A relationship expert has laid out a 'love cycle' which he believes explains why so many relationships fail.
Not to be a gloomy sort, but most relationships ultimately don't work out in the end. What can begin as an experience filled with love, tenderness and joy that makes you feel ways you've never felt before can all end in heartbreak.
They say it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all and that's a very persuasive argument, but as to why so many relationships ultimately don't work out it can be hard to fathom.
Each one perhaps feels like it falls apart for unique reasons, but relationship coach Stephan Labossiere said he thinks he knows the answer.
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Speaking to the Jay Shetty Podcast, Labossiere described something he called the 'unhealthy love cycle' in relationships between men and woman which could go on to ruin relationships throughout a person's life.
First love experience
Labossiere said it all stemmed from the 'first love experience' that people had and the impact it had on their subsequent relationships.
"They're at their most loving, they're just out there, they go all the way in," he said of women in their first relationship, and how it kicks off the 'unhealthy love cycle'.
"But that typically happens at a younger age, at an age where men are not mature enough to handle those kind of emotions, that level of commitment, so on and so forth."
So step one on the 'love cycle' is experiencing first love when you have no prior taste of it or context for it, and sadly at an age where you're unlikely to have the wisdom to navigate that properly.
Getting hurt
The next stage on this cycle is the pain that comes with the end of the first love.
He said: "So she gets hurt, after she gets hurt her moment is saying to herself 'I will never let this happen to me again'.
"So now the woman starts to consciously or subconsciously choose men who are, I don't want to say lower than her, but essentially a man who does not take her there.
"He's good enough to be with but 'I'm not that vulnerable with him, he can't hurt me like that first love hurt me'."
Labossiere says this then leads into the next stage, and the problems that throws up.
I can fix him...
The relationship expert said the 'dynamic usually leads to picking a person I can fix', and often times it doesn't work out.
He claimed this was an attempt to seek out someone they can 'make better' and in turn will 'appreciate and respect them'.
He then said that this love cycle could result in the man ending up cheating 'because you chose a man that you could never be the woman that he needed' and 'he can never be the man that you needed'.
Labossiere said that once a partner you've been trying to fix 'gets what he needs from you to build himself up' or when the 'smoke clears from being infatuated with you' you're left with a relationship that's not giving each other what they want.
We're not really right for each other
It all sounds a tad pessimistic really, but Labossiere said that this could produce a relationship where each half wasn't giving the other what they needed, so they'd be more susceptible to temptation elsewhere.
"He's safe, but he doesn't fulfil her, he doesn't satisfy her, he doesn't excite her in any kind of way," the relationship expert said for how these relationships sputter out.
He said he believed 'the safe choice is almost always the wrong choice' and claimed it was 'a function of people trying to choose these fixer-uppers'.
It's all over but the crying...
The next and final step is recognising when the relationships is done and dusted, with the podcast host asking how you know when it's time to end a relationship.
Labossiere said he thought 'society needs to change their thinking' about the end of relationships and explained that the end doesn't mean it couldn't work out under other conditions.
He said: "Letting go doesn't always mean it can't work out later, it's just that it cannot work out under these circumstances. Some people say 'I feel like they're the one', maybe they are!
"But maybe the time is not right and it's letting go that will allow you both to do what needs to be done in your own personal lives that will allow you to come back together and have something way more amazing."
His main signal for it being time to leave a relationship is if you're trying to make it work and your other half is 'unwilling to put in the work necessary'.
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Mental Health, YouTube
Joe Harker