The "Yes Pattern" In Relationships
Humanity is currently in the process
of learning how they can have themselves,
and be in a relationship with another person
at the exact same time.
So many people in society
don't actually feel like this is an option,
they feel like they get to have their personal truth
i.e. desires, thoughts, feelings, preferences, aversions, goals
and be alone,
or, they get to be together with somebody
and feel close to them and like they belong,
but the price is, losing themselves.
When they do this,
there's very little authenticity in the relationship,
very little actual honesty.
Being inauthentic is exhausting,
it feels bad,
it feels like closeness, love and connection
is conditional upon putting on an act
and being different than you are.
This behavior of learned inauthenticity
begins in childhood.
Many parents the world over
see children a little bit like a ball of clay.
What I mean by that is that it's just raw potential;
And then it's their job to mold that clay
into what they want it to be.
Essentially, many parents around the world
think that it's their job to decide what to turn their child into,
and they do that according to what they think is best.
And even though a lot of them may tell you
that they're doing what they think is best for the child,
in fact, underneath it all, they're doing what's best for themselves.
When this is a pattern inside of a household,
the child learns to do anything they need to do
to please the parent,
even if the doing of those things
is in fact, not true or authentic to the child itself.
The consequence of not doing so, is punishment.
The most terrifying of which,
is isolation, ostracization, exclusion and abandonment.
To understand more about this, watch my video titled:
The Freedom/Connection Split Within Humanity
Growing up in this kind of environment
is both painful and exhausting.
Growing up like this
is essentially complicated and exhausting.
The opposite of easy and free.
So, it's easy to see how this type of experience
can easily give rise to this opposite desire;
this desire for a relationship that is not complicated at all,
that's super super easy.
To have a relationship that's so unconditional,
that you feel completely accepted for who you are
and totally free to think, say and do anything,
and that you will be validated for those things
no matter what they are.
The problem with this, of course,
is that even though it's understandable
that you would give rise to the complete opposite desire,
it can easily create a pendulum swing to the opposite extreme.
and what we know about pendulum swings is
we just end up experiencing the opposite side of dysfunction.
To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled:
What Is The Pendulum Swing In Healing
This pendulum swing can be summed up as:
Perceiving "yes" as love.
People who fall into this relationship pattern are absolute.
"You're free to think, be, say and do whatever you want
and you'll always have my approval for any of it" freaks.
They want this for themselves and so they give this experience to others.
They surround themselves with people
who approve of everything, validate everything
and give them the freedom to say, be and do anything and everything
and they do the same for others.
They try to set up a "no consequences for anything"
sub-reality in the friendship itself.
There are some problems with this arrangement, though.
#1. Relationships based off of this "yes" pattern
they have an expiration date, it's inevitable.
Why?
Because there will become one day in this relationship
where what one person does
or says or behaves like
is gonna run into a "no" from the other party.
Now, the second that that no comes up
because whatever the person wants to
unconditionally think say or do
is going to oppose the best interest of the other person in the relationship,
when that "no" comes up,
the "no" in and of itself, becomes a trigger.
That trigger sets the person back all the way to their childhood.
Oh, wait a minute, I can't be say and do
exactly what I wanna do.
So, this is just as conditional as it was in childhood.
I guess this relationship isn't as good as I thought it was.
In other words, it's gonna put them back in this feeling
like in this friendship
they're also being conditionally loved
and the relationship just got complicated
and hard and exhausting
you get the picture.
Also, what this is gonna do
the minute that this "no" inevitably comes up in any relationship,
is that it's going to put this person in this scenario,
in the position to feel like they either have to comply,
or they have to rebel.
If they comply,
they will hold resentment for the other person
who they will see as "the bad guy".
If they rebel,
they will bulldoze the other person's best interests.
They're likely to end the relationship
because they'll tell themselves the story
that it isn't as good of a relationship as they thought,
because it's reminiscent of the way their childhood felt.
Both controlled and conditional.
#2. Unbeknownst to the very people
who feel really good in this kind of unconditional "yes" style relationship
it's not actually freedom and it's not actually unconditional love;
What it is is mutual enabling.
Now, enabling in this context,
applies to dysfunction.
Right?
If you're a "yes" to everything
the likelihood of you enabling dysfunction in the other person
is very very high.
To spell this out,
in a very straight and direct way
they will end up saying yes to things
that in fact, hurt the very person
who they say that they love,
but, when they enable
they're gonna be calling it "unconditional love".
#3.
This kind of relationship
is not actually possible
if you're deeply connected and deeply committed.
In fact, to create this
"I'm gonna say yes no matter what you think say and do" relationship
you have to in fact, be disconnected and detached.
This means, it's a false sense of closeness.
The freedom required by people with this pattern
is so extreme, it's a state of aloneness.
You can only unconditionally approve of
everything another person thinks, says and does
if those things have no impact on you.
And for it to have no impact on you,
you have to be really really disconnected and detached from them.
This makes it a "I do what I want,
you do what you want" relationship.
I want you to sit with that for a minute.
I want you to feel it in your body when I say:
"You do you, I'll do me".
To illustrate this concept,
I'm gonna paint an example for you;
An example involving friends:
All of these people who are now in this adult friendship group
experienced similar things in their childhood
where they felt conditionally loved and totally controlled
and there was a high pressure inauthentic environment.
With each other, they can feel exactly the opposite.
They subconsciously all love each other's company
because they know no matter how many other people
disapprove of what they're doing and disagree with their point of view,
it's a guarantee that the people in this group
will agree with them and approve of the decisions they're making.
They will feel validated instead of invalidated
and like it does not matter what they do,
there will never be a consequence.
One of them has a huge problem with commitment,
but that's okay,
because any time she decides to end a job
or blow off an interview
or end a relationship
or show up as late as she wants
she knows that the people in this group are gonna say:
"Yeah it probably wasn't the right thing anyway.
We totally understand.
I mean, like, it's really restrictive.
Maybe you're just meant to live life by your own terms."
One of them only finds connection through opposition.
He loves to establish connection with the other three
by triangulating them against whoever's bothering him in his life.
The good thing is he feels so ungaslit by them.
Over the months they've really shown him
that his perspective is right on the money.
They agree that it's insane how without fail,
people just end up going bad.
And no matter how right and good he is, they end up hurting him all the time.
One of them decides he wants to move to Germany
after all, he's feeling called there.
Obviously, the other members of this group
feel really disappointed
they're not gonna get to see him as much,
but when they sit and think about it,
they don't wanna be restricted either if they were in his position,
so they're gonna go ahead and vote for his freedom
and just let him go.
On top of this, they all love travel.
So if he moves to Germany,
this is a great excuse to see a country they've never seen before.
In other words, the absolute ease
with which all of the members of this group
can just separate from each other
feels super freeing and super loving.
It makes perfect sense that if a person grew up
in this kind of environment that creates this pendulum swing
the energy of "yes"
would feel more loving and more like freedom.
It would feel like you could finally have yourself
and be in a relationship at the same time.
But, consider that either both "yes" and "no"
have nothing to do with love
or that both "yes" and "no" have a place when it comes to love.
To love is to take something as a part of yourself.
To understand more about this you can watch my video titled:
What is Love
If you take something as a part of yourself,
you cannot say yes to everything.
You cannot approve of everything.
You cannot be unaffected
by what that thing thinks, says and does.
For this reason,
I want you to ask yourself the following question:
To what degree is the "yes" in your relationships
whether it is agreement, validation,
permission approval or freedom... healthy?
And to what degree is it just a reaction,
i.e. an unhealthy pendulum swing
in response to the painful conditions
of your earlier relationships?
Have a good week.
If you liked this video,
be sure to share it, like it and also subscribe to my channel
so you can see more content like this.
But I wanna personally thank you for taking the initiative
and having the bravery to step into the space of awareness.
Not only for yourself, but for the benefit of those around you.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com