In episode 76 Brad and Morgan discuss a new way to look at negative cycles.
If you haven’t yet listened to episode 3 called “Why Do We Fight and Avoid Difficult Topics” that episode will help you understand negative cycles.
You can check that out HERE: https://healingbrokentrust.com/podcast-blog/ep-3-why-do-we-fight-or-avoid-talking-about-the-affair
One of the first steps to healing is to get started. Listen to this and then join us for the Complete Healing Broken Trust Program
Has it been hard to break out of the negative feedback loop?
If you have listened to our podcast you are familiar with the patterns of interaction that keeps couples stuck in the healing process.
It's what makes communication so dang hard! And ultimately what makes healing together pretty impossible.
Yesterday I outlined the 4 crucial components to Healing Broken Trust completely.
Check out 31 Secrets to Healing Broken Trust Minicourse
Today let's talk about the Application stage of the puzzle.
The reason so many struggle to get out of the negative patterns of interaction AKA Negative Feedback Loop is because:
You need help taking the head knowledge and making it heart knowledge.
No other counselor, therapist, coach, program, book, or vacation can do this for you like we can.
But why not?
Simple, it's not taught in school.
Let me give an example...
I was speaking with a man the other day who said that his therapist told him that he needed to forgive his wife.
The therapist said he needed to write it down on a piece of paper and bury it in the backyard and never bring it up again.
Sadly this is common. Have you been told this before? How would that work for you?
The problem is, not only is it extremely dismissive of his feelings and needs, but it's going to make the underlying issues that caused the affair so much worse!
But bless the therapist's heart he was doing his best!
Frankly, you deserve better. So does everyone you love and ever will love because this is your whole life we're talking about here!!
Over the last 16 years we've worked with couples 1-on-1 and in workshops and have helped them actually heal.
We know what other helpers don't know.
We know that you can't do marriage work when trust is still broken....that means a vacation won't fix it.
We know how to heal your emotions so you can actually be present with your spouse so trust can be restored....boy it's hard to talk when you're upset.
We know how to give you long term results so you don't stay stuck in patterns that give you the same old results over and over.
There's so much more...
The point is you need the right person, with the right skills and knowledge, to help you apply the information you're learning.
And someone who knows how to get to the heart of the matter so you're not spinning your wheels wasting years of your life.
How we help...
2. You'll be able to immediately login and work through our couples master class and individual master class simultaneously.
3. Listen to a pre-recorded workshop and/or RSVP for a upcoming live workshop.
4. And join the live weekly group meetings
Transcript:
Brad: Let me just give you a little recap. Five types of negative cycles--I only want to focus on three of these. One is a complex cycle that usually involves someone who's survived some of trauma. And then the other cycle is when one person gets burned out, usually the one that has been pushing for things gets burned out.
And so, I'll explain that in a second. The three most basic types are the pursuer-distancer cycle--distancing is commonly known as withdrawing and so this is the most common cycle where you have a demanding spouse interacting with a withdrawing or distancing partner. And that pattern, the distancing or stonewalling position is shut down, non-responsive spouse.
And when they experience that, it's often a feeling of panic or aggression or anger where the pursuer says I'm going to make you respond to me. That's what the pursuer really want, is they want to get a response and sometimes when they don't get it, they force it. They want closeness and to feel important and needed.
Brad:
There's literally hundreds of things, thousands of things that you can do. It's just changing up the routine, doing new and different things. Obviously having children, they're great blessing, but don't let children and not having a babysitter keep you from doing new and exciting things and spicing up the romance that you guys have.
Morgan:
You are listening to Healing Broken Trust podcast with Brad and Morgan Robinson, where we talk about healing from affairs, infidelity, trust, and cheating in your relationship from the perspective of a professional marriage therapist and fair recovery expert. If you're wanting to heal your marriage, this podcast is for you, and we're officially on episode number 14 where we're talking about how do we rekindle romantic love after infidelity, and that's a very important question. So before I move on, I want to remind you that you can go to healing broken trust.com/episode 14, that's the number 14, and download your free resources to go along with this episode. It's going to really help you in expediting your change, so go to healing Broken trust.com/episode 14. And now let's go to our radio show recording of how to rekindle romantic love.
Brad:
Morgan, I want to move on to how to rekindle romantic love when it's lost. This is kind of related to a listener question that we had, so that's why I wanted to get into this.
Morgan:
Do you want me to read the question?
Brad:
Yeah.
Morgan:
So a person wrote in and they said, I've been listening to you talk about falling out of love. I've been married to my spouse for 20 years. I would like to know how to fall back into love with my spouse.
Brad:
Okay, that's a great question. Part of this listener is really, it's doing these things that we talked about last week on the show on how to fall out of love and thank you for contacting us, but there's also, even if you're married and you're not an affair on how to develop romantic love, well, this comes from Helen Fisher, her book, why We Love came out in 2004, and she's an anthropologist who has studied the brain and she has discovered that, and it's really simple. She has discovered that when we do new, exciting and different activities with our spouse, those exciting experiences enhances feelings of attraction, and so this is very important when we do new, exciting different experiences together. New and different is the key here.
Morgan:
Interesting.
Brad:
It enhances feelings of attraction, so when you do something with your spouse, that gives you a feeling of danger, it stimulates adrenaline, as Helen Fisher pointed out, makes us feel closer and more romantic with our spouse. So doing new, exciting and different activities elevates the level of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the chemical associated with romantic love, and research has pointed out that couples who do exciting general pumping activities as compared to less stimulating who do more normal activities
Morgan:
Get stuck
Brad:
In ways. Yeah, the routine, so people who do more adrenaline, exciting activities, they have increased feelings and more intense feelings of romantic love than those who just get stuck in their routines
Morgan:
And happiness. General happiness.
Brad:
Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you point that out. They have more just a general happiness, and so this can work even if you're the only one trying to work on the marriage. I had a lady come in occasionally. We see individuals who come in and we're happy with anybody who wants to work on the marriage. She was the only one that was able to, she took her husband to an exciting event and he had an affair and he was ready to leave. This helped them just spark that romantic love again and helped him to make up his mind that he wanted to stay. It doesn't have to be things that are expensive. It could be just trying a different restaurant, different part of town. It doesn't have to be things expensive,
Morgan:
Going to a new duck pond, which is something we like to do.
Brad:
Yeah, we like to go to duck ponds and feed the ducks bread in town. It's just simple. If you go to a gas station and get bread, it's four bucks. You learn that just so you know, just you know, if you go get a grocery store, it's cheaper, but it doesn't have to be expensive. When you're doing these new, exciting, different activities, it elevates the level of dopamine in your brain. Dopamine is the chemical associated with romantic love, and research is pointed out that couples who do that are happier, so this can work if you're the only one trying to work on the relationship, invite your spouse to join you in something risky and exciting. Maybe travel overnight or travel out of the country. Go bungee jumping, river rafting. Even trying a new restaurant doesn't have to be these big crazy things. Doesn't have, it doesn't have to be that at all. It could be just, let's try instead of watching tv, let's get out the board game. Doing something at the last minute, like going to a sports game or going to the movies at the last minute or swimming after the sun goes down.
Morgan:
Oh, that's fun.
Brad:
It's important to understand that anything rousing and unusual has the potential to trigger romantic love. Anything that gives you a feeling of new different that works. Anything that releases adrenaline that's exciting,
Brad:
Maybe
Brad:
A little bit dangerous, that also releases that, and that's also Morgan. Why when people are first in love, when people first meet, there's so much in love because everything's new and different and they go on dates. It's new experiences, new things that are different, and that's why also people usually when they're on vacation, they report that's probably their best times together.
Morgan:
It takes me back to our first date. It really does. Thinking about
Brad:
That,
Morgan:
Yeah,
Brad:
I remember that. It was supposed to last an hour and a half and it lasted 10 hours.
Morgan:
We
Brad:
Had a lot of fun.
Morgan:
We had a lot of random funness, so that was great,
Brad:
And so here's some other ideas. These are just ideas, just a handful. If you see something on the side of the road that's interesting, just pull off and go explore. You don't have anywhere to be, just go look at it. Going to the gun range together. Oh, that's fun. That's different and exciting.
Morgan:
Love to do that.
Brad:
Just dangerous. Swimming in the backyard at night. We talked about that, taking a last minute trip somewhere, and instead of going to a normal movie and a dinner, maybe just watching a movie in the backyard. Create your own little projector. Yeah,
Morgan:
Put a sheet
Brad:
Up. Put a sheet up. Yeah. There's literally hundreds of things, thousands of things that you can do. It's just changing up the routine, doing new and different things. Obviously having children, they're great blessing, but don't let children and not having a babysitter keep you from doing new and exciting things and spicing up the romance that you guys have.
Morgan:
Right?
Brad:
Part of this is if your spouse is falling out of love with you, let me say this, you don't necessarily have to intentionally be to fall back in love with you. What I mean is if you want them to fall in love with you, do not try to be overtly romantic.
Don't go have a candlelight dinner to music plane and try to create romance that way. Create romantic feeling, that romantic love feeling by just doing new and exciting things that it's a little bit more, it's not as in your face, it's not as obvious that you're trying to do that, but it's funner as well. So if you try to do something, you have these. It's more, I worked with a couple where the husband had fallen out of love and the wife was trying to recreate romantic love, and what this does is if you focus on, he was no longer in love with her.
Brad:
He
Brad:
Didn't want to be married to her. She was trying to get him to love her back, and so she wanted to take him to romantic dinner, and all that does is if you take somebody to romantic dinner that doesn't love you and that's wanting to leave you and you take 'em to romantic dinner, all they're thinking about is how much they don't love you anymore
Morgan:
During this
Brad:
Romantic. Yeah, it drives 'em nuts because they're thinking, I don't love this person.
Morgan:
Why are we at this romantic
Brad:
Dinner? Why are we here? I don't feel this way, and it actually pushes 'em further away. But if you do something new, different, unusual, it will help them recreate that romantic love, reconnect and reconnect. But if you try to do it more obvious like that, all they're thinking is, I don't feel this way towards you, and it actually pushes 'em further away. You take 'em somewhere that's different, new and exciting. Focus on that. Don't focus on trying to be romantic. If you focus on what's new, exciting and different, you're going to create romantic love as a
Morgan:
Byproduct.
Brad:
As a byproduct, but if you focus on getting romantic love and getting your spouse to love you back only by doing what are conventional romantic things, they're not going to love you back. In fact, and you tell 'em, you love me, do you love me back? You tell 'em things like that, you're just pushing 'em away
Morgan:
And they're going to say no.
Brad:
Yeah,
Morgan:
And that's going to work. That's going to feel worse.
Brad:
But what you're doing is you're doing kind of normal activities, normal everyday activities, so to speak, and then they're going to discover that they love you on their own and that's the best way and that's the best way. Thanks for listening to Healing Broken Trust. If you like this episode, you can always get our show notes and more details and links to the resources we discussed at healingbrokentrust.com. Also, as long as you're online, head on over to healing broken trust.com/retreat for details on an upcoming one-on-one retreat with me. If you like us, please subscribe and leave a review for us on iTunes. As always, everything discussed on this podcast is either my opinion or Morgan's opinion and is not to be taken as relationship advice because I'm not your therapist, nor have I considered your personal situation as your therapist. This podcast is for your entertainment and education only, and I really do hope you've enjoyed it. See you Until next time.
