We all want connection. We all want an amazing, sexy, supportive romantic relationship. In this day and age, people are more connected than ever, through technology, mutual friends, and family — so why is it so hard to find the person who can fill that position?
Most often, it’s not other people that are the problem. It’s ourselves. We’ve all heard that phrase, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Sometimes, it really is us.
We have so much hurt from our past that we haven’t yet worked through which keeps us from experiencing true connection with someone else. We put walls up to keep ourselves safe. We run away when things get serious. We put on a mask and fake a personality so that we don’t have to be vulnerable.
The truth is, hurt people hurt other people. We are sometimes the biggest roadblock when it comes to finding lasting, fulfilling connections.
So many people will say that relationships are your greatest teacher — I know they have taught me so much over the years. How many of you have gone through a challenging relationship in your life? Maybe there’s some toxic relationship in your past, and you’ve just always struggled in relationships, or maybe you’re in a place right now where things are going well, but you want to take it to another level.
If you’re in that place, then this episode is for you.
On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I discuss what is keeping people from accepting love and why marriages often fail with a certified relationship coach: Stephan Labossiere.
Who Is Stephan Labossiere?
Stephan Labossiere, AKA Stephan Speaks, is a certified relationship coach, speaker, and author. From understanding the opposite sex to navigating the paths and avoiding the pitfalls of relationships and self-growth, Stephan’s relationship advice and insight help countless individuals achieve an amazing and authentic life.
Dedicated to helping and devoted to keeping it real, Stephan’s straightforward yet compassionate delivery style attracts a varied clientele, including notable celebrities, civic and social organizations, academic institutions, singles, and couples alike, who can and are ready to handle the truth!
Stephan has been seen, heard, and chronicled in national and international media outlets, including the Tom Joyner Morning Show, The Examiner, ABC, and Huffington Post Live, to name a few. To coin a phrase by an individual who attended one of his speaking engagements, “he’s definitely the relationship guy, all relationships all the time.”
He’s got some great books out there, and after listening to this podcast episode with Stephan Labossiere, you’re going to want to hear more of his stuff. His most recent publications are Find Love After Heartbreak, He Who Finds a Wife, and The Man God Has for You, and they all teach you about how to create healthy relationships with the right people.
I was so honored to have Stephan Labossiere on my podcast, and we literally could have talked for hours. In this episode of The School of Greatness, Stephan talks about how important it is to heal before you get into a relationship, how to maintain healthy relationships and intimacy, and why over half marriages end in divorce.
The Number One Thing Holding People Back from Successful Relationships
Have you ever been in a relationship where nothing’s going wrong at first, but as you get closer, the other person begins to sabotage things? Maybe you’ve been this person before — and sometimes, we can even do it unknowingly.
According to Stephan, past, unsuccessful relationships can hold us back from new, successful ones. If you’ve been hurt in the past and you haven’t healed, you’re likely projecting that hurt into the future:
“We’ve all been through stuff, we’ve all been damaged, we’ve all been disappointed and hurt, but we have not properly processed those things, and we take those negative experiences, and we project them onto people, we project them onto our future, we project them to our self-esteem and self-worth, and we throw everything out of whack. Now, we can’t even embrace or set ourselves up for that great relationship because we are still holding onto the bad one that we experienced before.” – Stephan Labossiere
A lot of this comes from fear — we’re afraid that the same thing will happen to us again. So we often push away when things get serious, or we put walls up completely that prevent us from even starting new relationships. When we push away, we often end up hurting the other person, because it’s difficult to explain why we’re sabotaging the relationship.
Stephan says it’s about a loss of “emotional control.” When things are getting more serious, and there’s a higher level of intimacy, it’s harder to have control over our feelings for the person. That’s when the fear really kicks in. We start to look for something wrong to pin it on, but in reality, it’s our own trauma.
I asked Stephan if men or women tend to do this more, and he said women, hands-down:
“I think that because women are more emotionally intune … it’s quicker for them to feel like they’re losing themselves when they feel this amazing connection with somebody because again it pulls you into an area that you’re not used to being in…Also, the reality is that women are hearing so much from other women or from their own experience that good men don’t exist. There are no good men here. [It’s] a fairytale to believe you can meet this guy who is so great and so amazing. So when they meet that guy [then] something has to be wrong [with him.]” – Stephan Labossiere
On the flip side, men usually find themselves thrilled when they connect with an amazing woman, but they don’t respond to the women’s reactions well. If she’s feeling insecure or uneasy, men have a tendency to get easily frustrated and react in a way that actually fuels the woman’s fear.
“So, we do contribute to the issue, but we’re not quicker to run away — we’re quicker to latch on and say, ‘Oh my God, I want this, this is the opportunity I can’t let pass me by.’ Where she is thinking ‘this is not all real, this can’t be true, I’m fooling myself, let me run now before I get hurt even worse later.’” – Stephan Labossiere
The trick to resolving this issue is twofold: Stop holding onto your past relationships and communicate your feelings directly to your partner. If you feel fear building up, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that a good, healthy relationship can’t happen if you don’t let it in the first place.
