As the honeymoon phase wanes, relationships can shift:

We can start to feel easily upset by our partners..

..our old wounding from childhood comes up to the surface..

..or we can start picking apart each other’s behaviors…

These actions are often unconscious, but we feel the byproducts:

abandonment, confusion, sadness, depression.

We can hurt each other even more once we get into this state, by withdrawing or chastising..

Essentially we try to shame or abandon our partners into treating us lovingly again.

Why?

Because this is exactly how we were parented as children.

Good behaviors were reinforced and bad behaviors were chastised or shamed, in order for our parents to mold us to fit in to society and our families.

There’s an even more primal piece of our wiring for how we operate in relationship, from infancy, too…

As babies, we don’t use words to ask for what we need: “I could use a bit of loving care right now.”

As babies, when we need something from those around us..

We cry. We yell. We scream.

When we are uncomfortable as babies, we provoke those around us by causing them to feel uncomfortable too, basically. And this gets us what we need.

In addition to this way of operating, the adults around us also can intuit what we need, and fulfill those needs without us having to ask, too.

This is a deeply primal ingrained neural pathway of how to operate in the world and in relationship.

“My needs are always known and taken care of, and if they are not, I only need to make those around me a bit uncomfortable to match my own discomfort, and then they meet my needs.”

Can you see how this is reflected in adult relationships?

Can you relate at all in your own partnership? I know I used to operate like this with my husband, for sure.

Adult relationships often activate these deeply primal pathways in us, these ways of being that we learned all the way back in childhood or infancy, as we search for the love we crave on a cellular level.

We have to *choose* new relationship dynamics as adults, instead of our primal wiring from the past. Especially because for most of us, we don’t have examples of the types of relationship that we really resonate with, from our elders.

To pave our own way to love and joy and safety in our relationships now, we discover what we want and need within our partnership...

And then how to communicate this in a meaningful safe way…

And also how to HEAR in a meaningful safe way when when our partner communicates THEIR desires.

To really dive in deeper and create your own Sacred Partnership, I hope you can join us in our upcoming free workshop for couples, March 23. Check out the main website menu for more info and to register :) If you register but can’t make it, you’ll receive the recording afterward.