Bruce Muzik Good to be here! Thanks for having me.

Bruce Muzik The people who come to me are married couples who are very up and live up to 35 years. I think it’s the couple I’ve worked with which has been the longest. They’ve hit a point in their relationship where they’re either fighting all the time or they’re not fighting. They’re too afraid of fighting and nothing’s getting resolved. Or maybe, they think they don’t know how to rebuild a relationship.The once beautiful warm connection that drew the couples to each other is nowhere to be found. They feel more like enemies than they do like best friends. The emotional tone in their relationship feels more like a war zone than a loving relationship.I helped couples how to rebuild a relationship, repair the emotional bond and connection between them so that they can start to get along and resolve whatever it is that’s going on in their relationship. Then, ultimately live happily together and enjoy being in a relationship together.I got into this because my own relationships were not working. I love being in a relationship. I’ve always loved romantic relationships and I always put a higher priority on them in my life but somehow, I’ve just never been able to make them work.I was married for 7 years and I got divorced. After my divorce I was like, “I’m tired of failing.” I was tired of seeing the same patterns show up over and over again and not knowing what to do about them.At that time, I was a business coach helping CEOs and entrepreneurs make more money and I had a mid-life crisis. I met an incredible woman. She broke my heart and I was like “Enough. It’s time to figure out this relationship thing.”I took a couple of years off and started reading all the science and the research around how to rebuild a relationship and what makes romantic relationships work. What I discovered was just profound.

Bruce Muzik I discovered an area of research called The Patch Materials. The first big breakthrough I had was reading that about how to rebuild a relationship. I was like “Why weren’t we taught this at school?” If I had been taught this stuff at school, I would have happier relationships and probably I would still be married and not divorced.

Bruce Muzik After a while, it became apparent to me that this was my calling. This is what I was meant to do which is to help couples learn how to rebuild a relationship.All my trainings and leadership in public speaking, coaching, and psychology all came together and converged over the years and I started helping couples. I totally shifted the direction of my business and I’ve been teaching couples how to rebuild a relationship for years now.I’ve worked with over 500 couples now and I just love it. It’s the most rewarding work I’ve ever done and certainly feels like my mission in this lifetime.

Bruce Muzik First, you got to address where people are coming from to know how to rebuild a relationship.Most of us are so indoctrinated with unconscious beliefs about relationships that aren’t true. “Relationships shouldn’t be hard” is part of the most common one I hear from the people I talked to. They’re like, “This is too hard. It’s not meant to be this hard. Love is supposed to be easy.” “I don’t think we’re compatible” is the other most important one. Like somehow there’s some compatible person out there for you and there’s some incompatible people. People use these as excuses because they don’t know what is at the source of their conflict and they don’t know how to rebuild a relationship.The first thing I share with my clients when they either do one of my programs at loveatfirstfight or they come for coaching on how to rebuild a relationship is this idea that there are 3 stages that relationships naturally go through.

Bruce Muzik 3 Stages of a Relationship

1. Romance stage.

This is the one we all know and love. This is when we fall in love and this is what all good romance books are made of or romantic comedy.We’re usually high on love drug. Our brain is pumping up serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, phenethylamine, and all these lovely chemicals that make us focus on only the good. We only show our partner our light side, not our dark side.Of course, in some sense, we’re co-dependent. We’re dependent on each other to feel good. This is the nature’s way of ensuring that we get together, fall in love and stay together for long enough to have a baby and raise a child.

2. Power struggle stage.

Anywhere between 2 months to 2 years into the relationship according to the research, a horrible thing happened. The drug stopped being released and we literally wake up from a love hangover in this second stage of relationship.If in the romance stage we’re co-dependent with each other, in the power struggle stage, the purpose of it is to have us establish our independence and autonomy inside the relationship without losing each other, without becoming so independent and so autonomous that we have a relationship left.In the process of this stage, we almost fall out of love. We start to see our partner’s dark side which we would perceive is their bad side and we start to show them ours.The power struggle stage begins when we perceive a sense of permanence to the relationship. Maybe we get engaged or we discovered that we’re pregnant or we go steady or we move in together. If one of the both parties perceive permanence, that’s when the power struggle begins.I like to think of it like this. We come on the romance stage, we hit the process of that stage and we think, “I’m probably be spending some time with you like, maybe the rest of my life. And if I’m going to spend the rest of my life, something’s going to change and it’s not me, it’s you.” And so, we start pointing fingers at each other. This is the stage where I would guess probably 95% of divorces happened and all relationships end.I was speaking at a big conference of single men the other day. It’s a dating conference. There must be around 200 men in the room and I was saying to them, “Raise your hands how many of you are single right now.” I was talking about the power struggle stage and 95% of them put their hand that they were single and I said. “Well, consider that that’s an indication that none of your relationships have lost it.” And there was definitely silence in the room and everybody burst to laughter.They realized the power of the power struggle stage to destroy relationships and this is where most relationships get stuck.

Bruce Muzik If you’re lucky enough to make through the process of the stage, you end up in mature love.

3. Mature Love

In mature love, what distinguishes that is you are able to be helpfully dependent on each other and at the same time, helpfully independent from each other. You can flex and flow between needing each other and supporting each and not needing each other and being independent in doing your own thing.Usually when couples hit the mature love stage, issues of connection are no longer a problem and you move from two individual Me’s to a collective We. The way you approach the relationship is different. You’re approaching it as a team and you’re a teammate on the team rather than two individuals on the relationship.Often, couples in the mature love stage end up working together in some project like you guys are working together on this business. They know how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik They accept each other and are able to stay emotionally connected and sustain that emotional connection.95% of the people who come to me are stuck in the power struggle stage and they’re fighting and they don’t know how to rebuild a relationship.The first thing I do is I educate couples about these 3 stages and this is a big sigh of relief. It’s like, “Oh, we’re normal. We’re not crazy.” And I’m trying to assure them that it’s not that you’re not compatible and I am an expert in personality typing expertise.

Bruce Muzik I’ve never found a couple that aren’t compatible or don’t have compatible personalities. I’ve just found couples who aren’t willing to empathize with each other and who don’t understand each other so they see the other person as being different or ultimately incompatible.

Bruce Muzik Beautiful. I’m so aligned with that. I have exactly the same approach on how to rebuild a relationship.How do you make couples feel safe enough?

Bruce Muzik One of the things I have noticed through reading research and having worked with over 500 couples now is that talking doesn’t make people feel safe.Most couple come to me saying, “We learned communication skills. We just don’t know how to get along and control our fighting” My first response to them was, “I don’t think you do need communication skills. You know how to communicate. Think back to when you are falling in love, you didn’t have a problem communicating. You guys are firstly educated. You can speak English. You can communicate.”What happens in the power struggle stage is you don’t know how to connect emotionally and sustain staying emotionally connected.The power struggle stage isn’t a crisis of communication. It’s a crisis of connection.

Bruce Muzik I have a 7-week online group coaching program. At the very first week, I give couples four connection rituals to do every single day to keep them connected and to know how to rebuild a connection.I find these connection rituals work on an unconscious level. They work in a way where by the end of doing these rituals for a week, you start to feel your partner is your friend whether or not you’re in agreement about all the things you’re fighting about. Instead of seeing your partner like an enemy, you start to seem them like a friend.

Bruce Muzik One of the first things I do is I get my couples to eye gaze for 5 minutes a day. I have them wake up first thing in the morning and gaze them to each other’s eyes for five minutes. This has a profound effect that I call Rehumanizing each other which helps on how to rebuild a relationship.When animals are fighting, the first thing they stop doing is look into each other’s eyes. They stop eye contact. If you noticed, when you’re in a conflict with your partner, you will not be maintaining eye contact and if you are, you’re probably to intimidate them and stare them down.What I get couples to do is to start to engage in eye contact again and that works on an unconscious, sociological level to help calm the amygdala. That’s the part of the brain that’s responsible for the fight-flight or the freeze mechanism.Once your amygdala is calm and you’re no longer in fight-flight mode, you start to see your partner as a friend again rather than as an enemy.

Bruce Muzik The metaphor I like to say is that, “Your relationship goes from feeling like a war zone where it’s natural to shout.”  You imagine if you’re walking through a minefield in the middle of a war. You’d be yelling at your partner, “Watch out! Oh my God! Bomb!” You wouldn’t whisper sweet to each other in the middle of a war zone.Once you’re connected after eye gazing, your relationship starts to feel a bit more like a safe haven and feeling safe. It can naturally emerge without having to talk about it. Then when you talk, you can actually start to resolve your issues and know how to rebuild a relationship.But you can’t resolve your issues in my opinion. It’s very hard do about how to rebuild a relationship if you’re not connected first.I’m sure Luis, you’ve taught the communication skills and start speaking with eye language. You use the words “I feel” to share your feelings. What I’ve noticed is that it’s all good and well if you get couples to use eye language but when they’re not connected, “I feel” turns into “I feel you’re a freaking asshole and I want to kill you.”

Bruce Muzik Exactly. I’m so in line with you here.

Bruce Muzik I’m writing a book actually right now. I think I might just use this title for the book and the phrase is ‘Connect First, Communicate Later’. The idea is that if you connect first, very often, you don’t even need to communicate about what’s going on because the feelings of feeling like your partner is the enemy disappear. You’re loving towards the many when you’re more likely to be empathetic and to accept their perspective and point of view without needing to change it.

Bruce Muzik But if you try to communicate without feeling connected, then communication skills just get used as a weapon as we’ve just discovered and it makes no sense.And I’ve never heard anybody talk about it in such plain, simple language so I thought I’d write a book and that’s my message. I think it’s my contribution to the relationship space that I want to get out there about how to rebuild a relationship is the idea to connect first communicate later.

Bruce Muzik Eye gazing is intimate, vulnerable, and a sign of weakness. If you’re in an attack mode like evolution has wired us to not be vulnerable with our enemies because they might just stick a knife in our hearts and kill us. I think we’re biologically wired not to be vulnerable in front of our enemies. Yet at the same time, it can work to defuse the situation.

Bruce Muzik I’ve got a beautiful story I want to share with you about a little beach dog I saw the other day. I live on an island in the Caribbean. We have a ton of stray dogs and they’re the sweetest stray dogs out of any country I’ve ever been to. Every country has their stray dogs and they all have different personalities.And so, I see this tiny, little puppy running down the beach being chased by this big Doberman dog and I’m like, “Oh my God. This dog is going to die. It’s going to get eaten alive.” And so, of course the gap is closing between the dogs and the Doberman’s catching up and this tiny street dog is looking over its shoulder, looking absolutely terrified.And then, as the Doberman catches up, what do you think the tiny, little dog did? What was the strategy?

Bruce Muzik Almost. He rolled over onto his back, legs in the air in the most submissive pose in the world. Of course, the Doberman didn’t know what the hell to do and so he stared at him and then the Doberman started licking in the dog’s stomach. It was this beautiful scene and the metaphor I took away from it is the dog used vulnerability as a defense strategy. It completely defused the tension and instead of running, which is kind of what we do when we’re in a fight. Instead of trying to run away and defend itself, the dog just turned over and said “Here I am. I’m vulnerable.”When you open up and take the first step and roll over onto your back and reveal your soft tender belly and share your vulnerability with your partner, it completely defuses the fight because you’re not resisting anymore. You’re totally vulnerable. That’s a tip on how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik One of the other distinctions I teach in the first week of my program is what you resist, exists. If you are resisting something, it tends to stay in existence because you’ve got so much energy invested in resisting it. The minute you stop resisting, it disappears.That little dog chase I saw the other was like a metaphor for me for how to have successful relationships and how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik I’d love to.That cowering, that’s the freeze response. You either fight or flight and then the freeze is the cowering.Archetypes, this is some of the most useful stuff I’ve ever learned in my whole life. Discovering attachment archetypes changed my relationship dynamics for the better and I’ve never looked back. It’s probably one of the most powerful pieces of work I do with my couples teaching how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik A very well documented pattern tends to emerge and this type is called by many different names; the protest, withdraw pattern.One partner in the relationship becomes angry, needy, clingy, and demanding. They explode their energy outwards. I call this partner The Hailstorm.Imagine a big cloud in the sky and like big ice blocks be hailed down upon their partner below.The other partner, I called The Turtle. This partner tends to withdraw and retreat into their shell when they’re feeling emotionally disconnected.So let’s clarify when these archetypes start to emerge.Usually, in the romance stage, there isn’t any archetypes at all and in the mature love, you barely ever see it again. It only emerges again in the power struggle stage of relationship when we’re feeling insecurely attached to our partner.What I mean by insecurely attached is we don’t feel safe around our partner. We don’t feel safe trusting that our partners got our back and that they’re going to be there for us.

Bruce Muzik We may not be consciously aware but we may not be like quaking in our boots with fear. We may be too if we’re in a physically violent relationship. The essence of it is we don’t feel securely connected. We don’t know how to rebuild a relationship and we don’t feel our partner’s there and got our back and that we can relax knowing that the relationship is okay. When that happens, we have a natural survival strategy that kicks in from a part of our brain that the research is calling Our Attachment System.So I like you to consider that we all have an attachment system and it is designed to do two things that helps on how to rebuild a relationship.It monitors the physical proximity of our partner; how close our partner is. It also monitors the emotional responsiveness of our partner; how responsive our partner is when we reach out to them. Do they respond often or do they not? It’s probably very similar with John and Julie Gottman‘s research on bidding.The idea is that we make unconscious bids to our partner to determine whether or not we’re connected to them. The way I describe it to my clients is like a radar. We have this internal radar and it’s going “Beep-beep. Are you still there? Will you respond to me? Are we still connected? Beep-beep.” You might sweep your radar by texting your partner “Hey, honey. Thinking of you” and that’s called a bid.If a partner doesn’t respond in a timely manner, we feel like they’re not emotionally responsive and our attachment system goes in red alert.If our partner disappears for a while, we start to go on red alert. Our attachment system goes on red alert and this is a healthy thing. It’s designed to seek proximity. So, we go off and we start looking for our partner. If we can’t find them we call a police and we file a missing person’s report or if they’re emotionally unresponsive, we might send a second text message to them.If we still don’t hear back, we might think “Oh my God! Maybe they’re having an affair and maybe he’s sleeping with his secretary,” or we might go and stalk out outside their office and go peek through the window.

Bruce Muzik What happens is we all have an attachment system and it’s a healthy thing. But if you were brought up in a family environment where you didn’t learn what a secure connected relationship looked like, you might have developed a faulty attachment system that either goes off too early or doesn’t go off at all.Hailstorms have what’s called an overactive or a hyperactive attachment system. They see abandonment around every corner when often, there isn’t one. In the literature, they call this kind of person ‘The anxious person’.Hailstorms are anxious about the state of connection to their partner and they tend to fear abandonment more than any other type. So what happens is when they feel afraid that they’re going to be abandoned, instead of asking directly to have their needs meet, they start to protest the loss of secure connection to their partner. A protest is any behavior that helps about how to rebuild a relationship with their partner indirectly.Secure people tend to directly go, “Hey, honey. I’m feeling insecure. Will you give me a hug? I just want some reassurance that everything is okay.”

Bruce Muzik I’ve heard the same phrases come up over and over again and they usually complain. One of them is “Nothing I ever do is good enough.”One of other most common things that turtle’s report is that they shut down their feelings not because they don’t love their partner or because they’re upset but because they’re scared and very often they’re trying to protect the relationship.

Bruce Muzik Hailstorms address the issue so that I can relax and stop feeling so anxious and just feel safe again and feel like I’m not going to be abandoned. Turtles are afraid not of abandonment but of rejection.There’s a subtle difference between abandonment and rejection. Abandonment is being left alone on your own. Rejection is being basically told that you’re not okay for who you are.Let me see if I can give you guys some goals. These are what I call Soothing mantras and a soothing mantra is a set of custom words that are custom designed to sooth your specific partner that helps in learning how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik One of the things I do with my couples is I get them to create soothing mantras for each other and share how they would like to be soothed and heaved the moment so that couples can learn to soothe each other and create the safe space that helps on how to rebuild a relationship.

Bruce Muzik Oh, beautiful!So, I’ve noticed through now working with several hundred couples, creating soothing mantras, there are some common ones that come in over and over again.Hailstorms, generally, because they’re afraid of abandonment, they like to hear things like, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m never going to leave you. I’m right here.” “You’re safe”. Anything that implies they’re not going to be left alone and their partner’s not going to retreat into their shell basically.Turtles on the other hand, they’re afraid of rejection and also they tend to be afraid of being trapped and confined in pain. Because very often, they had experience as children of being trapped and confined in pain and not knowing how to deal with them so they like to hear things like, “I love you just the way you are. Don’t ever change. You’re perfect for me.” The final one is “Take as much time as you need sweetie. I’ll be here when you come back”, which speaks the turtle’s desire for space and time out.

Bruce Muzik This is most of the work I do that helps couples how to rebuild a relationship. The biggest part of the work I do with couples is helping them understand the hailstorm-turtle dynamic and helping them meet each other’s emotional needs, which leads to safety and learning how to rebuild a relationship.I help the turtle soothe the hailstorm, meet their hailstorm needs so the hail storm stops hail storming, coming demanding, critical, clingy, and needy. Then I help the hailstorms sooth the turtle so turtle doesn’t have to retreat into their shell.Then, both partners once they get comfortable with emotional intensity, can stay present and then, know how to rebuild a relationship instead of doing their usual dance or dynamic, which might be to spiral out control with door slamming and sleeping outside the bedrooms or whatever the case may be.Here’s the other thing. Hailstorms are inextricably attracted to turtles. I have barely ever met a hailstorm and a secure person in relationship. I will say 99% of my clients are hailstorm-turtles. I’ve never ever in my whole life met a turtle-turtle couple because they both retreat and I’ve met couple of hailstorm-hailstorm couples.What tends to happen is one partner will play the turtle when there are two hailstorms in a relationship. They’re reciprocal sides of the same coin. One partner is normally a hailstorm and would tend to play a more of a turtle in their relationship. My partner is a hailstorm as well so I tend to now, play more of the turtle.

Bruce Muzik One of the best ways on how to rebuild a relationship and interrupt the pattern is you have to be aware of your pattern.You have to understand what stuck Sue Johnson who’s one of the founders of Emotionally Focused Therapy which is the couple therapy that has a higher success rate than any couple therapy.Sue Johnson called these Dances, these patterns that couples get into. These three primary dances that she identifies in her book called Hold Me Tight;

1. Find the Bad Guy. – This is like a blame game dance. It’s an attack-attack dance. Both couples are attacking each other.
2. The Protest Polka. – The hailstorm and turtle dance. One partner withdraws and the other one comes demanding and needy.
3. Freeze and Flee. – This is where both partners retreat. So the hailstorm retreats as well and both partners pretending they don’t need each other. I think of this like an ice age. It’s like an ice age that creeps over their relationship and the emotional tone of the relationship is freezing cold.

You’re Dances start with a trigger. There’s always a trigger event. It might be we’re talking about ex-girlfriends and one partner is jealous and the minute the guy talks about his ex-girlfriends, it is the trigger for his girlfriend or his wife to spiral into their dubs, which might sound like “Oh! You’re texting her again. Are you?” and he starts defending and goes “Well, I’m not texting her. Not even once. She’s my ex-girlfriend. I dated her 15 years ago. What are you talking about?”Before you know it, these things spiraled out of control in two minutes or less. They are yelling at each other and their pattern is so ingrained. They move from blame game to protest polka to freeze and flee in a matter of minutes.  That night, they sleep in separate bed and it all started with a trigger event.

Bruce Muzik So the first thing you got to understand if you’re going to defuse conflict is you have to be able to identify which of the dances you’re stuck in. The trigger events, the trigger of your dances and then, give them a name. It’s critical to give each dance a name and this is one of the big pieces of Sue Johnson contributed to the space whose naming a dance.I have a dance with my partner that I called The Knife Dance and the knife dance emerged because I wanted to express like a knife in my heart and she express it like a knife at her back.When you’re aware of your pattern and the trigger events, you can start to interrupt it before it happens and then, choose a different strategy on how to rebuild a relationship.For example, if we noticed this thing coming up or knife dance coming along, the first person to notice that will scream out “Knife dance!” and like that is our sign like it’s a pattern interrupt. It’s a sign to interrupt the pattern and we stop and we have a prescribe set of steps on how to rebuild a relationship that we do afterwards.

Bruce Muzik The first one is to move into We language and start to use We language instead of I language. Usually, I’ll start by saying something like “Honey, we’re just hurting each other. Let’s connect first.” And then we’ll stop and with my eye gaze, if we’re feeling connected enough, we move into some kind of Harville Hendrix type in modern dialog or whatever the case may be.I think one of the most powerful tools I can give you is to sit down and start to analyze your dances to become aware of it. You don’t need to change it. You just need to become aware of it, then give it a name.

Bruce Muzik Look at what all the trigger paths are and share points are and share those triggers with your partner. So your partner knows what I call your Broken Toes. If you think of salsa dancing, you have to dance as a team. If your partner has a broken toe and you don’t know they have a broken toe and that could be a big problem because you might step on their broken toe by accident.We all have broken toes or these emotional hypersensitivities from our past, our childhood, previous relationship. We have are sensitive to certain issues and yet we don’t know we have broken toes. So we end up standing on each other’s broken toes.

Bruce Muzik What you’re pointing to is Sue Johnson’s seven steps on how to rebuild a relationship. The last was one is celebrate your wins. Come together as a team like “Yeah! We did it! High five man!” It creates this environment of “We’re a team fighting the conflict rather than fighting each other.”So I love that you guys are celebrating your wins. It’s beautiful.And Luis, just for your understanding of hailstorms and why they end up retreating as well, often, when hailstorms retreat, it’s for different reasons than when turtles retreat. Turtles tend to retreat to protect themselves or protect their relationship and to stop the fighting escalating.

Bruce Muzik Hailstorms retreat because they can’t reach their partner and they’re afraid they can’t reach their partner. What they’re trying to do is indirectly express their hurt to their partner and get their partner to respond.I’ve locked myself in my apartment and turned off the lights once. This was six to seven years ago before I had no awareness of this stuff. When I had a fight with my girlfriend, I was hoping she would knock on the door and then, literally climb onto the balcony to come and rescue.That would be a proof that she loved me. This whole childish little things like I turned my phone off. I wanted her to panic, “He’s turned his phone off! He is not in his apartment!” So that she could experience loving me, missing me, being worried and then, come and find me and rescue me.At some point, after an hour of sitting in darkness and my phone off at my apartment, I was like “Bruce, you’re a grown man. What the hell are you doing?!” I went over to her house and I cried and cried in her arms and I just apologized and I told her like “This is what I do. When I ran away from you, I want you to chase me. That’s why I ran away from you.”I’ve heard that from many other hailstorms as well. When they retreat, what they’re secretly hoping is that their turtle partner will come and chase them. But the turtle doesn’t see that. They’re like “Oh, well. He has retreated. He always doesn’t love me.” I will retreat even further then.It has the counterproductive effect of not solving anything. My partner now knows if I end up ever retreating on her, she should come running after me and it’s just me in pain. It’s like I’m in much pain that I don’t know how to communicate that in the heat of the moment.

Bruce Muzik What a great story.

Bruce Muzik Here’s what I would love to just convey to anybody listening.

Bruce Muzik You can fix this. There is hope and there are people you can work with it. You could go find a therapist. You can go and speak with Kamala and Luis. You can come to loveatfirstfight.com and get one of my online training programs. There are many options and it can be healed.The second thing is if your partner gets angry and critical, and you’re a turtle, just know that they’re in pain. They are hurt. If you take their anger at a face value, you’ll be missing its beautiful gift and message.If you’re a hailstorm dating a turtle and you’re thinking that your partner is withdrawing because they don’t love you and they don’t care, know they’re also in pain. This is their learned behavior and strategy for protecting themselves. If you stop getting demanding and critical, they’ll probably come out of their shell. That’s how you start how to rebuild a relationship.And finally, connect first communicate later. If you can remember that when you’re fighting, stop, interrupt, name your pattern and start connecting. Whether it’s through eye gazing or holding each other hands. That will make a massive difference for when you actually do speak.In my upcoming book, I’m going to be sharing 25 different ways on how to rebuild a relationship in several minutes or less. I’ll get hold of you guys when it’s done and maybe will arrange another free copy to your readers.

Bruce Muzik It’s such a pleasure.