I remember thinking

-Mark: “I remember thinking oh I should say something but what I actually ended up doing was being like nah it’ll be fine it’ll work itself out SPO done that too many times right and so we sweep we sweep it under the carpet and eventually you trip on the pile that’s under the carpet and what I realized through that was like my avoidance of conflict was not altruistic it was not I thought it was like oh I’m doing a good thing

now really unconsciously what I’m doing is avoiding conflict because conflict can lead to a fracturing attachment a fracturing connection but what it’s present in as is like oh I’m going to avoid these they can’t handle the truth they’re too reactive they won’t be able to hear this that’s not love first off if you are not sharing what you truly feel someone doesn’t get to truly know you so you never really get fully known in your relationships and then you feel like you don’t feel fully loved but you haven’t actually brought the full version of yourself there

which is really because we’re afraid of being rejected but what happens in the a fear of bringing our full selves to the relationship and thereby not doing it for fear of rejection is we live in the very embodiment of rejection and so my prayer for everybody is to say lay Truth at the table because if you lay Truth at the table the system starts to orient around truth now most of us develop our adaptive strategies things like being really intuitive and having being great very gregarious being great at sales

these are all superpowers when they’re harnessed but before that they’re manipulation and that sounds like a a criticism or a negative word but the behavior itself needs to be called out for what it is it’s it’s a shadow behavior and it’s operating from a place of fear and when you don’t tell someone the truth because you don’t think they can handle it one you get to live the story two you also get to blame them for not having the capacity for being able to hold what you want to share and three they never get to become the person who can hold it

so we end up recreating our very Rel the very relational Dynamics we’re trying to avoid and I’d say on top of all this is that we are not experiencing love in those circumstances and we’re not experiencing Freedom you know I think about how often we pursue everything we love when we leave relationships we all of a sudden pursue our dreams and I’m like why wouldn’t we actually make the relationship the place that truth gets honored and if we Place truth ahead of staying together

now at least now we’re really cooking because that’s actually the way that relationships truly Thrive is that they say I’m going to tell you the truth and I’m not going to protect you from your feelings because I’m sure that’s probably happened in your life I trust that you can hold this and there’s a deeper bond that gets created from that because look at our society this is a micro and a meta we’re placing feelings ahead of reality we’re placing feelings ahead of Truth and I can tell you right now that that is that’s just a giant trauma response that’s masquerading as altruism and it’s bulshit”

-Adam: “and it’s not sustainable and in fact many of us grew up in well many of us grew up in families that were not sustainable and we learn skills in an unsustainable system which we then carry out into the world so the only thing we know how to build is unsustainable relationships”

-Andrey: “and we actually talked about this extensively throughout many of our videos and many of our podcast interviews and there’s a found found issue here and and foundational issue is really trust mixed with control right I do not trust you to be able to process this and I choose to control the narrative to control the relationship in a way that makes me feel safe in a way that makes me feel safe Myself by controlling your reaction upon me”

• 14 May 2025
• Freedom
• Adam Lane Smith, Andrey Korikov, avoidance, Mark Groves, relationship, truth