The Phase of Relationships Nobody Talks About (But We All Need to Know About)

What if the fighting, the triggering, and the distance you're feeling in your relationship aren't signs that something is wrong, but signs that something important is trying to surface?

In this solo episode, I'm diving deep into one of the most misunderstood phases of relationships: the power struggle. It's the phase that follows the honeymoon, and it's the one that ends more relationships than it should. Because most people don't know it has a name, don't know why it happens, and don't know that it's actually one of the most transformative portals available to us if we know how to use it.

This episode is for you if you're 8-12 months into a new relationship and suddenly feeling more triggered, more reactive, or questioning whether you chose the right person. It's also for anyone who keeps repeating the same dynamic across relationships and wants to understand why.

I'm sharing real client examples, the frameworks I use in my work, and my own personal story of moving through the power struggle phase in my relationship.

In this episode:

• What the power struggle phase is and why it follows the honeymoon
• Why getting triggered is a sign the relationship is deepening, not falling apart
• How your partner becomes your adult attachment figure and what that activates in you
• Why we attract partners who trigger our deepest wounds
• Why so many couples break up or get stuck in this phase forever
• The U-turn: how to redirect attention inward instead of fixating on your partner
• What conscious love looks like on the other side
• My personal story of navigating the anxious avoidant dynamic in my own relationship

Key takeaways:

• The power struggle phase is a completely normal part of the relationship arc
• You're not just reacting to your partner, you're reacting to something much older
• We unconsciously attract partners who mirror our unresolved childhood wounds
• Leaving doesn't solve it. Until the wound is addressed, a version of the same dynamic will keep showing up
• The power struggle is a portal, not a dead end

Reflection question from this episode: When you're triggered in your relationship, what are you doing to get your needs met that might actually be perpetuating disconnection with your partner?

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Relational Alchemy, a podcast exploring how the patterns we live out in love, relationships, and everyday life hold the keys to our deepest healing. I'm Lindsay Bourne, a relationship and couples coach, and my hope is that each episode offers you insight, perspective, and a grounded sense of direction for the shifts you're ready to make in your own life and relationships. Shifts that move you out of fear or survival and into greater expansion, connection, and possibility. This is a space for learning how our most tender pain can be alchemized into our greatest source of growth and transformation. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Relational Alchemy. Today I am excited to be bringing you my first solo episode. And just to have the opportunity and the format to really deep dive into a topic. And today's topic I am so excited about. It is a topic that is really near and dear to my heart. It lies at the center of my work with couples and individuals. It has become my niche in coaching. And it's a topic that I think is really misunderstood and a topic I think we could all use a lot more understanding, education, and awareness on. And so one of my missions as a coach is to bring some of this knowledge more to the forefront and really just help more people understand it. So today's episode is titled The Phase of Relationships That Nobody Talks About, but we all need to know about. So if you are around eight to 12 months into a new relationship and you're suddenly feeling more triggered, more reactive, questioning whether you've chosen the right person or if you guys are compatible anymore, questioning yourself, shaming yourself for your reactions or just the activation that's happening in you, then this episode is really for you. This is a phase of relationships that is so normal and so universal, yet it's rarely talked about or normalized. And it's called the power struggle phase of relationships. And so I remember learning and first hearing about the power struggle phase of relationships when I was in grad school. And I got so fascinated by it. I went on so many rabbit holes learning about it. And it really even changed the course of my focus. I went into grad school wanting to support veterans with psychedelic therapy. And I left wanting to support couples in this really specific phase of their relationship because I feel so passionate about it and just have this real nagging feeling of more people need to know about this. And I was amazed that it was my first time hearing about it, learning about it, et cetera. And I was even posting about it on Instagram this past week. And I had a friend DM me and say, What the fuck? This is normal. Why doesn't anyone talk about this? And I thought it really summed up my experience really well. And I find also every time I post simple things on Instagram like, your partner is gonna trigger the shit out of you. The posts do so well. And it just further reinforces my belief that people just don't know enough about what happens during intimacy and why. So I am on a mission to talk about it, to normalize it, and to really support couples and individuals through it. And before we get into the episode more, I want to just share a little bit about why I'm so passionate about this topic. I really believe that relationships are our most meaningful experiences in life. We all want healthy, successful, harmonious relationships. Yet we're not taught how activating and confronting and triggering they can be. And we're also not taught that they're actually designed to bring all of our unprocessed pain and unmet childhood needs to the surface. And then we're definitely not given the tools how to navigate when all of that gets stirred up in relationships. So this episode is about the power struggle phase of relationships. So basically, when things start to get real in relationship. And I hope you can all relate to this experience, but I'm gonna really break it down in this episode. So I'm gonna talk about what it is, why it happens, why we attract partners that trigger us in such specific ways, why many couples don't actually make it through the power struggle phase, and then what becomes possible when they do. And so I'm gonna be weaving in some real examples from clients I've worked with, and I'm also gonna weave in my own story at the end just to make it really tangible, really relatable, and to really ground some of the theories that I'm sharing with you. So, first, we cannot actually really talk about the power struggle phase until we back it up and talk about the phase that comes right before the power struggle phase. And that is the honeymoon phase. So the honeymoon phase, I hope and I believe many of you probably know what this feels like and have experienced it. And even if you haven't, you've probably seen it portrayed in movies and books. It's when you are newly dating, you are so excited about this person. Dopamine is high, you have these rose-colored lenses on for the person and sometimes even the whole world. Everything feels easy and easeful and electric. The sex is amazing, the physical connection is really strong, and you just want more and more and more. It's often been compared to the feeling of being addicted to a drug or being high on a drug. And there's literal chemical reactions happening in your brain and hormones that make it feel that way. It's real, it's beautiful, and I think we all wish it could last forever, but it is temporary by design. And then a shift happens. So differences start to surface, triggers start to emerge. Maybe you're getting into your first conflicts, or maybe you're kind of getting in the same conflict over and over again. Maybe there starts to feel like this distance you can't really explain. And all of a sudden, it's like the juiciness, the richness of the honeymoon phase is really either fading away or it's like kind of starkly gone. And then people start to make meaning about this because we don't really know that next comes the power struggle phase. So a lot of times people make meaning: did I choose wrong? Are we incompatible? Is something wrong with us? Is something wrong with me? I thought I healed these wounds, I thought I was over this thing, et cetera, et cetera. And this is called the power struggle phase of relationships, and it is completely normal part of the relationship journey. It is par for the course, and it's actually a really, really powerful and transformative phase of relationships if you can use it as such. So a lot of times when people start to get triggered or they start to have all these big feelings or the honeymoon is worn off, people just think, oh, we're incompatible. Oh, this is actually not gonna work. And a lot of people actually end up breaking up during the power struggle phase. And it's such a bummer to me because the power struggle phase is actually such an important part of intimacy and relationships. And I'm gonna get into all of that, but I just want to say it is a really, really normal part of the relationship arc. And if you know what to expect and also how to use what comes up during it, you will be 99% more successful in your relationships. So, what is actually happening during the power struggle phase of relationships and why? So when we attach deeply to someone, they stop being just a partner and they actually become our adult attachment figure. It's just how our nervous system, how our psyches, how we are designed. And so when we start to get really triggered by our partner, this is actually a sign that the relationship is really deepening. It's not a sign that it's falling apart. So all of a sudden, because this person has now become your adult attachment figure. So when I say adult attachment figure, when we are young and we're kids, we attach to our early caregivers and they meet our needs and they help our survive. And then as we grow up, we don't depend on them anymore. Now we have romantic relationships where we actually start to attach to them and depend on them. All of a sudden, now you are projecting all of your unmet emotional needs from childhood onto your partner. So if you didn't feel prioritized by your mom growing up, you might start to feel unprioritized by your partner. If your dad made you feel not enough or like love was conditional, all of a sudden your not enough wound will come up and you'll start feeling like you need to prove yourself. There's so many different ways this could work. Abandonment is a really big one. If you felt abandoned or were abandoned by an early caregiver when you were younger, you might have a really deep fear of abandonment. And so maybe you're sensing your partner's pulling away a little bit, or maybe your partner isn't communicating as eagerly or as much as they used to when you first started dating. And your system might start to perceive that they are abandoning you like your dad did when you were a child. And so, again, this could look so many different ways. Those are just a couple examples. All of a sudden, your oldest, most unresolved attachment needs start to resurface. So you're not just reacting to what they did, you're reacting to what it feels like in your body when someone who matters to you so much doesn't show up in the way that you need. It is going to trigger the exact places in you where your parents did not show up for you in the way that you needed when you were younger. And these feelings, so these attachment wounds. So attachment wounds are basically a term for any time you were wounded in relationship with one of your early caregivers growing up. So this would look like mom or dad, a grandparent. It depends who you were really closely raised from in your first seven or so years of life. And everyone has attachment wounding. Everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum because no one has a perfect childhood. Even if you had an amazing childhood, there's some ways in which you were missed as a child. You were made to feel things maybe you shouldn't have been made to feel. There's just some way in which you have some sort of wounding from childhood. And when we're not met in childhood and we have these attachment wounds, we stuff them down in our system. We stuff them into our body, we stuff them down because we can't stay mad at our caregivers when we're really young, because we depend on our parents for our survival when we're kids. So even if they hurt us, abandon us, harm us, abuse us, gaslight us, et cetera, we still will stay attached to them because we depend on them for our survival. And what we do with any of that pain that they've caused us is we shove it into the bottom of the basement, basically, of our bodies and our psyches. And that pain just stays there, almost crystallized in time. And you develop defenses around them to not feel that pain, because that pain when you're a child is deemed too overwhelming or too painful to feel. So you shove it all down and you just keep it moving because you have to stay attached to your parents. So now, fast forward, and you're 30 and you're in a serious relationship, honeymoon phase is worn off, you're now in the power struggle phase, and you are now getting triggered. This deep childhood pain that has been buried away in you is now getting triggered by your partner in whatever way that looks. And so these feelings that get brought up during the power struggle phase, they are tender, they are young, they are raw and unprocessed. And that's why it can feel so like, whoa, what is happening to me? And you can sort of feel that these feelings have lived in you long before this relationship. So your partner all of a sudden becomes a mirror to all of your past pain, but especially your childhood pain. Because childhood is where we experience attachment. And when you're in a romantic relationship as an adult, that's where you experience attachment again. So attachment is the experience that threads this pain together. And it's not a flaw, it's just really how intimacy works. Intimacy is designed to bring all of our unprocessed pain to the surface so that we can face it and heal it. And how cool and crazy is that? I mean, it really sucks when it's happening, all of our shit getting activated in front of this person that we're still trying to win over, or we're still trying to be hot and sexy for, and really desirable and really cool, or whatever you want to be to your partner. And all of your childhood shit is getting activated. Your inner child is coming out, you're now acting, feeling, and thinking as if you're six years old and you were just abandoned by your dad. Like it just a lot comes up and it's really difficult to be with, and it's really difficult to be witnessed in as well. But the coolest part about all of it is that it is coming to the surface so that you can really look at it and heal it. Yet none of us are taught this. We're not taught how triggering relationships are, how confronting they are, or how to navigate what they bring up in us. And that is why I feel really passionate about working with individuals and couples around this. It's just a really rich time because literally everything in you is just on display all of a sudden, which is not a fun experience when you're in a new relationship. So I want to give you a real example of what this actually looks like. So I worked with a couple once and they were really stuck in this power struggle phase of relationships. So the woman was constantly feeling let down by her partner, who is a man, and like he could never get it right. And every time she felt let down by him, what came up for her was this deeper feeling of not being enough, not being seen, and of really being alone. And when we dug into it, it really mirrored almost exactly what she had felt as a child. This experience of never really being fully met by her caregivers. And then on his side, every time she expressed disappointment, he felt like he couldn't do anything right. He also had a deep shame response and a feeling of being fundamentally incapable of meeting her needs. And for him, that went straight back to growing up with a mother who was very controlling and always made him feel like he was getting it wrong. Always sort of micromanaging him. So you have these two people whose core wounds are perfectly locking into each other. She's re-experiencing the feeling that no one will ever really show up for her. And he's re-experiencing the feeling that he'll never be enough or never get it right. So they're both feeling deep shame and deep not enoughness. But the ways that they're showing up to the relationship are perpetuating that feeling in one another, even though they're both deeply feeling it themselves, which is a very common experience in couples' work. And neither of them is doing it on purpose. It is all subconscious. And it's just what intimacy does. It finds the wounds, it locks in. Two people lock into each other's core wounds perfectly, and it brings it to the surface and it keeps you fighting about the dishes or the conversation in the car or the thing that happened at the party. And it keeps you really disconnected from the actual deeper dynamic playing out that perfectly mirrors both of your attachment wounds. It's sort of this idea of when I feel this, I do this. And then when I do that, my partner feels this. And when my partner feels this, he does that. And when he does that, I feel that it's just this ongoing cycle and loop of me feeling triggered, doing something that triggers you, and then you're triggered, and then you do something that triggers me. And it's just like this loop that just keeps going. So I love really helping people get to the root of what is the cycle, why, and how can we start to shift it. So something I want to elaborate on is this idea that not only do our partners trigger all of our unresolved stuff from our past, but we actually subconsciously attract partners who trigger those exact places in us that are unresolved. And it's not random, it's not bad luck, you're not cursed, and it's not a pattern anyone is consciously choosing. We are relational attachment-based creatures, which means all of our deepest wounding is relational. And so when we're wounded in relationships when we're younger, we heal through relationships. So we are unconsciously drawn to partners who feel familiar at a nervous system level. And the important thing to know is familiar does not always mean good. It does not always mean safe. It just means known. So what's known is basically what we experience in our earliest attachment relationships, those zero to seven years with whoever you are most closely attached to. So if you grew up with a caregiver who is emotionally unavailable, you will feel a pull toward partners who are emotionally unavailable. Not because you want to suffer, but because that dynamic really feels like home in your body. And this is really the repetition compulsion at work. So the repetition compulsion is a concept from psychoanalysis that basically says our psyche is wired to keep repeating the same emotional experiences from our past, not because we're broken or cursed, but because it's actually trying to resolve them. It's like your unconscious keeps putting you in the same situation over and over again, hoping that this time you'll finally get a different outcome. This time you'll finally feel seen, you'll finally feel loved or enough. And so you keep attracting the same dynamic, the same wound, the same feeling and different people until you can actually turn toward it and do the deeper work of healing it at the root. And it's so crazy because this is how our patterns form. And it's like the psyche is like, hello. It's like it's sending you a message through these repeated experiences, which is so cool and so crazy to me. And it further supports my belief that everything in our external reality is a reflection of our unconscious, what is still unresolved in our unconscious. So basically, you are trying to heal your original attachment wounds through your current relationship. And that's why the power struggle feels so charged. You're not just fighting with your partner, you're up against something that goes back a really long time ago in your body and your psyche. And it's also why leaving and starting over doesn't solve it. Who has had the experience of getting into a relationship? All your shit comes up, you think it's because you're incompatible, it's the wrong relationship, you leave, you get into the next relationship, and there it all is again. It's because until these wounds are actually addressed, a version of the same dynamic will keep showing up in your next relationship. So that's why it's so important to not turn a blind eye to what is getting activated in you within a relationship. Because if you just turn away, you are just gonna have to face that again in your next relationship. So the invitation here is not to pathologize who you're attracted to, but just to get curious. What does this person bring up in me? And what does this tell me about what still needs attention within me? And there's a great couples therapist. He has been around for a long time. His name is Harville Hendricks. He is also a writer and a speaker, and he has a really simple framework that you can use if you're trying to understand what your own version of this is. And so what he has people do is he asks them, who did you have a more difficult relationship with growing up? Mom, dad, or a certain caregiver? And then what were you made to feel in that dynamic? So maybe you were made to feel rejected. Maybe you were made to feel not enough. Maybe you were made to feel like you were abandoned, et cetera. It could look really different for everyone. And then how is that same dynamic or feeling getting activated in your current relationship? And so those are a couple reflection questions to really sit with. You could do that on your own, you can do that with your partner. It's really powerful to do it with your partner because you can each take turns answering that question. And then you can really look at how are both of these dynamics that we had in our childhoods now sort of locking in and getting activated with each other, which is really where this work just gets mind-blowing, how specific it is when our childhood wounds really just lock in together with each other's. So when you experience the power struggle phase of relationships, oftentimes couples will fall into one of two paths. One path is that they'll break up. They won't know, they don't have the understanding or awareness or knowledge that what's happening, what's getting triggered, the conflicts, whatever's emerging between them, they're just like, oh, this is a sign of incompatibility. This is not going to work. We're fighting, we're triggered. I don't feel good anymore. I don't feel safe anymore. We got to go our separate ways. That either happens or a lot of times people will actually just stay stuck in the power struggle phase forever or for a really long time. Because unlike the honeymoon phase, it doesn't just naturally end. It ends because you both do the really deep work of looking at your own shit and moving through it. But I'm going to get to that in a second. But a lot of times couples will stay just stuck in the power struggle phase forever. So that means same conflict, the same cycles of conflict, just getting into a really deeply intense dynamic, triggering each other, fighting, getting reactive. Like how common does that sound for an experience of a relationship? Like pretty common. It's not really what's talked about in, you know, it's not really what's shown on like the big screen. And it's not always what people talk about in their day-to-day with their relationships. But trust me, that's a very common experience, especially doing couples' work. It's like most people are just forever in the power struggle phase of just activating each other, not really knowing why, not knowing how connected it is to all their past shit, and just staying in the muck forever. And it's like the muck varies to different degrees. So some people, it might not be that bad. So that's like they're okay with it. But sometimes it's pretty extreme and they've just normalized that as that's just what it's like to be in this relationship. And I really want to offer another way, a third path, which is can you use the power struggle as a deeply transformative portal? And of course, I'm never talking about couples who are truly incompatible and they just need to go their separate ways, or there's a lack of alignment, or where any type of harm or abuse is present. So I'm I'm not saying that this is all couples should stay together, but I'm really just speaking to couples that are truly aligned and compatible and truly committed to making it work, but they're just really rubbing up against each other's core wounds. And I have shared this on social media, but I am really in my work trying to shift the culture around couples coaching. I would say today it's still a bit stigmatized. It's still a bit like this is the last ditch effort. It's still like, oh, we're really in trouble if we're seeking out couples coaching. But I'm really trying to change the culture around that. I really think that couples should seek couples coaching during the power struggle phase of relationships because it is such a beautiful time to really deepen intimacy and understanding of each other. So when you do couples coaching in the power struggle phase, you get to know each other's triggers, each other's core wounds, their deepest fears and insecurities, their limiting beliefs, everything that's unresolved in them that they're projecting on you, and vice versa, everything unresolved in you that you're projecting on them. And it gives you just a beautiful blueprint, really, of how to move through this relationship in a way that deeply supports and honors each other and how to prevent getting deeply entrenched in these dynamics or caught in cycles of conflict or constantly triggering each other. It really sets a beautiful foundation for how the course of your relationship will go. So the invitation inside the power struggle, I love talking about the power struggle for many reasons, but this is one of my favorite reasons to talk about it, is because it is a portal and it is not a dead end. And I want to reframe that for everyone. And I want to say it again. The power struggle is a beautiful, transformative portal, if you let it be. And it is not necessarily a dead end. And this is gonna be an unconventional thing to say. But even if this relationship doesn't last, the healing that you do in this phase of the relationship, it's so powerful and transformative, and it will stay with you into your next relationship. So this idea that I said earlier, when we don't look at what relationships activate in us, we will just carry those wounds into the next relationship. So using what comes up in the power struggle as a roadmap back to all of the unresolved, unhealed parts in you is such a beautiful practice and such worthwhile work, no matter if you stay with this person another year, another 10 years, or forever. And what it is really asking of you is to turn inward instead of outward. So this is a phrase called the U-turn, which is a common phrase in IFIO, which is basically IFS for couples therapy. And one of the most common experiences when we are triggered in relationship is we immediately point the finger at the partner and we blame them. We make it their fault. We kind of fixate on what they're doing wrong. And while that can be your experience of your partner, it is not productive at all to fixate on that. First of all, you can't control the person. And second of all, it ignores everything happening inside of you, which is the only thing you can control. So the U-turn has you take the finger and point it back at yourself. And every time you are triggered by your partner, instead of again fixating, they should have texted me back sooner, they should have done this, they should have done that, the dishes, the laundry. It's what is this bringing up in me? Where am I feeling this in my body? Okay, it's a tightness in my chest. What is the story I'm telling myself? He doesn't care about me. Okay, when have I felt in my life that someone doesn't care about me? Oh shit. That makes me think of my dad. So it's like you are using the activation that is coming up, and you are just redirecting the attention inward instead of at your partner. And this would be a whole nother episode of really how to use the power struggle to really heal and look at your own shit. But I just want to tell you that the invitation inside the power struggle is to let it reveal what it's trying to reveal in you, basically what is still unresolved and unhealed in you. And on the other side of the power struggle phase is a phase of love called conscious love. And this is like the juicy reward for making it through the power struggle phase. You're aware of each other's triggers, you deeply understand the dynamic, which may never fully go away, but you really understand it and you know how to move within it. You know how to come back to each other, you know how to repair, you know how to take radical responsibility for your own triggers and your own shit. And rupture doesn't mean the end, and it isn't so threatening or so dangerous. You really see it as a normal, healthy part of intimacy. Relationships are always going to have a level of rupture. It's really how you repair. Conscious love, I'm not trying to make it seem like some fairy tale. It's definitely not like the honeymoon phase coming back by any means, but it is just it's two people that are more healed, more integrated, and able to connect on such a deeper level. When you're in the power struggle phase, you are often fighting and relating to each other from your inner child, and often relating to each other through blame, defensiveness, anger, shutdown, avoidance, anxious attachment, et cetera. You're just relating through such different parts. Conscious love is like, oh my gosh, we have worked through so many layers together that now we just get to connect from a really deep soul place. And it's not like any of these things are not going to come up again, but it's just such a deeper, more conscious love. I mean, it's really what the title says. And it means that you're both doing your own work and you also know how to stay connected while doing. So I want to give an example of this concept of the U-turn. So going back to that couple I mentioned earlier, it's tempting for us to focus on the other person. So the woman in the couple, she just wanted him to get things right, you know, to ask her how her day was in the exact right way, to get her food order in the exact right way, to apologize in the exact right way, to bring up vulnerable conversations in the exact right way. And if he could just get these things right, then she would feel okay. She would feel enough. But really, that wound is hers to tend to. Anytime we are trying to outsource our healing to someone else, aka our partner. So if he could show up in the exact way that I need him to, I will feel safe and okay. It's really a losing game because, first of all, they are not something we can control. And we are placing our anchor of safety in someone else's hands. And it's just an unrealistic ask of someone to know how to perfectly show up for you in each moment. And it also becomes a moving goalpost. Like your partner is never gonna get it perfectly right 100% of the time. And even if he does for a couple days in a row, it'll be temporary until the next thing happens. And so, what is more realistic? Making your partner do everything perfectly so that you're never triggered. Or when you're triggered, tend to what is coming up in you and getting triggered in you rather than projecting it all over him. And so, again, the invitation here is the U-turn. What unresolved childhood wounds and limiting beliefs is springing up in me? And how can I tend to them instead of asking and expecting my partner to heal something in me that hasn't been healed in myself? Can I take radical responsibility for my own part in this dynamic for my own wounds and how I'm projecting them onto you? So that is your job when you're triggered in relationship. It's not to fixate on your partner and what they could be doing differently or why they're wrong. It is to turn the finger back at yourself and ask what needs tending in me. So in the conscious love phase of relationships, the relationship stops being a place where wounds get activated and becomes a place where they actually heal. The unprocessed pain, the old beliefs about love and intimacy, the parts never got what they needed, all of it becomes workable. And when we are wounded in relationships, we heal in relationships. And so the arc of relationships is the honeymoon phase, the power struggle phase, and then the conscious love phase. And that is the journey. And it's available to every couple who are really willing to do the hard work. But it is hard, it is hard stuff to look at. Like I said earlier, it's tender, it's raw, it's really painful stuff. And it's hard to do it when being witnessed by someone. Like it's it's really hard to do in relationship with someone. But if you don't face this stuff in you, it will just continue to hold you back from the relationships and connections that you probably desire. And so the last thing I'm gonna do is tie in my personal story with it. And I want to share a little bit of my story and how the power struggle phase has come up in my own relationship, just to give you another example of how this can really show up in relationships and to just share with you all that I have so been there before and it is painful and it's hard. And it is through going through it that I am able to now really teach this work to you all. And so my partner and I started off as long distance. And so he was in Cleveland and I was in the Bay Area, and I had had a partner before him where he was super boundaried, we were non-serious, we were non-committal. That's a whole nother story for another time. And I often just wanted more and more connection from him, and I couldn't get it because of our boundaries and the relationship structure. And so then when I met my current partner, he was just so much more available for connection. And I was so excited about it. It just felt so good and so nourishing. And it felt like at first he was healing all of these parts of me that felt sort of rejected or felt ashamed in my last relationship. And this is often what can happen in the honeymoon phase. It's just like, oh my gosh, this person's healing all of my wounds until they don't, and that feeling runs out. And that is what happened in my relationship. So all of a sudden, you know, we were talking and connecting, and I just had an insatiable desire to keep connecting and keep talking more and more and more. And after around a year in, he started needing some of his time back. He started needing to set some boundaries and needed to start saying no. And it brought up a lot in me. And it brought up a lot of my childhood stuff around the word no and boundaries and feeling rejected and feeling abandoned and a lot of stuff. And so when he had to start saying no to me, it was like all of my shit was getting activated, my inner child, big reactions, big feelings, all of it, lots of anxious attachment coming out. And I felt really frustrated. And he also felt really frustrated by it. And the classic anxious avoided dance, he started pulling away. The more I wanted more, the more he wanted less and more space and more boundaries. And so we got into this dance of me coming forward and him going away, and then me coming forward and him going further away, and just feeling really upset, frustrated, disconnected. And we had a really powerful session with our couples therapist around this, and we understood how this was just rubbing into both of our childhood wounds. So when someone has to set a boundary with me or say no to me, based on stuff from my childhood, I feel rejected. I feel like they don't care about me. I just feel really bad about myself. And he, some of his childhood wounding and past wounding was around people don't respect his boundaries. And when people don't respect his boundaries, he feels like people don't care about him. He feels really alone, et cetera. And so it was so helpful to understand this. But I then had a solo session with our couples' therapists, and we were deep in this dynamic. And she asked me, How are you feeling? And I said, I'm feeling really like disconnected. I'm feeling really alone. I'm feeling really sad. And she said, you know, I deeply trust that that's actually how he's feeling too. And I was confused because I was like, Well, how could he be feeling that way? I'm trying to connect, I'm trying to talk more. I'm the one trying to make this happen. And she was like, you know, I actually think if you respect his boundaries and give him the space that he's trying to take, I think he'll actually feel better about coming towards and connecting with you. And he'll actually feel more cared for and more respected. And so we both had to honor each other's needs. And it was such a big unlock for me because I realized I thought I was trying to create connection between us, but because of my wounded parts, the way I was trying to create connection was actually perpetuating disconnection. And the same was true for him. He was trying to take care of his own needs, but the way he was doing it was perpetuating disconnection with me. And this is such a common experience in couples. And just think about it, it's two people whose core wounds, inner child, past pain, unprocessed pain is getting activated. They are just trying to meet their own needs, but in them trying to meet their own needs, they are actually perpetuating disconnection with their partner. And this is such a common experience with couples. So if that is an experience you're having with your partner, it is so normal. And you just have two people who are both trying to get their needs met and both trying to maintain connection, but doing it in ways that are actually creating more distance. And what's so powerful about this is that deep down, my partner and I were actually both experiencing the same thing. Sometimes I call this a shared wound or shared experience, but we both felt really alone. We both felt really uncared for. His strategy was to set boundaries and pull back. And my strategy was to pursue and ask for more. And both of those strategies were leaving us both feeling more and more disconnected from each other. So here is a question worth sitting with if you're trying to just parse out or think about what your own version of this is with your partner. When you're triggered in relationships, what are you doing to get your needs met that might actually be perpetuating disconnection with your partner? Because the answer to that question is usually where the real work lies. So for me, it was my inner child getting activated, feeling rejected, feeling abandoned. And I was trying to soothe that feeling in me by connecting and getting more attention from my partner. But that is me outsourcing my safety, my sense of okayness into the hands of my partner. But the real invitation for me was to do the U-turn back to me and ask myself, can I actually tend to these parts in me on my own and not make it my partner's problem to heal the things that are still unhealed in me? And so it's the U-turn. It's the U-turn back to self. So instead of trying to get your partner to do something so that you can feel better, it's what can you do to make yourself feel better? And how can you really tend to what needs tending to within? Because the more we can do that, the more interdependent we become with our partner, where we can rely on them, they can rely on us, but we're not seeking saving in them. We are not placing our anchor of safety in them. We are not projecting all of our shit onto them and then asking them to heal it perfectly for us. We are really taking care of our own side of the street, and they're taking care of their own side of the street, and then we can really have a beautiful connection from that place rather than from this place of grasping, clinging, and demanding things from our partner. So I hope that personal story helps you understand this concept more and what is really being asked of each person when you start to get into a power struggle or an anxious avoided dance or any sort of dynamic in which you know you're both hurting, but the way that you're trying to again get your needs met is actually creating more distance between the two of you. So if you are in the power struggle right now and it feels hard or confusing, or like maybe you chose wrong, or you don't know if you're compatible or you don't know how to move through it, just know that you are so not alone and this does not have to be a dead end. This is the heart of the work I do with couples and individuals. And I love nothing more than helping people move through this phase because it is difficult, it is confronting, and it will be like a roadmap back to all of your healing. And so if you are ready to dive in or you're just curious about what this work could look like for you or with you and your partner, everything is in the show notes to book a free consultation, to connect on Instagram, to get on my newsletter list. My DMs are always open on Instagram. And feel free to reach out and connect, to ask questions. I'd love to hear how this episode landed for you. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you for going on this deep dive with me. And I will see you next time. If this episode resonated with you, consider leaving a review, sharing it with a friend, or passing it along on your socials. It really helps the podcast reach new listeners each week. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a new episode.