The challenge we all face is that, on some level, we all have some unhelpful emotional patterns that we learned growing up.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of because, growing up, we all learn to create different coping strategies for the challenges life throws at us and to be fair, there are a lot of challenges.
The problem is many of our emotional patterns are not helpful today because they were created in our childhood for our childhood situations.
Some of us had to cope with extremely tough situations, and some of us learnt how to respond to life’s problems by mirroring how our parents coped.
So, when a couple starts using these outdated patterns together, they will find they can play out an incompatible dynamic in which each person triggers the other.
They may be a perfectly compatible couple when life is easy, but under pressure, their outdated patterns can surface and create an unhelpful disconnect.
Emotional patterns are behaviours we use without conscious thought.
Patterns are designed to make life easier, and in most cases, they do. After all, who wants to consciously consider which shoe to put on first or how we brush our teeth today?
The problem is that when fear strikes a person, their emotional patterns are likely to trigger unhelpful behavioural patterns within them, which in turn usually triggers unhelpful behaviours in their partner.
If you jumped into my world of couples in crisis, you would clearly see that reactive people are simply people who have lost control of themselves and are presenting their old emotional patterns and not who they really are today.
Couples spend years practising and getting really good at these automatic unhelpful patterns, and they end up taking each person to the edge of feeling hopeless.
Now exhausted, they can start to give up and see the relationship as hopeless.
Some, deep down, know they love each other, but they can’t find a way through these destructive patterns.
So now they can edge so close to the possibility of divorce that they scare themselves into a full-blown card on the table, honest heart-to-heart.
For many, it clears the air.
These couples talk and talk; in fact, they have never talked so much. They end up feeling better and think they may have fixed the problems.
What they do not see is that they are not currently running their old emotional patterns because they are “present”.
People who are “present” are not running old emotional patterns.
But as time passes and normal life resumes, they’ll notice the old subconscious patterns return, and now it feels a thousand times worse.
The patterns come back because they do not understand how to change the old patterns and replace them with updated new patterns designed for their life today.
My message today is very simple: if anyone runs old emotional patterns designed for a different life condition, such as childhood, those patterns won’t be appropriate for adult life or adult relationships.
So, people need an emotional reset.
They need to understand the needs the old patterns are trying to achieve and then learn if that old pattern is effective.
Once a person is conscious that the old pattern is not safe, the process of building safer ways to meet those needs can be initiated consciously.
Now, change for anyone is possible.
If anyone wants a better, happier life, understanding how to get the best out of yourself and become an effective partner is a must.
This is why I consider it critical that each person spends one-on-one time with me as part of my programs so we can correct any emotional disturbance that may negatively affect their life and happiness.
Once they understand the problem, they must commit to doing the work to change the pattern.
The most successful people in my programs have committed to themselves first. This shift makes them very confident partners who can now enjoy their lives with new, healthy emotional patterns.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
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