The Power of Attachment in Healing Relationships with Geoff Steurer (Episode #53)

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the human intimacy podcast, Dr. Kevin Skinner with my friend and colleague, somebody who's been a friend for many, many years, Jeff Stewer. Jeff, how are you doing?

Oh, thanks for having me, Kevin. It's so great to reconnect with you.

You know, I remember, boy, what was it, 13 years ago, 14 years ago, when we had a chance to do a series together when I was working for my expert solution.

Yes. Yeah, that was in 2009. I'll never forget it, December of 2009, because I just finished my core skills with Sue Johnson and her team and I was all fired up with all the attachment theory stuff and we went into the studio and recorded that series together. It was just really a fun memory.

So, so, so, so. Man, that's been 16 years ago.

I can't believe.

Right, right. Where does time go?

Right, yeah.

So we're going to come back to this because attachment. And I really think it's important for our listeners today to really get a grasp on how attachment influences everything that we do. In particular after sexual betrayal, people dealing with addictive behaviors. I just want to pick your brain and I'm so glad that you're going to join me. But more than that, I appreciate your approach to relationships because I think there's a lot of therapists and a lot of people who don't take into account this important attachment approach to helping couples heal.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so easy when there's been, especially when there's been a betrayal to focus on just separating the couple because it seems like, I mean, you would, you would do this for any sort of injury outside the Relationship. Right. If there was a perpetrator and a victim and somebody gets hurt, you know, the tendency is like on the schoolyard or in society with, you know, legal system, you separate them. But it's so challenging because these couples are deeply committed to each other or care about each other. And then there's this injury or this deep betrayal, and they've got one foot on the gas to move toward the relationship and one foot on the brake to back away from it. And you got to have help to know how to work with those opposing forces, because this attachment bond is keeping them together, even though everything in them is in tons of pain. So it's a challenging dynamic, and it doesn't help to just separate them as the answer.

Well, and maybe they won't let you separate them. How many times do you have clients who call up and say, we, we need help, infidelity, or something has occurred. We need couples therapy.

That's right.

And so even the mindset is, we need help with our relationship. And yet I'm not sure they know what they're asking for.

Exactly.

And so they. They need guidance. So let's talk a little bit about attachment and in particular, why attachment matters in the work that we're doing. Right? Because people think, well, it's. It's addiction or it's betrayal, trauma. Where does attachment fit into this puzzle?

Well, I'll just. For your listeners, I mean, maybe they know this, having listened to your. Your podcast and your body of work, Kevin. But, like, so forgive me if it's a little bit basic, but I'll just quickly explain that attachment is something that we don't choose. Attachment is something that happens as we form bonds with people that take care of us when we're babies for our survival. And we don't get to decide that. It's something that happens as someone pays attention to us and provides for us and takes. Holds us, talks to us, feeds us, shelters us. And then as we grow up, we become close to that person out of dependency. And that's healthy and it's normal, and it's part of what helps the species survive. And without that attachment reflex, we would just really be up a creek. We would just wander off and not feel any sort of obligation, and we would all be pretty isolated, and that's very dangerous. But as we grow up, that attachment relationship between a vulnerable dependent baby or child or teenager and the adult who's caretaking them, that attachment now gets transferred over to two adults who now form a healthy interdependency where they now promise to take care of each other. And you've listened to marriage vows throughout history. It involves caring for one another in this dependent way which says, yes, you're a fully grown adult, but I can't expect for you to care about me, touch me, love me, hold me, be faithful to me, and I can count on you and let my guard down because we're both going to offer that to each other. And it forms an attachment bond that is biopsychosocial, psychological, biological, emotional, relational. And that's a very deep weave where both people are intricately bonded to each other. And it's, it's part of how we survive and keep our emotional balance. And we physically thrive when it works really well. And that's attachment. And it is such a strong bond between two people that it takes a lot to totally end it. Even infidelity doesn't totally end the attachment bond. It might rupture it, create a crisis with it, but that those feelings of needing safety and connection and comfort from even somebody who's hurt you is really powerful and can feel confusing and crazy making. So let's talk about that. I mean the how to work with those forces. But it's powerful stuff.

And not only that, but it's not optional, right? Think about it. We are going to form an attachment style whether we want to or not. It's, it's, it's, it's literally, it's who we are. It's part of how we live our lives. How I see people, how I see relationships. Do I attach? Do I not attach? Am I hesitant to get into a relationship and trust people? Or do I open up and allow myself to connect? Again, not optional. So yeah, it would be really good if we could learn how to have healthy attachment relationships without this underlying blindness, if I can use that word, to not understanding how we're approaching relationships.

Yeah, so true. Yeah. When, I mean, it would be awesome, right? If before you pair up with somebody to be able to sit down and have a really mature, informed, self aware conversation about your attachment style. But none of us do that.

Could you imagine that conversation? Well, you know, I'm probably kind of a dismissive attachment style. Are you sure you want to marry me? But, but, but realistically it is something that we. Again, first of all, it's not optional and we're going to form an approach to relationships. And now the question is, where do we begin when we're transferring from this childhood into young adult into now a committed relationship? A lot of research shows that we carry that attachment Style with us, at least the perceived attachment style into this new relationship.

That's right.

Thoughts on that?

Yeah, we do, we do carry it. And, and what I love about attachment and the brain and the plasticity of the brain and the ability for us to change and evolve as, as adults. I heard it said once that marriage is our, our last great chance to grow up. And I love that idea that no matter what your attachment experience was around trust, reliability, emotional responsiveness or other dynamics that you may have experienced growing up as a child in a home with adults who are taking care of you, you can use your new adult attachment in your marriage, in your partnership. You can use that as a chance to actually shape a new type of attachment style, which is not easy, admittedly, but that is a place where we can start to deliberately start to change and understand how we show up and start making different choices and do healing and all kinds of other things to help co. Create a different type of attachment dance that maybe you didn't have growing up. And it's often a crisis that's going to bring you face to face with those attachment styles.

And really important, I think what you bring up there, it's not fixed. Right. We can shift from this. If it was insecure, I can shift in, learn how to create secure attachments. And, and I think that's important for our listeners because I've heard so many people say, well, it's just how I am.

No, not true. Yeah, I, I was, I was a very avoidant. And then there's been times in my marriage I was very anxious. And my wife and I have been married almost 30 years and we are constantly working and shaping to create a deeper secure attachment. But, you know, we, we're honest about some of the reflexes and tendencies we have from our childhoods and young adult relationships that we had that really shaped the way we feel about closeness. And the good news is, is you can do something different about it. And if you've got a willingness to do it and, and if you're lucky enough to have two people that want to do that together, great things can happen. Nothing's fixed.

Really, really important concept. So before we go too much further, a lot of people say, well, what do you actually mean by attachment style? What are the different styles? Oh, we talk a little bit about that just to give kind of a foundation of, okay, sure. Here's what we mean by attachment.

There's basically some. And it's easier sometimes to see with children. So secure is the goal. Secure would be like the gold Standard, that's where, where you know, and you hold a place in your mind that this person's going to be there for me. And when I'm not there, they're still thinking about me. And I can count on them to be there when I'm hurting. And there's this sense that overall somebody's got my back. That's a secure attachment. And if we're disagreeing or we struggle, we'll always come back, we'll always find our way back to each other. That's the gold standard. Now, there's other styles that veer off of that when that's not working out. Sometimes we're anxious and we're preoccupied about is this person going to be there for me? And you're constantly checking and worried and you're horribleizing and imagining that you're going to be rejected. And you're just preoccupied all the time about whether or not you're going to be close enough to that person. So someone who's anxiously attached is generally going to be more preoccupied about the relationship and trying to perhaps move toward more pursuing or closeness kinds of things. And then you have the opposite of that. Which is the more avoidant, which is someone who has a, has almost a ceiling or a limit of how close they can get. You know, people that are like, you know, don't pop my bubble, don't get too close to me, or they start getting too vulnerable or real, and they pull away and they tend to withdraw more. And that avoidance style is really a way to keep their emotional balance in the relationship, just like the anxious style is their way of trying to feel secure as well. So both people are using their approach or withdrawal methods responses in a way to actually feel, feel more balanced in the relationship. But it can create problems, especially when you start mixing those and then you have like a disorganized style, which is really just a combination of both of those anxious and avoidant. And that's a, that's a simplification of these styles. But ideally, you're going to want to recognize that what are the different styles that we have in our relationship? Am I, am I avoidant? My wife is anxious, or are we both anxious and we're just smothering each other? Are we both avoidant and we're both just withdrawing and avoiding each other? How do we work with this particular combination?

And again, there's a really important concept here because when we go back in time, we may start a relationship and we may think we are a certain attachment style, like I may say Well, I came into this relationship secure and, and something occurs in the relationship that can make me feel insecure. And maybe, maybe I feel more anxious because all of a sudden I'm dealing with betrayal, or maybe I'm. I'm hiding behaviors and so I'm avoidant of connection. I'm afraid to let people my world because of my own secrets. So we, we can create through our actions how we approach our attachment. But deeper than that, there's usually a story that comes into how we approach relationships that is often ignored. So it's not just the current relationship. It's the story over time that I have found more important for my clients. What about you?

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I think the experiences that we have form this narrative that, that may not align with what's possible or what's available to you or what, you know, what's going on in your actual relationship. And so getting, getting, understanding your own story and, and recognizing you can shape and change that story and even talk to the story to me is really, really encouraging. I'm a very hopeful person. I think there's a lot that can be done with this.

I like the hope there because far too often we have people. Can, can you even save, you know, some of these relationships if a person's avoidant or if a person's, you know, anxious? Really? I want to emphasize a couple things here to our listeners, because more often than not, I have people ask me questions like, can we save this marriage? Can people change? And. And if they do change, what. How do they change? What is it that really creates this shift from either an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style? What actually creates that change? I'd love to talk about that. Just to give our listeners some kind of a, you know, a foothold or something they can grab onto, maybe action steps.

I think a lot of honesty around how you show up in the relationship. So just awareness, like the old G.I. joe cartoons, right? Knowing's half the battle, right? Yeah, it's understanding that you even have an attachment style and then being curious about it. So there's lots of books, resources, podcasts, things to understand and even self diagnose. I. I'm perfectly fine with that. I think you should take a quiz like, think about it, talk about it, see if your family patterns have shaped you into a certain way and be able to identify that. And if you have two people that are doing that, that makes for a very interesting conversation. So I think initially, just recognizing that you one have an attachment style, what is it? How does it affect your partner? I love the way Sue Johnson put it one time when I was in a training with her. She says, each of you in the relationship have a very unique way of overwhelming the other person. And, and it's not on purpose and it's not because you're even necessarily doing something wrong. It's just because the way that you figured out how to get closeness or how to manage closeness and distance could possibly uniquely trigger and overwhelm your partner. So are you willing to look at that and come in contact with that self confront and look at how you might be overwhelming your partner. And imagine if two people are doing that and they're saying, I recognize that when I do this, you experience it this way or when I don't do this and you start talking about it from that attachment style of yeah, this is my tendency. And I, I don't like the way that affects you and I don't like how I feel. Let's, let's figure out if we can do a different dance. Let's figure out if we can start to move differently with each other.

I love the way you're putting that because now a couple who's doing that. You used a phrase I use all the time. Really the first part of all change for me is you have to have awareness.

Yeah.

And that awareness is a continuous journey of self exploration. How, what is my attachment style and how does my attachment style manifest in this relationship? One of the common things I've been looking at this is just a, I'm going to, I'm going to kind of put us into a scenario here for a second. Jeff. Sexual desire discrepancy. It's one of the more common issues that I find in many of the couples that I work with. And sometimes it starts as early as the honeymoon. And this sexual desire discrepancy and this concept of attachment needs. Right. And people being overwhelmed with. I want connection. It's too much for me. And so now we get into this couple attachment related issue of my needs not being met or you're overwhelming me with your needs.

Right, Right.

And now our attachment style really comes into play here because if, if I really feel like my needs can only be met through may sexual interaction or you're overwhelming me with your, your need for this connection. I, I just want to lean into that for a second. Like that's a huge issue for so many of the couples we deal with.

It is. And it can feel so desperate. And that's one of the, one of the important features of attachment Is because it's rooted in this survival imperative of if I don't have this. If I don't connect you in this way that makes sense to me, or if I don't have the distance that I need to feel emotionally balanced, then I'm going to feel like there's a threat. It's going to be coated in the body and in the. And then your emotional center as dangerous. So it can often feel so urgent, which is why couples stay up late arguing or why you can feel so devastated if you're rejected sexually or your partner just turns away from you. We code it as dangerous. And it's wild because it's in some ways almost irrational, right? Because it's like, I'm an adult. I'm not really in danger. I can feed myself and take care of myself, but yet I'm having these very, what, feel like young, immature, scared type feelings. But they're not immature and they're not regressive. There are. There are signal, our internal signals that say, this person really matters to me and I don't want to lose them. So in these conversations around sex and desire discrepancies and things like that, we have to really work to shut off that threat signal. We have to reassure our partner that we're on the same team, that they matter to us. And maybe we're not very good at this, but we're going to get it figured out because we really matter to each other. I remember Kevin, you know, some time ago, my wife, we were working through a really challenging issue in our relationship, and it would turn on some of the threat signals because we're both very different people, obviously coming from different backgrounds, married a long time, a lot of complexities with kids, et cetera. And we were working through some of these things. And I remember my wife looked at me and she says, hey, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. We'll get through this. And I remember my whole body just going like, I know that. But just that reassurance, just that signal of like, hey, we're doing this together. We're on the same team. I'm. I'm right here. It's something like that simple. Can start to switch off the threat signal. Imagine if you could do that with your partner and help switch off that threat signal. Just with some reassurance around, permanence around, I'm here, like, you matter to me. We're doing this together. It's us against everything else. We'll be fine. Those kinds of reassurances can help you deal with sexual desire discrepancies and some of these other things that feel really threatening.

And that's where couples really struggle to communicate.

Right.

Because we don't know how to communicate around this. And so we, we, you know, ignore each other, or we give each other the silent treatment, or we're aggressive because you don't love me. And so we use all these other tactics, really saying, I just need to know you're going to be there for me. I love that Sue Johnson phrase. Are you there for me?

Yes. Right. Yeah. It reminds me of that. That image you've seen from Burning man, that really famous sculpture of the two adults, the wireframe one. Have you seen that, Kevin? Yeah, the two, the two adults are. I'll just describe it. I don't remember the name of it, but they're. They're back to back, and they have their hand. They're slumped back to back, away from each other, their heads in their hands, like looking defeated. But inside the wireframe are two little children that are reaching out and touching each other's hands. And that's how it is. It's like we have these really deep biological yearnings to know that our partner is there for us, even though we're feeling separated and hurt. And the more you can activate that reassurance, because everything you just described, Kevin, like turning away, going silent, getting aggressive, yelling, those are all hot red button, nuclear options to signal to your partner, I don't care about you, you don't matter to me. You're going to be alone. And we, we don't tolerate those very well at all. It's so impossible to tolerate those unless we get some signal that our partner really cares about us.

And from a biological perspective, that message is, I either am fighting or I'm fleeing. And usually when we're in that kind of emotional intensity, our partner can't withstand that, so we detach from each other. Because I don't know what to do with that intensity. In fact, you're being a jerk or you're ignoring me, or you don't ever want me, or whatever that internalized belief is. The more we do that, the more damaging it is, and we don't. And that's where I see most couples get stuck, Jeff. They. They simply get stuck in that space, and they don't know how to get out of it. And they don't know how to get out of it. So you've already given us a really great line there. Right? I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. We're going to be okay.

Think of all the reassuring things you could say in that moment. And it takes a ton of courage to dig deep and say, you're really important to me. I don't want to lose you. I don't know what I'm doing, but I know that I want to be with you. You matter to me. Right. There's lots of ways to signal over to your partner that even though we're struggling, we're going to make it okay. We're going to be okay. I'm here. I don't know a lot of things, but I know I want to be with you. Those things, I mean, just as I say those, like, notice what happens in your body as you listen to this, as you, as you. It's like, man, I would love to hear that. That feels really good. Because that's universally what we're all really craving.

Soothing again. It goes back to that early attachment of being soothed through words or through healthy touch. And again, this is where I find a lot of couples don't know how to resolve it because they stop touching, they stop. They stop communicating with a soft tone of voice. They are sending messages that are angry and irritable and, and. And even disconnecting to the point where I'm not paying attention because all you want is sex or all you care about is this, or you'll never want to be with me. And so we continually are hearing these messages, that simple phrase or for those phrases they do, they calm down your autonomic nervous system. They help you relax.

Yeah, it's the stuff we say to little babies. And that may sound weird, but, you know, when a baby's crying, we hold them close and we say, you're okay, you're okay. I'm here, I'm here. Right? We. We say those things because whether the baby gets what we're saying or not, we're sending a signal of permanence, of commitment, of loyalty, of desire. Now, I recognize when you're dealing with betrayal and really difficult things around questioning permanence and questioning fidelity and those kinds of things, those phrases may be hard to say. They may be, you know, there may be a lot of uncertainty with that, but you can still say things like, I, I hope this can work, or I'm. I don't know if it can, but I would be really sad if it didn't. Or anything that signals that you, you know, you. You do mean a lot to me, even though I can hardly stand to look at you right now. I mean, it's Just, it's this, right? It's this sense of like, I really care about you and you also scare me to death. And they're both true.

The dichotomy what you're talking about is so true. Both directions. Because the person who's been acting out, I often hear phrase. In fact, I looked at some of this research because I was trying to understand this phrase that people use all the time. Well, I love you. And that's so confusing to people who've been betrayed. They're like, how can you possibly love me and do XYZ behavior? It makes no sense.

And.

And yet when you look at the research, most people who are acting out still say, I, yeah, I love. I love my spouse. That's so confusing. And yet, when we break it down, what are they really saying? I want. I want this relationship even though I'm doing stupid things.

Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective on that. Because if love is a verb, right.

You.

On paper, it would basically mean, no, you're not loving this person. You're not doing loving things. But what I think you're speaking to is that deep yearning to not lose somebody who's important to you. And maybe that becomes more acute when they're walking away or when they're really hurt, and then you're more in touch with it. I recognize that when people are compromised by sexual arousal or compulsive behaviors or other kinds of things or trauma, then sometimes we lose, you know, we lose connection with our deepest values and longings. But when you're faced with the. The prospect of losing someone who you're bonded to, you're going to use words like, well, you. I love you. You're really important to me. And it's. It is confusing to hear those phrases. And it's important to, you know, nurture those things and start acting in loving ways to perhaps reinforce that. But you can. Yeah, you can understand why it would be very confusing. But those. Those attachment longings are so deep that sometimes they transcend logic even. Right.

Right. And rarity. Is it one way or the other. And this is. I mean, maybe a core concept. When we are attaching to somebody, we're bonding in a profound way. And when you're acting out, you're not attaching to your person in those moments, there is not love. It doesn't mean that when you wake up, you like, what in the world did I do? This is a person I love. And how did I let my. Whatever you want to call it, addictive behavior, or how did I How did I let that overwhelm me to the point where I stopped being loving with this person?

Right, right.

And that's the, this question I see so many couples ask. It's so confusing. It's like how I, I do love my spouse, but why am I doing this?

Yeah, well, and I think that I, I had a, I had a guy in one of my programs, he asked this question just recently and he's, you know, he said, I, I keep telling my wife I've always loved her throughout our whole marriage, but you know, she's like rejecting that. And part of what I talked to him about was I do believe that what we think is love early on oftentimes isn't really the kind of love that you'll grow into, which involves caring about your partner's pain, seeing them as a real person. I think love requires more than just a feeling, more than just a longing. I think it shows up in lots of ways. Sacrifice, commitment, doing loving things. And I think it's okay to say that many of us start off with a very immature idea of love. Often self serving or makes us feel good, or we hold up a mirror and we feel like they're reflecting back that we're a good person too. But as we grow into real deep, mature love, it looks and feels very different than what I would call immature love or early love. And that's okay. We all have to grow into that. But I wouldn't die on that hill if, you know, if, if you're trying to prove or convince your partner that, that the immature version of love should satisfy them, because it really shouldn't.

Well, and it shouldn't satisfy us. Right? I mean. Right. If we really want a deep connection, we've got to learn how to love in deeper ways, more profound ways. You use the word compassion and empathy, deep listening, sitting with somebody in their suffering and their pain. You want to show love. You're you, you've hurt your partner, they're betrayed, they're angry. Your greatest love is to be with them in their pain.

Yeah, that's some advanced stuff right there. And you know, that's something most people have to acclimate to, have to learn how to do. It's not something that most of us have ever. It's it. You don't just learn that from a book. You have to learn it experientially by sitting with someone in great pain. And especially if you've hurt them, that's even harder. It's nice if it's some other, you know, jerk that hurt your. Your wife or your. Your kid or someone else. But if you're the one that did it, that's. That's a whole nother level of really putting that person in front of you. And it's. That's. It takes a lot of work, but it's totally possible. And it's. It's really what bonds are made of.

And. And the exciting thing that happens there is when you see people mature into that kind of love. Yeah, love that part of the work that we get to do. Jeff. When you see somebody's lights click on and they're finally like, I did it last night. We were having this conversation. We were in this fight, and it was an argument, and I finally, Instead of reacting defensively, I sat and said, what is my partner really saying here?

Absolutely.

Those are beautiful, beautiful moments, right?

Yeah, I've had plenty of those. I mean, I look back and I think. I think the Indigo Girls had had a line in one of their songs where they talked about, you know, being intimate strangers. And I think, yeah, my early marriage to my wife, we were both just 22 years old, kids, and I'm thinking, yeah, we were doing intimate things as pretty much strangers. And now, almost 30 years later, there's been a lot of growing, a lot of maturing, and I really could never defend that early version of me as someone that really understood love. And it's fine. I'm allowed to grow up. All of us are allowed to change. But I love the idea of deepening that, and I'm excited to see what. What's down the road. I. You know, you think that you've got it figured out now, but there will be more invitations and opportunities to deepen that love. And. And I would never want anybody to think they've just figured it out, you know, because it. I think there's lots of ways to expand and deepen our bond and commitment and love for each other.

The moment we think that we've got it, we probably are not humble enough. Right. I mean, there is never going to be a time where I think I'm. I'm perfect at G and. And perfect at receiving it. Love is such a complex thing because.

Yeah.

Barbara Fredrickson, in her wonderful book Love 2.0, she talks about the. This science of we.

We.

We are creating this space of love. And physiologically, the love that we create, it's not. It's not like you said, it's not just a feeling. It is an action. And when we take those actions, it fills. But I mean, literally, Love is felt and it's created in the action.

Yeah.

And anyway, so I think when we put into our lives the, the request to ourself, how can I be more loving? How can I be more attached? How can we be more connected? Your brain starts working on it.

Yeah, that's so true. I love that. Yeah. It's an intention, it's. It's a willingness to say, how can I be more connected to this person? And I think we should ask that of ourselves with our romantic relationships with our partners as well as our children. If you have children who depend on you to be deeply attached. And I think that it goes for adult children as well as children that are still in your home. I just think that asking that question is the starting point and recognizing, I bet there's more I could do to build a stronger bond with this person because like you said, there's never really a finish line for this.

So let's go to a couple of barriers. Let's go to the avoidant. Let's go to the anxious, ambivalent attachment style. Let's say that I've got an anxious personality. Jeff and I just want to go into a couple scenarios before we close up shop today. I'm an anxious person. And, and I question. I'm jealous. I'm worried about my partner because I just. I'm afraid they're going to leave me. What do we say to this individual who's got that kind of a fear of being abandoned?

Well, I would validate the fear of abandonment because every human has that, by the way. So I would, I would let them know that they're not crazy for feeling that fear. Now maybe it's felt like a runaway train or it's probably bigger than they'd like it to feel. But I would, I would encourage them to look at the way and Sue Johnson and EFT and this. I don't want to get too technical with it, but in emotionally focused therapy, her, her model for attachment therapy, she uses the word action tendency, which is really a fancy way of saying when you feel this fear of your partner moving away from you that you don't want to lose. What is the. What is your tendency? What is the action that you tend to take when that happens? And it's quick. This is something that happens in a blink of an eye. And for someone that's anxiously attached, it might be something like they start asking lots of questions or maybe they start checking the temperature by, you know, moving closer and becoming more hyper vigilant, you know, which can feel Smothering and difficult. So part of this is to help them understand their action tendency, what they tend to do, and then see if they can understand with compassion what's what their worry is about. Like, what are they worried? And be able to somehow put that in words or in a different way toward their partner. So it might be something like, I know I get really scared when, you know, you come home from work and you check out on your phone and I start to feel really anxious that maybe you don't care about me. And instead of just saying, why are you always on your phone? You know, which is probably this anxious feeling, you can look at that action tendency and say, I think I just worry that I matter to my partner. And I want to know that, that I can feel more secure with that. So you can start to phrase things in a little bit softer way. Now, of course, we're going to collide with the other person's attachment style, but. But at least on that side of it, you can start to look at it that way.

And to that, if I'm avoidant, I'm probably gonna say, are you ever gonna get, are you ever gonna trust me? Are you ever gonna get over this?

I. Right.

So it's like, it's like that's the battle that we often see between couples. And that's right. And going back to this concept of maturity, while the mature response there is, I recognize the fear inside of me and I try to communicate it in a non accusatory way.

That's right.

But more of a, I am scared, I am afraid, I am worried about. Most people respond well to that kind of open vulnerability.

Yeah, it's definitely, it kind of declaws the, the intensity there. Right. It's not as much of an attack, and it's hard to be mad at a little kitty cat who's not gonna claw your eyes out. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot easier than having a tiger come at you. And in that moment, right, with the person who's avoidant, they can do the same thing. They can recognize that they might be dismissive and they're trying to create distance because it feels intense. Where they can say they can start to talk about their own tendencies and recognize that perhaps they get overwhelmed easily and they want to know that their partner is going to, you know, see them as a good person or whatever the case may be, and you can start to communicate these in softer ways. Now, this is not, this is easier said than done, but at least there's A map or a starting point to help you maybe reorganize this in a different way than you've been doing it.

Right, right. So the avoidant. It could say something to the effect of this is when I normally pull away.

Yeah.

And I don't know how to stay here because your emotions might. I. I feel overwhelmed, but I'm going to try to stay here because we matter.

Exactly. And that's. That's right. And I want to go back to that reassurance, that piece that. That the reassurance will always flip off the threat level. It will. So you can start this by saying anything that would reassure. Hey, I noticed that I get really anxious when I see you on your phone. You're really important to me, and I really want to know that I'm important to you. That's where I get scared. And I want us to be close. Right. Those signals of you matter to me. We're in this together. Those kinds of things start to, you know, sound very differently than, why are you hurting me?

And now we're talking about the awareness of how we're communicating and the messages that we're actually sending. Again, Jeff, I think you and I could talk for hours and hours. In fact, we have in the past, you know, 16 years ago. But I love this conversation.

Yeah.

There's so much more that we can share with you, but maybe this will give you, our listeners, kind of a little bit of a feel of what's going to be happening at the upcoming Human Intimacy Conference in March. In March, 14th and 15th, I wanted to invite all of the experts on. I'm going to get as many as I can, but Jeff is just one of our experts who's going to be talking about this model of attachment and relationships. Jeff, do you want to share with our listeners a little bit about what you're going to be talking about?

Yeah, I'm going to build on what we've talked about here. So I'll probably review some of these core concepts for people who maybe haven't heard this podcast. But I'm going to take it a little further into the. The arena of attachment wounds and betrayal and where it really starts to get messy, because the examples that you and I, Kevin, have talked about have been around probably more common variety marriage issues. And when you start getting into betrayal, trauma and attachment wounds and infidelity or secrecy or those kinds of things like that, it really starts to overwhelm the attachment system. And my. My goal in this presentation is really to help you not only make sense of what's happening and how all the pieces are moving, but also give you some practical things you can do.

Awesome. I can't wait for the conference. It's gonna be so much fun.

Likewise.

So, Jeff, I'm just gonna. One more question for our listeners, and this is more of. If I'm a person who feels stuck and I don't know how to resolve issues with my partner, what is your favorite strategy when people just feel stuck?

Well, it's going to sound like what we just talked about, I think. When you feel stuck, I think it's important to name that we're stuck. Like, I think it's important to make this something that we're doing instead of blaming or trying to get your partner to change, to really open it up as, hey, what? Something's happening with us. We're stuck together. And it's really like this sense of us against whatever it is that we're stuck. And you make. You make the cycle or the other issues, you make those the bad guy, if you will. And you're just now a team working on it. So I think just naming it and phrasing it as relational really softens things pretty quickly.

And phrases. I don't know how to do this, but I want to. Because, yes, our relationship matters. They may seem like simple phrases, but again, there's a concept you brought up here. I am. I'm turning towards you. We're a team or a team.

Yeah. Don't turn on your partner. You don't want to. You're bringing this up because they matter to you. So why don't you just say that?

Which was great. That's too simple. Right?

It's.

It's too simple or too vulnerable for me to say. You matter to me.

Right. It's.

It's too simple in some situations.

Right. It's scary because what if. What if you. What if they don't think you matter to them? Right. That's where we get scared. But you got to be brave in these relationships. You got to be brave.

And when we are and when we show that kind of validation, we're actually overcoming our deeper fears, the wounds, the things that may have prevented us from attaching in the past. Jeff, so much fun catching up. So much fun talking with you. Absolutely love the conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for having me, Kevin.