Moment 150: The REAL (& Usually Unseen) Reason You’re Struggling With Love & Relationships!: Logan Ury

Logan Ury (0:03)

For anyone listening who's feeling really stuck, going deep on attachment theory is one of the number one things that you can do to really understand yourself, understand your past patterns, understand who you've been attracted to and why it isn't working. And so there's a lot of great relationship science out there, but this might be the number one thing that I want people to take away. Let me describe what happens when you're avoid and attach. So first, there's a trigger. So the trigger might be that you go out with somebody on Saturday night, you have a great night, they sleep over and Sunday morning, you wake up and you're just ready to do your thing, but they're still there. So you feel triggered by the fact that they're still at your house. Then you do something called deactivating strategies. So these are thoughts or feelings that push them away. So it might be like, oh my God, it's 10 o'clock and she hasn't brushed her teeth yet. When is she gonna leave? Oh, is she gonna be here forever? And then you start thinking about flaws in that person. Well, this is wrong with her or that is wrong with her. And there's all these things that are subtly pushing her away from you. And then you do a protest behavior, which is sort of snapping or just saying something like, okay, I called your Uber. And I feel like many of us have had that situation where you think you're going, you think things are going well with somebody. And then all of a sudden they're like, the Uber is here. And you're like, oh, so you're kicking me out. And it's so interesting because it's like the other person has no idea what's going on for you. They feel like you just had a great date and they're like, great, let's go out to the diner for breakfast. And instead that person is like, I will never have my life back. You are taking over my world. You're really blushing. And so what an avoidant attached person can do, let me give a few tips for them. So one of them is being really clear about what you want. And so it's absolutely fine if you want the person to leave. But saying something like, hey, I had such a great date with you. I have a big week of work ahead of me. And so I want to get started, but I will call you again soon. And so just asking for what you need. Another thing is overriding the flaws that are become so obvious to you. So there's a really interesting thing called the negativity bias. And even though we're living in this age of ChatGPT, and all of modern technology, our brains are running on ancient software. And so our brains have the negativity bias, which is that we're much more likely to ruminate on what's wrong with someone. The reason for this is that if you had five ex-girlfriends and one of them wanted to kill you, it was really important to know which one that was. And so your brain would remember that. And so to overcome the negativity bias, to overcome this feeling where avoidant attach people focus on flaws, you actually can work on focusing on the positives. So even just saying to yourself five things that you like about somebody. So you could think in your head, last night was so fun, she looked so cute, wearing my t-shirt, I'm really excited to hear her talk more about her work, whatever that is. And so actively overriding this feeling of pushing people away. Because that's one of the really hard parts about being avoidant is that you feel like those criticisms that you have in your head are so valid. Well, I need to pay attention to this. But what you don't understand is that that's actually a subconscious way for you to not get close to somebody.

And so I'm coaching someone right now, where she told me, oh, I went on a date with a guy. Everything was great, but he wore a white t-shirt under his shirt, which reminded me of my uncle. So I can't be with him. I was like, do you understand how ridiculous that sounds? Obviously, that's not a reason to not be with someone. That's an excuse for you to not get close to someone. And as we talked about it more, it became obvious that she's really afraid of being hurt. She's been abandoned by many people. She was in a bad marriage. And for her, if I don't get close to you, then you can't hurt me. And that's part of the avoidant attachment. If I never rely on you, then you can never let me down. And so part of it is actually getting more comfortable relying on somebody else.