The "Dancing Monkey" Pattern in Relationships

monkeys used to be trained by their masters to perform to do things like dance for onlookers in exchange for money or in the monkey's case dance in exchange for food because of this the phrase dancing monkey is now used when describing someone who performs and performs hard to try to get what they desperately want and need or avoid what they're desperate to avoid in relationships people can slip into the pattern of desperate performance in order to be loved and avoid punishment and this pattern is the dancing monkey pattern in relationships let's break it down shall

[Music] we as living beings we need to feel a sense of empowerment about getting the things we want and need as well as avoiding the things that are painful and unwanted this becomes tricky when navigating the land of relationships we are relationally dependent in many ways regardless of whether we are children or adults there are a great many needs that we have which involve other people if you want to learn more about this you can watch my video titled dependency needs the thing that no one will accept that they have relationships are at the very

heart of human existence but this does not mean that people easily align with what we want and need in our relationships with them we ultimately have no control over whether another person chooses to do that or not we have no control over whether someone will love us and behave as if they do we also have absolutely no control over whether a person will abandon us but when we desperately want and need to be loved seeing as how love is the most Blissful thing that a person can experience in a relationship and even in life and

when we desperately want to avoid being abandoned seeing as how abandonment is the most painful thing that a person can experience in a relationship and even in life it's too tormenting to be powerless too torment to be powerless relative to this so we gain a sense of control in relationships somehow the way we gain a sense of control in relationships where truly there's so much we can't control because it involves another person's Free Will is to take 100% responsibility for the relationship and convince oursel that we can control whether we are loved and whether we

are abandoned that we can do that by being what would entice them to love us and to stay it's at this point that we enter into the dancing monkey routine in relationships we perform desperately doing anything and everything that we can to be loved and anything and everything we can to avoid being abandoned let me give you some examples we do things like let go of our hobbies and interests suppress our opinions adopt their Hobbies interests and opinions pour energy into making ourselves as attractive as possible showing off our talents trying to control them manipulate

them obsess over fixing oursel warn other people about oursel to try to test whether they will or won't abandon us figure out their desires and go above and beyond to become what they desire desperately assessing compatibility trying to act easygoing hiding our needs anxiously diving into hours of conversation in order to try to establish security shower them with affection words of affirmation gifts service quality time so that they love us and not leave us make sure that we stay in their proximity do Shadow work on them be kind no matter how we're treated let go

of our boundaries help them make oursel as entertaining as is humanly possible make them laugh be overly nice validate them suppress deny and disown parts of ourselves ask them questions about themselves victim control Dynamics and this list goes forever okay on and on and on it's not necessarily that doing many of these things in a relationship is in and of itself wrong for example there 's nothing wrong with showering a person in physical affection the problem is that our motive for doing so is a desperate attempt to be loved and to avoid abandonment so essentially

we're doing this like a desperate dancing monkey so as to be loved and so that we don't get abandoned so that's a really big problem if you want to learn more about that by the way why that's such a big problem you can watch my video titled if you want to be happy don't do this a great deal of these dancing monkey behaviors are self-abandonment behaviors they're behaviors where we reject suppress deny dis own and do not caretake the aspects of ourselves that we believe will interfere with other people loving us and not abandoning us

as a result we are no longer loving ourselves to learn more about this you can watch my video titled do you abandon yourself to not be abandoned by others when some of us were young we came into families where our caregivers did not engage and step into the relationship with us families where we were rejected neglected turned against and abandoned emotionally if not physically as well families where we did not feel valued and wanted and loved we took the blame for this so as to have a sense of control in an inherently powerless position we

made it about ourselves and we slipped into the illusion that we could change this terrible situation somehow by being good enough to be what they want and value by trying to eradicate and abandon the aspects of ourselves that we feel made them reject neglect turn against and abandon us we take this attitude of say desperately working for and Performing for love so that we aren't abandoned with us into our adulthood we live our adult relationships like this as well we do so only to find that nothing works we find that people abandon us anyway and

this usually makes us into an even more High performing dancing monkey well what'll happen here is that we're going to inevitably reach a point where we feel like nothing that we ever are or ever do is going to be good enough to make it so that people want us value US and don't abandon us and like something that we don't see must be really wrong with us to make them do it what we don't realize and will not accept as this there are plenty of other people who do not meet our criteria for a person

whom people would want value and never abandon and yet they don't get abandoned for the sake of this conversation I'm not going to be politically correct here because it's important to see this through the lens of a person who's in this dancing monkey routine you ready talking directly to you if you're in this dancing monkey routine there are people who have terrible personalities there are people who are old people who are super super needy people who are ugly people who are disabled there are people who beat up their wives there are people who are addicts

there are people who are in prison having committed crimes there are people who are mentally ill there are people with chronic illnesses and terminal illnesses there are people who do not consider others they're narcissistic as hell there are people who can't regulate their emotions whatsoever there are people who spend their whole life focused on their career rather than on their partner and yet the people in their life their partner for example they don't abandon them why is this the case because abandonment is not actually about how amazing you are or horrible you are to be

with the truth is you have less power than that it's about the other person choosing to be an abandoner in response to whatever they may have all kinds of excuses maybe even good ones for why they made that choice this conversation that we are having right now isn't about whether it is objectively right or not for someone to leave a person this is a conversation where you need to become aware that other people in the very same situations as you have found yourself in and even way worse would not choose to abandon so how you

show up in a relationship is really about you right but the choice to abandon is about them and it isn't okay to take responsibility for both how you show up and how they show up in the relationship so many of the people who abandon in relationships are absolutely fundamentally incapable of having relationships because they step out of them that is their go-to response and that does not work in a relationship that is an anti- relationship behavior when we desperately perform for love and perform to avoid abandonment we cannot actually attract a person who will value

want and love us the reason being that the person on the other side is in love with the performance this means you can't ever stop performing and a big part of you does not feel loved when you are always on edge having to work your ass off to keep someone interested and keep them from going away a lot of we do when we are in this pattern is to put effort into amplifying aspects of our s that we feel would be desirable for example it may be true that we are very beautiful and so we

will amplify our looks and Lead With that being what is of value about us in relationships or for example uh we may feel like we're really smart so we're overly demonstrative of our intellect and relationships now this whole process takes serious effort also a lot of what we do when we're in this pattern is to try to change ourselves so as to be desirable and we also can't keep up that act underneath this attempt to put effort into pushing certain traits forward and into changing oursel is the fact that we feel unlovable as a result

we don't put very real things on the surface for someone to see so how can the person who would love us and even love those things about us see us so as to come forward and love of us how can we find someone truly compatible here are some questions that I want you to ask yourself if you recognize yourself in this dancing monkey pattern what do you do in a relationship in order to be valued loved and wanted by others and what do you do in a relationship in order to try to guarantee that you

won't be abandoned are these elements of your performance part of what you want the exchange to be in a relationship are they real are they authentic to you are they painful are those things what you want to be valued and loved for are you going to drop it would you be fine performing in this way forever in the relationship does keeping up fill-in the blank Behavior eventually make you feel unloved by the other person or even more insecure about yourself and the relationship the bottom line is you need to accept that you have no control

over whether you are loved by someone or not and you have no control over whether you are abandoned by someone or not this is really hard to accept you need to stop maintaining the illusion that if you demonstrate to any person that you have enough value and are what they want and give enough that they will value and love you to the degree that they will not abandon you when you accept this even though accepting this is painful you will stop taking the full onus for how people act towards you in a relationship you will

realize that if a person decides to be an abandoner in a relationship that is their dysfunction they could just as easily decide not to be no matter what you're doing you will realize that being authentic is the only genuine way to get real love from someone who values you and whom will not abandon you as a part of this authenticity you will decide how you want to show up in a relationship you will decide what your reasons for doing different things in a relationship are such as looking nice or cooking for them or staying up

all night to settle an argument so that you don't go to bed angry this way the things you do in a relationship are no longer just a so that in order to try to get love or avoid abandonment and this way you are taking responsibility for your half of a relationship being the kind of person you want to be in a relationship your way of being in a relationship will no longer be a desperate performance you will no longer be caught in the terrifying life sucking exhausting nightmare of being a dancing monkey to get love

and avoid abandonment have a good week [Music]