's acting as an emotional dictator and then who can
Speaker 1: act as a kind of a financial dictator as well.
Speaker 1: And I have had clients who are married to these
Speaker 1: people and you know, they maybe they've been a stay
Speaker 1: at home mom for fifteen years, right, But then they
Speaker 1: discover then they're in this like loveless marriage where they
Speaker 1: get absolutely nothing back. And they got to go with
Speaker 1: the program, right, and they got to go with the program.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as they push back and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't working for me. I mean, the dismissive avoidance
Speaker 1: is going to dismiss an avoid and they've had years
Speaker 1: and years and years of that, they get fed up.
Speaker 1: They try to go get a divorce and then I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you how that process works.
Speaker 1: If you don't have any money, you can't get anywhere, right,
Speaker 1: And so then they they're really scared of losing custody
Speaker 1: of their kids.
Speaker 3: They're really scared.
Speaker 2: The man has control now emotionally and financially.
Speaker 1: You know, because the family court system is all about
Speaker 1: who can outspend you, know, who can you can keep
Speaker 1: it going for literally ever I've been through fugual Well.
Speaker 2: They can emotionally outspend you.
Speaker 1: Also, absolutely they can wear you down completely with their
Speaker 1: inability to compromise, with their inability to see what's in
Speaker 1: the really truly the best interest of both parties in
Speaker 1: the situation. It really dismissible avoidance, thrive on control, and
Speaker 1: that comes from and it's not in the same way
Speaker 1: a narcissist does. It's definitely different from narcissism. So I
Speaker 1: always try to tell people this isn't das aren't necessarily narcissists.
Speaker 3: They can be, but not all das are narcissists.
Speaker 1: Many are very deeply insecure, deeply insecure, and and their
Speaker 1: insecurity though is not only unrecognized by them, yes, it's
Speaker 1: recognized by most of society. What they look like on
Speaker 1: the outside are very stoic people, people that really have
Speaker 1: their stuff together, people operate based on logic and you know,
Speaker 1: have all of theirs in a row.
Speaker 3: And that is true of them.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of the DA's that I encounter are
Speaker 1: very successful people. And then they come to me, and
Speaker 1: they're like, I've been successful in every ever, every area
Speaker 1: of my life except with my wife, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: And those are then amenable to change.
Speaker 1: But in situations where you know, a woman has been
Speaker 1: through this for fifteen twenty years and she's tired of
Speaker 1: living in a loveless marriage and she wants to get
Speaker 1: out their deep desire to have control, which comes from
Speaker 1: being pushed into hyper independence too soon for their development,
Speaker 1: where they had to have control in order to survive
Speaker 1: because they were tasked with doing things developmentally that they
Speaker 1: weren't ready for as children. It makes them hyper control
Speaker 1: their environment and they almost have like the spirit of rebellion,
Speaker 1: which is if you push for something, they almost push
Speaker 1: back harder, like no, I'm not doing that right. So
Speaker 1: they're not the compromise. They're not good at compromising. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a my way or the high way type
Speaker 1: of mentality, and obviously that can be really detrimental when
Speaker 1: you're trying to have reciprocity in a relationship.
Speaker 2: It's the most common female attachment style.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, it's kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of split. Now I have what in my practice it's
Speaker 1: called selection bias. Feet fearful avoidance have the most pain,
Speaker 1: so they're the most likely to get help. Right, So
Speaker 1: you know, if you're the more pain you're in, the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to reach out for help. So
Speaker 1: I would say the most common attachment style I see
Speaker 1: is fearful avoidance. But I know we also have a
Speaker 1: lot of anxious preoccupied women too. They don't have that
Speaker 1: avoidance side. They only stay anxious, and no matter kind
Speaker 1: of what happens in the relationship, they continue to try
Speaker 1: to make it work. Whereas the fearful avoidance is like, well,
Speaker 1: as soon as you hurt me, I'm going to pull back,
Speaker 1: and I may exactly in right, I may. The fearful
Speaker 1: avoid it might decide to jump out of avoidance and
Speaker 1: back into anxiety and establish connection, and they can do
Speaker 1: a push pull. The anxious preoccupied is sort of always
Speaker 1: pushing for the connection no matter what.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, I'll.
Speaker 2: Takes more insecure, it's more desperate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just don't leave me.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay. And that's a lethal combination with the dismissive avoiding,
Speaker 2: because they're gonna run and they're gonna be yelled or
Speaker 2: just dorm at you. Let's talk about the dating, because
Speaker 2: it's a dating podcast, so your dating, you go out.
Speaker 2: And I think that people, I think that women really
Speaker 2: believe things that men are saying in the moment, whether
Speaker 2: it's about sex, whether it's about money, whether it's about commitment,
Speaker 2: and it's a stranger. And I think Barbie Adler, who's
Speaker 2: a matchmaker on here, really was the one who. I
Speaker 2: think it was her who basically who basically was like,
Speaker 2: this person is a stranger. Yeah, and I just and
Speaker 2: then you probably touch on love bombing and all this
Speaker 2: different stuff, like there's someone I met recently who looked
Speaker 2: at me and was like, oh my god, and like
Speaker 2: just had a feeling about me. And that can happen.
Speaker 2: You can feel like you had an instant connection. And
Speaker 2: then they started to operate in the pre dating phase.
Speaker 2: Hadn't even been on a proper day, just met them
Speaker 2: a couple of times. You're vibing with them, there's an
Speaker 2: energetic connection where like it's a strong connection, so you're
Speaker 2: allowing them to push it a little further with you
Speaker 2: in like fantasy like oh we'll do this one day,
Speaker 2: we'll do this, we could start a business together, we
Speaker 2: could live near each other. Where do you live? I
Speaker 2: live there too, That's what I want to And like
Speaker 2: now you're like in love with so five minutes in.
Speaker 2: But like, we have to recalibrate ourselves. It's our responsibility
Speaker 2: just because the guy says, oh your eyes and that's
Speaker 2: exactly what I want. You're what I want. You have
Speaker 2: to be rational, insane and no, this is a stranger.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't matter that they told you they want
Speaker 2: to marry you on the first date. Like every rom
Speaker 2: com movie with Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, it's not
Speaker 2: realistic and it doesn't make sense. So and I hear
Speaker 2: women all the time he said this, he said that,
Speaker 2: or even three dates he said this, he said that,
Speaker 2: And like they're then mad at the guy. So you
Speaker 2: have to recalibrate yourself with a stranger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean our brain chemicals are definitely going
Speaker 1: to lie to us in the beginning. They're going to
Speaker 1: lie to us, and they are going to give us
Speaker 1: feelings of euphoria and happiness and a lot of what
Speaker 1: ends up happening, especially for fearful avoidance.
Speaker 3: This is a really fa thing.
Speaker 1: Is you know, emotions are made up of the feelings
Speaker 1: that we have in our body, plus the story around
Speaker 1: what's happening. That's actually what emotion is broken down into,
Speaker 1: So what we feel inside of our body, plus like
Speaker 1: our like story or understanding of what's occurring.
Speaker 2: Well, but none of those irrational too. Describing two fantasy things.
Speaker 2: Then there's one which is like the boring logic and
Speaker 2: intellectual knowledge you are discussing like you're a libido and
Speaker 2: like is it your it or you're super ego like
Speaker 2: those things that are coming in and like excited on
Speaker 2: two different.
Speaker 1: Ends, right, yeah, definitely the definitely the primal like energy
Speaker 1: part of us, I think is really activated in the
Speaker 1: early dating relationship. And you know, so what ends up
Speaker 1: happening is people experience an emotion that is really fear
Speaker 1: and associated with red flags like love bombing. Right, Like
Speaker 1: love bombing should be a recognizable red flag, but it's
Speaker 1: not because it provokes feelings in the body that mimic excitement.
Speaker 1: It's really fear. Fear and excitement have the same feeling.
Speaker 1: But the story that you're telling yourself helps you determine
Speaker 1: what emotion this is. And so the story is like, oh,
Speaker 1: new partner, they're so attractive, like they're doing all these
Speaker 1: great things.
Speaker 3: They're you know, they're what I want. I really want to.
Speaker 1: Connection and this seems so amazing, and maybe compatibility details
Speaker 1: are kind of there. It looks good on paper, but
Speaker 1: nobody shows you who they really are. For the first
Speaker 1: six months of a relationship. Everybody's trying to put their
Speaker 1: best fit forward.
Speaker 2: Well, that's amazing, you're saying, first six months, that's being generous. Wow,