Are you trapped in negative relationship cycles that make you feel stuck and even a little crazy? Do you and your partner have toxic patterns–bouts of fighting, shutting down, or tuning out–that leave you feeling upset, unheard, and unloved? Although we often expect our intimate relationships to be naturally healthy and smooth, unhealthy dynamics can take over–or be present even from the start. But take heart–you don’t have to stay stuck. Even destructive habits that seem permanently etched in the fabric of a relationship can be changed when genuine motivation and deep love are at work.

Today, I’m joined by a relationship expert who is known for her magic touch in transforming past experiences—especially the not-so-shiny ones—into pure relationship gold. Topics discussed include healthy love, communication, relationship dynamics, toxic patterns, toxic dynamics, marriage, emotional connection, Runaway Bride, people pleasing, caretaker, fear of commitment, commitment phobia, self-love, self-care, relationship coach, power of attraction, manifestation, relationships, healthy relationships, attachment, secure attachment, insecure attachment, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, love blocks, and self-growth.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Sanaiyah Gurnamal:

Website: https://www.sanaiyahgurnamal.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanaiyahgurnamal/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sanaiyahgurnamal/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanaiyahgurnamal/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SanaiyahGurnamal

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sanaiyahgurnamal?lang=en

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Free Yourself from Toxic Relationship Patterns with Expert Sanaiyah Gurnamal

Top Tips for Ending Negative Relationship Dynamics & Creating Healthy Love

Do you and your partner have toxic patterns, bouts of fighting, shutting down, or tuning out that leave you feeling upset, unheard, and unloved? Although we often expect our intimate relationships to be naturally healthy and smooth, unhealthy dynamics can take over or even be present from the start. Take heart. Even destructive habits that seem permanently etched into the fabric of a relationship can be changed when genuine motivation and deep love are at work.

I’m joined by a relationship expert who’s known for her magic touch in transforming past experiences, especially the not-so-shiny ones, into pure relationship gold. For this episode, we’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “Please help me save my marriage. We’ve been together for 5 years, married for 3 of them. My husband and I have become trapped in a cycle of fighting over big things like money and stupid things like me texting when we’re watching TV.

I know it’s not just him. I bait him a lot, and I learned this from my dad. He wants to start a family, but I don’t want kids because our relationship is too toxic. Is there a way we can get out of this loop of nagging and picking at each other?” With that issue as the focus of this episode, this is the show. Please note that as this episode may contain sensitive information, reader discretion is advised.

 I’m joined by a delightful guest, Sanaiyah Gurnamal, who is a love alchemist, relationship coach, and self-love expert. Welcome to the show, Sanaiyah. It’s a joy to have you with us.

Thank you so much. I am so honored by your introduction. It was beautiful. I want to thank you for having me.

It’s a pleasure to be with you. This is such a great question of the day. I love it. I know there are a lot of people who will see themselves in this issue because it’s so common and one that we often don’t talk about because it brings up shame and embarrassment. Before we dive into that very interesting topic, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you, you?

What makes me, me is my passion. Anyone who meets me notices right away that I’m passionate about the work I do. I’m passionate about self-love as being the foundation for our relationship with ourselves. I’m passionate about helping people and also helping people understand how important it is to take personal accountability in your life, that there are deeper layers to who we are, and that anything is possible when you have the right mindset that allows you to get to your goals. Those are some of the things I’m very passionate about. It is one of the things that I hear over and over again from other people about how passionate I am about what I believe in and the work I do.

Thank you for that. I’m a big fan of being passionate about something or many things in life because it’s passion that keeps us going forward. It helps us continue with purpose and helps us show up. Thank you. I love that introduction. I can see your passion and your energy. Let’s set a nice foundation for our audience. You introduce yourself with one of my favorite words, self-love.

When we talk about self-love, many people think, “It’s loving myself.” It is loving yourself, but it’s so much deeper and, certainly, a work in progress for all of us. Sometimes we can take 1 step forward in self-love, and sometimes 2 steps backward. Could you tell our audience a little bit about what self-love means to you?

That’s such a great question to start off with because a lot of people have very different definitions for what self-love is, what it looks like, and how to live their life loving themselves. What I’ve learned from my many years of searching for that deep understanding of what self-love is is that it’s our ability to recognize our own needs. Those needs might be emotional, physical, or spiritual as well. It is our ability to recognize our own needs and then meet them, not tomorrow, not another day, or not when it’s convenient, but right now to respond to our needs and be there for whatever we need.

A lot of us have grown up in families and environments where love wasn’t freely given, where we had to earn love, where we had to prove ourselves worthy of love, or where we might have wanted love for years and not received it. Being an adult who’s learning to love yourself is the journey of giving yourself that love by meeting your needs and by meeting whatever you need at that given moment in your life. That in itself is an act of love.

Thank you for that beautiful foundation. Let’s dissect that a little bit. In my clinical work, when we’re talking early on in somebody’s therapy, I say, “What do you do as self-love?” They’re like, “I love myself. I buy myself this. I do that.” When we get to the heart of things, often, there is that inner voice the person grew up with that is constantly criticizing them or secretly saying, “You’re not enough,” or that we have all of these elements from childhood forward.

I always say I’m not blaming or shaming parents. There’s no use in that. It’s about looking at what went well and doing more of it, and what didn’t go well and either doing less of it or trying to eradicate it. As kiddos, we were told to be seen and not heard, or a parent who didn’t have a very high EQ called us names or criticized us. All of those things etched their way into who we are.

I love how you approach self-love as knowing your needs and meeting them. Generally, the self doesn’t have big needs. The self doesn’t need a fancy car, a perfect body, or a perfect house. The self’s needs are generally quite lovely and basic, such as healthy relationships, being heard, being safe, and being with people whom we trust. The need for the self is to have good self-esteem, to be growing, and to evolve. Could you give me your take on what the self needs? It doesn’t have to align with mine. I’d love your perspective.

Redefining Self-Love Vs. Self-Care

I do agree with so much of what you said. It’s very aligned with my own beliefs. I do want to address one of the first things you said, which is about, “I buy myself things.” When people say, “I love myself. I buy myself things. I get myself a massage. I get my nails done,” there is that little bit of confusion because that is self-care, not self-love. Self-love doesn’t look like buying yourself fancy gifts or pampering yourself. Those things are amazing, and I love doing them for myself as well, but they aren’t enough to say that I love myself, and I am truly dedicated to myself.

Being seen, seeing who you are, being in touch with how you feel, understanding yourself, and committing to the things that are important to you, such as your time and energy, and drawing proper boundaries are all different aspects of self-love. I heard you say quite a few of them as well, so we share that approach to self-love.

Also, what is important to highlight is that what we want for ourselves may often be at odds with what other people want. Learn to prioritize yourself and choose yourself. Even though you want to please other people, you want to make other people happy, and you care about other people, too, it’s important to be able to choose yourself first and say, “I can show up for what I need and still be able to give to others.”

As you have probably heard that old adage, you can’t pour from an empty cup, so you have to be able to fulfill yourself first. You need to make sure that you have energy for yourself before you can give that to other people. You have to strap yourself in first before you are good to anybody else who’s struggling in their own life.

We always have to see ourselves first before other people, without feeling like that’s a selfish thing. It isn’t, “I only care about myself and nobody else matters.” It’s more of this understanding of, “I have to be in a good place. I have to be full of energy and full of love for myself to share any of that with other people. To be able to share that with other people properly, I have to be full of it. I have to be full of love.”

Self-Love As A Prerequisite For Healthy Relationships

I agree with you 100%. I like the part where you talked about not confusing purchasing things with self-love. I want to look back to that for a moment because it is so important. Sometimes, people buy themselves something, thinking it’s self-love, and feel worse afterward. They get that initial dopamine hit and are like, “I bought myself a nice dress,” or, “I bought myself a sports car,” or, “I bought myself a great dinner,” only to find that after that hit wears off, they feel worse.

That’s why it’s so critical to have that self-love first. Self-love then tends to be more in a balanced place of, “Maybe I want that, but I don’t need it, so maybe I’ll forgo it,” or, “Maybe I want that. A massage would feel  good because I’m tired.” Our expectations are shifted when we’re coming from a place of what would feel good to us, rather than trying to fill our soul that is aching and hungering with things, because the soul doesn’t care about things.  Self-love does not care about things.

Let’s continue. You said so many wonderful things about self-love and self-care. We can hold those in their own place because they are so important when we pivot to relationships. If we are in relationships where our self-love is not strong, it’s like being on this very tenuous tightrope where we can get easily pulled down into whatever’s below.

When we look at the reader’s question, this sounds like a once-promising romantic partnership because they did get married after all. It has degraded over time into dynamics that, at least from the individual who wrote in and from their side, they’re not happy at all. What are some basic tips that you would offer that we can lay as a foundation for this?

First of all, I wanted to thank you for bringing up dopamine because that is an important thing to also talk about. Our world has become so distracted that we’re constantly looking for these dopamine hits or these feel-good moments, like buying ourselves something, giving ourselves that massage, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with them, but what we’re doing is neglecting the hormones that matter when it comes to relationships, which are serotonin, oxytocin, which is great for bonding, and endorphins, which is something that you can trigger through other activities like exercise.

The idea is that we are so focused on the dopamine hit that we forget that our body also needs serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin. A lot of these hormones come from activities where we are connecting with other people. This brings me to the person who wrote in and the issue that’s challenging their marriage. Clearly, there’s a lack of communication, bonding, safety, and joy in the relationship.

It isn’t necessarily just a problem in the relationship. I do believe from all the work that I’ve done with over 5,000 clients at this point, one-on-one, that a lot of this has to do with their own relationship with themselves, which is probably going through its own individual challenges. That is coming into their relationship and getting in the way of a healthy, loving connection between the two of them.

I usually work with one person in the couple. I almost rarely do couples counseling or coaching, mainly because all it takes is one person to start to work on themselves for their experience of the other person to change. If I have a client, who’s often the woman in the relationship, comes to me and says, “Sanaiyah, I am struggling with this relationship. All we do is fight all the time. It’s toxic,” I go back to, “Where have you seen this pattern in your life before?” It’s often not in the current relationship. It’s something they have seen from the past.

You mentioned it. Your reader who wrote in said one of the things she learned, the baiting, was something she learned from her father. What is happening is often our behaviors, our reactions, and what we anticipate in our relationships, especially the loving ones, come from childhood patterns and dysfunctions. These are things we grew up with or things we saw our parents do. If they fought all the time, we end up fighting all the time. If one person cheated on the other, we grow up attracting people who will betray us, cheat on us, and make us feel insecure in a relationship.

We’re often repeating patterns that we’ve grown up with, we’ve learned before, and we’ve experienced before. It doesn’t necessarily become about my client and their partner. It becomes the story about my client’s life and what they have constantly experienced in the form of negative emotions in their relationships. All they do is they keep recreating that. It could be with their partner or in other aspects of their life. Often, when you look at the bigger picture and zoom out, you see all these different isolated events. You connect the dots and you’re like, “It’s not different and isolated. It’s things that have been happening over and over again for a very long time.”

Early Childhood Programming & Attachment Patterns

You can’t create change. It’s extremely helpful if you’re in a partnership and the other person wants to change, too. I agree with you. Our patterns are formed early on in life. Our attachment style is formed by eighteen months of age, generally. When we think about how much concentrated time we spend with our caregivers, they are generally all we know or most of what we know for the first three years of life.

They’re present as we go to kindergarten, grade school, and elementary school. For those first, generally, 17 to 18 years of life below our conscious radar, we are picking up the body language and the oral back and forth. We are picking up the dynamics. Our brains are going to be wired in certain ways because that’s what we are picking up.

I agree. I love that the individual who wrote in is already aware that this part can be attributed to something that they learned from Dad. It’s those insights, as small as they might seem, that are the gateways. Those are what allow us to have the insight. Insight is critical. Once we have the insight, then we can choose to change. Back to you. I love that you already set the foundation with, “Let’s create the awareness of where the patterns are coming from.” That’s step one. What’s step two?

Before I go into step two, I want to address something you said, which was also so important. I love that you’re helping me explain what I want to say as well, because there’s a lot of alignment in the work that we do. One of the things that I want to address is how important it is for the other person to be willing to change.

In my work, what I found is that the other person doesn’t have to actively change, but be open to change. Here’s why. Our relationships are interactive. We aren’t in a relationship as ourselves. We interact. For example, if I see my husband in the morning and he says, “Good morning,” and then says something to me, I can interpret it any way I want. I might interpret it as being rude, or I might be fine with the way he said something.  What the other person says can often trigger different reactions in us.

We’re constantly reacting and interacting with the other person. What might feel hurtful to somebody else may be something that is worth laughing about in another relationship. It’s how we’re constantly interpreting different behaviors, events, and communication from other people that determines the quality of our relationships and how we will react.

The key difference is whether we will respond to the communication or the interaction, or we will react. If the relationship is great, we often respond. It’s a beautiful, loving relationship between two people. When we’re constantly reacting because we feel attacked, threatened, or resentful, and there are all these negative emotions that we’re carrying from previous interactions with that person that build up over time, then you get the exact kind of situation that your reader describes in her message.

Step two is looking back at your childhood. That was step one as well, but going deeper into it, trying to understand, “What are the events that have shaped me into the person I am today? What do I believe about love? What do I expect out of love?” It’s examining our beliefs and our perspective on love. “Is it positive? Is it what I want it to be, or am I repeating these very faulty patterns, notions, or understanding of love in my own life?” It’s happening all on the unconscious level. We aren’t aware we’re doing it, but it shows up in our behaviors.

Often, we’re trying to protect ourselves. We are repeating behaviors that protect us but end up pushing other people away, triggering other people, or eliciting the kind of behavior we don’t want. Our goal is simply to protect ourselves from what happened in the past. We’re anticipating it in the present relationship. If you had a father who was an alcoholic and you grew up with that, you realized as a child that you had to be quiet around him. You had to tiptoe. You couldn’t express yourself because, if you did, he might react. He might get angry. He might have a meltdown.

You learned that you had to shrink in your relationships to avoid conflict. You might go into your adult relationship the same way, even though you are not with a partner who’s an alcoholic. This lack of being able to communicate, the lack of being yourself, because you’re still reacting from the childhood experience of having to protect yourself from your father’s outbursts as an alcoholic.

I agree so much. You made me think, when you were talking about the childhood piece, of my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love. It sounds so simplistic. What is your definition of love? People might say, “Love is being cuddled. Love is being adored,” or whatever it might be. If we go back to childhood and the definition of what we learned as a child, using your example of an alcoholic parent, if the parent is an alcoholic, walks in the door, and hits you, and that parent is supposed to love you, love equals being hit.

If the parent walks in the door and criticizes you, or you’re trying your best to work on something, but all you get is criticism, and you look up at this big parental figure because you’re tiny and the parent is God or goddess, then you’re like, “Love is criticism.” If the parent ignores you, you’re like, “Love is being ignored. Love is stonewalling. Love is gaslighting.”

Your brain is forming. It grows like wildfire when you’re young, so you’re taking all this in. You grow up, and you may be different with your friends, because friends don’t necessarily trigger those intimate relationship defenses that pop up. You’re then in an adult relationship. We’re thinking of our reader. They might be in a situation with their husband, and they’re poking, triggering, or doing all of the little things, maybe criticizing.

Why? It is not because they’re broken or hopeless. Clearly, the individual wants to create change. It’s because those are the patterns they learned in intimate relationships, and they’re carrying them forward. I love how you’ve set this up for change. We have the foundation. We have the understanding. We have the awareness of the definitions of, “What am I bringing in in this silent script that’s running the show?” What do we do?

Identifying & Healing Love Blocks

The next thing to do is understand what your particular love block is. I have found that when it comes to love and relationships in particular, we have specific personalities or expressions of ourselves that can be categorized into five different types. I created this quiz because I would see the same patterns over and over again with my clients. I figured, “If I could put this together and simplify it for my client, what would it look like?” I created this quiz that helps people understand what their block is when it comes to love. Depending on what your block is, the path to healing and overcoming that will look a little bit different. That was the goal of identifying the block. It is to understand what this particular type of situation needs.

If you grew up in a family where you weren’t valued, you weren’t made to feel important, you were one of those children where you were taught you had to be quiet and you could be seen but not heard, and you felt very unwanted and unloved, you might grow up to have some challenges when it comes to confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. When that shows up in a relationship, it could show up as people-pleasing. You constantly feel like you need to earn the other person’s love.

Is that 1 of the 5 love blocks?

One of the five love blocks is people-pleasing. Your understanding of love is that it must be earned. To earn love as a child, for example, you had to get good grades or you had to help out. You had to take care of certain chores in order for your mother to say, “You’re a great child,” or, “I love you.” You grew up thinking that you had to constantly please yourself.

What happens is you end up attracting partners who you feel either you have to change yourself to make them happy or make them love you, or you constantly are vying for their attention or love in other ways. You’re constantly people-pleasing in that relationship. What happens is you end up losing your identity because you’re so focused on the other person.

As time goes on in the relationship, the partner stops valuing you and stops seeing you as someone with their own identity because you’ve sacrificed all of that for them. You taught them that you are not important, that your needs don’t matter, and that you are not the priority. They are. They got used to it. We train our partners how to love us.

If you train your partner that your needs don’t matter, eventually, you start getting resentful because they don’t prioritize you. You’re constantly exhausted from pleasing them, doing things for them, and not getting anything back. It worked in the beginning because that’s how you started the relationship, and they got used to it as well. They got used to not having to give love back or make you feel special. You allowed it.

Time goes on, and you get more and more resentful. That turns into all the squabbling and conflict. You then start getting either depressed or feeling unloved or not good enough, but then, you already felt all of those things in your childhood with your parents. All you’re doing is repeating that. It feels so much worse because it’s not the first time that you’re experiencing these emotions. It’s the same experience being added on top of the old experiences you’re carrying from childhood that were never healed.

I’ve discovered they’re much worse because, in childhood, we didn’t choose our parents or our family. People often ask me, “How could I have chosen this partner who was going when they started to become aware of the cycle?” I help them realize, “You chose, but you didn’t consciously choose. No one goes into a relationship, or at least no one I’ve met yet, who says, “I want to be criticized or harmed the way my parents did.” It’s that, “I believe in an unconscious desire that this is broken in the same way.” That gives us the window to healing because, on some level, we get that it’s broken in the same way. That same knowing also realizes that it’s a potential for healing that wound. What’s love block number two?

We’ve got the people-pleaser. We’ve got the commitmentphobe. That was my love block. It’s one of my favorite ones because you keep blaming other people for having a commitment issue. You think you attract emotionally unavailable partners. You’re stuck in relationships where it feels like they’re not all in. They’re not as invested as you are.

You think that they are the problem, but the twist in the story is that if you are one who keeps attracting the same kind of partner or situation, it’s not them. It’s you. For me, it was this big moment when I realized that every single partner I dated was someone who had this emotional baggage. They couldn’t commit. I had glorified the whole situation and made excuses for why they couldn’t commit. The truth was, they couldn’t commit over and over again.

I started to notice that these men I was dating who couldn’t commit to me would end up committing to the person after me. That’s when I said, “It’s not their issue. It must be mine because I’m the common denominator in every single relationship that looks the same.” That was the most liberating realization that it was me and not them. If it were me, I could do something about it.

The commitmentphobe is the personality who thinks everybody else is the problem. They have the commitment issue, but it’s you. For the commitmentphobe, you want a loving, fulfilling relationship, but you’re also running away from it because you’ve seen relationships, your parents, your siblings, your own experiences, and your friends where love wasn’t as pretty as it seemed. You realize pretty soon that it wasn’t unicorns and rainbows. It was hard work. It was a lot of pain. It was difficult. Part of you wants to protect yourself from that.

That makes sense. It’s where avoidant attachment comes from. Let’s move to number three. What is the third love block?

Runaway bride. Runaway Bride is based on a Julia Roberts movie where she’s about to walk down the aisle. It was Richard Gere in the movie. I remember that movie specifically because she was right there. She was going to marry the guy. Right before she’s walking down the aisle, she gets on a horse and runs. That is a classic runaway bride situation where every time you’re about to take the next step, you’re about to get closer in the relationship.

Maybe you’re going to move in together. Maybe you are going to get married. Every time the relationship gets to the next step, you start to get cold feet, and you bolt. That may look a little different for everyone. It’s not necessary that you walk out of the relationship, but you might start sabotaging the relationship. You might create fights over things that aren’t that important. You find ways to push the person away because you don’t want them to get too close. Ultimately, you’re afraid they’re going to hurt you. You’ll stay in the relationship, but you’re constantly in the space of, “I need to protect myself.”

It is very much that light mode where it’s used as a defense mechanism, but it’s also flight at the same time.

It’s flight mode masquerading as fight. The response is a fight mode, but it’s deep down the flight mode of, “I want to run away from this situation.” It’s very interesting because you’ll often behave badly in a relationship with your partner, but it’s not because you want to intentionally hurt them. You want to protect yourself from being on the receiving end of that.

It’s that fear of vulnerability, which is generally learned in childhood. We can rebrand that one, for a moment, to make it a runaway bride and groom. It flies to any gender. What is number four?

Number four is the caretaker. This is the child who probably had to take on a lot of responsibility for a number of reasons. You could have had a mother who was incapacitated as a mother. She could have been going through mental health issues. She could be working all the time, taking care of the family. The child had to step in to probably raise the siblings or take care of the house.

Basically, the child becomes a stand-in for the parent and takes on a lot of responsibility that they didn’t need or they shouldn’t have had to take on, but the situation required it. They grow up becoming the responsible ones, constantly taking care of other people. That becomes almost a sense of worth, like, “If I take care of other people, then I am important. I have value. I am loved.”

That becomes the pattern. You attract partners that you have to take care of. That might be a situation where the partners are struggling with something financially, addictions, or different challenges in their own lives. Your entire relationship is about focusing on them and taking care of them, neglecting your own needs, and neglecting your own desires. Sometimes, for a caretaker love block, you stay single because the thought is, “I have too many responsibilities. There’s no space in my life for a partner.”

What’s number five?

The memory chaser. This is where it feels like you’re stuck in the past in a relationship that didn’t work out. You have this whole idea in your head of the one that got away. You’re always looking over your shoulder at the past at what didn’t work out. You’ve put that whole relationship on a pedestal, so it looks like the perfect relationship, even though there was a very good reason why it didn’t work out. You don’t want to see it because, in your head, it was the perfect relationship.

You can’t move forward because you’re still stuck in the past. You keep comparing any new partner to the old one. You’re stuck in this space where the future looks pretty bleak because you miss that one chance, the ship that sailed. You’re caught in this whole loop of chasing memories that aren’t even real, so you don’t move forward. You don’t let new love in. You don’t give anyone else a chance.

I’ve seen that dynamic haunt current relationships because they might think, “That person was perfect because they loved me more. They had a better body. They had more money,” or, “They got drunk with me and this person doesn’t drink,” or, “They were okay with me smoking and this person doesn’t.” We’re looking at all of that in a silo, not realizing how that relationship would’ve evolved or what that person would look like 20 years later or 30 years later. You’re right. We’re back to self-protection on this type.

Let’s take all of this back to the question of the day. Not sure what’s happening on the husband’s side, but it sounds as if the wife is in that pattern of the runaway bride. She’s using the criticism learned in childhood and carried forward to create constant upheaval in the relationship, not doing it consciously, which gives her reasons to get on the horse and gallop off into the sunset emotionally. Even if she’s staying, there’s this galloping off, leaving the relationship. I agree with you. It is often a defense against deeper love and vulnerability.

Key Tips For Shifting Relationship Dynamics

I know we don’t have much time left, so I’d love to get in a few important tips that will help this individual realize, “If I start using some of these tools, I can start creating shifts in my relationship. I can share them with my partner, or I can model them for my partner, or I can model them, embrace them myself, and create a sense of ease in myself,” which may create a change in the partner’s dynamics as well. We don’t know. What would you offer?

There are a couple of things that I want to share. First of all, you did say runaway bride, which makes complete sense with this reader, but it could also be a memory chaser. They might have a relationship in the past that they hold as the ideal, and they’re not getting that in the current relationship. It could also be the people-pleasing love block because they’re constantly doing things for the partner, and the partner is not sharing anything back. It could be a couple of different things. We’d need a little bit more information.

If I were the reader or anyone else tuned in, the first thing I would do is take the quiz to understand what’s going on with me. The second tip I want to share is to go back and do what I call a relationship inventory. Look at all your relationships. What do they have in common? What did you feel in every relationship? My goal for that exercise is to help you become aware of what you’ve been creating and what you’ve been attracting.

Ultimately, what I would say to the reader who wrote in is not to focus as much on what the partner is doing wrong, but to focus on what it is that you are doing to invite this response from them. What is it that you are sending out in your communication with your partner that is getting the kind of behavior that you don’t want from them? What if you changed your strategy? What if you became more vulnerable? What if you started asking for what you want?

It depends on what their love block is. If they’re the people-pleaser, ask for what you want instead of expecting them to give it to you. Clearly say, “This is what I need. Do you think you can give this to me? If you did, it would make me feel this way.” What kind of conversation you would have with your partner to change the dynamics would be a little bit different depending on what your block is.

Understand what your role is in your relationship. If you’re single, what is the role you are playing in the people you’re attracting? If you are married, what are you protecting against? That is something that is very particular and connected to what block you’re operating from. In the work I do, I do a lot of healing on the emotional wounds that each of us carries, whether it’s a father wound, a mother wound, childhood dysfunction that we have to clear, pain, trauma, or inner child work.

I focus on the first part of what created these blocks to start with and what are the experiences and events that shaped you to have this kind of block. After releasing that, changing all of these different inputs that have resulted in this kind of output situation in our lives, we work on that. I call that the releasing the past aspect. I then work on building the confidence, self-esteem, new beliefs about love, new notions, and new expectations. Finally, the third part of the work I do is attracting what you want in your relationships, whether you are in an existing relationship or you are single and looking for love. It is a three-step process of releasing, rebuilding, and then attracting.

I 100% agreed with you. When we look at this reader’s question, she becomes aware of where all these patterns came from. Like anything, we might not see ourselves in a strictly insecure attachment or a strictly secure attachment. In 1 of these 5 styles or any style, we may see bits and pieces. The idea is to reflect on the past to see where the patterns came from, be gentle as you decide what you want and what’s happening, and then play step by step because patterns don’t change overnight.

It is realizing, for the person who wrote in, “If I’m tending to criticize my husband, I wonder what happens if I make a pact to myself to notice how many times I do that a day. I want to notice how often I do it.” When we notice, we start creating awareness. Maybe step two would be, “What happens when I feel that coming up and I don’t criticize? I wonder how that will change things.” If we have this awareness of what’s happening, we allow ourselves a nice pause, like, “Maybe I don’t have to criticize him for leaving his underwear on the floor. I can let them be and see what happens.” We are allowing that slow and steady change, and that’s often the hardest part.

Neurobiologically, we’re hardwired to dive in, criticize, or stonewall. What happens if we, slowly but surely, try to stop? Our brains are going to come up with new patterns. We want to watch and see what new patterns come alive. We lean into the patterns that come alive, and we lean into the ones that seem filled with love and connection. It will bring up a sense of vulnerability and a sense of something new, maybe some fear and anxiety. That’s okay, because if you’re doing something with love, the outcome is ultimately going to be a good one. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can our audience find you?

Thank you. My website is SanaiyahGurnamal.com. I am also on all social media channels @SanaiyahGurnamal, on Instagram, in particular, YouTube, and TikTok. I’m pretty much everywhere, so feel free to drop me a DM or reach out. I also want to invite your readers to take my love blocks quiz. That is SanaiyahGurnamal.com/love-blocks-quiz.

I wanted to add one quick note. I know you said that patterns don’t change overnight. I agree with you that we have to change our behavior if we’re doing it on our own, and it will take time. We want our readers to know that this is something that takes commitment and dedication to yourself. Having said that, in the work that I do with my clients, I’ve found that when you do the healing, your patterns do change overnight.

When I work with my clients, we change patterns in every session. We change how we feel. We change behaviors. We change what we attract. I also want to invite you to consider the fact that you aren’t limited by it. It doesn’t have to take time. It doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be changed. Sometimes, when you’re working with someone with a very clear goal of what you want, things can change overnight. That is my experience with the people that I work with. I wanted to share that and give you a little note of inspiration before we end.

I agree with you. There are times when we can change a behavior in the moment. We can say, “I’m never going to have apples again.” Often, though, the trap that people get into is that they want the relationship to change overnight, or they want to lose ten pounds overnight. We want to realize that patience and perseverance are key.

Especially when there’s someone else in the dynamic, it’s not uncommon for us to take a step backward after we’ve taken a step forward when we get triggered. If there’s unresolved trauma and all sorts of things, it will take time. We need to have grace with ourselves around that. Otherwise, we’ll fear we were a failure. Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate your time. To our audience, thank you for sharing your time, energy, and journey with us.

Important Links

• Sanaiyah Gurnamal
• Sanaiyah Gurnamal on Instagram
• Sanaiyah Gurnamal on YouTube
• Sanaiyah Gurnamal on TikTok
• Love Blocks Quiz: Is Your Love Life on Track?
• The Joy of Imperfect Love
• NAMI HelpLine
• National Domestic Violence Hotline
• Mental Health and Relationships – MyHealthfinder
• Carla Marie Manly, PhD
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on X
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on TikTok

About Sanaiyah Gurnamal

Sanaiyah Gurnamal is the Love Alchemist, known for her magic touch in transforming past experiences—especially the not-so-shiny ones—into pure relationship gold. As a Relationship Reinvention Coach, she guides individuals through deep inner transformation, helping them embrace self-love, break free from toxic relationship patterns, and attract the love they deserve—creating a life Powered by LOVE. She is also the charismatic voice behind Project Loving Myself—a Spotify Top 50 and #1 Trending podcast—where self-love isn’t just a buzzword; it’s an invitation to become your top priority, biggest fan, and loudest cheerleader. Because the most important relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself. And how you love yourself teaches others how to love you.