Today we’re going to be talking about attachment styles and how it plays into getting an ex back. I’m also proud to announce that I got an opportunity to interview Tyler Ramsey who coach Anna and I are bringing on to be our newest ex recovery coach.

Check out his pretty awesome about page here.

So, without further ado I introduce you to attachment styles with Tyler Ramsey!

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The Importance of Attachment Styles

Chris:
All right, we’re recording. All right. Today, we’re going to be talking about attachment styles with someone who’s very near and dear to my heart, Tyler Ramsey, who, if you don’t know, is the newest coach that we just brought on to ex-boyfriend recovery and ex-girlfriend recovery and the entire ex recovery brand. How’s it going, Tyler?

Tyler Ramsey:
Hey, how’s it going, Chris?

Chris:
It’s going well. So, before we kind of get in to attachment styles, which you and I, we were just sort of talking like, okay, what would be a good thing to talk about for your first introduction into the atmosphere, and you were like, oh, attachment styles. You really love attachment styles. And of course, we were talking for 30 minutes before we started recording, thinking like, okay, what are we going to cover. And we’re like, well, we can’t cover everything because it’s such a gigantic field. But first things first, you’re kind of an impressive dude. Why don’t you tell us, because Tyler has been featured in some gigantic places, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and why we chose you to be our coach?

Tyler Ramsey:
Okay. So, I’ll give you a little bit of a history or biography of me a little bit. So I actually got a bachelor science degree in 2016 from Appalachian State in chemistry. And I’m currently a third year med student in Campbell University. And so, hoping to pursue psychiatry, so this makes a lot of sense to become a relationship coach with ex-boyfriend recovery, but I’ve actually had a lot of experience with you guys in the past. And so I’ve been a moderator of the Facebook group since 2016, so I’ve been with you for quite some time. But also, on the side a little bit, I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of it’s kind of blown up. And so I’ve been featured in a lot of places, like BBC, Time magazine, Healthline, forbes.com, a lot of other big media outlets, and so I kind of had some experience with social media and also with the ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend recovery as well.

Chris:
Do you see why we picked him? Not only does he have the credentials but he’s extremely smart. So, today, we’re going to be talking about attachment styles so we can kind of strut his stuff off a little bit. Okay. So, Tyler, this is going to be a tough one because there’s so many areas to go with the attachment styles. I recently did a video on the dismissive avoidants, because it was funny, Anna had mentioned, Anna’s our other coach, she had mentioned when we were talking last time that the most difficult situation she’s having now are these dismissive avoidant exes. So, I’m kind of curious to get your take on how you would approach a dismissive avoidant ex. Let’s say someones going through a breakup, they’ve got an ex who’s a dismissive avoidant, and maybe the correct way to go is maybe let’s define what the different main types of attachment styles are.

Tyler Ramsey:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I definitely think that’s a great way to start because honestly, the best way to even approach to get your ex back is to kind of figure out what their attachment style is. And so the four main, and there are a lot of subtypes within these four, but the four main types are anxious preoccupied, fearful avoidant, dismissive avoidant, like you mentioned, and then secure. And so all of these are built from your childhood. And so you kind of have these learned patterns in which you learn to adapt emotionally from your caregiver. And so depending upon how your ex grew up from their caregivers is how they attach to their friendships, their intimate relationships. They impact actually everything, and so that makes a huge difference on how to get an ex back in general.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so, I know the no contact rule is something that’s really big, and that’s probably pushed across in every way of getting your ex back. But with the dismissive, they’re a little bit more tricky because, especially with a person that’s trying to get their ex back is anxious, that can be really challenging for them because most of the time, after a breakup, they shut down completely with their emotions and they try and numb out and they completely try and forget about their partner, and it can take up to three or four months before the feelings end up resurfacing. And so sometimes, that 30-day no contact that you hear, that’s generic, but when you’re dealing with somebody like dismissive avoidant, you might need to wait a lot longer for them to actually feel the feelings of a breakup.

Chris:
So, you said a lot of interesting things that are specifically with, really, when you’re looking at breakups, it’s so situational, right? We often, like you said, we talk about the no contact rule, how we have these different timeframes for no contact rules, depending on the situation, but the extra layer of complexity occurs when you start looking at the attachment styles of your ex. And so what’s interesting, why don’t we… so, like Anna said, dismissive avoidant seems to be the most difficult type of exes to try to get back. So what Tyler also said is very true. We’re finding that most of the people who are ending up working with us tend to be in that anxious attachment style.

Chris:
So, it’s kind of almost this really difficult recipe where you have someone who’s anxious trying to get back someone who’s extremely avoidant and dismissive. But why don’t we spend some time just maybe giving a definition for… okay, so this is going to be kind of crazy, quick side note, four or five years ago, someone in the Facebook group had mentioned attachment styles, maybe it was you, and I was like, what are attachment styles? I was curious so I ended up going to YouTube and trying to find out, what is this? And the best video I ever found on attachment styles was actually someone who used Marvel characters to define what attachment styles are, and I was like, oh, okay, I get this.

Chris:
So, why don’t we kind of do our own version of defining what each of the main attachment styles, what that type of person acts like in their specific subcategory?

Tyler Ramsey:
Definitely. Okay. So…

Chris:
I’ll go down the list for you.

Tyler Ramsey:
Okay. Yeah, for sure.

Chris:
So, let’s just go with an avoidant, right, because we’re finding lots of avoidants. So, what does an avoidant typically going to do?

Tyler Ramsey:
Okay, and I think this is more prevalent, especially with men, that they’re probably more avoidant. If you’re going to pick between the four, they probably fall more in the dismissive avoidant category. And so most of the time, they rely on their feelings as independency. So, if you… that they are totally against codependency completely, so they don’t rely on anybody else to soothe their emotions. And so, what they end up acting like, especially in the context of a breakup, they kind of push that person away because they deem them unreliable at that point, as I don’t need to rely on this person to make me happy, or I can’t rely on them anymore for my emotional wellbeing, because that’s the way they were brought up as a child because their parent ended up being that way as well to where they felt like they couldn’t rely on anyone.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so a lot of them are very successful in life. So they’re very charming people, they end up being top of the lines. You see these people with CEOs, physicians, lawyers, and so because they had that trauma built in from the beginning of their life so they end up overcompensating in that way. And so that’s why they can be very charming for a lot of people in the first place, but when they feel that deactivation, is what they usually call it, so you have activation and deactivation, and usually, deactivation is trying to soothe their own emotions by numbing out completely, and so they rely back to their core wound of, okay, I need to be independent, I don’t need to rely on anyone, and so that’s why they can feel so cold after a relationship.

Chris:
Yeah. It’s almost like their way of coping.

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Tyler Ramsey:
Yes.

Chris:
I guess, I hate to bring fighter flight up, but it almost seems like that’s so accurate here. They tend to just sort of bail and it’s their way of coping with… rather than facing the emotions, they kind of want to bail instead and just sort of… because that’s what’s always worked for them in the past. And we’re finding, unfortunately, a lot of exes tend to be this way. So it’s important to understand how to deal with these type of people, but we’ll get back to that later because next, we’re going to be dealing with anxious type of attachment style. So, what does an anxious type of attachment style look like?

Tyler Ramsey:
Okay. So, an anxious attachment style, well, let me actually back up a little bit. A lot of the times, an anxious and avoidant attract each other.

Chris:
Yeah. I mean, that seems to be what we’re noticing.

Tyler Ramsey:
Yes, and so [crosstalk 00:10:03]…

Chris:
Take a guess which one is who.

Tyler Ramsey:
Exactly. Exactly. And so that’s kind of what’s so interesting about it is that you have this attraction between both of them and they kind of meet their needs in a different way. But as you progress with the relationship, it becomes a cyclic thing going on with the avoidant kind of dismissing and the anxious person becoming more activated. And so I’ll kind of get back to what anxious actually is, is they kind of rely on everyone else to self-soothe their emotions. And so they’re usually very caring people, they’re the ones that are really thoughtful, they’re the ones that will send you a card that’s very… like they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how they wrote it, or they’re very good in tune with other people’s needs.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so they kind of learn their partner’s needs in a way kind of no one else ever does. And that’s what’s so great about them and that’s why they attract a lot of people in that way. And so you can kind of see those kinds of people attracting avoidant because they feel like they can get their needs met in that way too. And so a lot of the times though, you’ll see an anxious person, if they’re with an avoidant attachment style, where they will constantly text. If they don’t get a text back maybe [crosstalk 00:11:38]-

Chris:
Yeah.

Tyler Ramsey:
… hour or two, they end up getting worried that, that person is abandoning them in a way because that’s their core wound in childhood. So they feel like they’re abandoned because they rely on someone else to soothe their emotional capacity. And so that’s why it can get really tricky with them, then they end up activating more and more, and it feels like, oh, I’ve done something wrong, let me go fix it. And so that’s why you see the constant texts with them and then they kind of get more and more activated as they feel like they’ve become abandoned. And so that’s kind of how the root of an anxious starts as well.

Chris:
So, I’m kind of actually curious to get your take on this because my take of anxious people is exactly what you said, except it’s almost to me it feels like they don’t have any self-identity. They put their self-identity into other people. They don’t really have enough confidence in how they view themselves, they get a lot of that feedback from other people, and especially when it comes to romantic relationships. So, do you feel like… have you seen a lot of that as well?

Tyler Ramsey:
Definitely so, especially with the anxious attachment style. They look for validation from everyone else because they don’t have a good sense of their own self, and so they look for others to give that to them. But even with the other attachment style that we haven’t completely talked about, which is fearful avoidant, they really don’t have a self-identity at all. They have a mixed attachment style.

Chris:
So what’s interesting is this is sort of the big hot topic that Tyler and I were kind of talking about before we started recording, which is the fearful attachment. So the fearful attachment, only 7% of the population has this, so it’s extremely rare, but Tyler was telling me, he seems to notice them everywhere. And fearful’s kind of interesting because I remember my wife was explaining the attachment theories to me and how you can even find it in infants almost, or toddlers, or whatever. And they do all these different tests, right? And I can’t remember exactly what it was, but the test that they did for fearful attachment style, the toddlers react very strangely to certain types of situations. It’s almost… let’s just define what it is first. So, fearful attachment style, you go.

Tyler Ramsey:
Yeah. So, fearful avoidant is like opening a whole can of worms, in my opinion, because [crosstalk 00:14:21]…

Chris:
Yeah. I mean, that’s [crosstalk 00:14:22]. You know how those black holes out in the universe and [crosstalk 00:14:27], that’s the fearful attachment style.

Tyler Ramsey:
Very, very true. And honestly, if I had to pick between the four, I think they, in a way, are the hardest to get back because they are so unpredictable.

Chris:
I will say, it’s rare to find them. So, I feel like we don’t have enough data. If we had tens, hundreds of thousands of coaching people coming through, then we’d probably have enough data to understand how difficult these type of people are. But I feel like it’s hard because only 7% of the population really has this. And maybe people have touched this, but anyways, fearful attachment style, the black hole.

Tyler Ramsey:
Yeah, definitely. So they kind of experience both ends of the anxious and avoidant. And so they show good characteristics of both. And depending on the fearful avoidant, you can have more of an anxious leaning one and you can have a more avoidant leaning one. And depending on which one you’re dealing with is depending upon how you kind of navigate them.

Chris:
Yeah. I would even say it’s really difficult to deal with these people too because one minute, they are extremely, okay, like you mentioned, the texting thing for anxious, right, they’re constantly texting. Well, one minute, the fearful people will do that and the next minute, they’ll want nothing to do with you.

Tyler Ramsey:
They’ll just drop off the face of the earth.

Chris:
Right. [crosstalk 00:15:48]…

Tyler Ramsey:
Like nothing ever happened and that you activated your avoidant side. You’re just like, goodbye.

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Chris:
In a weird way, it is very much like this pendulum swinging, where it’s based on all sorts of factors, but how you reconcile with what’s going on in here. Because I’m curious if you’ve ever thought about this because I feel like in order for me to understand people, I try to put myself in their specific circumstances, and I can’t ever quite reconcile how these type of people view the world to do these things. So I’m kind of curious, what’s your take on them?

Tyler Ramsey:
So it’s interesting you used the pendulum analogy, because actually, with the fearful avoidant, they can show signs of… or you can see a… I’m trying to look for the word now. Basically, if you have a fearful avoidant, they’re more subject to also have a borderline personality disorder. They go really, really hand in hand with the switching between back and forth and hot and cold. They’re actually labeled as a hot and cold ex. They really warm for a while, for hours and hours and hours, and especially if an anxious is texting a fearful avoidant, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest person in the world, they’re texting me back immediately, immediately.

Tyler Ramsey:
And then just as soon as they’ve activated their avoidant, which you could’ve done nothing to do to have that happen, they just drop off for hours, and then that ends up sending the anxious person in this crazy whirlwind and thinking they’ve done something wrong when they haven’t done anything wrong. It’s how they cope with their emotions.

Chris:
They’re hard to understand, but the best analogy I’ve ever found is that pendulum. And I guess the natural question people typically have for me when I try to explain this to them is like, okay, well, what do I do? And I feel like the answer is never an easy one, but it also probably lies with secure attachments. I think, this is just my personal opinion from what I’ve seen in the limited data that I’ve had the privilege of observing, if you can come at any type of attachment style, anxious, avoidant, or fearful, with a secure attachment, you tend to have the best chance of navigating the sea, because it’s going to be a lot of rollercoaster, up and down, the waves are going to be kind of crazy.

Chris:
This is a weird analogy that has turned into, but why don’t we define what a secure attachment style is, and then we can kind of just sort of freestyle, because there’s still a lot to unpack here.

Tyler Ramsey:
Oh, there’s definitely a lot to unpack. So, the secure attachment style is just kind of a… so they have a great sense of their own self is probably the best way to define it. So they know their own self-worth. So when a breakup does occur, they are sad at the beginning and they will grieve it, but they do move on because they do have good self-worth for their own self. And so that’s why, yeah, it is probably a little easier to get a secure attachment style back. But those people really do have a good sense of self-worth, but also, they hold strong with all the other attachment styles. So if you have a secure with any of the others, they bring the other one towards the middle.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so they end up rubbing off because they don’t get activated when maybe somebody doesn’t text back for a couple hours. So their assumption is, oh, that person’s busy, or that person’s got a lot going on that’s why they’re not texting me back, instead of assuming the worst. And so that’s why it can be really helpful for a secure attachment style to be with an insecure attachment style to bring them more towards the middle.

Chris:
Yeah. So this is something I’ve been talking a lot about in my recent YouTube videos, which is, look, no matter what, as long as you can take that mindset as sort of embody the secure attachment sense of self-worth, you are in good shape. I’ve seen this consistently with success stories, people who are succeeding in getting their exes back. Oftentimes, and for the longest time, I couldn’t quite put words into psychologically or philosophically why this would happen, but I would notice, a lot of these people, I would ask them, who would get their exes back, I would say, okay, was there ever a point where you were just like, I’ll be okay without them? And almost every single person said yes, I got to that point.

Chris:
And for a while, I was just saying, well, maybe they’re just letting go, but I don’t think that’s it. I think they were anxious and they kind of trained themselves during no contact to become secure. And the no contact rule almost served as the catalyst for making them realize, hey, I have more self-worth than I realized. I’m putting too much of myself into this relationship. So, that’s ultimately where I think the power of attachment styles comes in. Where it gets really difficult though is most people listening to this, Tyler, are probably sitting there and thinking, wow, that sounds so easy, but it’s not. Most of us are not 100% secure. We have different percentages of insecurities with anxious avoidants, or things like that.

Chris:
So, what would be your advice to someone who’s listening to this and saying, okay, that’s what I want to do, I want to become a secure attachment style? Is it even possible to change your anxious attachment style into a secure one?

Tyler Ramsey:
So, I definitely think that’s a great question, just to start with. I definitely think that you can change your attachment style. It is learned behaviors, and so you can reprogram your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind is actually what controls you. It knows what it’s going to do two weeks from now, and that’s what’s so crazy about neuroscience and it’s kind of mind boggling in a way and it kind of hurts your brain a little bit to think about that.

Chris:
It’s almost like quantum physics, how we think like, okay, point A and point B, but the rules of quantum physics are way different than the simplistic. And I totally agree with what you’re saying with regards to you can change and it’s learned behavior, but people think that they can just, even a no contact rule is enough time, think of it like this, you’ve had a lifetime of pattern, of being this anxious way, it’s not like in a month, you’re going to all of a sudden rewire your brain or your subconscious to believe like, oh, I’m secure now. It’s almost like you have to create a new pattern or something. So, sorry, I interrupted. You just maybe go into the weeds. [crosstalk 00:22:49]…

Tyler Ramsey:
No, you’re totally fine. I mean, these conversations spark other conversations. And so, no, I definitely think you can reprogram it. And I, honestly, if you want my greatest opinion with the no contact rule, is it’s more for you as a person and not your ex. As much as that… yes, it does twofold, honestly. [crosstalk 00:23:10]-

Chris:
[crosstalk 00:23:11].

Tyler Ramsey:
… anxious because you’re not reaching out, but it also gives you the time to get to a secure place to where you’re not freaking out that, oh, I have to have my ex back or I’m going to literally die kind of thing.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m super glad that you said that because I’ve been doing this for almost nine years now, right, so I started in 2012, we’re almost at 2021 now, but what’s interesting is when I first started and learned about the no contact rule, my brain was thinking, oh, this will work because it will make your ex miss you. That’s almost what everyone, the trap people fall into. But when I started writing articles and people started coming to the website and realizing like, hey, this guy had some interesting ideas, and I started getting the data back and seeing what actually worked, and really, there’s so much you can learn just from talking to your actual customers, or talking to your actual clients.

Chris:
When you talk to these people, you realize, making the ex miss you isn’t really the power of it. It’s what you do with yourself during that time, getting to that secure place that you’re talking about. So what he’s saying, everyone, is absolutely on the mark. And you’ll notice, if you can go to some of my earliest articles, I don’t talk about this concept at all. It’s only after I’ve learned why this is working that I’ve changed the way I’ve been trying to teach people because this is actually what works. A lot of people are asking like, hey, why is ex-boyfriend recovery getting such good success rates? I mean, Anna, the other day, was telling me that 70% of the people she’s working with have gotten their exes back.

Chris:
And sometimes, it takes longer but this year, 70% of people have gotten back together through her. Why is she getting these success rates? Because what Tyler’s exactly saying. She’s not training people… there’s almost like two aspects to it. There’s the strategy to it and the tactics to it. Tyler’s talking about the overall strategy to how you should be viewing this process, which is not focusing on your ex, it’s kind of focusing on you, which is super cliché, but there’s psychological reasons for why it’s working. And it really has its roots embedded into this attachment style.

Tyler Ramsey:
No, that’s totally true. And so that’s something that I try and follow by with the [inaudible 00:25:35]. Because honestly, if you don’t do that… so, there’s two ways to approach a no contact rule, let’s go with that. You can, let’s say you set a 30-day no contact, you can use the 30 days and you can set a calendar and you can gruel every single day until you get to the 30-day no contact, not work on yourself at all, and just try and make it through for the 30 days. And then just as soon as that 31-day comes, you’re still in that state of anxious and you are in no capacity to even text your ex because you’re this very huge desperate person that is wanting that person back, and they’re going to feel that when you do it.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so if you don’t spend that 30 days working on yourself, like going to the gym, or just promoting a lot of self-love for your own self, then what makes you think you’re going to have your ex fall back in love with you in the first place? Because you’re this needy, desperate person. So it’s twofold in a lot of ways, but in the same time, during that no contact, it allows your ex to miss you as well because it is a secure way to not reach out to your ex because you know your own self-worth in a way as well during that time.

Chris:
So, I’m actually kind of curious, I’ve been reading a lot of psychology and philosophy books lately, and I can never say his… it’s because of his last name, I always want to say Young, but I think it’s Yung. Carl Jung. But have you ever heard of his sort of theory on the shadow and integrating the shadow?

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Tyler Ramsey:
Yes.

Chris:
So, I really think there’s something to that, actually. Because when I first heard about it, I thought, oh, this is just like mumbo jumbo BS. But when you really sit and think about it, because a lot of what he kind of posits, each of us has this dark side to our subconscious, and oftentimes, you can tell your shadows kind of talking to you when you’re walking down the street, you see someone across the way and you immediately think, I don’t like that person, that’s your shadow talking. And usually, your shadow is a reflection of the aspects of yourself that the aspects of that person that you’re jealous of, right?

Chris:
So, let’s say the person’s walking extremely confidently and you said, you look at that… I don’t like that person. Well, that person is confident, and because you don’t feel confident, you’re projecting onto them. And so, really, a lot of this integrating the shadow into yourself is owning that, realizing you have this dark side to you that you are capable of these bad things and these bad thoughts, and recognizing, no, I’m actually jealous of that person, I wish I’m more confident. And I think, actually, this is kind of the kind of work.

Chris:
When he talks about self-love, I think self-love is great and everything, but you also have to have some intellectual or philosophical sort of leaps and bounds during no contact as well where you’re doing this kind of work where you’re thinking, you’re just trying to realize who you are as a person, because I think a lot of times, people, when they go through breakups, they’ve put so much of their personality and so much of their self-worth into that relationship, and when it’s gone, they’re kind of left picking up the pieces, not knowing how to put them back together. So I think those are the kind of also helpful things to do during no contact as well, and that can all help you get along to that secure attachment style.

Tyler Ramsey:
No, definitely. I mean, I think you’re kind of preaching on a little bit of reprogramming your subconscious mind in a way. Your subconscious mind’s a little weird, and so [crosstalk 00:29:22]-

Chris:
It’s super weird.

Tyler Ramsey:
… that you’re saying, like the person that’s confident and you’re getting those radiating feelings from them without even opening their mouth, and that’s your subconscious reading into them. And so, it’s almost like walking into a room and you know the energy before you’ve even seen the person. So that’s [crosstalk 00:29:42].

Chris:
Right. You just know it. A lot of people feel like, oh, I just feel it. No, it’s subconscious picking it up and…

Tyler Ramsey:
And I can relate this back to, I mean, and this kind of goes along with this, is that every relationship coach you’ll see on the market will look at you and say, as soon as you let go of your ex, they feel it, and that is actually very true because your subconscious is that powerful, they actually do feel it, even if it’s been three or four months down the road and you faked it, as soon as you’ve let go, they know it. And that’s exactly when you feel them come back, or they’ll text you, that’s the time that they will [crosstalk 00:30:21]-

Chris:
And then you [crosstalk 00:30:22]…

Tyler Ramsey:
… the very next day.

Chris:
Right. Right. And you’re thinking, like, oh my God, this is [crosstalk 00:30:26]…

Tyler Ramsey:
[crosstalk 00:30:26].

Chris:
It’s really spooky too because, Tyler, I’m not messing with you, you can actually go to the YouTube channel and look at the playlist success stories. And if you listen to each one of those success stories, and there’s 25 or 30, so it’s 30 hours were just right there, I talk about this exact concept and I ask the people, and they’re like, yeah, that happen. That happen.

Tyler Ramsey:
I’ve had it happen to me as well.

Chris:
There you go. [crosstalk 00:30:49]…

Tyler Ramsey:
It’s been very freaky. It freaked me out for a long time.

Chris:
It’s almost like the analogy I can make for people who kind of don’t or aren’t able to figure it out themselves, it’s almost like when you’re thinking about, let’s say a TV show or something, that you haven’t thought of in years and then you go out in public or you go to the mall and then you see they’re promoting some sort of box set in the window, you’re like, oh my God, I was just thinking of that, this is an even more powerful version of that where you’re just sort of like, you know what? I’m done with that person. Then they contact you a couple days later, and you’re like, how? How did they know? So, yeah.

Tyler Ramsey:
It’s very, very weird, but it is honestly… it’s something that a lot of the neurosciences, we haven’t been able to actually tangentially nail down, but we know it’s there, we just don’t know exactly how it works in the [crosstalk 00:31:45].

Chris:
It’s a lot of science is like that. I had that surgery, I had to go up to Wisconsin about seven weeks ago, and my dad, he’s always really into stuff like that, right? And he was explaining to me how quantum physics work. And when he started talking about quantum physics, it just blew my mind because I’m like, no, that doesn’t make sense. But that’s kind of the point. The point is we have set up all these rules in our reality, in our three-dimensional world, but when you go to the quantum level and the quantum rules, they’re completely different and we don’t understand them.

Chris:
We’ve still yet to reconcile. I mean, that’s why string theory exists, to try to figure out how do we make this part glue on to this part. And our brains work the same way. It’s hard to figure this stuff out, but hopefully, 50 to 100 years, they’ll have some more information for us to learn things about ourselves.

Tyler Ramsey:
No, that’s really, really true. And so it’s just something that we know it’s there, we know the observations. It’s kind of how science works in general, honestly. You have all these observations and then you try and prove them. And that’s how physics is built completely actually. Physics is actually more of an abstract thing, and then you have all these mathematical equations to back up the [crosstalk 00:33:12].

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about the Socratic method because, I don’t know what they taught you in school, but I remember when I was going to school, they’re always making a big thing about the scientific method, right, like test the hypothesis and do stuff like that. But they just ripped that off from Socrates, which Socrates is the one who came up with the Socratic method, which is like, hey, ask a question, see if you can disprove it, if you can, your question is wrong. Reframe the question… you just keep doing that until you feel like you’ve arrived at the truth. And you’re just constantly doing that. And that’s sort of how I’ve tried to structure breakups.

Chris:
We’re learning more too. I think this is a hard thing for people to wrap their minds around, like Tyler, me, Anna, we don’t know everything yet. There’s so many… people want like a one size fits all solution but there’s not necessarily one that exists.

Tyler Ramsey:
There’s not.

Chris:
But we’re getting closer and closer to learning like, hey, these are the core components that we’re finding our present and successful scenarios, but even then, it’s such a… human beings are complicated by nature. In some situations, you should not be getting an ex back in. If there’s emotional abuse, a physical abuse, you shouldn’t be trying to get that person back. And sometimes, people need help that we can’t provide. So there’s just a lot of things to consider there, and I don’t know how we got onto this, we were supposed to be talking about attachment [crosstalk 00:34:39].

Tyler Ramsey:
Well, and I was going to say, this is a great way to loop it back though with what you said with a lot of the abuse. A lot of these, when you put two attachments that are…

Chris:
Incompatible?

Tyler Ramsey:
Yeah, incompatible or maybe just not secure attachment styles together, a lot of emotional abuse can occur. [inaudible 00:35:01] emotional needs aren’t met, and it’s not because that they can’t be met, it’s because those people can’t hear each other. They can communicate all they want, but at the end of the day, they’re not communicating the way the other person needs to be communicated to. And that’s what’s interesting. I do feel like any attachment style can be together if they learn the other attachment style and how they work, because that’s the only way you’ll ever bring both of you to the secure attachment style by learning that.

Chris:
And the irony to it all is all they need to do is learn the correct skills to talk to each other in a way that it will hit them and they’ll understand.

Tyler Ramsey:
Exactly.

Chris:
But most people don’t do that. I mean, I think that’s something that never split the difference of that book that I always talk about now, really posits, which is a lot of times, people just don’t understand how to talk to each other to get their points across because it’s almost like, imagine if you and I, Tyler, are having a conversation, I’m yelling at you, you’re going to become defensive, right? And I think that happens a lot, the tone of your voice, what you’re saying, a lot of conversations now through relationships, especially breakups happen over text. It’s a lot different when you can actually see the other person. You can see them nodding their head or rolling their eyes, or you see their happy body language or sad body language.

Chris:
There’s a lot more going on with communication that is not being said. A lot of us put such a high premium on the words, but I’m learning that it’s actually not so much the words, it’s a combination of the tone of voice, as well as the body language that can help deliver the correct way so that someone gets the message that you want them to get.

Tyler Ramsey:
Of course. No, definitely. That’s very, very true. And so I think a lot of the… I mean, if I had to guess, I mean, it’s probably true, the number one cause of a breakup is communication issues, even in marriages.

Chris:
Yeah.

Tyler Ramsey:
And probably, trust is following that second, but communication is probably the number one reason why breakups ever occur.

Chris:
I think that’s accurate. It can always be boiled down to some communication or lack of communication. Usually, I think there’s aspects of breakups that I’ve seen where people don’t communicate at all because they are assuming this person feels this way and so they’re like, I don’t want to hurt their feelings so I’m not going to talk about it at all. And it just kind of blows up and becomes this gigantic… and [crosstalk 00:37:43]…

Tyler Ramsey:
[crosstalk 00:37:43] back to the attachment styles in general.

Chris:
It does.

Tyler Ramsey:
And so you have somebody that’s anxious that presumes that, that’s how that person should feel. And then you have somebody like a fearful avoidant that’s too afraid to be verbal about their needs in the first place. And so when you have someone that will never confess their true feelings and just say, hey, this is what I want, this is what I need, because they feel so inadequate about themselves to the core that they don’t feel like they should do that, to where they let things boil up until they blow up. And so that’s what causes a fight.

Chris:
So I think the beauty of what he just said is that a lot of our understanding in relationships can be boiled down or have their roots in this attachment style. A lot of the reasons these breakups are occurring aren’t because of things that you said, it’s because… a lot of times, people are asking why, why did they break up with me? Well, it’s because they’re this type of attachment style and you’re this type of attachment style and you’re just sort of acting the way that your attachment style should act, and they’re clashing and they’re not sort of… and I really love what you said about the secure attachment style almost pulling the other ones with it to the light.

Chris:
It’s almost, if you want maybe a real explanation of how that works, look at our solar system. Everything revolves around the sun. The gravity pulls things close to the sun because it’s such a large thing. Well, a secure attachment style is almost like gravity. It’s going to pull that other person closer to you, but you’re naïve if you sit there and think, if you’re an anxious attachment style, that you can just all of a sudden wake up tomorrow and be a secure attachment style. It doesn’t work that way. It takes some work. You have to put the work in.

Tyler Ramsey:
You do. And…

Chris:
So…

Tyler Ramsey:
Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah. So, Tyler, as you can see, is awesome. And he’s going to be, in January, we’re going to start coaching with him, but he’s our newest coach, and we’re going to be doing lots of articles and podcast episodes and he’s going to be featured on the YouTube channel a lot, so you’re going to see a lot of Tyler. So if you have any questions or anything, feel free to hop on and hit him up. If you’re in the Facebook group, he’s a moderator in our Facebook group already, but if you have any questions, you can probably just ask a question through our website. But I just wanted to say, thank you so much for coming on, Tyler, and I’m glad to be able to share you with everyone else.

Tyler Ramsey:
Yeah, definitely. Well, I appreciate you having me.