relationships and how to create one

deeply intimate, connected, loving, passionate,

sexy, juicy and lasts a lifetime.

Now whether you're single or your in a relationship

you're gonna find this video incredibly useful, because you're about to discover

your unique fingting style.

A fighting style is an unproductive way, when you react in a fight

with your partner that causes you to unconsciously sabotage the relationship

and have you experience being disconnected from your partner and

breakdown relationship.

We're gonna discover what's your unique way of doing that is.

Then we're gonna take a look at how to take conflict

and transform it into an opportunity for intimacy.

So, stick about coz' you're gonna find this really useful.

Before we begin I wanted to spell

a myth that exists in a popular culture and if you believe this myth

you're probably always going to struggle in relationships.

The myth is "a happy and a healthy relationship

is a relationship where neither party fights"; that is complete BS.

Now the fact is that all relationship that lasts a lifetime

and where the love stays alive and thrives

go through five consecutive stages (that be covered in detail in the first video

in the series), they are just very briefly: The Romance Stage,

The Power Struggle Stage,

Stability Stage, The Commitment Stage and finally The Bliss Stage.

The only way to get at the bliss stage is by moving through the power struggle stage.

Most people get stuck and break up in the power struggle stage coz that's

where all the fighting happens, that's where all the conflict happens.

Unless you have the skills to communicate, in a way that creates deep intimacy,

you will not be able to move through the power stuggle stage and your relationship get's

stuck there. You'll go round and round and round, dealing with the same issues, the same

conflict over and over and over untill one of two things happen:

You break up or you end up surviving in a relationship that's emotionaly

dead or just plain old boring. The third option is to learn how to love consciously.

Now can you see that in order to get

to the bliss stage of your relationship you've got to go to the power struggle stage.

You've got to fight, because if you don't fight,

you will never deal with the core issues that the power struggle stage is designed to deal with.

So, I want you to look at fighting in a different way.

What if conflict in your relationship

is just the two of you working out each other's differences to try and

navigate a way to move forward together.

What if you're gonna approach conflict in that way, I think you get a really different result

than if you thought of conflict as something to be avoided at all costs.

It's understandable, because you've grown up in a society where

fighting is considered bad and unhealthy.

Perhaps you've been in fights that have been really hurts,

you've closed down it was painful and destructive.

You might have learned that it's not safe to fight

but when your in a relationship and you're not able to fight in a healthy way,

you never deal with your issues to the point where they get complete (resolved).

So, you end up recycling those same issues round and round and round,

It just gets exhausting and drains the life out of your relationship,

can you relate? A really smart friend of mine Evan Pagan, has a unique way

of looking, at the power struggle. He says that,

"The deeper you are in love the more likely you are to fight". I think he's right,

because the deeper you are in love, the more you care about your relationship working.

The more you're really willing to do whatever it takes to work through your differences.

So, you can pop out the other side with a relationship that works.

That's a reframe for you, rather than thinking that

happy and healthy relationship - is a relationship where there's no fighting,

Think of it like this, when you're fighting it's just a sign that

you have a really deep and true love.

I like to think of two kinds of fighting, one I call reactive fighting

and the other one I call conscious fighting. Let's take a look at the anatomy

of a reactive fight. All reactive fight starts off with a trigger event.

This could be something as small as you partner

forgetting to take the trash out

or you came home from work and

she didn't hug you or kiss you hello. What ends up happening is the

trigger event triggers an experience of being disconnected from you and your partner.

You end up fighting each other (you actually end up fighting against each other).

When you do this you have a reactive behavior,

a way of fighting that escalates the fight.

It's like pouring fuel on the fire, instead of pouring water on the fire.

When this happens, you experience even more disconnection.

That disconnection you experience reinforces the reactive behavior.

You keep on reacting and you're feeling more disconnected, then

you react again you get even more disconnected,

until you're in a full-blown fight.

Both of you feel alienated where you don't feel connected at all.

Where you feeling shutdown, judged, misunderstood

or alone in a relationship with somebody you actually love.

I'm gonna let you in, on a little known secret about fighting in the power struggle stage.

When you get into a fight, you have a reactive behavior that

either explodes out, where you explode your energy out

or withdraws in, where you pull your energy back in and withdraw.

I'm gonna call the reactive behavior that explodes out "The Hailstorm"

and the person that withdraws I'm gonna call "The Turtle" because they

withdraw into their shell, right? Now you are either a hailstorm

or a turtle in your relationship. What tends to happen

is when you get into a fight and you move into this reactive behavior,

you'll either hailstorm or a turtle. If your the storming type,

you force your partner to become a turtle and withdraw;

coz your hailstorming on them, it's not safe your exploding your energy out of your

partner. Then the turtle goes AHHH! and withdraws into the shell to retreat.

And ofcourse if your a turtle the more you withdraw into your shel the more

you force your hailstorm partner to hailstorm.; cuz they're like;

"where did you go Im trying to communicate you disappeared on me AHHH!!!"

(Panick) and they start to hailstorm, hailstorm, hailstorm.

Does that sound familiar? Usually the hail storm is accused by the turtle

of being needy, being controlling, possessive

or just like too emotional and dramatic.

The tutle is accused of being cold,

emotionally withdrawn, disconnected, stoic or aloof.

Well if you can relate to this on your own relationship; firstly,

your normal and secondly it's just an indication that your in the power

struggle stage and you haven't figured out yet how to move beyond it.

But what ends up happening is if you stay stuck in the cycle of the hailstorm

and the turtle you'll never get your arguments resolved.

You end up recycling and repeating the same issues over and over again,

which leads to disconnection and a lack of trust and safety in your relationship.

When there's no safety because the fights have become like war zones,

then what ends up happening is the intimacy dies and the first thing to go is sex.

Sexual passion just disappears when you get stuck

in the power struggle stage, without learning how to create deeper intimacy

out of your conflict.

Let's take a look at an alternative, which I'm gonna call conscious fighting.

Now in a conscious fight you still have a trigger event,

but this time it's usually a new trigger event because your resolving your issues

as you're going, right?

The trigger event, triggers a disconnection between you and your partner,

but instead of getting into a fight with each other and hurting each

other what you end up doing

is you end up getting into a fight, but both of you in the same team,

fighting a common misunderstanding.

You're fighting for the understanding, you fight to find clarity.

What happens is when you find the

understanding between the two of you

and you defeat the misunderstanding you end up feeling

deeply connected with each other, instead of being disconnected like in the reactive fight,

you actually end up being more connected with each other, which creates the spin-off

of intimacy, right? Imagine going into a fight

and coming out feeling more intimately connected and loving

with your partner. Imagine what would happen if you did that every fight.

What happens is each issue gets resolved

and as it gets resolved you can move into the next issue,

until all the major issues are dealt with,

and there's not really anything left to fight about.

This is when you move beyond the power struggle stage

into the stability stage, the commitment stage,

and the bliss stage, but you can't get beyond the power struggle

unless you learn to master the art of contious fighting,

what I somtimes refer to as fighting

fair or fighting for love, does that make sense?

I'm gonna close this video with a powerful strategy a powerful mindset,

that will help you move from reactive fighting into conscious fighting.

I've noticed that a lot of people when I'm coaching them around their

relationship end up complaining about the partners; like,

"she whines and Nags all the time" or "he never takes the trash out" or

some kinda complaint. These complaints usually act as trigger events,

that trigger the cycle of the reactive fight, right? So, usually starts with a complaint;

like, whine, whine, whine he or she never does this right!

So, I wanna give you a new way of looking at partners complaints. Think of it like this -

underneath every complaint which partner comes to you with is a fear.

A fear that they may not even be aware of and a covert plea for connection.

Okay, I'll say it again, underneath

every complaint which youpartner comes to you with, is a fear

a fear that they may not be aware of and a covert hidden

plea for connection. A couple came to me recently for

coaching and when I asked her husband what was wrong in the relationship and

why they come to me for coaching,

he said "well you know she just unreliable she doesn't know how to

keep her promises she says she's gonna quit smoking and then one day

I find her out in the backyard smoking", and she goes

"I don't understand what the big deal is and I'm just having a cigarette every once in a while,

I'm aloud to change my mind if I want to". And so we started to

unpack this complaint that they have with each other. Her complaint is that he overreacts;

his complaint is that she's unreliable. What we discovered,is that, there was a

deep-seated fear under her smoking.

His complaint had nothing to do with smoking, because she had promised him

that he was gonna quit smoking. He discovered her smoking.

He made that mean, his story was that she

was and reliable, that she couldn't keep her promises

and that he couldn't keep a simple promise like quitting smoking,

how is she even gonna keep their relationship vows?

How is she ever gonna feel faithful?

His fear was that she would abandon him and for him,

her smokng equalled she was gonna abandon him.

His covert plea, was a plea for connection, what he was really saying

when he was complaining about the smoking was,

"please don't leave me, please be reliable, please love me, please don't abandon me"

When she saw this she had so much compassion for him.

When he saw this about himself, he suddenly realized,

"Ohhh it has actually nothing to do with the smoking.

I'm just really insecure right now" and they could start to work on the real

issue and start to work on the issue of insecurity,

that they walked out one coaching session

head over heels in love with each other again. Having resolved this

issue and understanding each other on a much deeper level and having a renewed

sense of compassion and understanding in their relationship.

So, now it's time for you to do the work in your relationship to learn how to fight consciously.

To help you with this I've included a PDF link down below this video,

that's gonna walk you through discovering your hidden

fear and your covert plea,

in the most common complaints that you have about a partner.

Then you can take this exercise and do it with your partner and discover

their most common complaint about you and what they're hidden fear is behind

that and what their covert plea is.

Talk about this with your partner and actually understand yourself

(what your deepest fear is and how you go about pleading for connection), will help

you break that patern and that cycle in your relationship.

Also in the exercises I'm gonna give you a little quiz to help you discover whether or not