She Wants You To Hear Her (Not Fix Her Problems)
Today I’m going to talk a little bit more about how to make relationships work.
Learning about attachment styles and how to make love last is not an easy task.
The reason that I constantly talk about attachment style is because they actually explain how love works. And I keep getting questions about it and requests for more videos. So I’m going to get into 2 emails.
If you understand which attachment style your partner has, and which style you have, you will be able to engage in the dance that is love.
Once you learn the steps, you’ll see tremendous growth in your relationships. You’ll know exactly what you need and how to ask your partner for it. You’ll be able to see what your partner needs and give it to them. You’ll learn how to be present with your partner, so that they’ll know that you’re there for them.
Their anxiety will go down. You’ll learn to stop hurting each other. And you’ll learn to repair your relationships when one of you is hurting.
I got a question from Eddie. He says Hey Craig your videos are incredibly inspiring and insightful. I have been watching them every day since you started posting and I’ve learned a lot. I still get overwhelmed hearing about attachment style and understanding about love and what makes it last. I was hoping you could put out another video talking more about it.
Eddie I appreciate the kind words and your dedication to my channel and your personal growth. Really understanding attachment theory and learning about how it affects relationships takes quite some time.
So let me just talk about Romantic Love. What we are starting to understand is that romantic love is basically a grown up version of the emotional bond between a mother and her child. It can be any of your caregivers, but for most people they are taken care of their mother the most.
So the way we attached and bonded with our parents is going to be very similar to how we bond with our partner. So the relationship you had with your parents is going to have a huge impact on how you love your partner. The way love felt for you as a kid you are unconsciously try to recreate in your adult romantic relationships.
Love and connection is our strongest drive. We long for it. Closeness and connection makes us feel safe. When we have a strong secure connection with someone it relieves our stress.
When we feel disconnected from our partner, it makes us feel anxious, scared, and actually causes us physical pain.
There is research that shows when we get scared, if we can hear our lovers voice to soothe us. Turns on bonding hormone in our brain that turns off fear. Now, we initially learn to hear our parents voice to soothe us and then it becomes our partner in our adult relationships.
Now, the other end of that spectrum is Isolation and being cut off from others. This is the ultimate danger signal. That is why it’s so painful when someone breaks up with us. And this is part of the reason I tell you, that if a girl breaks up with you, you do not contact them for any reason.
They need to feel that pain and loss of losing YOU. If you make any form of contact it lets them know, I still got him!
I have a second email here from Gus who says: Hey Craig, I definitely can see myself in your videos. Whenever you talk about wanting to fix a girl’s problems, that is exactly what I do. My girlfriend is constantly having issues with her cousin. Her cousin is really nosy and getting involved with things that have nothing to do with her. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to say or do. Every time I offer her help she gets pissed at me.
This is perfectly understandable Gus.
Okay, so love is supposed to double the joy and divide the grief.
If your girl is having problem, you divide the grief. The way you can do that is to be there for her. Show her that you are a resource for her. That you are supporting her.
After this video I suggest you go back and watch my video How To Make Your Partner Feel Loved where I talk more about this.
When your girl talks to you about problems with her cousin she wants you to listen. You want to calm her and comfort her as she talks about her issues with her cousin. I know it can be frustrating to want to solve her problem when you think you have the answer. But ONLY give the answer if SHE ASKS FOR YOUR OPINION.
It took me a long time to understand this. Emotional attunement and responsiveness is the key to secure bonding.
If you grew up in a home where you had a lot of fighting, abuse, neglect, or bad communication, these behaviors are not natural, because you likely didn’t see them.
You don’t learn to ask for what you want, because you probably wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. That’s one reason people become manipulative. They don’t know how to ask for what they want. When they did, they were repeatedly denied what they wanted and so they gave up.
Now as an adult they often ask in a shy or sly way.
Here’s an example of someone
If you’re not busy can you help get dinner started? Now If you don’t because you are busy. They may get mad (because they were trying to slyly ask you what they wanted)
You never help me with dinner!
They are hurting because they feel rejected again. I had an ex do this. One time she said oh there’s meat in the fridge and she lied down to take a nap. She didn’t say: will you please cook for tonight?
It was late when she laid down, so I wasn’t even sure she would want to eat. I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t make it. When she woke up, she was furious.
Because she had a long history of having her needs neglected by her narcissistic mother. She has a very avoidant attachment style. She doesn’t know how to ask for what she wants. She wants you to intuit what she wants. She would even say, I want someone who knows when I want them to vacuum.
She expects her partner to know what she’s thinking and give it to her. Like a mind reader. This is a very early childhood wound. She wants someone to care for her like a parent takes care of a child. Because her parents didn’t do it. Because she refuses to work on her issues, she can’t make any relationships last.
She doesn’t want any demands on her. In other words, she wants to be taken care of, but not have to give anything in return.
Things usually add up. You don’t get a woman who is narcissistic or has an avoidant attachment style by having 2 parents that met all their childhood needs. If you have a healthy parent, they give you what you need when you need it. If you have a narcissitic mother, they give you what you need when they feel like it. So the baby doesn’t learn, if I cry I get fed, or picked up. They learn, If I cry sometimes mom comes, sometimes she doesn’t. They assume its because they aren’t lovable and they start to get shame.
It’s sad because she has such a long history of rejection, she turns away to numb the hurt. People like this are actually hurting the worst. They’ve need reliable safety.
But, they have to already acknowledge that they want help. Many avoidant people don’t think the risk is worth the reward. They kept losing over and over again.