How to Not Lose Yourself in Your Relationships

[00:00:09] Matt Landsiedel: Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast by the Gay Men’s Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health, and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. I am your host, Matt Landsiedel, and joining me today again for the second time is Tom Bruett.

[00:00:24] Tom Bruett: Thanks, Matt. I’m so excited to be here. Ned, this is a really, I think, important topic that we’re going to talk about today.

[00:00:29] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. And it builds off of our last topic on secure relationships and why gay men struggle in romantic relationships. And so if you haven’t checked that episode out, you can go and check that one out as well. This is your first time meeting Tom. Tom is a therapist, trainer, consultant, and author who work extensively with the queer community. He is the founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, which provides therapy for queer folks and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. You can find that at queerrelationshipsinstitute.com.  All right, so today we are talking about balancing closeness and space in romantic relationships. So essentially, how to not lose yourself in your relationships. This is a very important conversation. What we want you to get out of this episode is how to maintain your sense of self and freedom in your relationships while also knowing how to develop closeness and intimacy. So we’re going to be sharing some tangible ways to walk this fine line. So stick with us till the end of this episode to find out some. Some of our. Our pointers on how you can do that. There’s a lot of terms to unpack here. I think we’ll try and do our best and not make this episode too clinical, but there are some things we want to make sure that we put out there that people have a clear understanding of what it is. So codependency and a meshment, I think, are the kind of the two concepts that we’re going to be unpacking when we. When we look at how people lose themselves in relationships. And then what we’ll do is we’ll take the conversation more into unpacking, like differentiation, individuation, interdependence in relationships and how people that are really good at maintaining their sense of self in relationships, how they go about doing that. But first we want to talk a bit about, you know, for the listener, viewer. Listener who you might find yourself losing yourself in relationships, or maybe you have an anxious attachment style and you have a hard time staying centered in relationships and you become preoccupied with the relationship or with your partner. This episode will help you kind of untangle some of the things of where this might be coming from and how you can start to move towards more maintenance of. Of your. Your sense of self, your own separate sense of self in your relationship. So why don’t we first start by just by unpacking codependency and a measurement. Like, what are these. These two concepts? So from your point of view, and I know this came up in the last episode actually around codependency, and we unpacked it a little bit, but we didn’t get a chance to go into it too much. So I’m just curious, from your perspective, what do you see codependency as?

[00:02:48] Tom Bruett: Yeah, so before we even go there, I think kind of just highlighting that, at least from my perspective, like, secure relationships really straddle the balance between connection and autonomy. And so, you know, with any of these topics, we’re talking about whether it’s codependency or enmeshment, like, those are ways that you lose autonomy. And so I think codependency, if we just think about the history of it, it started more in the addiction world. And it really mostly refers to kind of relationships that feel out of balance in some ways. So the typical definition of codependence would be you’re a codependent if you’re partnered with someone who is active in their alcoholism or substance use in some way, and you’re somehow connected to them, and you can’t write that imbalance in some way. And so I think codependency, when I think about that way, I think about it as like there’s some sort of imbalance or something that’s happening there versus enmeshment, I feel like is more. Is more general in terms of just blurred boundaries. There’s blurred boundaries. It’s more. Family systems work. It comes from not just romantic relationships, but sometimes it could be you have blurred boundaries with your mother or a cousin or, you know, whatever it may be a co worker. So those are kind of some of the distinctions I see in those two concepts. But what do you think?

[00:04:01] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting with the addiction thing, because that’s where this all started. And it’s interesting because I always see. And I did addiction work for the first 10 years of my career. That was actually what my undergrad was in. And whenever there would be family issues here, it would be like, okay, let’s say the husband is addicted to alcohol, the wife is addicted to the alcoholic. Right. So I think that’s where it becomes. And this. The person who is struggling with codependency tends to get their. Their Sense of self or their self worth within their relationships, not within themselves. I think that’s a really key component of it. And I was kind of doing some research on this on the topic because I. I see codependence is like an umbrella term. I think it has evolved away from the traditional view of it being within the addiction space and it’s moved into relationship psychology. And so anyways, on the secure relationship Instagram page, I love that page for attachment stuff, she defines it as one when one or both partners over rely on each other’s thoughts and feelings to define their own thoughts and feelings. And I think that’s when we start moving like from the traditional model of addiction codependency into. It starts moving towards a measurement, in my opinion. So I think like codependency can start here and then a measurement might be like the next level. And I think that’s going to be more of what we’re unpacking today. But I wanted to disentangle these concepts because I think I hear a lot of the terminology of codependency in pop relationship psychology. And I think a lot of people, when they think about themselves being anxiously attached, they think codependency. I’m codependent on my partner when they might actually be. It might be better to use the word enmeshment or merge. They’ve merged too much with their partner and they haven’t. They’ve lost their sense of self in the relationship.

[00:05:45] Tom Bruett: And if I love the word, you know the definition for merging. If we think about it as you lose your sense of self and you become one entity. And so in relationships, when you become one entity with somebody else and you lose yourself completely, that is where I think a lot of relationship issues start to surface.

[00:06:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yes. And I can my relationships. And most of the listeners know this. I’ve talked openly about my disorganized attachment and having a ton of more complex trauma and attachment trauma. Growing up, most of my relationships have been that I’ve had a very hard time maintaining, maintaining both of these bubbles. Like the way I look at is a Venn diagram and you have the me bubbles and then you have this shared we bubble in the middle. And when I’m in the anxious side of my attachment style, I can easily slide into the wee bubble. I lose my me bubble. And then when I’m in the avoidant side of my attachment, my me bubbles floating away. And I’m just like, I’m not no longer here. So my. My work has been around finding balance between these two things. This is a very, very. I’m excited to share, you know, just some of the things that have. That have helped me on this journey. But yes to what you’re saying, I think there’s. This is all about balance, in my opinion, and how we can. How we can do this. And for a lot of people, this is a really hard thing to juggle because of things like attachment trauma and insecure attachment styles that can really prevent us from connecting or having that sense of autonomy, as you said. Okay. So. Well, actually, I want to just read what a measurement is as well, because I just chat GPT this one. So a measurement is where personal boundaries between people, often family members, become blurred or overly diffused in an enmeshed relationship. Individuals are overly involved in each other’s emotional lives to the point where their identities, needs, and emotions are entangled. So I love this. And you use the word like fuse, where it’s like, we can’t. We can’t separate ourselves from the relationship. And then all of these issues start to arise in the relationship.

[00:07:38] Tom Bruett: And just to emphasize this is if we look at media representations of love, right. If we look at pop psychology, this is something that’s often valued and prioritized. Like you are supposed to lose yourself in love. You are supposed to kind of get swept up into the. The honeymoon phase of a new relationship. And there are aspects of that that are important. Yes, you need to bond, you need to attach. You need to have a way that you can connect with somebody else. But if you don’t have the ability to. Also. I love your bub analogy to kind of be able to move out of that. We bubble at times. That is where so much conflict happens.

[00:08:11] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. And it’s. It’s interesting too, because we’re working. It’s. Sometimes it feels like we’re working against ourselves as a culture because we’ve. We’ve got all the Disney movies, we’ve got all the songs, every single song. When I listen to them now, since I’ve learned about a meshman codependent scene, I’m truly learned it. I’m like, man, all of these songs, all these love songs are so built in this. This cultural acceptance of. Of merging yourself with somebody. And. But I think also, too, we’re working against biology to a certain degree, because all of these, you know, oxytocin and dopamine and all these. Our brains become flooded with these. These feel good hormones. And so the early stages of. Of falling in love can really, really intoxicate us. And it can feel hard to Differentiate from that, because our friends aren’t giving us that hit. So it’s like we want to spend all of our time with our partners. And so if this is you, this is. I want this to be a very open episode. No shame. This is not really about that because like I said, I’ve been there and I, I know the shame of feeling stuck in that, like you feel addicted to your relationship is essentially so. But we’re here to help people find a way through the, the murky waters as best as we can. Right. Okay. So let’s talk maybe a bit about some of the consequences. So you said when we get. Fall into this relationship patterning, like, a lot of relationship issues come up. Like, what are some of the things that you see, whether it’s in your own work or within your own relationships?

[00:09:37] Tom Bruett: I think it falls kind of into two buckets. You either, if you’re ignoring your connection to yourself or you have disconnected from yourself, you either start moving into a place of avoiding conflict and avoiding tension, or you move into a place of increased tension, increased conflict in a way that sometimes is not productive because it’s not sustainable. You need to be able to, to take care of yourself and connect with yourself. So you’ll see things like resentments, or you’ll be blaming your partner a lot, or you’ll be really upset and just kind of disconnected from your community. You know, there’s. There’s lots of different ways, little symptoms that will come to mind if this starts happening. But you start, you know, you’re probably fantasizing about, oh, I wish I was really reconnected to this hobby. Or I wish I could just go on a trip with the boys or whatever. Like, you’ll see yourself fantasizing about things that you wish you could be doing. And the question I always ask people is, why, why aren’t you doing things? Why can’t you. Yeah, why can’t you reconnect and do the things that are important to you?

[00:10:34] Matt Landsiedel: And what do they usually say? Like, what are common responses that you hear from people when they say that?

[00:10:38] Tom Bruett: I think it’s really important to emphasize that this is a process. It’s not a light switch moment. Like you’re gonna. Because knowledge is not understanding. So you’re going to listen to this episode, you’re going to resonate with some of this. And then you may feel frustrated because, okay, I can’t just, you know, apply these concepts in real life. It’s like a muscle and so the differentiation. Muscle or the ability and differentiation. I think is the way to move out of this enmeshment or codependency. It takes practice and like anything new that you’re learning, it’s going to take some experimentation. And so oftentimes it will start with really small things and people will, you know, just reconnect and say, I actually don’t want to eat freezer food tonight, I want to go out to dinner. And just that small little act of asserting yourself. That is the beginning stages of starting to move away from this enmeshment. Codependency, merging.

[00:11:30] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, consequences. I’m trying to think of my own experience. Preoccupation for sure, preoccupation with the relationship. And I think growing up in it, you know, feeling codependent with my mother, it was like I didn’t really get encouraged to individuate and I think I didn’t develop this sense of trust that I needed. So I think when we are in a codependent or in a mesh connection, we rely on that mirror to come back to us. Right. So when we don’t have that mirror, we can feel lost, we can feel like we don’t have a sense of self, we don’t trust ourselves, these sorts of things. So I think that for me was a big one. And then when carrying that into my intimate relationships, I would, I almost had this deep feeling of like not feeling like I’m enough. Like my own inner world, my own interests, my own life. It wasn’t enough. I needed that connection with somebody or a relationship in order to feel like I’m interesting or. So it’s, it’s fascinating. And I think a lot of the work for me has been coming back to my own hobbies and my own without swinging to the far side of my attachment spectrum, which is going to be the avoidant side, which is like I don’t need anybody. Right. So it’s like this ping pong game. It’s like I’m either, you know, black or white. There’s no gray. So I’ve been, I’ve been having to learn the gray parts of my attachment and being able to tolerate. And I will say too, I think a lot of people, and I see this in my own work, is that people become reliant on like co regulation when right. With their partner. So it’s like when they’re having big emotions, they, they need their relationship or their partner to soothe them and they’re not learning the skill of self regulation or being able to be with their own emotions and regulate their emotions on their own. And I think that’s a, a big one for sure. Yeah.

[00:13:06] Tom Bruett: And it’s another thing we see in pop culture a lot. The, the example you’ll see of this either in friends or, you know, in movies or media is the person who has started, they got into a relationship and then there’s the like common cliche, okay, I’m gonna see you in like two years to, to your friend group because you’re no longer going to rely on your friendship connections or you neglect your self care, you stop going to the gym or whatever it is that actually lights you up. You stop doing in the beginning stages of a relationship. And that may be okay for a time, but if you do that over an extended period of time, you know, two plus years into the relationship, you are going to be resentful, you’re going to be, you’re going to stop nourishing yourself. And you know, that’s the kind of stuff where it can become problematic for people.

[00:13:47] Matt Landsiedel: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And humans are so creatures of habit. Right. So it’s like if the first, let’s say five or six months is this merging where we do merge and we want to learn about our partners and we’re all the feel good hormones are flooding our body, how can we with consciousness come back to ourselves and say, okay, how can I bring more balance between the me and the we? Right. And I think also too, this is, it’s important to note that it’s going to be very different for different people. Right. Some people are going to be very autonomous and they’re going to want a lot of space and they might feel that feeling of like all the ruminating thoughts of I wish I could travel with my, the boys, I wish I could do this. Whereas some people might not think like that. So I think there’s a spectrum of people that require certain amounts of space and certain amounts of closeness. And I think a healthy relationship or a secure relationship is going to be finding somebody who you’re compatible with in how much space and closeness that you want in a relationship.

[00:14:41] Tom Bruett: Yes. Or learning how to navigate those differences.

[00:14:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because you’re not always going to find somebody that’s going to be like, right on even. Right. It’s like. And I think as a relationship evolves, you’re going to see differences in that as well. Right. Like being with somebody for a year versus, you know. Right. Like early in the relationship or even 10 years. There’s going to be, at least for me, I see that a lot more space is required in a relationship as.

[00:15:03] Tom Bruett: The Relationship progresses, a lot more space and a lot more intentionality to reconnect.

[00:15:08] Matt Landsiedel: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And that’s, again, brings us back to the conversation about habit. Right. Because if people get caught in these habits of. Of how much space and closeness that they have in the relationship, then you need to be constantly bringing consciousness and awareness into the relationship. Like, how. How can we rediscover one another to find, you know, new ways of connecting and being with each other? So even in the conversation, it’s like, you know, my brain’s going to, like, one side or the other. It’s like, easy to fall into that category of like, you know, over emphasizing one or the other.

[00:15:39] Tom Bruett: Yeah, it’s a practice.

[00:15:40] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. What are some of the causes of codependency or enmeshment from your perspective?

[00:15:45] Tom Bruett: So a lot of it starts in family of origin stuff. And so the family that you grew up in, we know thinking back to something you were saying before, like looking to a caregiver to mirror us, that is a biologically natural state from like the ages of 0 to 2. And so if you don’t have that mirroring, if you don’t have a caregiver who is able to be fully present with you because of their own trauma or their addiction or, you know, just a mismatch. Sometimes there’s just a mismatch of. Of styles. It doesn’t always mean that your parent has something awful happening for them. It could just be a mismatch. If you don’t have that secure foundation, it makes it really difficult as you move forward because then you’re. You’re pulling for that from your adult romantic relationships. And you know that, yes, there’s a bit of that that’s okay to ask for from an adult partner, but there’s some of that that can feel like, you know, a burden. It really comes down to a weak differentiation muscle. And differentiation is a concept that we talked about the last time that we spoke. And I’ll just define it briefly so that we can talk about it a little bit more. But it’s really the balance of togetherness and separateness. Being able to keep your emotional balance inside of a relationship through this kind of balancing practice of connection and autonomy? And so are you able to do that? Are you able to connect with your sense of self, your thoughts, feelings, wishes, desires, and then tolerate the tension that can arise when a partner has different thoughts, feelings, wishes, desires? Yeah, and it’s in that tension that I think a lot of this codependence stuff arises. And so if you Have a weak differentiation muscle. If you’re not able to really connect with yourself and then hold the tension that can arise with somebody else, you know, that that creates a propensity to moving towards codependence or a measurement or merging.

[00:17:28] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:17:29] Tom Bruett: And. And then, you know, there’s systemic issues like all of us are, you know, we grew up gay in a homophobic world or if you grew up as a trans man in a transphobic world or thinking about racism and how that impacts systemically. I think when you have all of these power imbalances and things happening, it does encourage a lot of people to go inward and not connect with themselves because they’re really trying to attune to the world around them or, or find safety in that.

[00:17:56] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Something interesting that you said, like growing up, you know, gay in a homophobic world. Do you think that, you know, at least in I see this in myself or a lot of the clients that I work with, gay men tend to carry rejection sensitivity. And I can link this into codependency or a measurement in the sense that I don’t want to differentiate from my partner because they might reject me, they might not want to be with me. So I’m going to self sacrifice or self abandon so I can maintain, you know, homeostasis in the relationship and then so my needs go unmet, but the relationship or their needs get met and then things stay status quo.

[00:18:31] Tom Bruett: I think that’s very, very common. And anytime where you’re. Where you’re kind of making that internal negotiation without including your partner, that is a recipe for trouble.

[00:18:42] Matt Landsiedel: What are some common things that you see like in your own practice that people have a hard time differentiating is really a spectrum.

[00:18:50] Tom Bruett: And so it can go kind of like what you were just talking about with rejection sensitivity. It can go from something as small as this weekend. I really want to go for a hike. I don’t want to do housework. Something really small like that. Something a little bit more charged like hey, actually tonight I actually want a bottom. Even though we’re both first, I really want you to me and really allow that to be okay to kind of come into your sexuality. It can go into the open relationship states place for some people of hey, I want to, I want to challenge our relationship structure. It can go into retirement or different phase of life. Stuff like hey, I want to move somewhere else or hey, I want to retire early. Can we save a lot and not go on as many vacations this year or use our money in a different way? I mean the topics Are endless. But it’s the same process. You know, when I see it in my office, it’s usually people who, they look to their partner before they self define. And so, you know, I can see it physically happen in the office where, you know, I’ll ask a question and they’ll, they’ll look at their partner and they’ll check in before they respond. Like there’s lots of different ways it shows up, but it’s, it is a, it’s, it’s very clear. It is a process that can be shifted and can change the dynamic in a relationship so much.

[00:20:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah. Learning couples work, that’s one of the things that, you know, you look for is it’s like you ask a question and then which partner looks at which. Right. Like you can tell and it might not be for the same thing. It might be when you know, for finances, maybe one partner looks the other and. But you’ll get a sense of who the one that is looking for authority to a certain degree. That gives you an idea of relationship, the way the relationship plays out in certain ways.

[00:20:25] Tom Bruett: Yeah. Who holds the power in this relationship? Who are the decision making bodies?

[00:20:29] Matt Landsiedel: Yes, yes, exactly. I’ll just read some of the causes that I identified. So, you know, having to focus on others needs to survive in childhood. So if you were parentified as a child, let’s say again, you had an alcoholic father and you were a child and you had to always be monitoring and being, you know, attentive to their needs, it can easily lead to us being preoccupied with other people’s needs and not our own. So we haven’t maybe developed a strong sense of self. And I think when we don’t have a strong sense of self, we’re encouraged to individuate or even differentiate or have boundaries as a child, we tend not to develop a strong sense of self worth. And I think when we have a strong sense of self worth, we are very much concerned about our interests and our, our needs and making sure that we’re able to set our boundaries. And so yeah, I think it’s really important to note that this is very, very much linked into self worth. From my perspective.

[00:21:21] Tom Bruett: 100 boundaries, self worth, self esteem, these are all issues that are connected to the ability to be able to speak for what’s important to you.

[00:21:30] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, is there anything under the umbrella of, you know, identifying pain point or anything that we want to talk about before we start moving into the conversation about, you know, healing and differentiation and how to support this process of, of individuating I just want to emphasize that.

[00:21:43] Tom Bruett: This is super common and supernatural. And so if you are having this experience of feeling like you’re merging with a partner. Yeah, that is totally okay. If we think. I think it’s also just important to kind of make that distinction between individuation and differentiation. Individuation is a very natural developmental process that we go through usually in adolescence or young adulthood, where we, it’s usually with our caregivers where we come forward and we say, this is what I’m going to do with my life. You know, leaving the nest. And it’s. There’s not so much a check in with your parents or your caregivers about that. You’re going to go out and you’re going to live your life and hopefully your parents support you becoming your own person.

[00:22:19] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:22:19] Tom Bruett: When there’s been breakdowns there, when your parent is super merged or attached with you and doesn’t allow you to kind of separate in a way that is totally natural and developmentally appropriate, that can also set the stage for differentiation challenges. Because differentiation, unlike individuation, you have to be able to check in with your partner. It’s not like I’m going to do whatever the hell I want to do and you’re going to come along for the ride. It’s a conversation.

[00:22:42] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly. Yeah. A parent with unhealed attachment trauma or an unhealed inner child is going to guilt trip their child for trying to individuate. Right. And then the relationship becomes managed by guilt. And that’s going to probably be a very similar feeling that the person is going to bring into their romantic relationship. And they might even choose a partner who is going to disapprove of them individuating or differentiating in this case and playing out that familiar pattern of guilting, feeling guilt about, oh, I can’t have my separate sense of self, I can’t do the things I want to do because my partner is going to disapprove of me. So yes, this is very much tied into childhood stuff and even a fear of abandonment. Right. If you perceived abandonment or connection disconnection from a parent when you try to individuate, there might be a deep seated fear of being abandoned if you stand in your truth or you develop a sense of self righteousness. Man, it’s tricky stuff. And a lot of this I think is played out unconsciously, right? Yeah, it’s just trauma being played out unconsciously within family systems and. But it requires a lot of consciousness to pinpoint it and then to do the work to heal it and not pass it on to the next generation. All right, so that’s a good segue. How do we heal this crap?

[00:23:54] Tom Bruett: I mean, there’s so many different ways to heal this. Right. And I think it does start in relationship. And so whether it is in relationship with a friend or another relative or a therapist or a coach or a community, maybe you’re in part of a group. You can’t do this work alone. I love Murray Bowen’s quote on differentiation. Differentiation is your degree of resilience to the interpersonal contagiousness of another person’s anxiety or strong feelings.

[00:24:21] Matt Landsiedel: Yes. I love that it’s a lot, you.

[00:24:23] Tom Bruett: Know, to unpack all those words, but really it means, like, can you hold on to your sense of self when there is that contagiousness? That can happen. My mentors use the analogy of a tuning fork. And so if you hit a tuning fork and you bring another tuning fork next to it, the other tuning fork is going to pick up the same vibration as the tuning fork that’s been hit. And so we have to be able to really hold on to ourselves and not allow that, whatever the feeling may be to come. To come forward.

[00:24:49] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:24:49] Tom Bruett: And so. But I do believe this starts with relationships.

[00:24:53] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah. In a big way. I think, you know, I’ll speak from my own personal experience. I was terrified of relationships. Right. A core characteristic of a disorganized attachment is just trust issues and unhealed betrayal wound. So I think for me, it was. I did a lot of work solo, and it wasn’t until I started doing the work in relationships, whether that be a therapeutic relationship or romantic relationship, that thing started to really transcend. And I think that’s a big piece. But for me, you know, it comes down to healing, abandonment stuff. And, you know, that for me was huge. Just working on. On abandonment, wounding and my fear of rejection and these sorts of things. It really allowed me to stay within my own body. Like, I think a lot of it was. I was heady, dissociating and playing out the scripts, the stories, and not actually attuning into myself in a felt sense. So I wanted. When I started doing a lot of somatic work and embodiment work, I was able to really tune back into my intuition and, like, hear the whispers of my soul. Like, no, I don’t want to go right when my partner goes right. I want to go left and do this thing. And then a lot of it for me was learning how to communicate that, like, relational skills need to Be you know, developed when healing is taking place. And then that way the healing takes place. So I’m no longer feeling this intensity of guilt or, or fear and I can now move into being able to communicate my needs and, and boundaries in a healthy way. So that was a big piece of it actually for me. Like just learning communication skills was absolutely critical.

[00:26:28] Tom Bruett: Yeah, the first step is really assessing because it’s, it’s going to be different for everybody. When you think about a question around differentiating or kind of putting your needs forward like, and it could be something simple like what do you want to have for dinner tonight? Or what do you want to do this weekend? Or something that really is asking you to clarify and self define in some way. And if you struggle with that, with answering a question like that, then it’s time to go inward and say, okay, what’s actually happening here in this moment that’s preventing you from going and connecting with yourself? Is it dissociation or you know, checking out or numbing or something? Or is there some feeling of guilt that comes up or you know, what, what is actually happening there? And it’s going to be unique and different for every person. And so that’s why I think sometimes this work needs to be done in relationship with somebody who has experience, whether it’s a coach or therapist or whatever, because then they can help you through this maze of figuring out how to reconnect with yourself.

[00:27:21] Matt Landsiedel: A common thing that I see in my practice is people just in flight, they’re in busyness and they don’t actually attune to themselves because they’re too busy rushing around in the cerebral energy. And they’re not actually in the somatic energy, which moves a lot slower. So it requires us to turn down the volume of ourselves and attune to the slowness of our experience so we can really tap into the minutiae, the little things that are coming up and saying, yes, this is what we want. But. And if you haven’t done that in a long time, you’ve been dissociating for a lot of your life. It’s going to take time. Right. It’s not just a quick plug in like you’re gonna. It might feel like I have no idea what I’m feeling. I’m confused, I don’t know. And actually in one of my therapy sessions, I, where I was the client, I remember just hitting this wall and not knowing what I was feeling. And it was so liberating to just say, I don’t know, I’m confused. About what I’m feeling because my flight brain, my trauma brain thought I had to always know what I was experiencing. And for me just saying I don’t know what I’m feeling right now and surrendering to that not knowing it was so powerful for me. And then it allowed me to connect to the young inner child within me that was like spent most of his adolescence not knowing what he was feeling because no one was really there to help me organize right my emotions and my thoughts as a young boy. So I think that’s a big piece too. Is like spending time with yourself and getting curious about our emotional world and our thoughts and developing self awareness, these things.

[00:28:46] Tom Bruett: Just to share a little bit about something that happened to me recently. I can go into busyness. That is my go to way of checking out. And I had a lot of stuff coming up recently. You know, I had a book come out and all this work stuff and I was really feeling burned out and my partner and I had a vacation coming up and I was really not looking forward to the vacation because I was like, how am I going to take time off work? And I was like, this is a problem, right? And it wasn’t until the very end of the vacation, thankfully we had the privilege of doing this where I was like, oh, I’m feeling a little bit disconnected from some aspects of things that I’m doing in my professional life and I need to make some switches. But it wasn’t until I had a period of a couple weeks of actually quietness and stillness where I could actually connect with that feeling of like something inside isn’t feeling right and it’s a reminder that it’s a practice and it’s a lifelong practice and you know, you can know these things about yourself and then you have to just kind of know when it’s time to check in and slow down and do the things that you know are going to help you.

[00:29:46] Matt Landsiedel: Yes, One of the best things that I’ve done for myself just in the last two years since I’ve done a lot of like more trauma work, is going every night for a walk and I try and go for an hour walk even if it’s freezing cold. I live in Canada and I will still bundle up and go. And there’s something about that for me. So no music, no phone, leave everything and it’s me with either my thoughts or my sensations and nature and I’m just focusing on that. And for me that’s my time to process my day to organize my thoughts and my feelings and it Just gives me an opportunity. And for me, that’s a nice negotiation because going from flight or busyness energy straight into, like a meditation, it’s too hard for me. My system goes very fast. I’m a Gemini and, like, got so much fast moving energy inside my body, so I like to just walk. It’s a great compromise for my body and my system. So for those listening, that might be a good way to start connecting with yourself.

[00:30:40] Tom Bruett: I love that. I’m gonna try it.

[00:30:42] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah, it’s great. And I. I normally focus on my five senses, try my best. It’s very hard, but my mind always wants to dominate the experience. But I try and be like, okay, bring me back to my smells and what am I seeing? And I just try and get more somatic with my experience.

[00:30:57] Tom Bruett: Beautiful.

[00:30:58] Matt Landsiedel: All right, so I think we might have talked about this already, but maybe we can go in a little bit deeper. Is interdependence and differentiation. How do these support secure relationships?

[00:31:07] Tom Bruett: Yeah, so interdependence, I think, is the thing that we’re, at least from my perspective, all working towards in secure relationships, which is the ability to hold balance within yourself and to be able to strike that balance between autonomy and connection and to allow there to be individuals inside of a relationship with your. Kind of going back to your bubble analogy, like having the two or the three, how many people are in your relationship? Individuals. But also having this collective Venn diagram overlap where the sum is greater than the individual parts.

[00:31:38] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:31:39] Tom Bruett: But being able to move back and forth between connection and autonomy is. That’s the goal. And that’s. That is really scary and overwhelming and tricky for some people. It was for me.

[00:31:51] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. How long have you been with your partner? I think last episode you said five years.

[00:31:56] Tom Bruett: Uh, no, we’ve been together about eight years.

[00:31:58] Matt Landsiedel: Oh, okay. Yeah. And he was a big factor in you developing secure attachment? Yes, he has attachment going into the relationship.

[00:32:06] Tom Bruett: Yeah, he has a secure attachment. You know, his parents have been married for 50 years, and he is very grounding. And I can be more kinetic and disorganized at times and, you know, just being able to myself work through some of the anxiousness or work through my own avoidance and be able to kind of come back to a secure base. And, you know, for us, I think also I have done a lot of work where I’m able to communicate in a lot more clear way. And, you know, I know much more about what’s happening in my inner world. And so it wasn’t just magically meeting the Right Person. It was like doing the work and then attracting somebody who was different and had a different flavor than the usual guys that I would go for.

[00:32:46] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I like that. I like that. I think for me it would be more. Well, I guess it’s a conversation around desire because for me, you know, I’ll relate it to like a song. Like when I love a song, I’ll listen to it on repeat until I hate it and I’ll move on. Right. And it’s like this all or nothing thing. So in order for me to maintain desire, healthy levels of desire in a relationship, I need to miss my partner. I need to have some separateness. Right. If I’m always with my partner, the novelty wears off. So I think for me, keeping a relationship yummy and like that, I want to keep coming back to it and engaging it means that I have time to come back to my own separate world and have my friendships and connect with people and then have a yearning to want to come back to the connection. But not where it becomes compulsive. Right. The yearning is like a healthy yearning. I think that’s a big one for me is, you know, differentiation allows me to, allows the relationship to stay maybe like love based versus fear based, I think, because when I’m not differentiating, I’m more in this like fear energy of like I want to keep my partner close to me because I don’t trust them or I’m worried this or that. It’s always going to be rooted in fear. When I have trust and I’m rooted in like myself and I, and I’m just operating from a place of love. Like I’m actually wanting my partner to go off and differentiate and like live his life and explore his hobbies and you know, friends and stuff like that. And I think important piece of it though is trust. Once I have trust and maybe the initial six months or whatever, when we’re, we are more merging, that’s where the trust is forming, hopefully. So then we can, you know, move into differentiation.

[00:34:22] Tom Bruett: And trust is built with time and new experiences. And so if you have new experiences in securely attached relationship or relationship that’s becoming securely attached, it’s going to feel different than other relationships you’ve had. And so that even that can feel unnerving, you know, as you’re like, oh, this feels so different and unique and good, but also scary. And, you know, there’s a lot that can come up with with being in relationship with somebody.

[00:34:47] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Do you see that in your own practice or anything where if Somebody’s been really attached to, you know, moving towards insecure people. So let’s say you’re anxious and you move towards avoiding people because it activates the familiar trauma response in you. And we might confuse that, you know, an activated attachment system as love when we start doing work on ourselves, but we’re not maybe fully at that point where we’re able to receive love and. And feel worthy. In my experience, secure people feel like, under. Stimulating almost in a way. Like, it’s like they’re too consistent. They’re too predictable. They’re. You know, there’s these pieces to it. So it’s like I almost have to. My attachment system has had to learn how to, like, recalibrate to, like, safety is actually healthy. Yes. And the peaks and valleys are not. So if I get butterflies on the first date, and, you know, that’s probably not a good sign. Like, in my opinion, it’s like, it’s my system being activated, wanting to play out some sort of attachment trauma.

[00:35:45] Tom Bruett: Well, and it could be because. Because some people say, oh, does that mean I’m gonna have to find, like, a boring relationship forever? And, like, what if I don’t have that butterfly experience or the experience where I’m really desiring my partner? Does that mean then, over the time, together, that we’re not gonna be able to have a fulfilling sexual life, if that’s what you want or whatever? And I think it’s. It’s kind of both. I think there needs to be some attraction there, but if it’s only butterflies and butterflies turns into chaos, and that feels familiar, and, you know, that’s, I think, something to watch out for. But you still want to be able to feel that spark or that connection with somebody.

[00:36:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yes.

[00:36:19] Tom Bruett: I think that’s. That’s where I think people can get into trouble because they’re like, oh, I hear all this secure stuff, but I don’t want to be bored of my relationships. So finding that right. That right person for you is important.

[00:36:30] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, Yeah, I guess it would be for me, following the butterflies. And if it leads to anxiety, then it’s not a. It’s not a good thing. You know, butterflies turning into anxieties. It means I’m playing out a familiar.

[00:36:41] Tom Bruett: Pattern depending on how the partner responds. Right. If you feel the anxiety and your partner is the secure base.

[00:36:46] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:36:47] Tom Bruett: You can have a new experience.

[00:36:48] Matt Landsiedel: But you know, how relationships, eh, they’re so complex. But it’s. It’s cool. It’s what makes it fun and interesting.

All right, so last time we talked A bit about attachment styles. So let’s see if we can bleed this into this conversation. So how would you say attachment styles play a role in this topic for people?

[00:37:08] Tom Bruett: I think they are intimately connected with everything we’ve been talking about, you know, and if we think about just the different attachment styles and how it may make. So again, I’m using the theory that to move through a meshment or, you know, the merging, you have to differentiate. And so what gets in the way of anxious, avoidant, disorganized folks from moving into this process of differentiation? We talked a little bit about for anxious folks. Like, if. If you think about that contagiousness of the anxiety of, of differentiating with. With a partner, you may be more likely to withhold or not bring things forward or like, you know, survey the landscape. What does your partner think about this? You may, like, put out some feelers before you really bring things forward. And then the classic example of, like, oh, I sent this text where I differentiated and I put something out there. And then you keep checking the texts like, oh, is my partner going to respond and what are they going to say and how are they going to. You know, like, that whole process that at least feels very familiar to me and I’m imagining you could relate to a little bit too.

[00:38:09] Matt Landsiedel: Very much so.

[00:38:11] Tom Bruett: And then if we think about avoidant folks, avoidant folks are more likely to see something that feels uncomfortable if they’re differentiating or if their partner is, and then move away from it. So they’re gonna, you know, put down their phone using the same text message analogy and then get distracted by something else or kind of pull into something else. It doesn’t mean they’re not also feeling dysregulated somewhere inside. They just have a different way of showing it.

[00:38:33] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I think. If we go back to the Venn diagram, I feel like avoidant people stand for the me and anxious people stand for the we. And I think they both have something to teach each other. Right. So an anxious person can teach an avoidant person how to come more into the we. And I think a avoidant person can teach an anxious person how to come into the. The me. Right. Come into their me. But it’s a very painful experience for both of them when there’s not enough consciousness or, you know, because I’ve seen actually couples where it’s unconscious and it’s extremely painful. But I’ve seen anxious and avoidant come together and make it work because they have done enough work on themselves where they’re able to start talking about their feelings. And maybe they’re not fully at a secure attachment style yet, but they’re able to play out enough consciousness and communication to, to make it work.

[00:39:22] Tom Bruett: I would see it slightly different. I think both the anxious and the avoidant are concerned with the me’s. It’s not until you move into differentiation that you’re concerned about the we. Because the anxious person pulling for the text message response is also not encouraging secure attachment. It’s encouraging anxious attachment.

[00:39:39] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:39:40] Tom Bruett: And so it’s, it can look. And that’s where I think it can be tricky because people are like, you know, so that’s just a different, a different take on it.

[00:39:47] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Well, the anxious person is requiring the avoidant person to come into the connection with them. Right. In order for them to regulate themselves. So I see where you’re coming from, but it’s almost like an indirect way of them focusing on their me. But they need, they need the avoidant person to go through the we circle to come to them. So yeah, it’s interesting. It’s all about needs when you think about it. We’re all, we’re all playing out patternings that we likely learned in childhood in order to get our needs met, our attachment needs. And some of us are really good at using communication to get it done. And some of us are stuck in maladaptive and even manipulative ways of getting our needs met without being direct with our partners. So again, I think it’s a testament to communication and how important it is to talk, learn how to communicate with partners. And that involves talking about fears, I think is a big piece of, of it. And that’s one of the, the things I wanted to talk about before we maybe move into the conversation about the tangible things is just like talking openly about our fears around closeness and space. Because for some people their fear might be around intimacy and for some people their fear might be around abandonment. And so how important is it and when would you say to have conversations about this when you’re in a, in a relationship?

[00:41:05] Tom Bruett: I think it’s really, really important. And I just want to say one more word about, about the sometimes misunderstood person who’s avoidant is that that’s also them trying to self. Both people are trying to self preserve in those moments. And so sometimes the threat of being close to somebody, it actually does move people into, you know, a hypo way of processing things and they are shutting down and like their nervous system can’t take it. So it’s not that they’re just being standoffish or something, there’s something really going on in their attachment system. And so knowing yourself well enough to know which bucket you fall into or if you can fall into both buckets with different people or whatever, you know, really knowing how your nervous system works and then being able to articulate that to somebody. Like, you know, a recent example of somebody where they were sending a text message to somebody new that they were starting to date and you know, they were more on the anxious bucket and the person they were starting to date was more in the avoidant bucket and they were able to actually say, hey, when I see that you’ve read my text message and it’s, you know, multiple hours before you respond or I have to be the one to send the next message, that creates a lot of feelings inside for me. And I’m not trying to smother you or do anything like that, but can I actually just share what that is like for me? I mean, that would be a super risky conversation and take a lot of courage to do, but those are the kind of conversations that will lead to more secure connecting.

[00:42:30] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, it reminds me of sharing impact before sharing intention, I think can go a long way, like whenever there’s something that’s happened. And like, especially for somebody with, I would say a disorganized or even an anxious attachment style, you know, sharing impact like that this had an impact on me and getting. Letting them know that you see that this has impacted them before explaining yourself or sharing the intention of why you’re doing what you’re doing can probably really help mitigate a lot of conflict because a lot of people are with those. More on the anxious. Well, I shouldn’t even say that. I think all insecure attachment really want to be like seen and they want to like, you know, know how things, how the relationship is impacting them personally. Right.

[00:43:09] Tom Bruett: Yeah.

[00:43:10] Matt Landsiedel: So getting curious, I guess could be. Maybe if you’re listening to this and you have a partner that you’re. You want them to understand you more is like really just getting curious. And sharing impact can be powerful, you know, ping ponging impact, sharing.

Okay, anything else on that topic? I don’t think so.

[00:43:27] Tom Bruett: I think, you know, the, the disorganized piece, I think just noting that you may move back and forth between two of the buckets that we just talked about. And so that can be confusing for a partner in some ways. And so that that means it’s even more important that you’re able to explain what’s happening And I think impact is really important because a lot of times people will personalize it and say, well, you left my message unread, and you didn’t, you know, you didn’t get back to me for six hours. And then you’re in a conflict and your partner hasn’t learned anything more about you. And. And then the other person may be able to, you know, by taking. And again, just using that example you’re learning, is this person going to be able to hang with me? Is their attachment system going to be able to show up when I need them?

[00:44:06] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:44:07] Tom Bruett: And if not, cut your losses sooner rather than later because you can’t do the heavy lifting. If you do the heavy lifting for someone else’s attachment system, that is enmeshment. That is merging.

[00:44:17] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. And it’s exhausting, Right? Yeah. It’s a quick way to lose yourself. And then it. It becomes a relationship built on power, too. It’s like this person has power because they know that you’re afraid of activating their attachment or their. Their nervous system. So it becomes this imbalanced relationship that feels almost like it’s. It’s a job. It’s your job to regulate their nervous system. So. All right, well, let’s maybe share some tangible ways to practice interdependence and differentiation.

[00:44:45] Tom Bruett: One thing I encourage a lot of people, especially if they fall more on the anxious end of things, is to practice when someone asks you a question, practice saying, I don’t know, I need to think about it. Because so often we will get into relationship or connections with our intimate partners, and they’ll. Especially if we’re more anxious, they’ll say, hey, what do you want to do? And you may instantly say, oh, I don’t know, what do you want to do? Or give an answer that you think they may want to hear without actually saying, let me slow down and connect. And that would be the second part. In order to connect with yourself and do more differentiation work, you have to connect with your thoughts, feelings, wishes, and desires. And so being able to journal about those four different quadrants and separate them out and really think about them, because that’s going to allow you the ability to communicate that to somebody in a more clear way. Sometimes people will use the word needs there. And I know we’ve been using needs a little bit. That can be tricky, because needs, you can’t really negotiate with a need. If somebody says, I need air to breathe, I can’t really negotiate with that. Right. Like, you do need air to breathe. And so really thinking about is something a need or is it more a want or a desire or a longing? Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s a need and you know, that’s okay. But I think it’s, it’s important not to get into the practice of negotiating people’s needs because that’s kind of a losing battle.

[00:46:00] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, exactly. It’ll feel like you’re going uphill on that one.

[00:46:04] Tom Bruett: Yeah. And I think making, you know, if you’re more on the avoidant side of things, you can make space for your partner to share first. Lean in a little bit, tolerate the anxiety that’s kind of come up or the tension or whatever the feeling is for you when you think your partner is coming towards you more and say, okay, I actually want to hear you and I’m going to work on regulating my own nervous system and then I’m actually going to share something back. I’m going to give you something back in this conversation and that, you know, that’s, that’s hard for some people.

[00:46:32] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. What I’m hearing you say a lot is like really this is, a lot of this work is developing a relationship with our nervous system.

[00:46:39] Tom Bruett: Yes.

[00:46:40] Matt Landsiedel: Because we have to be able to be willing to tolerate, you know, having an activated nervous system in the wee bubble, but also in our own separate me bubbles. I think that’s, it’s really important.

[00:46:50] Tom Bruett: And if you’re in a relationship with somebody who’s also been able to do some of this work, you can make it a group activity. And I’m not saying you’re, you’re using each other’s nervous systems to regulate or co regulate sometimes that’s possible. But you can give each other feedback. And kind of like with the text message example, I was saying, hey, it feels like this when you do this. I’m not asking you to change it, but I just want to let you know the impact, like you were saying, of, of how this, what, what this does to my nervous system and then can the other person really understand that and take that in and it’s a practice and it, but so often people just avoid that because it’s uncomfortable, it feels risky. We haven’t maybe been encouraged to do that kind of communicating with partners. And yeah, so it really is, is super important. And like you were saying earlier, like going for a walk, what is the self regulation work that you can do to really be able to calm your nervous system down whether you’re solo or in connection with somebody else?

[00:47:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Something that’s helped me in the early stages of, of developing some of this stuff was taking time to write out like stuff. So I’ve had shared Google documents with my partners and I’ll write something and it’s like, because, you know, in the early stages of doing this I was very anxious and I would not tune into myself and I would abandon myself in my relationship. So a skill that allowed me to develop more just staying here, staying with myself, was just writing, writing a little letter that had some needs or requests in it that allowed my partner to read it and then, you know, ping pong back and forth because that also too gives me time to be with my nervous system when he writes back. And I can be with the feeling of, you know, if he says, sorry, I can’t meet that need for you. I can be with the feelings of rejection or whatever comes up for me and maybe it doesn’t have to feel. And then I can graduate more in as I develop more tolerance with my nervous system. So there’s many ways of doing this and communicating with partners. It doesn’t have to be sitting across from them being super vulnerable, at least not at first. Yeah.

[00:48:42] Tom Bruett: And what I love about what you just said is people think and process emotions in different ways. And so if you’re somebody who does process more through written word, like, great, sometimes I wouldn’t maybe share that with a partner. Right. Like slow it down. And depending on the dynamic in your relationship, like, you may want to just write it out to your partner and then, and then sit on it for a day or two and decide if you want to share it or how you want to share it. Some people like what you’re describing, that would work really well for them. So really thinking about the nervous systems of the people involved and what, what’s going to work for everybody at the table.

[00:49:13] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I love that. And even just taking the, that what you’ve written into the conversation can be helpful too. It can help you stay on track if you get flustered with, with anxiety or nervousness or fear. Got to find what works for you. Right? There’s no one recipe for everybody. We’ve got to make our own little recipe that works with our attachment style and, and whatnot. So I just wrote down a couple things. So for people that are wanting to focus on space in the relationship, so focusing on your own hobbies really like, you know, take up a new hobby and do something separate from your partner that allows you one night a week to go out of the house and do something separate and, and, and practice that. Maintaining your own friendships. This is a big one for me, because I don’t really want a relationship in the gay world where all of our friends are merged. I know a lot of gay men are like that and like they have the same friend group, they do everything together, they travel together. I’m really wanting like a separateness and like to have my own friends I think is important to me. So that could be something for people. Plan one trip a year without your partner could be something. I did an authentic relating workshop in LA recently and there was a woman there who, her and her partner do that and one week out of the year they spend apart and they each get to go off and, and do something. So I thought that was really neat. Doing personal development. When we’re on our own personal development path, whether that’s you’re in therapy, you’re doing coaching, you’re doing courses, right? You’re, you’re staying. The focus is on you and your own personal development. And then for those of us with closeness, something I recommend to my clients is doing weekly and monthly check ins to nurture the relationship. So weekly is like a 20, 30 minute check in. Like hey, is there any needs? How are you feeling? Is there anything unspoken that we need to talk about? And then monthly is more of like an hour or two where you sit down and it’s like a real vulnerable time to just come forward and bring anything that’s on your mind, any fantasies, any desires, any fears. And it’s an opportunity to. So it’s like devotion devoting to the relationship so it can maintain its sense of, of safety, I guess. Yeah. Traveling together, couples counseling or coaching, intimacy retreats. There’s a lot of amazing people in our community doing a lot of retreats for couples and stuff like that and then have hobbies that you enjoy together. So maybe you do something, you know, once a week where you do it together. You could do pottery together or different things to, to keep things interesting.

[00:51:29] Tom Bruett: So what I love about what you just shared right there is those are examples of both autonomy and connection. And all relationships need examples from both of those lists. And so it can’t just be one or the other. So make sure that there is some balance there.

[00:51:45] Matt Landsiedel: Exactly. Anything you think we missed or that you want to touch on?

[00:51:49] Tom Bruett: You know, I just, I think this concept for some people is a little bit, can be a little bit cerebral. But what I love about what you just did right there at the end was bringing us back to the practical. And so it doesn’t have to be that you do all of these things tomorrow, but what Is like the next one step that you can take from listening to this podcast? Because it’s great to listen to this podcast and to get more information, but if you are listening to this, what is one action step you can take either in your personal life or in your relationship that’s going to make this, you know, into a process of the rubber meeting, the road.

[00:52:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I love that. And that might even be as simple as, hey, like, I’m gonna ask my partner on a date and I’m going to bring up, you know, needs. Like, what do you need? What would you love to experience more of in this relationship? How are you experiencing our relationship? Like, these sorts of questions can be great just to get the. The conversation going. And so, yeah, I like it.

[00:52:40] Tom Bruett: And it could even be just listen to this podcast and then let’s talk about it. Right. Because then you have some shared language.

[00:52:45] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Amazing. Well, I’m sure you’ll be on again because I, I like creating with you and you’re just a wealth of knowledge. So I do appreciate you coming on again and, and sharing your experiences. And it’s nice to have you here.

[00:53:00] Tom Bruett: Yeah, thanks for having. And I always. I feel always so stimulated after our conversations.

[00:53:04] Matt Landsiedel: Yes, it is.

[00:53:04] Tom Bruett: So it’s just great to connect with you on this, on this level.

[00:53:07] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Thank you. And your book is out now, so do you want to maybe just share where people can find it, and. Because. Sure.

[00:53:13] Tom Bruett: Yeah. The book, the Go To Relationship Guide for Gay Men From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment. And you can find it anywhere. Books are anywhere you get your books. So at the library, at booksellers.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the publisher, Kindle, it’s all those places.

[00:53:29] Matt Landsiedel: Okay, great. We’ll make sure it’s in the, in the show notes as well, so people can get that. All right, thanks again and thanks for the listener viewer tuning in to another episode. Much love, everybody.