Part 1 What If Your Childhood Is Impacting Your Intimate Relationship? I’m creating several posts to help this community understand attachment logic & how it impacts or drives disconnection in your intimate relationships through the lens of Grinchy. How often do you find yourself questioning why you do what you do during intense fellowship with your intimate partner. For example, we all have our go to move, some of us shut down, get defensive, or pursue our partner when things get heated? Here's the thing! In the early stages with my coaching clients, once they understand, my guys are often amazed about “sometimes, the person you're fighting isn't the real problem.” Through psychoeducation, my guys move from confusion to understanding how their brain and body is simply responding to fears learned long before they met their partner. What Is Attachment Logic? We will go deeper as we move forward. As a start, Attachment logic is the spine of the babysteps mental men’s relationship coaching model. Attachment Logic is built off my love for Attachment Theory. Psychologist John Bowlby, the creator of Attachment Theory communicates that humans are wired for connection. According to Attachment theory, as children, we depended on our caregiver(s) to help us feel safe, loved, and protected in the world. If those early caregiver attachments were something different than healthy, we grew believing relationships were unsafe. Grinchy will help us understand what it means when I say all behavior has a purpose. None of us do anything for no reason. In this community, I am going to let Grinchy demonstrate to us how his attachment issues drove his cycle of disconnection with everyone except Max. After my guys understand their attachment style, their behavior changes in relationships. They come down after their own Mt. Crumpit. They learn how to recognize their emotions and the emotions of their partner. Understanding this, helps my guys understand what I mean by “What if your childhood is impacting your intimate relationship.

Fellas, I’m Concerned Before I took my break at the beginning of the summer, I kept hearing something from guys on social media. “I was blindsided.” She says she's done. She wants a separation. She's talking about divorce. And he is standing there thinking: “Where did this come from?” --- But here's one of the things I'm going to challenge my guys to understand: The breakup may feel sudden = The disconnection usually wasn't. There was a dance happening before the relationship got to that point. And that's where we're going to do some work. You have to understand this dance. They no longer feel on beat, they feel you stepping on each other’s toes, all these moves are creating distance and driving you two apart emotionally. The Dance of Disconnection If you're familiar with my coaching style, you already know something about me. "I love to teach!" I'm a trained marriage and family therapist who left private practice to exclusively focus on coaching men. Why my guys? Because I believe a lot of good men want to lead their families well, but like myself, nobody ever gave them the emotional tools to do it. This has caused an epidemic of low emotionally self-awareness in the community of men. One of my top goals is to attack and manage that deficiency. I want to give men tools to become better partners, better fathers and better leaders in their communities. ----- And that includes the guys who are no longer romantically involved with the mother of his children. You still have a relationship to lead - You still have children watching - You are responsible for raising a man who is productive in the community. So the backbone of what I'm going to teach in this community is clear - The Dance of Disconnection Is The Enemy You may also hear me call it your cycle, a loop or a pattern. . And you're definitely going to hear me say this over and over: THE CYCLE IS THE ENEMY. Not her --- Not you -----This dance. Why Does the Grinch… Grinch? That's where the star of our show comes in.

What’s up community, I apologize, I have been running around this spring and it has got the best of me - in a good way – more on this later. Recently I read some comments on IG going back and forth about some confusion if feelings and emotions are the same thing. By the time you complete this short read, you’ll have some clarity. So, hang with me, sometimes the nerd in me likes to get a little teachy. I will try to lean more into storytelling. First, to land the plane quickly - feelings and emotions are 100%, not the same thing. Here’s the thing, this is important The benefit of understanding the difference will increase your self-awareness. This will help you also recognize the feelings and emotions in others. Understanding the difference between emotions and feelings has the potential to play a major role in consistently disrupting intense fellowship that lends itself to the dance of disconnection. emotion. Simply the word means to emote. There are primary and secondary emotions (more on this later) – Primary emotions are the first true emotions, the bottom of the iceberg, they are honest, vulnerable, held in - probably connected to attachment needs - A lot of men will not engage the primary emotion, they feel unsafe. Secondary emotions represent the tip of the iceberg. This is the what is sitting on top of the iceberg. come - often a protective strategy. This all happens in milliseconds - emotions are a reaction to something, the result of the brain assessing if things are cool – (i.e., “am I safe?”, “am I being disrespected?”, “do I matter?”). figuratively, the emotions will be the tropical storm. feeling - A feeling is what happens when the mind notices and "describes the emotion" (we begin to think) – the experience of the emotion, the awareness of the reaction. (i.e., I have “feelings of sadness, nervous, anger, lonely, and hurt” …….). When your emotions detect something important – the body reacts, the unconscious response, (i.e., jaws clench, hands shake, sweating, the feeling in your gut)

I Got Blindsided Series "exposing toxic relationship positivity" What’s up community! It’s your boy @yocoachboom — your relationship consultant. Today I’m going to say something that has been a thron in my side for some time now - Some of the advice you see online will actually hurt your relationship. And it needs to be addressed. The Warning You’ve seen the posts: “Just communicate better - “Be more vulnerable” - “Here’s 5 steps to fix your relationship” - Sounds good, right? But here’s the thing… That advice can fail men who don’t feel safe doing it - yes a lot of guys may struggle with the word safe, so let's go with comfortable, not at ease, a little anxious What toxic relationship coaches fail men…… Most of the men I coach were never taught how to: talk about feelings, stay calm in conflict , feel safe opening up So when someone says… “Just communicate better” That’s like telling me… “Just speak Spanish Kris”… when I never learned it. - Does that even make sense? What Happens Next Guys tries the strategies He follows the steps. And then… -He shuts down-He says the wrong thing-Wasn’t expecting her to pull away The self-talk tied to the old childhood wound says - “Something is wrong with me.” And just like that… -Dude’s confidence drops, His trust in working with another coaching drops the relationship gets worse, distance increases - The guy has not identified and addressed the dance of disconnection that is causing one or both of them to walk off the dance floor - Here’s My Contrarian Take The problem is NOT communication. The problem is… The couples dance of disconnection. “The performance anxiety issue.” If you don’t stop the dance… None of the toxic relationship positivity strategies will work long term. Not date night.Not better words.Not “being more vulnerable.” The Performance Anxiety Lens When a man feels pressure in a relationship… His brain detects a threat, alerts the amygdala - a red code alert It’s like a radar picking up a formation of spinning clouds - the tornado horn sounds

Top 3 times of the year for break ups 1. Jan 2. Spring 3 Summer