Okay, so now we've looked at some of the dynamics that underlie intimate personal relationships. But what is an intimate relationship actually look like? Which is a very good question. The easiest way to answer that question is by first looking at what an intimate relationship is not. And so this is where I'd like to take a look at the blame and defend ritual. So what happens in the blame and defend ritual is that an emotion will come up in one of the spouses or one of the couples and what they'll do is they'll project that emotion into the situation they're in.

So it may come in the form of an argument. And so the emotion is coming up maybe from somewhere in the past, but they're projecting it onto their spouse in the form of blaming them for whatever is their feeling. And the natural response of the person being blamed is that they're going to go into defending themselves, which is pretty Probably a repeating pattern from somewhere in their past as they're slipping into the victimhood role. So here's what it might look like. Dammit, how come you never clean up after yourself? This place is a pigsty.

And the other person may respond. Hey, wait a minute, I back off. I mean, where's this coming from? It's like I'm out of here. Okay, so what happened in that situation is that anger of the the place being dirty, was triggered inside of the the first person that was blaming the other and so that anger may have come very likely from somewhere in the past and his childhood or whatever. And so they're just projecting it into the argument in that situation.

The other person is falling into the victimhood role, which may be part of their, their past journey too. And they're the way to deal with it was to not deal with it. So they just took off. So what happens in kind of an unaware relationship? shift is that blame and defend ritual will go round and round like a merry go round and nothing will ever get resolved. So it can go on for months, weeks years.

And at some point, they may come to a point where the relationship itself breaks off. They can't come to a resolution, the relationship deteriorates, and finally they split up. And both of them will eventually get into other relationships. And what they will probably find is that those same patterns are going to repeat themselves in the next relationship. So what's that what that's telling them is that whatever their issues are coming up, they're not about the other person. It's about what's going on inside of you.

And the best way to deal with that is to go into some deep meditative states or to do some healing work. So that's the blame and defend ritual. So let's move along and go on to our next topic and see what a more evolved relationship might look like. See you there.