The 6 Stages of Love — And the One Stage That Kills Most Relationships

Most people think relationships fail because someone stopped trying, cheated, or they just picked wrong. But what if relationships follow a predictable pattern — and most of us are sabotaging them at the exact same stage without even knowing it?

In this episode, I sit down with Thais Gibson — founder of Personal Development School, bestselling author, and one of the world's leading experts on attachment theory — to break down the six stages every relationship moves through, why most collapse at stage three, and what your attachment style is actually doing to your love life, your desire, and your ability to stay.

I also get personal. About the patterns I've repeated. About staying in relationships I should have left. About what it took to finally see myself clearly enough to stop.

If you've ever wondered why you keep ending up in the same relationship with a different person — this episode is your answer.

What you'll learn: Why chemistry isn't compatibility and what actually drives attraction • The six stages every relationship moves through • Where most relationships die and why • What your attachment style is doing to your sex life at every stage • How to actually change your attachment style in 90 days • Why doing the work together is the only thing that saves a relationship

Find Thais at https://university.personaldevelopmentschool.com/ — free attachment quiz at the link

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Transcript

New Name, Same Bold Mission

Topic Setup: Six Stages Of Love

Meet Thais Gibson And Attachment Theory

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I'm Annette Benedetti, host of the podcast formerly known as Locker Room Talk and Shots. The show has a new name, Talk Sex with Annette. But at its core, this is still your locker room. It's where we strip away shame, get curious, and speak the unspoken about sex, kink dating, pleasure, and desire. Around here, nothing's off limits. These are the kinds of conversations we save for our boldest group chat, our most trusted friends, and of course, the women's locker room. Think raw, honest, and sometimes unapologetically raunchy. Welcome to my podcast where desire meets disruption and pleasure becomes power. Let's talk about sex. Cheers. Today's Talk Sex with Annette topic is the six stages of love, why it feels amazing and then suddenly falls apart. Most people think relationships fail because someone stopped trying or cheated or you've just got a bad picker and picked the wrong person. But what if most relationships fail because we don't understand how love actually works? Today's guest believes love doesn't just happen, it unfolds in six predictable stages. And if you don't understand what stage you're in, you'll sabotage it or walk away thinking something's wrong. I'm joined by Thais Gibson, founder of Personal Development School, best-selling author, and one of the world's leading experts on attachment theory. Her work has reached over 70 million people and helped more than 60,000 members across 145 countries understand why they love the way they do. Today we're breaking down the six stages of love, why so many relationships collapse at the exact same point, and what this means for the future of dating, attachment, and long-term desire, because love doesn't fail randomly. It follows a pattern, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. But before we dive in, I have to remind you to subscribe to this podcast so you can get more episodes like this one. Also, I'm on OnlyFans, and there I'm sharing my sex and intimacy, how-tos, demos, and audio guided self-pleasure meditations. You can find me with my handle at talk sex within it. You can also now sign up for the subscriber-only podcast episodes where those meditations and so much more are going to live. And you can find me everywhere you want to find me when you scroll down to the show notes below. All the links are there. But for now, Thais, can you tell my listeners just a little bit more about you?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, so I really got into this whole field of dating and relationships because I have always been somebody who like authentically cared about how I connect with people around me. And I also grew up in a household where there was a lot of turbulence and challenges when it came to love and connection and communication and really understanding one another. And so I think at a young age, I was deeply interested in how do we properly communicate? How do we work through problems instead of kind of brush them under the rug and have them come out in challenging, argumentative ways later on. And because of a lot of the conditioning I had growing up, I struggled in my own relationships. So at a young age, I had a hard time, you know, working through conflicts or problems. I would shut down or I would push people away, or I would feel anxious. And so it turned out I was actually a fearful, avoidant attachment style. And on my own quest for healing and really understanding the root cause of why we do what we do and how our conditioning from childhood affects our adult romantic relationships and honestly, all relationships, I experienced profound healing, like just so much transformation, so much growth. And it was something that I'm always the type of person that if I love something or something really helps me, I just want to give it to everybody. I'm like, try this. This is amazing. It's gonna help you. So I started teaching a lot of workshops for free for a while. That led to having a really busy client practice. And that led to, you know, eventually having such a long wait list in my client practice. I put materials online and sort of accidentally grew a YouTube channel and everything just kind of unfolded from there. But it's been a beautiful journey that I'm super grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Well, and I'm honored to have you here. I know that this is going to help a lot of people out there, and a lot of my listeners are really looking for answers to their own relationship struggles, whether that's in the dating phase or whether they are in a relationship right now. So, guys, stay to the end because we're gonna uncover a lot of information that's gonna help you identify where you are in your own dating life and relationship, what stage, or if you are just gonna start dating, you're gonna go into it armed with useful information so you can traverse and make it through the dating process far more successfully, hopefully finding the partner who is ideal for you. So let's dive in. I'm ready. I have got lots of questions. I need to decode my own dating life. Shared is let's talk about dating. All right. First, when you say that there are six stages, what does that mean? And what are they?

Why Relationships Repeat Patterns

SPEAKER_01 6:06

So the six stages are actually stages that every single relationship goes through. And it's essentially the life cycle of a relationship. So I'll talk about them at a high level, and I'm sure we can really unpack them in a lot of detail. But what's really interesting before I share them is that most relationships break up in a particular stage and have the most struggles in a particular stage. So if people are currently in a stage where they're feeling stuck, there's usually personal reasons in our own conditioning as to why that's happening. But also, if people find themselves out of a relationship and are single listening to this, they'll usually hear that they end up ending relationships in the same stage each time. And again, there's usually things that we can move through and rites of passage we can learn about. That once we learn them, we're equipped with better tools to navigate that stage in the future. And it allows us to keep building and growing together with people instead of growing apart. So the six stages are first the dating stage, usually lasts between zero to six months. Then the honeymoon stage usually lasts another year to year and a half. Then the power struggle stage, which everybody goes through and can literally be something that people stay stuck in forever. It's statistically where the most relationships end. And also healthy, secure people with really good tools, they end up, if they got really easy modeling for relationships growing up, they end up in a position where they navigate that stage pretty gracefully. But if people were insecurely attached or had different attachment traumas growing up, they may have some more challenges there that we can help them move through today or help them understand. If we make it up to the power struggle stage, then we move into the stability stage. So we sort of find our footing, we get the stability in the relationship. We feel like we can kind of settle in a little bit more. And through that, once we found our footing or sort of rhythm, I sometimes refer to it as the rhythm stage, then we move into the devotion stage and then the bliss stage. And the bliss stage is statistically where most couples end up staying together for the long run. And they report in the stage not just being in a happy, healthy place, but actually feeling fulfilled in that stage. They're not questioning or doubting or fighting as much and they've really learned to navigate each other. So those are six stages at an overarching level. And I think as listeners go through this today, they can start recognizing, ooh, which stage do I always get stuck in, or which stage am I in now?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Well, let's start with the first stage, the dating stage. What I would like to know is why do people mistake chemistry for compatibility, or is that a mistake? Great. I mean, I know this is a challenge that I've had is that when I go into dating, I'm looking for this hot chemistry, thinking that is a thing that means we're going to be good partners.

The Six Stages Overview

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, it's a really good question. So there's three things that drive attraction psychologically. Okay. So obviously there's physiological attraction related to biology and evolution, like we're attracted to certain features in one another. But from a purely psychological place, there's actually three drivers of attraction. One driver is if somebody's expressing or repressed traits. This is where you hear things like opposites attract. For example, if somebody's super assertive and they're they meet somebody who's very passive, we end up actually being wired to our brain has an allostatic impulse. We're wired to want to attach to people who express differently than we do because together we have a better chance at survival. It's almost like trait variety. If you, if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, if somebody really smart pairs up with somebody really strong out in the wild trying to survive, they have a better chance at survival. So we have this dynamic where we're attracted to people who express very opposite to us. What's interesting about that is what we find attractive early often is the thing that drives us nuts in the power struggle stage. So, you know, as an example, I remember when I met my husband 11 years ago, I was like, oh, he's so assertive. And I was just amazed at how assertive he was. And I thought that was so attractive. And I felt like, oh, there's sort of when I attached to that, I felt like, oh, he he would look out for me and sort of have my back too. And I really liked that. But then in our power struggle stage later on, I was like, oh my gosh, he never makes compromises. Like he needs to compromise with me. And we'll see this in every relationship. We can kind of come back to that later. But that's one of the first features that drives attraction. And just another analogy for people is sometimes somebody will be like, oh my gosh, that person's so easygoing and they're so attracted to it. And maybe they're the type A person. And then, you know, they end up in a relationship and then they're like, oh my God, this person's so disorganized and it drives them nuts. And actually, what we're supposed to do is take on aspects of each other. Like I learned in my marriage to be more assertive myself and be better with my boundaries. My husband learned to be more flexible, and that's how we actually grow beyond the power struggle stage, but we'll come back to that. So that's number one. And the second feature that drives attraction a lot is if somebody meets your deeply unmet needs from childhood. So, you know, what ends up happening is if you felt really unseen, for example, as a child, and somebody comes along and they meet you and they're so present and they're really attuned to you and they make you feel seen and known and ask you meaningful questions, like that will make somebody's brain light up, like fireworks going off in somebody's brain, because there's all this dopamine and oxytocin from these need beams. And the third thing is we are most likely to invest in the longest people who treat us the we the way that we treat ourselves. Because consciously we can say that we want all of these things. We can say we want the emotionally available partner or the the healthy partner or the person who's working on themselves or takes accountability. But at the end of the day, our subconscious mind is wired for survival and it equates familiarity to safety and thus survival. And so we end up investing in people who, and this is a huge part of what you were just mentioning, is if we're like, oh, the chemistry, the chemistry, a lot of times we'll say, Oh, I want the emotionally available person. And then we meet somebody who's emotionally unavailable. And if we're emotionally unavailable to ourselves, because we're always people pleasing everybody else, then it feels like fireworks. We're like, oh, I like this. And our conscious mind is like, oh no, there's red flags. But our subconscious mind, which is our conditioned, habituated self and responsible for 95% of all of our beliefs and thoughts and emotions and actions, that subconscious part of ourselves will be like, oh, no, we like this. This is familiar. We like this, and we'll go after that. And so a lot of times, chemistry does not equal compatibility. Sometimes what's most familiar is people who treat us in unhealthy ways that we treat ourselves. And so that ends us up in these dynamics where we chase after people or we invest in people long term. We're not actually the best fit for us necessarily.

Dating Chemistry Versus Compatibility

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah. God, I love a love bomber. I like to be. Yeah, I think that comes from the like wanting to be seen or and feeling as a child, like you know, a classic middle child syndrome, like lost. And I'm just like, man, if someone love bombs me, I'm like, oh, I know you're toxic, but bring it on. Yeah. Ah, exactly. I'm not saying that exactly that resonates a lot, but also the familiar, right? If you were treated in a certain way when you were growing up and and that was taught to you as love, then you cut and you and it wasn't and it wasn't great, then that's what you look to re-experience later on.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Exactly. And one will really drive that initial attraction, that that meeting your unmet needs. But then the other will often be the thing that drives the long-term investment in in the relationship, is what's familiar over time. And so it can be tricky that way. And that's why I think it's really important for people to, and we can get into this, but in the dating stage of relationship, like know what you want and know how to vet properly so that we don't end up in the same repeated patterns over and over again. Cause those repeated patterns are showing us to ourselves. They're showing what lives within us that actually needs healing or love or growth. And until we we learn those lessons, we'll keep going back through the same patterns and in relationships and dating.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

And isn't it true, like in the first stage of the dating stage, or maybe maybe the first two, even the honeymoon, it's like our brains are literally on drugs, like getting those dopamine hits and oxytocin hits.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah, exactly. So in the dating stage and honeymoon stage, we have elevated serotonin, the well-being neurochemical, oxytocin, the bonding neurochemical, dopamine, the motivation neurochemical. That's where you see people like always motivated to go out and get dressed up and go for dinner, but then it changes later on. You're like, let's just wear sweatpants and stay in. But you'll see that a lot. And then also phenylethylalamine, which is the attraction neurochemical. And so that starts off really strongly. And what that can lead to people to doing in the dating stage of relationships is ending up in scenarios where they say they want something, they want something different this time, they want to break the pattern, but we're so drawn to these things at a deeper subconscious level. And because your subconscious mind runs the show, that's where you have to, you know, start to be really mindful. So I usually tell people, you know, just to start off with, hey, like make a list of the things in a relationship. I call this your relationship shadow. Make a list of the things in a relationship that you keep ending up in if you're not happy with them. Okay, if you're happy with them, it's another story. But if you're like, oh, I keep ending up in this situation where maybe somebody breaks my trust or somebody's emotionally unavailable or somebody's really secretive or somebody isn't consistent or reliable, or these things that that we get triggered by. And then I tell people, and it's a little bit of a confronting exercise, but it's really important, is okay, where do you do that to yourself? And what happens is until we clean up those patterns in ourselves repeatedly, like enough over time, then we'll keep being so attracted to people who mirror them back to us because it feels familiar to the subconscious mind. So for example, if somebody's like always drawn to the emotionally unavailable person, like clockwork, the people who are drawn to emotionally unavailable people are the people who are emotionally unavailable to themselves because they're always putting everybody else first. They're always putting their own feelings and needs on the back burner. And so somebody comes along who mirrors that back to them and they said on their checklist or their vetting list, I want the emotionally available person. But until you become that to yourself first, your subconscious mind won't be attracted enough to invest in it in other people. And that's like the number one reason we keep repeating the pattern. So we want to change those things, heal them within ourselves. And it reminds me of this quote that I love by Rumi. And Rumi says, if I am irritated by every rub, how will I ever be polished? And it's this idea that, you know, everything that bothers you, everything that hurts you, every pattern in a relationship is showing you to yourself. And relationships are a beautiful tool for love and connection. Obviously, they they fill our love and connection bucket, but relationships are also a very profound and powerful tool for growth. And when we learn to see ourselves through what comes up in us when triggered in a relationship, it gives us access to these sort of layers and crevices of our subconscious mind that we can suddenly become consciously aware of enough in order to heal.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah. It is, it's true. Getting caught in those cycles, I've seen it in myself. And I have had to, in the last two years, I've been really working on my own cycles. I think that one way to look at it is if you have been in many relationships and you're like, these people were all terrible. Yes. That can be true. I always say that can be true, but two things can be true at the same time. What's the common denominator? Exactly. I love that you said who is like, all right, all right, Annette. He was a dick, he was terrible, and he was, and she was, but I'm the person who's attracting them and staying. You know what I mean? And and so then for me, it was uh let's stand back and lay them all out and look at them and say, what's what's similar? What is the pattern? What and and the cool thing, and I think you'll support this, is you can actually do that with your friendships as well. I find that my friendships often mare the relationships, the same issues show up in a different way, right? But I'm repeating the same cycles, looking for the same things in my friends, in my lovers. And then that's the thing, the wound inside myself that I need to heal so I don't keep cycling through it, right? Exactly.

Familiarity, Subconscious, And Attraction

SPEAKER_01 19:03

That's so beautifully said. And and what you're sharing there is is really powerful because, like you said, it doesn't take away from the fact that it hurts when that happens. It doesn't take away from the fact that like the other person's behavior is often unacceptable or not healthy, and that they may be being a jerk or or not showing up well or their behavior's hurtful. But it's not just that we attract those situations or that we're attracted to them. It's more that we we stay in them. Stay in them. Yeah. And somebody will always, whoever's hurting you, if they're really hurting you over and over again, you're hurting yourself like one degree more by choosing it over and over again. And so that's the part where, you know, sometimes it's confronting for people, but also it's like, hey, until you see this clearly and change it, it's it's worse to be in that situation over and over again than to acknowledge it and take a little bit of accountability for what you can control and then do the work to move through it. And so I don't know if you're you're comfortable, but I'd love to hear like, I'm sure there's a few things because for most people, there's not just one, but is there a pattern that you notice? Like you mentioned your dating life and and a pattern, is there something that you found, like, oh, this person kept hurting me in a certain way?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

You know there are some what I would say standard ways. Like I definitely have been in many relationships where it started out like they saw me and they came after me hard, and I was like slow, hesitant. And then the moment I committed to it, I was like, all right, I'm in. After taking my time to get to know them and they're telling me how wonderful I am. Then the switch was turned off. And then it was like cold, distant, punishing when I thought affection or thought sort of what I was getting in the beginning. And that, and that for me is almost the hook. Now it's like I need to earn it to prove that I'm worth loving, right? Yeah. But I think what got me, and I've sh I don't know if I've shared this on this podcast, in my last relationship, I had a partner who drugged me without me knowing it. Oh my god. And this was early in the relationship. And it was very traumatizing, obviously. And I and it was very interesting because after it was all over and I was confronting him, we were talking, he actually was able to make me feel sort of bad for him. He's like, why would I do such a thing? And you know, I was trying to make him feel better. And so for me, with that last relationship, because I stayed with him two at least two and a half years later, before leaving, um, what was really hard for me to get past is why would I not have left someone at that point. But then as I was doing spreading the relationships out in front of me, and I'm like, wow, I feel like I've been in a lot of really abusive relationships, right? I went back to one of my very early relationships where I actually had another boyfriend who tried to drug me. Oh, wow. And I stayed with him. Wow. And I was like, okay, what's happening here? Because I feel like someone who's done, I've been in therapy a lot. I've done a lot of things to like heal the obvious obvious things. I'm I'm very, I do a lot of work on myself. Yeah. But I'm like, this is like I am now 50, and these are the relationships I'm still getting in. And if it was a girlfriend standing in front of me, what would I say to her? You know, what would I say? And so I've really did some digging into that. And like, what am I doing? Why are these people who are doing things to like try to seriously hurt me? Why am I then chasing them to try and make them love me? Right. Like that's almost like the elixir right there, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah. So and what have you do you mind if I take you through something for just a second? Yeah. So so if you had to label that person, so that that archetype in that situation, so the person who tries to drug you or does drug you, what would you call them? Would you call them manipulative? Would you call them advantageous? Would you call them deceitful? What would be like the the standout term that you would use?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

I think it's it's it's super hard because I still can't understand the action. I can't understand the action. I can only label it as abusive and manipulative, obviously. I I a controlling, super controlling to control my whole experience in that moment and to see me falling apart because I thought I thought I was losing. Mind. I literally thought I was having a nervous breakdown. I was so embarrassed when when it happened. And so it was like controlling, you know, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

So, in that scenario, when you look back on the past and relationships, and I'm just curious if anything comes up here, is there anywhere, and we can start with manipulative first because it's a lighter one, but is there anywhere where you found yourself manipulating yourself? So the shadow becomes, and this becomes the work. Is there a theme or pattern where you manipulate yourself to please other people? Is there anything where that comes up for you as a theme?

Self-Audit: The Relationship Shadow

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Well, yeah, I I definitely try, have tried to in the past convince myself to be what I thought other people would love in me. Like early in my life to try and earn love from my family. I tried to be the perfect housewife, perfect mother, and and to repeat what I thought I had seen my mother do to be accepted by my family. And it was so counterintuitive. Like I completely abandoned who I was. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm not that person. And I was very bad at being it. But in different ways and different relationships, I've done that. What do they want me to be? That's how I'm trying to act. Yeah. And I'm trying to convince myself that's who I truly am.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yes. And so that is exactly why your conscious mind will say, I want like the healthy person. Like somebody who would never do that, where I don't have to even worry about that. But your subconscious mind, it's almost like the alarm bells don't go off properly because that's what you're used to doing within yourself. So do you see how it becomes familiar? And then consciously, we we know better through our logic and reasoning, and yet subconsciously, we stay in those situations. And so if I were to ask you, okay, what would the opposite of that look like? And honestly, it's not usually just changing the pattern of people pleasing less. It's usually like actually going through and auditing all the times where I say yes when I mean no, all the times where I'm like, I guess I'll try something like that, even though it doesn't feel comfortable for me. Or I guess I'll pretend like I'm okay with this scenario, but deep down, I don't really like this. And it's all of those times that that happens. And then it's really practicing in your life and ideally across a 21-day cycle of being super diligent about it, because that 21 days creates new neural pathways, if it's repeated enough, that are likely to stick. So it becomes your new set point. But it's like, I am going to show up and every day I'm gonna be like, did I honor my truth? Did I say my authentic needs and boundaries? Did I honor my feelings? Did I speak up when somebody hurt me or affected me? And if you drill into that so repeatedly at a subconscious level for 21 days, you're usually healing that pattern that was conditioned into you from prior experiences, which in turn will be your actual emotional immunity to avoiding being in scenarios with people like that again, because it's no longer conscious that it's no longer comfortable at a subconscious level. And so when people do anything like that, and it was so interesting to me, honestly, because you said, you said, I felt badly for him. And it's like, oh my gosh, you never saw yourself. Like you poor you, you go through this huge traumatic thing that's so crazy that somebody would ever put you through that. And then you you're busy trying to see him and understand him. And it's like, hey, there's this void of like honoring your own feelings and connecting to your own truth and like seeing how that would feel for you. And so, you know, that's a lot of the work. And as you really do that consistently, you'll no longer, if you see a red flag from somebody like that in the future, big or small, like, you know, a smaller version of something that was controlling or manipulative, you would be like, oh, no, no, no, I'm not here for this. And you would honor that more. So does that kind of make sense of how that comes full circle a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Absolutely. And I think that that has been at least elements of that without quite that guidance has been the healing that I've done, right? It's over the last couple of years, it's like I am going to treat myself like I would be treating these other people. I thought, what if I tried doing that with myself? That was just like a thought experiment. And it was really interesting. Now it's I'm shocked sometimes when someone will say something to me that's like, you know, a little jab, or I'm so quick to turn around and say, don't talk to me like that. Like it happens so quick. Definitely shed a lot of friendships. Definitely like who I'm surrounded by has changed, right? And and then I only really started dating again this this past year. So that's been it's been an interesting, it's been interesting how quick I am to like be done with with those signs. But I recognize, I mean, it's a lifelong journey, right? When you when the things are so embedded in you.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Absolutely. But the fact that you're showing up that way is so beautiful. Like the fact that you took something so hard and and were able to go deep within yourself and honor like, okay, I'm not gonna put myself in these scenarios anymore. Let me start treating myself like I treat everybody else and show up for everybody else. And and yeah, just to hear that is beautiful because it sounds like you're on the path of exactly what you you need to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

This does bring me to a question that I had, because this all obviously goes back to some attachment theory. So this is rooted deeply in attachment theory. What which attachment style tends to mistake intensity for falling in love, right? The fearful avoidant.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

So anxious attachment styles do do that too, but they do it a lot less. So they more just want like the validation, the certainty, the love. They want that like consistency, like they really like that. Whereas fearful avoidance are the ones that are like, give me the roller coaster, give me the high highs and the low lows, give me the depths, give me the intensity, give me, because that's what they know. And it's because their conditioning is so all or nothing growing up. They usually have really great experiences with love and connection, and then really hard and confusing ones. And so that's their subconscious comfort zone of going back and forth and hot and cold. And a lot of people first hear about attachment theory and think, oh, I'm the anxious when they're the fearful avoidant. But a fearful avoidant, they deactivate frequently. So they will be the individuals that they're like very loving, very all in. But then as soon as somebody gets really close, yeah, they're like, ah, that's why I was dating.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Yeah, yeah.

Annette’s Pattern And Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 31:10

So that's that's the one. And and then they'll pull away and retreat because they're scared. It's like they feel that they love love, but they feel threatened by it simultaneously. And so the more they feel and the more they fall in love, the more scared they are of being hurt, and that's where they pinball from.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

That's who I date. Yeah, yeah. Fearful avoidance, love me. I don't know what it is. I've like started testing the people that that I date. Um you are because and nine out of ten times, fearful avoidance. Yeah, and that's what I told you, the love bombing in the beginning, and then I'm like hooked, and they're like, Yeah, and it's back and forth and back and forth until I'm exhausted.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, like I think you know, and I want to say this really clearly too like fearful ones can be very loving and very empathetic people and very caring. I do think like if somebody's to the point where they're trying to drug somebody, that's probably like maybe even like narcissism or psychopathy or something a little further beyond just attachment styles in terms of the extreme of that scenario. But but yeah, traditional people and and you know, fearful wins are very good at making people feel seen and heard and like they're you know interesting and they ask meaningful questions and they want to go deep, and there's a lot of like really strong appeals. But as soon as they start feeling vulnerable themselves, that's where they're like, oh no, this is this is scary, and they start to push away. So I was a fearful avoidant, but yeah, that was my attachment sound. But like I did the work, like that was something, and that's something I really believe in. I actually think it's kind of tragic that we see all these people right now in the world and like attachment theory became this mainstream thing. The downside of it becoming mainstream is now all these people are just like, oh, I am this attachment sound, that's who I am, and they're identifying themselves like that. And it's like, well, no, that's just a subconscious set of rules that you've learned about love and connection. And you can rewire that stuff. And unless you're doing that work, you're you're causing more chaos in your own life, you're causing more pain in your own life. It's coming from a place of self-protection for each person, but like we got to do that work because it's always way more work not to do the work. And like we can have really loving, stable, healthy, fulfilling relationships if we do. And it's not even that hard. But yeah, like my big message I'm trying to put out to the world is like you can change your attachment style and we should be working to do so.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

That is kind of it is one of the big questions I've had. And some people dance around the answer. And I have, at least from my personal experience, I identified as anxious attachment. And I look, I still am always, I'm just also an anxious person, but I'm always working to heal it. But I do feel, and I've noticed after the past, I guess I'm now close almost to three years, two and a half years of healing, I don't feel like I'm, I I wouldn't necessarily fully define myself as an anxiously attached person anymore. I feel like I'm very personally attached to myself. I'm kind of my primary partner. So all of my other partnerships, while they're very important to me, like I don't have that same, it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel the same.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

And that is a really good thing. So what we're actually, I'm a big believer that if we were ever insecurely attached, part of our work is to become our own partner. Like part of our, I say this and it's so cliche and it's so true. Healing happens when you become your own parent. Like whatever the triggers were that were imprinted on your subconscious mind. So the wounds, if you felt like not good enough or trapped or unlovable or abandoned or or you know, betrayed, if you have these wounds, we have to rewire those wounds because otherwise they're your baggage. You're gonna bring them into every relationship and they're gonna dictate your thoughts and they're gonna dictate the conclusions you jump to and the fears that you have and the partners that you pick, which is really tragic. And then the other side of it is healing also happens when you give to yourself the deepest unmet needs that you had in childhood. So if you never felt protected, good, you're gonna start setting great boundaries and you're gonna become your own self-protector. If you never felt seen, you're gonna sit down with a journal every night, you're gonna get to know yourself. If you're somebody who never felt like somebody was there to support you and try to understand you, good. How can what does that look like for you? How can you best support yourself? And let's start like exploring and introspecting so we understand ourselves. So so much of the work, and you know, I actually go through like five pillars of how you heal your attachment style because that's like it. We try to do it in 90 days. Like, hey, this is the goal. We have 90-day frameworks. You it doesn't have to be this huge drawn-out process if you target the subconscious mind, because it's the root of all of your conditioning. We can't just intellectualize, we have to really get into the subconscious wiring. But the two of our biggest pillars are like trauma, are the things that happen to you that shouldn't have happened, like abuse, but also the things that didn't happen to you that should have happened, like deeply unmet needs. And it's a gabar mate quote. And we really go into that like go meet your deeply unmet needs, go rewire these big wounds that you're bringing into every relationship. They're not your fault. It's unfortunate you went through that, but they are your responsibility. And until we do that work, that's where we keep repeating cycles. And so, yeah, so those are two of our five pillars of healing your attachment cell. And I'm such a believer in it. I did this myself first 15 years ago before I started teaching this work over the last 15 years, and it has literally like revolutionized my world. Like I couldn't, I used to be like, I'm never getting married, I'm never having kids, I'm never, I was so terrified of relationships and I was so difficult in relationships. Like I was such a hot and cold partner and push pull and and you know, really loving and then really avoidant and just, you know, all over the map. And I I know I kind of left a little bit of a wake of destruction in my relationships when I was a kid. And and, you know, I did that work and healed, and like I am, I have a very peaceful relationship. I feel very connected and very comfortable and fulfilled. And like I, if you asked me that 15 years ago, I'd been like, no, that's not possible for me. That's not that's not in the box, but truly you can change your wiring. And if you got dealt a really hard hand of cards, it doesn't have to stay that way.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

So getting back to the stages, I assume the stage that most relationships die is in the power struggle. Yes? Exactly. I mean, this makes sense to me. But also there is this phenomenon of the spark, the intimate spark dying as emotional safety increases. What's that all about? What stage does that happen in?

Mistaking Intensity For Love

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Great question. That's right after the power struggle. So that's a rhythm or stability stage. So what happens is, and and I love that you asked that. So what happens is in the power struggle stage, how we get out of it is we learn to communicate through problems, is one of the big sources. We also learn to take on some of each other's needs, like we talked about. Like if somebody's really assertive and somebody's really passive, we actually or take on some of each other's traits. We learn those things together. And it's really interesting because polarity creates attraction early, like those opposites attract. But polarity literally puts the spark out long term because in polarity, if we don't know how to navigate that, it creates resentment. So if somebody's always assertive and somebody's always passive, the passive person resents the assertive person and then they pull away or get frustrated or upset. And then that causes this person to feel like they're being criticized or whatever it might be. So, so those are the things that like start off as being attraction and spark. But unless we learn to navigate those things properly and take them on together and kind of equal out some of those traits, then it causes more, more heartache and problems. So what's really interesting is I there's this old saying, and it's like there's no such thing as a loss or a gain. Things are only ever changing forms. And I'm a big believer in that. Like, like, sure, the spark isn't the same, like, oh my goodness, spark of excitement and novelty. But when we get into the rhythm stage, what's essentially happened is we we left the power struggle. We learned to navigate conflict, we learn to hash out problems. You can't even get out of the power struggle unless you learn how to do these things. You let somebody into your true fears and flaws and needs. And we learn to take on some of each other's traits. And in doing that, you drop them mask. Like you've gone from conditionally based love in the dating and honeymoon stage because you're mask on, you're on your best behavior. It's kind of you're you're showing yourself with conditions, which means you're means you're only available for conditionally based love. Now we drop the mask, we let somebody in, we say what our hurts are or our fears and relationships. We learn to support each other through those. We learn to communicate through conflict, we see each other more deeply, we learn each other more deeply. We love each other in those depths of the experience. And then, yes, some of that polarity is gone because we've learned to come to center and support each other and move through things, but it's almost like the difference between a little sapling that's like, oh, a little sapling, a windsworm can take it out, versus like a tree that's built really deep roots. Like you connect so much more deeply. And through that depth, the spark can still exist in a different form. So now that spark is more about intimacy and depth of connection rather than novelty and attraction. And so we still have like a really beautiful context for like deep intimacy, meaningful fulfillment around sex, around emotional intimacy, around all pillars of intimacy as they exist. And it actually, in a lot of cases, deepens the intimacy for people overall if they learn to navigate the power struggle stage properly. But then what we can do is we can understand that once we find that rhythm and that footing in the relationship with each other and that depth exists. Well, now what we can do is we can go out into the world and we can still do novel things together. We can still create novelty in new ways. We can still go to a new restaurant, try a new hobby together, try something new around your sex life with somebody. Like you can do these things that's going to still foster that spark while actually creating more of that depth. And so that's where we can move out of that stage and keep progressing.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

So, folks listening, the rhythm stage is where you want to try the threesome. You gotta get to the rhythm stage first, all right? Hot wifing rhythm stage. Not up front, not up front when you're in the conditional love stage, which brings me to my favorite topic that has to do with this stage that I want to talk about, the six stages and what sex looks like. I'm talking in the bedroom sex, right? Because we all know that it looks different when you're when you're in the dating. Let's say, like, let's say you decide to have pre-premarital sex, which many of us do, and you're dating, you start having sex then, then you get into the honeymoon, it looks a certain way then. Then things get a little, you know, spicy in the bad way. It looks like something then, then the rhythm stage. That's when people come see me and they're like, we aren't having exciting sex anymore. Maybe, maybe not. No, what I wanna, I want to, I want you to kind of walk me through the stages and what sex kind of looks like. So people might be able to see themselves in these stages through their bedroom activities.

From Power Struggle To Stability

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah. So what you're gonna see actually, like if you look at the data on it, in the dating and honeymoon stage, couples are usually having more sex and more intimacy. And especially more insecurely attached couples. There's the spice, the novelty, the excitement, the just newness of everything, the getting to know somebody, the spark is there. We have the elevated neurochemicals that we talked about, all of that. Then the power struggle stage, there's more resentment, there's more miscommunications. We drop the mask. Sometimes that can feel confronting because somebody's like, oh, wait, but you like to do all these things before, and now that's shifting or changing. And so people end up taking that personally. But then we have these two paths. Path one is securely attached people learn to navigate and work through those things, and it truly brings them closer together, which allows their degree of intimacy to be quite sustained. So what's really interesting, if you actually talk to a lot of securely attached people, they report in relationships feeling like post-power struggle stage, they're still usually having sex on average twice a week. And that's what the data is showing us, and they report enjoying and feeling fulfilled in the sexual activity that they're having twice a week. If you look at the other 50% of the population who's insecurely attached, they are the ones that when, because really physical intimacy and emotional intimacy, they really do go hand in hand. They're really hard to peel apart. What ends up happening is in the power struggle stage, you have a couple. And if they can't learn to navigate conflict, the mask drops. We're in that adjustment phase, we're we're used to somebody, we feel distant, we don't know how to navigate that distance. So, in place of that distance, become more and more walls of resentment. If you don't know how to communicate about your needs when it comes to sex and intimacy, if you don't know how to talk through problems emotionally and you resent your partner, all of these things are creating distance. And then we actually see an insecurely attached people, their sky their sex life decline massively to the point where they can be in a relationship, they don't have sex for months at a time. And they're still trying to make the relationship work. And so really it's a function of do you know how to talk through these things? Do you know how to communicate? I'm a big believer that around all needs, whether it's emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, we should be able to talk about our needs around sex, around anything as easily as we're like, oh, hey, can you pass me the bottle of water? Like it should be something that if you're doing a work, you're able to talk about openly, you're able to share with each other. And then you're bonding more deeply because somebody knows you. They really know you in your inner world. They know emotionally what lights you up, emotionally what your pain points are and how to support you physically and sexually, what lights you up and what you need and how to support you and how to make you feel connected. And so all of these things, if we can really air them and talk about them and be open and vulnerable about them, you actually see people sustain a really healthy sex life after the power struggle stage. It's when that's not there that then now people feel confused and frustrated and they don't know how to talk it through or talk it out. And now we have these challenges, and now we see their sex life really decline.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

So here's my question. You're going along in your relationship, you make it through, you know, dating, which is fun. And then you're going along and you make it through the honeymoon, which is great. And then you get into the power power story. And and let me be clear, this person has, you know, they're they're not securely attached, but somehow most of us, we muscle through it, right? We muscle through it. We make even muscle through the power struggle. But let's say one day we wake up and and we're like, I'm still in this relationship. I'm muscling through it. I don't see myself exiting, but I'm miserable. Is there a way, regardless of what stage you are in, to start doing the work to heal that attachment wound and therefore alter the relationship you're in, hopefully in a positive way? Or is this whole relationship now based on and the success of that relationship based on an insecure attachment?

Sex Across The Six Stages

SPEAKER_01 46:34

So I will say that when I would see couples, I used to run a practice before we went into all of our online. programs and and when I would see couples, they would come into my office on day one. And the number one thing I cared about, the number one thing, I didn't care how much trauma you had. I didn't care how deep your wounds were. I didn't care what attachment style you were and what attachment style pairing you had in your relationship. I was like, are both people here to do the work? That's the number one thing. Because if one person does the work alone and they do all this growth and healing, they're going to outgrow their partner or they're going to be like, okay, this isn't fair. I'm carrying the whole emotional burden and load of the relationship. The work doesn't have to look the same all the time. It doesn't have to be like one person reading the books and doing the courses and rewiring their brains and the other person like also doing the exact same thing. Of course it's great when couples do that work together, but it can really be that one person learns to work through their core wounds, learns to talk openly about those core wounds and their needs. And there's really five pillars that take people through of healing. So pillar number one is you rewire those core wounds. So those fears of being trapped, helpless, powerless that cause you to pull away or the fears of being abandoned, rejected alone that cause you to cling on too tightly, or the fears of being betrayed or unworthy that cause you to feel like you're hot and cold and can't decide like those core wounds that we found in each attachment cell from an integrated attachment that you point to you, you can heal those. You can rewire those. It takes 21 days of repetition and emotion to feed your brain the other side of these things. There's a little exercise we have for how to do that. That's a solvable problem. That's one of the first things where you're like, oh, relationships don't have to feel so anxiety producing or frustrating or confusing or have to have all this resentment because my brain's not bringing that baggage into all of the scenarios at that point. That's like tremendously rewarding and freeing. That's number one. Number two, you actually have to learn to meet your own needs like we talked about and then to regulate your nervous system. Once we've done that inner work, now we bring that work into our relationship. And what that looks like is communication and boundaries. And that's actually what deepens intimacy in a relationship because if we're able to say like hey here's what I need now that you know your needs and and now that you're meeting them halfway so you can actually receive them from somebody properly as well. It's part of your subconscious comfort zone now. Now that you're not so triggered and dysregulated. So now you can actually be vulnerable and be comfortable in your vulnerability and share things. Now we start actually being able to know oh my partner gets upset when when this happens. Okay, I'll be mindful of that. I'll look out for them. Or if I see somebody do that thing to them, I'll go support them and check in on them. Once we start learning to navigate those things more deeply, then we foster way more emotional intimacy, way more physical intimacy because imagine you can just completely talk about your preferences when it comes to physical intimacy and sex and you can fully hear and support your partner and theirs like of course that increases that sense of physical closeness. And now you move out of the power circle stage because you've done that. Then we can build in new habits in the rhythm stage like let's try still try new things or or go to a you know novelty can exist in many, many forms. It can be like road trips or whatever it is, but this spark that keeps things exciting together. And then once we've built those things in, we end up having, as the data shows, securely attached people way healthier relationships romantically, way better connection emotionally and real a really healthy sex life for the long term. And so when we can do those things, that's what we're building and creating with each other. And then you also don't have to feel like relationships are so turbulent or confusing. You can actually feel settled and safe in them in a way where safety doesn't have to be a substitute. It's not like mutually exclusive to novelty and excitement and passion. They can both be there in healthy ways.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

You've got your roadmap I love it before we go I would love for you I'm going to do a little something different with our takeaways from this episode but maybe if you could give my listeners tips for each stage whether they're in front from dating to the ultimate bliss little tips that they maybe should think about if they've identified that they're in that stage or think they might be or they're going to start dating and going through them. Here's a tip for each stage to keep things moving flowing developing well or to get out to get some sometimes you got to get the fuck out.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Take it from me certain stage what are your tips for them okay so first stage dating stage I would say know what you want and vet accordingly. So that what that means is every time you go on a date don't sit down on date one and as if you have got like a job interview and there's like my 21 needs in a relationship and here's the checklist like don't do that. Know your non-negotiables know your needs and your preferences have a good idea and every date ask one to two meaningful questions. So you can find out is this person going to do that? If if your big need in a relationship is like hey I want somebody who is willing to talk through conflict ask that on date number two or three bring it up you know talk about a time that they were maybe in a a conflict with a past boss or an ex or or a relationship and and like ask oh and what did you do? How did you approach that? Like learn get the information okay that's number one that props early because when you do you avoid the heartache later on and you end up putting yourself in a position where you're much more likely to be with the right person. Second stage honeymoon stage um communicate your needs early okay so once we're in a relationship with somebody of some sort we want to start talking you don't have to be like I need from you to call me three times a day. It doesn't have to be like that but you can say like oh I really love consistency in a relationship. That's something that really lights me up that's really important to me. Start telling people the things that are meaningful to you so you give them an opportunity to know you. Because if we people please too much in the honeymoon stage, it's like a further fall from grace when we take off the mask in the power struggle stage. So communicate early it goes a long way. And we're more receptive to hearing it in the honeymoon stage as well. Power struggle stage, learn vulnerability. If we can't learn vulnerable open communication, we'll always get stuck there and we'll just stay in that stage forever. And also notice like what are the things that trigger you in the relationship? It's usually that somebody's expressing a very opposing trait and learn to meet each other halfway. Okay. So those are like very easy things to practice. Well they're easy easily described it's vulnerable to practice them but it's really powerful work. Then when we get into the rhythm stage that's where we want to build in these these novel things into this part of the relationship. We found our footing we've deepened the bond we're more intimately connected and let's like have things that bring a spark into our lives or relationships. And it can be anything from like trying a new hobby or going to a new place to trying new things sexually like whatever it is we want to be building that in in that rhythm stage. Then in the devotion or commitment stage we want to be having healthy conversations about our future and what we want to build and what we want to create together. And that ultimately brings us to the blessed stage in which at that point we're really just enjoying each other's company. We found our footing we're intimately connected emotionally physically in all the ways and statistically people are extremely unlikely to break up in the stage because their needs are deeply met and they deeply understand one another sounds like a little bit like a video game.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

You got to make the different levels exactly that's what was going on in my mind as I was listening. Those are great great tips. What a great just little guidebook for you guys. If you just want to like cut that part of this conversation and take it with you that's going to give you a lot of helpful information because right now we need a whole lot more love and healthy relationships in this world for sure. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I would love it if you would share all of your information with my listeners because listeners if you are looking for someone to work with or for resources Tys a fantastic resource for navigating your attachment style issues and relationship adventures. So can you tell them where they can find you definitely thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

So I'm at personaldevelopmentschool.com people can take a free attachment quiz and like get an in-depth report about themselves and their wounds and their pain points and how to start navigating and healing them. I also put daily content on YouTube which is tai skibson-personal development school and um I am on Instagram which is at the personal development school and just thank you so so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

I really enjoyed chatting and sharing and just touching face with you. Yeah this was a great conversation and friends I want to remind you again that you can now sign up to subscribe to my exclusive content which is going to be giving you more helpful tips and information guides that are exclusive to subscribers. That's extra information outside of this podcast. Also make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you can be part of more conversations like this one with experts that know so much about relationships, sex and intimacy, all the things that are going to heal this world and we're talking about all these things right here. Thank you again Tys for joining me today this was a fantastic conversation I really appreciate so much for having me it was so fun to chat and my listeners I'll see you in the locker room cheers