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Hi, friends, and welcome back to the Widening Your Aperture Podcast.
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In Episode 1, we established the theoretical baseline of relational unsafety.
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In episode 2, we looked at operational escalation.
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What happens in real time when a trauma-informed partner introduces boundaries, transparency, and somatic realities to an unsafe dynamic.
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Today, in episode three, we are examining what happens when direct conflict becomes too threatening to an unsafe partner's ego, and communication moves entirely underground.
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We are unpacking passive-aggressive architectures and transactional mechanics.
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The subtle, covert ways an avoidant or volatile partner maintains relational leverage, enforces compliance, and avoids vulnerability when they lack the somatic capacity for accountability.
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When direct accountability is required, an unsafe partner rarely engages an honest, real-time presence.
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Instead, they deflect, wait for an opportunity where they feel in control, and deliver a one-sided lecture disguised as concern or support.
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During our post-trip Zoom call, I held a clear boundary pointing out how unfair it was for people in his life to hear a distorted narrative when they didn't know my side, and how what happened between us should have remained sacred and private.
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But instead of honoring that truth or meeting my trauma history with empathy, Noah flipped to the mirror, put on the parental robe, and stepped into the judge's chair.
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He sat back and began lecturing me on basic human connection, telling me, when you hit rock bottom, you need human interaction.
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We're social creatures.
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That's why we're here.
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Thank you for the TED Talk on basic biology, Noah.
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I was unaware we were social creatures.
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And then came the classic infantilization.
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He began laying out basic life instructions as if I were a toddler who had never seen daylight.
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You need to eat right, first of all.
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Your sleep, exercise, sun, long-term discipline, find a new job, start a new routine every day.
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When I looked him in the eye on that call and asked point blank, were any of the boundary issues I brought up unwarranted?
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He answered directly.
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No.
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Every single boundary was valid.
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But because an unsafe partner cannot attack the substance of a healthy boundary without
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looking entirely unreasonable, he pivoted.
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Well, it was the cadence and frequency.
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Now let's pause for a quick reality check.
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I was his first girlfriend ever.
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So I have to ask, what metric exactly was he using to evaluate the standard cadence and frequency of an adult relationship?
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What baseline?
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What historical archives was he pulling from?
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When an unsafe actor has zero experience to back up their authority, they simply invent a gold standard where your standard human needs are always too much.
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When an unsafe partner cannot meet you as an equal in vulnerability, they lower your status by lecturing you on basic survival.
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Infantilization is not mentorship.
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It is a covert, slightly absurd strategy to reclaim the upper hand.
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Which brings us to the second mechanism, the worst thing deflection and backpedal.
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When you hold up a clear, unyielding mirror to unpredictable behavior or emotional volatility, an unsafe actor's nervous system often cannot tolerate the threat to their self-image.
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Rather than taking ownership, they twist your actual words, manufacture a narrative of extreme victimhood, and execute a dramatic shift from explosive outrage to self-martyrdom.
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During our post-trip Zoom call, Noah sat in an echo chamber of his own making, cycling rapidly between the judge, the martyr, the savior, and the righteous victim.
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In a single conversation, he denied ever saying I love you in a more than friends context, shifted the goalposts, and brought up his favorite weaponized lie.
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He sent a direct text explicitly claiming I had said, I am the worst thing that has happened to you.
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On that Zoom call, he looked at me and asked, Is that what I'm expected to tolerate?
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Verbal abuse?
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This was his setup.
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Having framed my boundary as abuse, he immediately broke into a full yelling rant.
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Why would I come back to verbal abuse?
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Nobody tells me that, Kristen, I am the best person alive for every person in my life except you.
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And he continued to escalate.
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We need to work on this.
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Why would I want to come back?
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I am not going to put up with this.
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I have much more high self-value.
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It was so deeply destabilizing that 15 minutes into the call, my nervous system completely dissociated to protect itself.
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That single Zoom call left me so dysregulated that I saw my care team three separate times that week to process the severe Darvo, gaslighting, and verbal abuse.
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It was during one of those sessions that I confronted his claim, knowing I had personally reread all 108 pages of our text history and found no such statement.
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I asked him directly which text he was referring to.
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He doubled down, posturing with false confidence.
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I have the text, Kristen.
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I can go back and find it.
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Under the pressure of actually having to produce the evidence, he backed off his bluff, admitted for the first time that it wasn't verbatim, and finally forwarded the actual receipt.
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What I had actually written was, You found a way to bring out the worst in me, and then held it against me and punished me for it.
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Who does that?
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Dr.
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Vance read the text and stated the obvious.
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This is a far cry from I am the worst thing that has happened to you.
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He fabricated a quote, bluffed about having proof in 108 pages of text to justify labeling a call out as verbal abuse.
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The third mechanism is transactional amnesty and moratorium.
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In an unsafe dynamic, affection, presence, and forgiveness are never freely given.
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They are traded like currency.
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When conflict reaches a breaking point, an unsafe partner will often attempt to enforce a unilateral reset or moratorium without doing any of the actual labor required for repair.
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They offer a sweep it under the rug amnesty, expecting you to grant them clean slate status simply because they declare that they have moved on.
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Following our breakdown, know us in a lengthy, rigid following our breakdown, know us in a lengthy, rigid text, setting the terms of our interactions, explicitly stating, I don't want this to be an interview for our friendship.
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If we're gonna be friends, we need to act like friends.
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I have done my work to move on from whatever happened a month ago and since then.
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I don't want to be asked, why did I say this or why did I do that?
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I've acknowledged my mistakes and apologized for them endlessly.
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I have not continued to hold you accountable for anything, and I don't plan to.
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He declared that he had moved on and conditioned his entire presence on
my agreeing to just forget all of this now.
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As Brene Brown reminds us in her Braving Inventory, trust requires structural boundaries, reliability, and true accountability.
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You cannot unilaterally declare a moratorium on accountability when the underlying harm has never been repaired.
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Unearned absolution is simply active suppression.
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Which leads us to the fourth mechanism: covert punishment and micro-punitive delays.
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When you refuse to accept unearned amnesty or hold a firm somatic boundary, conflict rarely looks like an open argument.
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Instead, it looks like micro punishments, strategic delays in text responses, sudden drops in emotional warmth, weaponized indifference, and low-stakes tethers.
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Over a 60-day period following my clear disclosure and boundary setting, Noah dropped 12 distinct intermittent tethers, casual, low effort check-ins like hope you're resting, or door is always open.
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These microcommunications are not genuine bids for connection.
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They are low-risk fishing lines designed to test your boundaries, gauge your availability, and keep the relational door cracked without ever offering an ounce of safety, transparency, or apology.
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And finally, the fifth mechanism, the ego-preservative knot.
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Why do unsafe partners rely on these passive aggressive architectures?
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Because keeping a relationship unsettled preserves their ego.
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As long as the dynamic remains confusing, transactional, and chaotic, they never have to face the painful reality of their own limitations.
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In his book, The Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett breaks down the laws of conflict, showing how defensiveness and stonewalling act as psychological shields.
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And as Gottman clinical research demonstrates, stonewalling and defensiveness are the ultimate predictors of relational death.
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When someone repeatedly converts intimacy into a bargaining chip, weaponizes delays, and uses infantilization to deflect accountability, they are showing you their capacity.
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Intensity is not intimacy.
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Chaos is not connection, and transactional mechanics will never yield relational safety.
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When an unsafe partner refuses to meet you in real-time presence, stop stepping into the arena, protect your peace, trust your nervous system, and step fully into your sovereignty.
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Your support helps the support reach the people who need it the most.
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Have a question, a topic request, or a story you'd like us to explore in an upcoming episode?
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Send an email directly to ask WYA at widenyouraper.com.
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I will also put this email into the show notes.
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To stay connected, access our clinical research roadmaps, and receive deep dive updates delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to our Substack page or newsletter.
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The link will be included in the show notes.
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Until next time, keep widening your aperture, trust your nervous system, and hold your boundaries firm.