 Okay, so today we're gonna talk about love attachment style, particularly if a avoidant man can truly commit to a anxious woman and all the different variations there. And I'm really excited to have a special guest in the house. I hope I pronounce her name properly, Tai-Ease Gibson, who is the author of the book, Learning to Love. It just came out, I've just began reading it. It's awesome, there'll be a link below to get a copy of the book. Welcome, Tai-Ease. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here with you. Okay, so rather than give you a whole background of who you are, I want to jump into a question. I read a quote today from Kahil Gabraw that says, love one, love one another, but make not a bond of love. And this made me think of love attachment style. So do you mind kind of giving us the differentiating between love attachment and love? Does there- Yes, it's a powerful question. It's funny, because I just finished having a conversation with somebody the other day about how it's so easy in this sort of modern dating world that we have now with internet dating and all these sorts of things to make love really based on a combination of infatuation and transaction. And as somebody who was insecurely attached to myself, you sort of think, okay, you infatuate with somebody, you connect with them, you wanna kind of win them over. And that sort of is our attachment style often being activated more than anything else and us trying to sort of gain favor and win approval and these sorts of things. But I think true love, like actual love is actually very separate from that. I think that rather than it being this transactional exchange, it's more about, and I'll give a client's example, I had a client years ago when I was running my practice who said, I'm Tais, I'm gonna see a matchmaker and this matchmaker, I want them to find me a wife who is a great cook and who takes care of herself. And he had this whole laundry list of all these things he wanted. And he said, in exchange, I'm gonna do these things. I'm gonna pay for things. I'm gonna, and he had this whole setup. And love isn't that, we're not robots. Love isn't about just this transactional exchange of things. And what we have on paper, love is actually about us being able to deeply be vulnerable with each other and open up and share who we are and what we need from one another and make space for that, make space for our differences, check in with the relationship, really be in a space where we can care for one another and actually want to support each other and meet our needs. And those are deeper things. Those are things like a space to be vulnerable with one another, a space to share that we need validation or reassurance or care. It's not somebody pays for the groceries and somebody cooks that, it's not surface level things. And so I think there's that element. And I also think that when we really love somebody, we make space for them as an individual, as their unique self. And I think that that's really what that quote is representing. So, well, and I'm full agreement. And the word that really within that quote is the word bond. And what I find in my own experiences and with my clients, we bonded, or another word for bond is attach to another human being and being that I'm a, you know, an anxious preoccupied anxious person. I'm aware of that about myself. I tend to have, I tend to attract, you know, more avoidant, non-expressive people in our lives. And I'm attached to them, but I'm recognizing that it's an attachment. It's a bond. I don't feel like it's love because there's a misalignment there. So why is it that we, you know, why is it these attachment styles kind of go together? Okay, so this is a really interesting question. So I think we have to look at the subconscious and how the subconscious mind works for a second to really get a clear answer here that I think everybody will hopefully remember for the long haul. We grew up in a household and we learned these subconscious set of rules about love. I think it's important to know that your conscious mind is responsible for three to 5% of your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, your decisions, your actions and your subconscious is 95 to 97%. The different patterns we have in our childhood form the relationship we have to ourselves. So if, for example, you have a lot of inconsistency in childhood, that is one of the things that's likely to create anxious attachment style. So there's a lot of inconsistency where, you know, caregivers are really warm and loving and they're there, but they work a lot or you're with your grandparents a lot or there's a lot of like touch and go. Then what ends up happening is there's this constant perception of abandonment that's there, okay? I have love, it's taken away. I have love, it's taken away. And so it creates this big abandonment wound. The wounds we acquire through what programs, through repetition and emotion, the subconscious mind and childhood become the things that we do in the relationship to ourselves. So you have this abandonment from childhood of your anxious preoccupied. You then self abandon all the time as an adult by putting your feelings last, your needs last, people pleasing everybody else, trying to put everybody on a pedestal and you're in the pit, you know, by comparison. And so we have these patterns. And then because the subconscious mind is survival wired, it says, well, even though this might be painful, this is working because we're surviving. So then what happens is the biggest factor that actually drives long-term investment and attraction in relationships is if somebody mirrors back to us the subconscious comforts only have in the relationship to ourselves because their subconscious associates this with survival and safety. So if you have abandonment wounds in childhood, you reenact those wounds in the relationship to self and then your biggest point of what you're attracted to another people will actually be people who are more likely to emotionally abandon or completely abandon. In other words, people who are emotionally unavailable to you just like you are to yourself if you're anxious preoccupied. So that actually is what's drawing and driving these points of attraction. And this is where we have this like, why do anxious and dismissives often attract each other? Well, because that's the subconscious comfort zone of relationship to self. Okay, so I know all this and I'm gonna speak for myself, everyone who's watching, you know, like, okay, I know all this about myself. And yet I still follow the pattern. Like, I mean, like I see the hole in the sidewalk but I still fall in it. Like, so what's the, you know, like how do we really move past this? Especially for those of us that are the anxious ones. Yes. And it's a really, really important question. And the thing that I love about different attachment styles pairing up honestly is that exactly what each of them needs in order to heal is also exactly what they need to do in the relationship with each other to make the relationship work. So part of the anxious preoccupied's journey to getting more securely attached and being able to actually sustain a relationship with a dismissive avoidant person if that DA is also willing to show up and do the work themselves is that that anxious preoccupied person needs to do a few really core things. Number one, they need to stop self-abandoning. And that really looks like a few different things. I mean, one is that anxious preoccupied's often the moment they're in a relationship or a connection they will prioritize that above everything. So, you know, their career goals they'll put on the back burner, their friendships they'll put on the back burner, their family relationships there, you know, you name it they can be putting on the back burner. And so they have to stop that cycle. And it's actually a re-parenting cycle. Like the more you change that by allowing yourself to have your needs seen and heard to have your feelings expressed to make space for your other areas of life to meet your own needs. All these different things are not only forms of self soothing but when you start doing them you move out of this codependency and into interdependency. The difference really being that if I am codependent I think you should meet all my needs and I should meet all yours and that's it. If I'm interdependent I realize that I have a large responsibility to myself in regards to my needs where I can meet my own needs and I can also communicate them to you very directly and very strongly. Like, hey I need more reassurance in our relationship or I need more quality time like we need to do a date night when we can put those things there and we can make space for them but also we can give to ourselves what we're yearning for from other people. When we do that through repetition and emotion that's actually what reprograms that subconscious comfort zone. When people have a new subconscious comfort zone that's more securely attached in the relationship to self all of a sudden who they're actually attracted to become securely attached relationships with others. Okay, so I'm aware and I'm speaking mostly about anxious because I tend to notice that my clients which are women tend to be more anxious than avoidant and that's now, is that a fair assessment? In other words, is that traditionally the case that men tend to be more avoidant and women tend to be anxious but I'm an anxious person so I fit in the opposite of that. Why do you think that is? I'm just kind of curious why women tend to be more anxious? It's a great question. It's I think statistically it's true by a fairly wide margin by about 15, 20% that's what like most recent sort of surveys and Gallup polls are showing in research but what you're seeing has a lot to do with the culture, right? Like culturally unfortunately men often grow up in a household where it's like, hey, if you express your emotions you're being a baby toughen up and so there's a lot of messaging through repetition and emotion of hey, you should repress your emotions which is part of what makes somebody who's avoidant emotionally unavailable is there's no space for them to express or have their emotions attuned to but also generally because of that and then get more childhood emotional neglect which is really one of the biggest root causes for avoidant attachment style particularly on the dismissive avoidant side whereas anxious preoccupied the big root causes are often growing up in a childhood with a lot of incongruity in regards to the amount of connection that's there. So it could be like I mentioned earlier parents are really loving but they work a lot it could be that parents are really loving but there's a divorce and one parent moves to another country or it could be things like mom is really warm dad's really cold and that juxtaposition creates this perceived abandonment all the time through repetition and emotion wires this assumption that people will always abandon you as an adult. So just really quickly since I keep talking about my particular experience I suspect in my particular case my mother was the emotional avoidant my father was the anxious so I imprinted what my father was experienced this is a lot of I did the Hoffman process and I analyzed and unpacked all of where this might have come from. I certainly feel as though I've improved along the way particularly in my most significant relationship but there's something I'm really curious about that relates to avoidance because coming back to men who probably are more traditionally avoidant. I'd like you to one talk about the difference between a dismissive and a fearful avoidant but two the second piece is about emotional expressiveness. I just tend to observe that avoidance are far less expressive about their feelings and their emotions which to the anxious person feels like a complete amount of neglect. And in the minute you make a request for some need being met it's being perceived as being needy instead of just meeting a need. So I know I gave you a lot there so feel free to go in any direction. They're amazing questions. So the first thing we'll do is unpack the difference between a fearful avoidant and dismissive avoidant. So dismissive avoidance really their root causes childhood emotional neglect. So basically a lot of their modeling in childhood is like everybody's a ship passing in the night in the family. There isn't if the child comes home from school and they had a bad day even if the parents notice it they're not gonna be like, hey honey, what happened? Are you okay? There's just not this attunement and emotional support. And the way I like to think of a dismissive avoidant is that they're basically just stunted in their emotional growth around interdependent relationships around giving and receiving with each other around having this exchange and around learning how to understand their own emotional selves, right? Because if there's no conversation about it there's no growth around it. And so that's our dismissive avoidant. They tend to not wanna have conflict too much in relationships. They tend to be, they'll really express themselves in terms of I think rather than I feel they will speak a lot about their opinions and ideas they will rarely share about their feelings and they tend to as soon as closeness really gets real for them, they fear vulnerability deeply because it didn't feel good to be vulnerable as a child and then not get their emotional needs met. So they really try to distance themselves from anything around that. So they are more pervasively avoidant in relationships. Okay, okay. Fearful avoidants actually have an anxious preoccupied side. So fearful avoidants get conflicting ideas about love. On one hand, love is really wonderful. They've had some really nice experiences. On the other hand, love is really terrifying. This could be because they grow up in a household with an alcoholic for example. So sometimes that alcoholic parents in a great mood when they're drinking and they're really loving. Other times they're cruel, they're angry and so they get these really big conflicting ideas. Another example would be growing up in a household with a narcissistic parent where sometimes that parents love bombing, they're super kind, they're super loving. Other times they can be terrifying. So there's a lot of this really strong it's like this push pull within them all the time. I want love, I want closest, it terrifies me, I need to get it away. And so this push pull puts them into this space where they have the anxious side. They have the ability to fear abandonment, want love, get anxious, but they also have an avoidant side. The difference there is that they will not be as pervasively avoidant. They will be like anxious avoidant, anxious avoidant really swinging back and forth. But when they do get triggered, they tend to shut down much more intensely than our typical dismissive avoidant. Like you can think of a dismissive avoidant as pulling away. You can think of a fearful avoidant as pushing away, like really trying to get somebody away from them because of the sort of pain and suffering and fear they're having about love. So those are some of those first big differences in the relationship. And then what was the other thing you asked me? Well, I'll bring that up in a second because you just said something that really, for lack of a better word, sparked my curiosity. The difference between pulling away and pushing away, do you mind elaborating a little bit more because I often talk about how men pull away from a relationship. Usually they're just pulling away from the, at least the way I've observed the emotional responsibility of a relationship while they might want companionship, connection and sex, but emotionally speaking, they pull away. But what does pushing away look like? Cause that's new to me. Yeah, so pushing away is usually that somebody will be doing something to try to create distance and almost sabotage the relationship or connection. So if you think of a dismissive avoidant as like when they're triggered or they're upset or they're frustrated about something or they just really need time alone, they'll sort of withdraw. Like you can think of like a tortoise tortoise going into its shell, right? With somebody pushing away, they will do things like say, I can't do this with you anymore. This relationship is terrible. You never show up for me. Like they will do things to kind of assault the connection essentially because it's coming from that triggering. And so it's not just them with drawing back, it's actually them coming forward to sort of push the person away with words, with actions. And there tends to be this really strong undertone of sabotage that's there. And although it's not the person consciously sabotaging, it's that they have these deep subconscious fears and triggers that have come online. And as an attempt to deal with those triggers and fears are like, hey, this person, they think the person's the source of their pain, but it's their subconscious beliefs about love that are the source of the pain because they can't differentiate those triggers act up and they're like, I have to get the person as far away as possible to get these terrible feelings as far away as possible. But they're actually being confused and intertwined with the beliefs versus the person. So it'll create this more explosive a lot of the time or angry or emotionally charged response. And you would see with somebody just pulling back. Yeah. Well, okay, I did have a question before but I'm gonna sidestep that question and come back because this just sparked a new one for me. So, and this is just an observation in my vision, if you will, most humans are rather clueless to most of this. I mean, they are completely unaware that this is going on. So a person that might be watching it go, yeah, I know my love attachment style, but I'm with someone who's, you know, I'm anxious they're an avoidant, but the person who doesn't know they're an avoidant, you know, they're gonna keep doing the same thing over and over again, most likely expecting different results. So for those that are in a relationship right now that are listening to this and go, okay, I know my attachment style. What do I do about the person who doesn't know about their attachment style? It's a really great question. So kind of depends on what that person's attachment style is because we tend to have different responses. Like anxious preoccupies love to learn that they're anxiously attached cause I think it gives them some like emotional validation. Like, oh, this makes sense why I feel this way now. And like it's not me, you know, cause a lot of anxious preoccupies, you can sort of see the difference between the conscious and subconscious, right? Like if an anxious preoccupied woman, for example, listening to this has ever had the experience. I have lots of friends like this growing up. I had moments sort of similar to this. I was fearful avoidant, but where your conscious mind says, don't call the person again. You already called or don't text them again. It's not gonna work for you and you know better, but you do it anyways. Like that's actually your conscious versus your subconscious mind, right? Your conscious mind says, no, don't do it. Your logical thinking mind is your conscious. Your subconscious is your patterned mind. It's your coping mechanism, your programmed mind. So your subconscious for an anxious preoccupied is really just focused on maintaining proximity. That's how you feel safe. You don't want to lose the person. So you do these things. And so you can really see that like illustrated in that example. But when it comes to our dismissive avoidant, so our anxious preoccupied, when they hear that, they're like, oh, I'm anxiously attached. This is why there's a reason. I think it's very validating for a lot of people. Fearful avoidance, very similar thing, right? Fearful avoidance are very like emotionally turbulent because one day they're really warm. One day they're really cold. Like they're just back and forth. And I think that having been a fearful avoidant, I can firsthand attest to a lot of these kind of like conflicting ideas. Wait, you were a fearful avoidant? Oh, I was like a super fearful avoidant, yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I was gonna ask you what you were, I suspect you're secure as you're married now. Secure now, yeah, yeah. I was fearful avoidant and did a lot of work on this. And that's part of like how I came across, we got into this sort of line of work and my husband when I first met him actually was dismissive avoidant. So we did a lot of this work and are both very secure now, but it's interesting to see it sort of like unfold. Oh, I have a quick question. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm interrupting because now this is just as hard as we're going on. So I kind of have a theory that it's better for two anxious to be together and to avoidance to be together because the, what are your thoughts on that? Okay, so this is the crazy part. So I did, I was in private practice, I worked with people, I'd see 40, sometimes 50 people a week tons of people for the better part of a decade. And that's how a lot of this work was born. I've seen tons of clients and really working on the stuff. I hardly ever, like less than probably half a percent of the time actually saw a relationship work between two anxious or two dismissive avoidant because there's some clenching comforts on repels each other, right? Like that part is, it goes against. So what I would see is sometimes two anxious people would kick off like dating and then both of them would, you know, a few weeks in sort of push away. Same thing, two dismissive avoidance, nobody would ever make the first move. They might like hang out or spend time, but nobody wants to be vulnerable. So these would be the dating situations that would fizzle out very quickly and lose steam. But you said your husband was, you're fearful or you're dismissive and he's fearful though, the other way around. I was fearful and he was the dismissive avoidant. And that's where you'll see the exception of fearful with an anxious preoccupied definitely happens all the time fearful with dismissive. Sometimes we'd see like a secure person with a little bit of anxious in their style like sort of secondary anxious and then an anxious preoccupied, you could see that but too dominantly anxious and too dominantly dismissive it just really never happens. Okay, so well, you said something cause it made me think of, you know, one of the premier books is attached by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller and Dr. Stan Tachkin's Wired for Love. By the way, I had him on the broadcast as well. You know, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller say that roughly 50% of people are secure and I don't buy that one bit. I do believe and I read this in your book and by the way, everybody, I want you to check out Learning Love by Tais Gibson. Okay, there'll be a link below. Definitely check out our book because I believe we all have a default. And I think in the book it talks about you might be like 80% secure but you still have your residue from anxious or avoidant that sort of thing. Do you mind leaning in for that for a second? Absolutely, yeah. I think there's a couple of things that we don't talk about enough in regard to attachment styles. One is that everybody has a dominant attachment style but you can have a secondary style and you'll see it expressed in lots of ways. Like somebody can be mostly secure but have those really anxious moments. And so you can actually test to see where you exist on that sort of spectrum with how many anxious preoccupied patterns you have, right? How often you self-abandon or deprioritize yourself and people please with others. And then we can also, where it shows up a lot is like you can be fearful avoidant leaning anxious or fearful avoidant leaning avoided. So for me, I was fearful avoidant leaning anxious. So I would feel more of that anxious side. I still had very strong avoided moments at times but we can have fearful avoidance leaning dismissive who their secondary is dismissive and they are the ones that they can feel anxious but they will spend so much more time deactivating than they will activating, right? They'll spend so much more time pushing people away when they feel anxious rather than trying to bring them close. And then dismissive avoidance can have some secure attachment in them. Dismissive avoidance can have some fearful avoidance side to them. So you'll see these sort of components or we can still have traits. It's not just this like in a box cut and dry thing. It's all about the sort of traits and qualities we express in relationships and where that's associated with specific attachment styles along that continuum. Okay. All right, so since I talked about me, I know I'd like to think I'm closer to secure than I've ever been before. I'd like to think that I've gone through I've gone through these evolutions in my last three significant relationships. Most likely what you said is I'm probably gonna be better suited with someone who has an avoidant either a residue. They're on the same path. They're secure leaning towards or they're avoidant leaning towards secure. Yeah, and I wouldn't say better suited. I would say that the point of attraction. So if we go to the conscious versus subconscious mind again, your conscious mind in a perfect world would be like, hey, I'm gonna date somebody who's secure. I wanna secure relationship. That's what I'm looking for. And the more secure you are in the relationship to yourself, the more your subconscious mind will also be on board to want to invest in that person. Because again, that subconscious comfort zone is this familiarity space. And there's three huge features that drive attraction at the end of the day. One is somebody expressing different traits than you. It's called trait variety and we're biologically wired for it. Like if you just think like years and years and years ago, if somebody was trying to survive and one person was strong and they paired up with somebody smart, together they have a better chance at survival. So we're actually wired to seek trait variety. It's part of like that biological sort of mechanism. It's what you hear in the expression, quote unquote, office, it's attract. Then somebody who deeply meets our unmet needs creates this subconscious attraction. Like if you as a child didn't feel seen and you have a woman who comes along and deeply makes you feel seen, you might feel something about that really quickly. Or I had somebody the other day say to me, Tais, I went on a first date with somebody and I sat down and he opened the menu and he pointed things to me and he was very attentive. And she really was like drawn into that. And then when we looked at her childhood, she was always yearning for that in different forms. So we can have these deeply unmet needs. But the biggest thing by far that will actually create attraction to somebody else longterm will be is somebody mirroring back to you basically the way you treat yourself. That's another way of saying the subconscious comfort zone. And so in a perfect world, what we do is we work to become more and more secure in the relationship to ourselves, right? We work if you're coming from anxious preoccupied attachment style. And I'm sure you've made huge strides based on all the work you're doing. Cause a lot of the work you shared that you've been doing is about you prioritizing yourself, your healing, your self care, meeting your needs, reparenting, you know, all these things. Those are all the things that the anxious preoccupied needs to do on their path to secure is look out for themselves, have their own backs, set their own boundaries, meet their own needs, feel their own feelings and prioritize healing those things. So that's like exactly what you want to see as an anxious preoccupied. You're actually looking for like, am I reprogramming core wounds, meeting my needs, learning to emotionally regulate, setting boundaries and speaking up for myself with other people and my communication. So the more you're doing that, that's on the path to secure. But usually you will be attracted still to people who represent. Like if you, let's just say for argument's sake, you're 80, 20. You're probably much higher than that, but let's just pretend. So 80- No, I'll go 80, what, you mean preoccupied 80? Yeah, let's say you're like 80% secure, but you still 20% of these people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm probably 80, 20. Maybe better, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, so let's say you're somewhere in there. Well, what's gonna happen is you are likely and that 20% of that 20% really consists of like, yeah, you still people please too much. You still don't really set or speak up for your own boundaries. You're actually gonna be attracted to somebody who also doesn't really care about your boundaries, who also doesn't make space for you to speak up too much because that's that subconscious comfort zone. So those will be the things that magnetize us and they feel like butterflies, but they're more like red flags. They're more like warning bells going off. But that's the stuff that I think is so powerful and beautiful about relationships because relationships, it's not just about like getting infatuated with somebody and then sticking it out. Relationships are about growth. Relationships show us our unhealed parts. They are mirrors into ourselves and there's a beautiful Rumi quote and Rumi says, if I'm irritated by every rub, how will I ever be polished? And those irritants, those frustrations, those things that get under our skin, they're showing us our unhealed parts so that we can take account for them and say, oh, I don't like when my partner doesn't prioritize my needs. Well, where is that mine? Where do I not prioritize my needs? How can I be better at communicating those needs or making space for them or meeting my own needs and making them a priority? And so all of those things that bother us are opportunities for growth and evolution. And as we keep treating it that way, we'll move closer and closer towards becoming securely attached. And the more we are secure in the relationship to self, the more we'll then be attracted to secure people. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, and I share a bit about my personal experiences because I was in a significant relationship that ended recently. And one of the things that attracted to me to her was this trait variety. You know, there were certain traits about her that I just loved and admired. And at the same time I abandoned some other things. I basically took red flags and painted them green. And let me be clear, this is a fantastic human being. It was just a slight misalignment between the two of us. And we weren't meant to go on the long journey. We were meant to go on this journey to break us individually open, which I gained so much from. So I want to be clear. But I want to lean into something because I think the big difference, or at least this is the way I observe it, it's one thing if you express a need and the person isn't willing to meet them need. It's also the same thing as you express a need and they're incapable of meeting the need. And this is where I think of like an anxious person who just desires closeness and connection and some verbal expression. And since men tend to be very emotionally constipated, we, you kind of mentioned that earlier in a way, you know how you- Not all men, not all men, but there can be that. I'm saying, well, you know, most, well, not most of the time, we'll say significantly to the time. Men can be non-expressive. And yes, let me be clear, everybody, there are tons of great men out there. It's raining great men. So let me just be clear, you know, when you're with that person who is just either incapable or doesn't want to meet your needs, be emotionally expressive. Is that the time to end the relationship? I mean, because we can't change another person. Can a person who's non-expressive ever change? That was kind of going back to the previous question I had. It's such a good question. You raised so many good things. I want to go back in the second after two for a second and talk about the trait variety for one more moment. Yeah, okay, I will. And so this is an amazing, you brought up so many amazing things at once. So here's what I do with people historically in my practice. First thing is like, we want to make dating intentional. We don't want to make dating. Oh, I'm attracted to somebody. I have a fun time. Let's see if it works. You want to know your non-negotiables. Like I've had, you wouldn't believe the amount of people I had when I was running my practice who were like, I want kids and the other person and they date somebody that didn't want kids and they come in to see me for their first session and be like, we're having a problem. We've been together five years. I really want kids. This person doesn't. What do we do? And it would be like, well, if that's a non-negotiable for both of you, like it's not going to work. And, you know, so we have to know our non-negotiables. We also have to know our standards. What are we looking for? What's meaningful to us in a relationship? Is it somebody that communicates through things and is willing to hash things out? Is it somebody who is emotionally available? So we want to be as intentional as possible so we can, you know, show up for our needs. The second thing is the amount of people I would see and I say this with lots of respect to anybody going through this, but it's a really important place to check in. The amount of times I would see clients come into my office and say, Tais, they're unwilling to meet my needs. They're not going to meet them. And then we would actually unpack how they were communicating about their needs and realize, well, there may be more that you can do on your communication. And when they fine-tuned their communication, suddenly their partner would show up. So I call these like our stops on the train. The first stop on the train is when you're communicating, are you communicating proactively or reactively? Are you saying you never do the dishes or are you saying, hey, I need some support. Can you take a turn doing the dishes? Because if we're in the reactive form, that's just gonna land to your partner's criticism. It's not gonna be something, we can't even count that as proper communication. It's just being received as something totally different. So we have to be communicating in the positive. Second thing, are we seeing our needs through? I would see a lot of people who would say, Tais, I told my husband once that he needed to be, taking a turn to do the dishes. And he did it for a couple of weeks, then he stopped. And it's just never gonna work. And it's like, listen, we have to remind people sometimes. Like people have programmed ways of doing things. We have to go back and say, hey, remember we talked about this, can you take a turn and can you do this? So we have to see our needs through. And then what I would see two other big stops on the train where people would get stuck is somebody would, their partner would do something. Let's, I can think of this one woman. And she would say, in this one particular instance, she said, my husband, I told him I needed him to take a turn doing the laundry. He did the laundry. And then he folded everything wrong. And so I told him, hey, you did it all wrong. And it's like, we have to positively reinforce people. We can still give feedback. We can say, hey, I really appreciate that you did the laundry. I really appreciate that you're showing up. For future reference, can we do it this way? But instead she said, what's the point of doing it? You did it wrong. So we can't criticize when somebody's showing up for a need. And then the last one is sometimes we're not vulnerable enough, right? Sometimes if I say to you, hey, can you fill up the gas tank? That's going to land differently with somebody that's your spouse or your partner or your loved one than saying, hey, I'm going through a tough time right now. I need a little bit of support. I'm feeling overwhelmed by a lot of the responsibilities I have. Can you take some stuff off my plate? I could really use you right now. I could really use you being here and supporting me. When people have more context for things, they receive what you're actually needing. We say it's the gas tank. Often it's about being supported in the relationship. So when we communicate those underlying, more vulnerable needs, communication goes better. So I would always get people, like we've got to check those stops on the train. And oftentimes I would say 80, sometimes maybe a little bit higher percent of the time. The people who said they're not changing, they're not trying to meet the needs, just had to fine tune their communication. And then we really saw that needle move. But if you do all those, you've checked in, you've shown up, you've practiced, I then tell people set a deadline. If you know this thing or these three needs are really important to me and you're communicating them and you're fine tuning your communication, you're checking in with all those things, you're showing up, eventually you have to decide, like, am I happy in a relationship if these things don't change? And if the answer is no, you set a deadline, you say, okay, I'm going to try really hard for two more months. I'm going to do everything I can throw everything at the wall. And if you still don't see the needle move at the end of the deadline, you know it's time to walk away guilt and regret free. Okay. So, okay, so I wanted to shift this conversation a little bit and I have not forgotten about trait variety. Okay, I'm going to bring that up in a second. So one thing I think you should know about my audience is most of my audience is midlife, which I say is after baby making years and before retirement. So most people that come to me, they're in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. And why that's so, why I niche that is because a significant percentage of people are divorced in this category. And, you know, and the divorce is the unraveling of the tapestry of a life with somebody else. And many people just immediately go attach themselves to somebody else to fill the void instead of actually working on themselves, which is why my channel is always about self-improvement. I want to lean into the thing is with this demographic, particularly, and this might be true for people in their 20s and 30s, is that we see a lot of friends with benefits. We see a lot of situationships. We see a lot of casual relationships. We are not, I don't believe I'm seeing enough significant types of relationships you talked about where they're almost in an environment where they're living together, where they can actually work at a deeper level on their attachment styles and their communication styles. And you said earlier, the importance of intentionality. I harbor, I mean, I'm not harbor, I scream at the top of my lungs on my videos, the importance of being intentional, particularly intentional about serious commitment, serious relationship. And so I watched a video of yours, I think it was called Bad Dating Advice, and in that you talked about the six stages of relationships which is the dating, vetting stage, the honeymoon stage, the power struggle, stability, commitment, and bliss. Okay, I'm gonna throw a twist with this. How does this apply to love attachment styles and what advice can you give people about being more intentional? I know I grew a mouthful at you. You raised so many amazing things at the same time. So there's, you know, one of the first things is, so there's six stages. It's actually adapted from the work of Dr. Susan Johnson who talks about five stages of the relationship, but I just, I couldn't, she just went right into honeymoon and I was like, what about the dating stage? Oh, I wanna talk about that then. Yeah, so the dating stage, it has to be our vetting stage. So going back to your point of intentionality, like we will not, we are so much more unlikely to find a partner that we're actually interested in spending time with and investing in when we just show up to see how we feel. You wouldn't do that with a job. You wouldn't do that with a career choice. You wouldn't, you don't do that anywhere that's meaningful to you. So why are we doing that in dating? So we have to know like, what am I actually looking for? You know, I know for myself, one of the biggest things that I appreciate so much about my husband is that like, he and I will never sweep things under the rug. If there's the problem that's this big, we're gonna hash it out and have that conversation. And that was something I was really clear that I was looking for early on. And you know, so those things matter. And so our vetting stage is often we'll see the anxious preoccupies in that stage going into your question about the attachment styles. They will be the ones who are like, as soon as they feel attraction or a bond, they often then make the relationship about trying to win the person over and people please. And the dismissive avoidance because they are more unlikely to want to foster deep connection and because they're afraid of vulnerability, they are more likely to flaw find. So they will be hyper picky in the dating stage and they will look for anything that could go wrong. What that also represents is actually at a deeper level that dismissive avoidance don't trust themselves to work through conflict. So you have to imagine if you are somebody who believes that you can't work through conflict on some deep subconscious level, then you think you have to find the perfect partner where there can't be any conflict, right? So because they're so disempowered there, they often look at like, you know, I have to find somebody who's not gonna have, there won't be any conflict. And so they often super, like their partner's often under a microscope early on, flaw find, especially as soon as things get more serious. Fearful avoidance can kind of do a little bit of both. They can try to win somebody over, but then they can flaw find and they can sort of flip. Oh, so fearful kind of do a little bit. I think you said this earlier. They also mirror or mimic, excuse me, anxious behaviors. Absolutely, they, yeah, they have the ability, they basically, fearful avoidance sometimes actually referred to as anxious avoidant, which is probably a much better term for them because they literally are like anxious and avoidant combined, but they just because of that pendulum swinging, they can be more in like emotional turmoil. They can like be more confused. They don't have a good attachment strategy. They really like second guess things all the time, go back and forth. So, so that's really the fearful avoidant and they'll exhibit both of those sides. They'll exhibit the anxious side in dating, they'll exhibit the avoidant side in dating where they're flaw finding and trying to deactivate and create that space. Then we go into the honeymoon stage, which is basically characterized by once we've made a commitment to somebody, like, hey, we're just gonna see each other or hey, let's give this thing a shot, like some kind of like exclusivity or commitment to things in the long haul. And that's where we'll see anxious preoccupied still people pleasing dismissible avoidance if they made it that far, they will again start flaw finding more, deactivating more in the honeymoon stage than usual and fearful avoidance again, mirror that same path. Then we have the power struggle stage, which statistically is the stage that everybody breaks up in. Okay, can I pause you for a second? Yeah, yeah. Because, and I don't wanna forget power struggle stage. So I've observed, by the way, you said you added honeymoon to the five stages that Susan- Added dating, Added dating. Oh, dating, dating. She originally went into just honeymoon stage and it was like, but there's a lot that happens pre-honeymoon. Okay, so other than people's list, you know, like people have their kind of their checklist, okay? Yeah. I've observed that most people actually jump into the honeymoon stage first, after they've checked a few boxes and they almost abandoned the true vetting stage. It's just an observation I have. In other words, they get physically intimate rather quickly. They immerse themselves in the feel good dopamine experiences and they almost abandoned the vetting because the vetting is the red flags and the vetting is the, you know, whitewashing of red flags or turning red flags green. That's what I see happening is people, this is by the way, my whole coaching is all designed to be discerning and vetting. That's where I focus my private coaching is being vetting. But I don't believe people actually do a really good job at vetting. In fact, they kind of do it at just a few checklists, Mark. Do you have any thoughts on what I just shared? Yes, I mean, I think that anxious, so there's a couple of things. That's what I was so interested that you raised earlier is like also your demographics. So coming out of a divorce after first marriage, 40 to 60 year old sort of demographic space, people coming out of a long-term divorce, especially if they've been married, have kids, it's been a while. I think it can't be, it's far too understated that people coming out of that are also going through an identity crisis. It's just inevitable. If so much of our subconscious identity is based off of our needs and our subconscious comfort zone, when we have a family unit that strips apart, we're used to getting our needs met through people in specific ways and specific forms. And because our needs are at a deep level part of our sense of self, when that's stripped away and shifted, there's going to be an identity crisis, which then means that demographic in particular, because when I had a lot of clients in this demographic as well, I saw the exact same thing in particular, are going to very much struggle to know what they want because they don't even know right now who they are. And so then when you combine that with your demographic, being mostly anxiously attached to individuals, for sure there's going to be like very few people in the actual vetting stage. Now, dismissive avoidance will often go the exact opposite direction. So they will be like too vetting, too slow moving, unwilling to compromise. I had a dear friend, and I hope it's okay that I say this, but I'm not going to say the person's name, but he's very dismissive avoidant. And I remember he was dating somebody and seeing somebody and he went on a trip and I was really excited for him. I was like, he's going to finally like grow in this area and he's spending the weekend away with her. And I was excited to hear about how it went. And I said, how did it go? And he said, it's not going to work. And I said, why? You know, like what happened? Everything was going so well. She's such a great girl, like what's going on? And he said, Tais, I went to get coffee one morning. I came back to the hotel room and her makeup was everywhere. And I was like, her makeup was everywhere. Like I was waiting for like the real story. And he was in a space where he said, I can't date somebody messy. And dismissive avoidance, like one of the big things is that they don't realize that a lot of these like problems are solvable problems because they haven't been modeled proper communication. So he said, hey, can you clean up your makeup? Hey, can you be mindful of our space? I really care about things being tidy. But instead, like that I think really illustrates dismissive avoidance in relationships where they go, I saw this one thing, that's it. That's a wrap. Because they don't know how to communicate through those things because they did not have modeling like that growing up. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, so they'll tend to really lean on that side of like over vetting, but anxious preoccupies coming out of an identity crisis after a divorce. You'll see them just try to jump right into the honeymoon. And there's sort of this like love addiction, right? There's sort of this like yearning for a closeness and trying to get that like sort of hit of dopamine like you said, to push them in that area. So we'll see if we go back to like the power struggle, the power struggle is the stage where it's like, you are supposed to move through that together. Like you are supposed to, the power struggle, although it's statistically the hardest stage where people break up the most, it's also the stage that presents the greatest opportunity because the whole point and right of passage of the power struggle is for a person to share their inner world with somebody else to say, hey, these are my fears. These are my flaws. These are my needs. And to form systems together where you learn to accept one another in that and communicate through those things. As an example, if I know that my husband's sensitive to criticism, I'm gonna be really mindful of that in the relationship. I'm gonna communicate things and do it in a healthy way in a kind way, in a respectful way. If he knows I'm very sensitive to not having quality time, he's gonna go out of his way to check in with that, right? And that didn't happen naturally. That happened because we communicated and shared those things enough in vulnerable moments that we just without thinking now take those things into consideration. And that's actually the work that's supposed to be done in the power struggle stages, those sensitivities, those needs, those fears, we're supposed to learn to consider them, share about them, talk them through. So it just becomes the new normal for us to do the relationship in that way. And that's a beautiful thing. It gives us the opportunity to go from what is more conditionally based love in the dating and honeymoon stages where mask is on, showing myself on my best behavior with conditions into more unconditionally based love where I actually let somebody in, open up, share my inner world. And because I'm showing myself without conditions, I can now be loved more unconditionally. And so that's the point of the power struggle. And when we make it through that, we get into the stability stage where we naturally consider each other better, the commitment stage where we're now ready for a commitment, have those discussions, and then the bliss stage, which is like the honeymoon stage, but with much deeper understanding and knowing of each other. Because you're feeling more secure at this point. You feel solid. In fact, the word that comes to mind is trust. In other words, you know. So, okay. Well, I wanted to give you a chance. I got more, I got so much more, we can go for hours, but I want to give you a chance. Oh, by the way, everybody really quickly, I use this book, Learning Love. There's a link below to get a copy of this book. I'm reading it right now and I'm loving it. So I'll be, this will be in my new repertoire when I talk about attachment styles for my videos. In the future, we talked about trait by variety and I want to share something you might get a kick out of. So in my last relationship, I was with a woman who actually know how to fix things. Like her father was an upholsterer. He had tool sets, you know, and he took her into work with her. So I liked these qualities about one. This just comes to mind. I love the most. She just knew how to figure stuff out and fix stuff. And it occurred to me when our relationship ended, I liked it because it's kind of deficient within me. I'm like, I'll call a handyman, you know, if I needed something. Me too. You know, like, and, but I love, I like, I miss that now that it's gone. I miss these qualities. So you wanted to talk about trait by variety. Feel free to go any direction you wish. So this is the most interesting thing. So that's exactly like, that's a beautifully illustrated example because you see like, we actually are yearning for these things because they are our repressed parts. They are the things that we've disowned within ourselves. Usually it's because we believe we can't do these things because at some point we had learned helplessness around them. So then we just like found another way of dealing with it, like calling the handyman. And then we're drawn. It's funny because we're drawn to that person, but in a sense we're kind of drawn to that missing part of ourselves. So part of how we get over that is to learn to see that we have the capacity for those things and to actually work to do trait integration. So to actually work to like nurture those traits within ourselves. And it's part of how we heal from a breakup most quickly. So a lot of times what happens, and this is the kicker, this is the important part about trait variety is that early on we're attracted to those things, but exactly the things that we're infatuated by because trait variety is very like dating and honeymoon stage infatuation. It won't be something that lasts by the power struggle stage. The exact things that we were so infatuated with almost always become the things that we resent the most. So I'll give you an example. I realized with my husband when we first started dating, I had done a lot of healing and I still was like not good at communicating my needs. So I, and I would really go out of my way to meet everybody else's needs. And I still had that sort of like anxious side to my fearful avoidant attachment style. And I early on, my husband was just so assertive, like with anybody, like everybody all the time, like he would just say it how it is, no problem. And I really admired that. I had it for sure on a pedestal like wow, like it seems so courageous to me. And at first I was really infatuated with that in the dating and honeymoon stage, but that was the bit, one of the biggest things that came to a head when we got to the power struggle was like the thing I thought was so great. I was like, he's too assertive with me, like not making compromises, not be willing to meet some of my needs and come halfway. And so what happens is those are the things in the power struggle as well that like will do, it will unravel the relationship until we learn to integrate those traits in the relationship to ourselves. So I realized that at the time and I was like, okay, I have to be more assertive back around different things so that my needs can be met so that I'm not triggered by this trait that I once thought was so great. And I worked on that and not only was that extremely healing for me, but it actually gave him the opportunity to be great at showing up in the relationship and meeting my needs. So the things that we are attracted to in the dating and honeymoon stage will usually kick our butt in the power struggle stage until we learn to take on some of those things as well. And on the flip side, if the relationship doesn't work out, part of what we sometimes are yearning for and actually grieving is that our subconscious mind attaches to these traits on other people. And we feel like that's what attaching is, right? Attachment theory. So when we attach to somebody, we feel like, oh, now we have these traits. And part of what grief is, is the void of those things when that person is no longer in our lives. So when we can start integrating those traits for ourselves in healthy ways, it also speeds up how long it takes to get over a past relationship. Oh my gosh. I'm gonna share with you on a personal level. I so needed this because the relationship I was in ended five months ago and now having this conversation and created a little bit of clarity for me. So for those who follow my channel, know a bit of my journey. Okay, I have two more things before we wrap up. So the title of this video is, can an avoidant man commit to an anxious woman? Can you address that? And then I have a personal question to ask you to end this video. Absolutely. So the answer is yes, but with a caveat, which is are both people willing to do the work? Like if we have somebody who's just a true avoidant and a true anxious and they're not bridging that gap, they're not working to become secure, we have to remember like, we're not born with an attachment style. It gets conditioned into us over time. So we can do things to make sure that we're working for interdependency. We're working to both know our own needs, both be able to meet our own needs, but both be able to get them met and communicate them from one another. If we're willing to do that work and we're able to open and be vulnerable and share and create strategies together to mitigate the pain points and challenges in the relationship, 100% that's possible. But the key part is, are both people willing to do the work? And so that means, what we have to see is we have to see the dismissed avoidant understand that they're dismissed and avoidant. I think you asked me earlier and we got sidetracked, but I just realized this right now, but you asked me a dismissive avoidant. Like, can we tell somebody their attachment style if they don't know it? And the answer is with a dismissive avoidant, like anxious and fearful, they love to hear it. They wanna know everything, secure, same thing. Dismissive avoidants, they're quite sensitive to hearing that they have a dismissive avoidant attachment style because they're sensitive to criticism or so. And so instead it's better to lay out, hey, here's the four attachment styles. Here's what I am. What do you think you are? And sort of let them arrive there because otherwise they often feel like it's a criticism or kind of like accusation. And so when somebody understands that about themselves and then knows, hey, I have to work on compromising. I have to work on opening up and sharing and being more vulnerable. We wanna set a deadline and see, does the needle move? Do they show up? If the answer is yes, because we're communicating, we're leading by example, then you'll see tremendous growth. That's on everybody's case and people are really set in their ways, they're unwilling to change and that's what we have to be deciphering is does the person wanna do the work and show up or do they not? And that's gonna be what makes a little different long term. Well, by the way, thank you for that. And you said something key and the folks, you follow me, you know I harp on this over and over and over again. And you said, Taiz, are you gonna work on it? Like it's working on it. And by the way, when people say relationships take work, what this work is is just working on your stuff. You know, like I mean, yes, relationship, a good relationship should be relatively easy in the sense that there isn't a tremendous amount of power struggle and a tremendous amount of friction. But the hard part is the individual work. And if you've got somebody who's not willing to do the work on their doing their part of the pie, you know, 50, let's say 50, if they're not doing a hundred percent, a half of the pie and you're doing it, then you're with the wrong person. So I'm really happy that you said that yes, an avoidant and an anxious or, you know, a fearful avoidant and a dismissive avoidant. You know, if they're doing, and even two anxious people, I guess if they're doing the work together, holding hands, you can make it work. Absolutely. Okay, so I'm curious, you weren't prepared for this, but now, because you talked about your husband. All right, what was it like the two of you dating right from the very get-go? Could you, would you be open to sharing? I'll share anything. Okay. I would say that I was really drawn to kind of like the mystery, like he was sort of reserved. And I think like as somebody who's fearful avoidant and wants to like connect deeply with people, which is a very fearful avoidant thing. I wanted to kind of like crack the code, like figure out sort of all of that stuff. And definitely like really hit it off in a lot of ways. He was very like more intellectual and I was more emotionally available. And I think we really enjoyed chatting and having quality time and a lot of those things. But pretty quickly early on, I realized like, I'm not gonna get my needs met unless I advocate for them. And I knew enough at that point in my own journey to know that that was my work. And just sort of like we talked about earlier, like I really think that the cool part of having a different attachment style from somebody is that somebody's gonna show you your stuff that you've got to be working on. And there's this beautiful opportunity for growth. And so what I end up seeing is like, I started really advocating, communicating, fine-tuning how to communicate properly, not reactively, not after it happened, but in the moment that I was feeling something, like really it caused me to have to build a deeper relationship with myself to know what I was feeling and experiencing in a real time. So I wouldn't build up frustrations about things and then communicate in an unhealthy way later. And that forced me to grow into that work. And he actually showed up, I would say like as close to 10 out of 10, like I was so surprised. At how much he showed up to really meet the needs and make the effort and wasn't perfect all the time. But then if there was a moment where he forgot, I'd be like, hey, remember when we talked about this thing? And so it became something that has been a huge blessing for me because it was the first relationship I ever had. We've been together for like going on nine years down. And it was the first relationship I ever had where I trust that we can work through everything, talk through anything, anything that comes up, we'll handle it. And I have a lot of trust and faith in that. Whereas in past relationships, I had no idea how to do that. I was single for a long time before him doing a lot of healing work. And in past relationships, it was pretty much the opposite. So yeah, huge, huge blessing in that sense for sure. Well, I'm gonna piggyback that with one more question because I'm curious because I'm a big advocate. Like in your video, you talked about bad dating advice, things like playing hard to get and love solves all the problems and all this stuff. I'm a big proponent of people dating one person at a time and investing in getting to know someone like that bedding stage you talked about really being mindful in that experience. I'm curious, did that happen with the two of you where you guys kind of really intentional right from the get-go? Yes, yes, I would definitely say that. And I don't think that that was like on purpose. I was definitely personally in a place where I was trying to just stay on my own because I knew that I had a lot of like work to be doing and then I started my career and I was focused on that for a little bit. So I was to be honest, like maybe pickier than I would normally be when I was first dating thinking like I'm not gonna spend time unless it's a really good fit. And he actually had a period before he met me where he took a good time out on himself because he realized like maybe there's things I have to work on. And he was sort of like approaching it more like analytically and practically but still doing that. So yes, I definitely think that happened and it was kind of more of a fluke by that chance at that point, but I definitely think it's added to the ability to really get to know each other. Yeah. You know what? And here's the thing because I'm an, okay, and I just have a confession to make coach me for a minute because obviously I overthink. I mean, I'm fascinated with human behavior. I'm fascinated with how humans operate in the world. I just, to me, this is fun. So amazing. I could see myself, you and I talking for hours and I'd love to pick your brain. Like that's the kind of thing I do. But I also think that can be a bit of a detriment. You know, in other words, I'm so used to overanalyzing things that I might miss the forest through the tree. So with your parting words, any advice for me going forward because I hope everybody, this relates for everybody else who overanalyzes. I had such a great question I would say that rather than overanalyzing things that could go wrong or maybe work or not work or getting too much into that space where I would focus my analysis, my time spent on analyzing things is the things that I'm worried could go wrong are these solvable problems. Like I think that that's one of the biggest challenges we can get so stuck in our head that we're like, oh, they maybe do this. So in five years, it could end up this way. And we can use that to in a sense, it becomes like flaw finding, right? But if we can take all of that energy overanalyzing and instead just really get specific as to what my concern is and then go address it with the person and just say, hey, I noticed this the other day. And then this is important to me. Like, let's say you see that somebody's inconsistent with their communication, right? If you go to them and you say, hey, you know, I just wanna let you know one thing I'm really looking for in a relationship dynamic is consistency around communication. It's really important to me. I notice that's something that we lack sometimes is that something you'd be open to working on. That's where you're gonna get the real answers to your questions. It is that, right? That's where you're gonna see that like rather than wondering or worrying and analyzing by just having approach oriented behavior and discussing it, you're either gonna see the need to move or you're not and you're gonna get, you're gonna get faster to your answers and solutions while also mastering the ability to have those tough conversations. So I'm sure you're already fantastic at but there's a lot of value in just spending your time there rather than in the analysis paralysis space. Okay, well, I'm taking that in by the way to some degree, obviously. You know, the truth is I know this about myself but I also recognize that because I can empathize with my clients so much like when I'm on a coaching call and they're talking about, I'm like, yeah, that's me. That's me. That's me. I know that. It's like rapid self-learning when you work with people because you see yourself in all these areas. Okay. Everybody, I want you to first check out Tayce Gibson's book, Learning Love. There'll be a link below. Also, she has an amazing YouTube channel called the Personal Development School. I'll have a link for that. She has great videos talking about attachment styles, variety of different things that relate to this topic that we're talking about. I highly recommend you subscribe right now to her channel, follow her videos. You are a delightful creature. Let me just say that you are a delightful person. This has been so much fun for me to have you in the house. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed this so much. You're so wonderful to speak with. I feel like this could go on for five hours with no breaks and we wouldn't even notice how much time has. It's just like in the blink of an eye. So yeah, really, really grateful to be here with you today and thank you so much. Well, I'm gonna reach in like I end all my videos. Can I give you a big gigantic job at the bear hug? Thank you. Not everyone. Go again, check out Ty's Gibson. Let's do below. All right.