Three couples finished their marriage breakthrough program with me this week. Their individual challenges were a dramatic loss of trust, loss of love and an affair. Each one was on the edge of divorce with both people suffering not sure which way to turn. Each couple reported to me their relationship is now significantly better than it’s ever been.
Thankfully these couples and their children now have a future that makes sense. For them it’s a huge relief they are out of their own personal hell and now living confident relationships.
To help these couples out of hell one of their challenges was due to very negative spirals they didn’t know how to deal with. Each couple had different patterns and for very different reasons.
Their patterns had to be interrupted and reconfigured so they could successfully reconnect.
If couples do live over time in these negative patterns with no clear solution one person can start talking about if it’s worth carrying on.
When couples dynamic gets into a negative pattern it is very challenging for them to see the solution and so they can be left feeling powerless and hopeless as they naturally withdraw from the relationship.
It is totally possible for so many couples to come out of their negative pattern spiral once you know what the pattern is for and how they are created.
Negative couples patterns, of course, come from individual negative patterns as each person creates a reactive emotional state to the other behaviours creating a downward spiral that can crash a relationship.
This must be stopped!
Once a couple can see what they are doing and why they are doing it then they can choose to make changes that can create a safer outcome for themselves and their relationship.
You see what happens when a couple runs these patterns they both start to suffer with each other and this creates a dramatic change of focus within the individuals.
The focus can change from happy and in love to all they can see is what’s wrong.
This is a process. BUT What’s great about their partner is still there it’s just no longer needed for self-protection so their minds will struggle to see positive qualities in a way that reconnects them.
So if someone can’t make sense of their partner behaviours they can engage a pattern to protect themselves from their partner and if practised for long enough that person can stop seeing all the good in their partner and the relationship.
All they will see is the bad and this intern collapses their future vision so the relationship looks impossible to continue.
So many couples are falling victim to starting this destructively negative process that is killing their relationships without them knowing.
A person who is experiencing these patterns is usually unaware they have created them, where the patterns have come from and what they were for.
This means the person will usually just accept their pattern(s) as part of their natural identity.
They may say things like “this is just who I am”, “I can’t help how I feel” or “it’s just how I feel”.
Many people are running these outdated patterns i.e. patterns that were created to protect them from emotional challenges from many years before.
Some people run outdated patterns from childhood, some run patterns from what they think they have to do to survive or get their needs met in relationships.
So when a person is triggered they run a pattern that was designed for a totally different life situation, not the one they are in that day.
This is why what they do rarely works for either person.
This means the historic pattern can be triggered by an event today, but it will usually fail to create a successful outcome and so their self-created pain is now magnified because life feels hopeless.
Sadly so many people attach this self-created pain to their relationship or partner and so a relationship or family can be collapsed for all the wrong reasons.
What is doubly sad is if a person has a destructive pattern they are unaware of, they are highly likely to repeat this pattern in future relationships.
If children are exposed to these negative patterns they can also adopt them in their own lives so please hear this message and take action.
The reality of a negative pattern is very simple…
… a partner can be a trigger for a negative pattern but that’s all.
It is impossible for someone to run into another person’s brain and create their feelings for them.
So if a person is having a reaction to someone’s words or actions they are running their own behavioural patterns without knowing.
It’s usual that most people have their own negative patterns and both people run them with each other.
It’s important to understand the concept of “You made me feel XXXXX” is not actually physically possible.
So where a pattern becomes destructive is when a person in a relationship is constantly triggered to run their habitual pattern and their focus starts to shift in terms of how they see their partner and the relationship they are in.
What the triggered person is doing is building a negative association with their partner.
This, in essence, is the reverse of what they did to fall in love.
A person in love essentially focuses all their energy into what’s great about their partner and this creates the platform for an exciting future whilst choosing to ignore things today that could irritate them years later.
When a person is triggered they will run negative behavioural patterns that make them feel bad and so their focus naturally shifts from everything that’s good in the relationship to an active search for everything that’s bad.
This person can even rewrite the history of the relationship connecting to any negative thought or memory and making that the new story of the relationship.
This can feel unfair and very upsetting for those on the receiving end.
Remember all the great things about their relationship are still going to be there it’s just that person will now be so conditioned to only see the bad finding the good for this person can feel impossible.
So when all a person can see is negative thoughts about their partner this is a distortion of reality rather than the truth they may present.
Getting to the truth in relationships and learning what couples are truly capable of is so important to protect both people from future pain.
One gentleman I was working with last year said he hated his wife behaviours and started an affair. He said the affair was initially exciting and a relief from the negative home life…
…BUT once the affair partner had got over her excitement she was then afraid she would lose him, she then started to display the exact same negative behaviours as my wife.
He said it woke him up with a desire to understand what was really going on.
All he wanted was love and maybe the answer was not in another woman maybe the answer was in understanding.
As you can see I share with my client’s new understandings and give them powerful tools so they can really build competent/confident relationships for life.
Men and women are really not designed to live together for life, so if you want to achieve this goal of lasting love that so many seem to fail at, you are going to need a shift of understanding and some skills and tools to become a valuable partner.
If this has struck a chord with you why not allow an expert help you uncover what you are struggling to see and what’s really blocking your future.
Individuals and couples are welcome!
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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