5 Attachment Wounds Hiding in Cross-Cultural Relationships

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Cross-cultural relationships create a very specific kind of conflict that most couples will never fully understand. The fight is rarely about where somebody's from, though. It's more about what love, respect, and safety were supposed to look like growing up. And now, how those two different blueprints keep colliding in the same places, producing the same resentment year after year. My name is Adam Lane Smith. I am the attachment specialist and I've spent years working with couples who are doing everything right by their own standard and still ending up in the same place over and over. Cross-cultural relationships have a layer on top that makes attachment wounds so much harder to see and harder to address without the right frameworks.

[00:00:41]That's exactly why I'm bringing in Arena Shenina, one of my certified attachment coaches. Arena works specifically with individuals, couples, and families navigating cross-cultural relationships at the attachment level. And I want to say she is darn good at it. She coaches in English and in Russian. She's navigated immigration and divorce herself, and she has seen firsthand what it costs when two different family systems try to become one and fail. In this video, Arena and I are going to walk you through the attachment science behind why cross-cultural relationships break down the way that they often do.

[00:01:14]which specific wounds are generating the conflict in yours and what it takes to stop repeating the same cycle. And if there are children in that home, they are absorbing both models right now and what you need to do to get addressed.

[00:01:28]We're going to talk about that here together, too. Arena, thank you so much for being here. I love working with you.

[00:01:34]Please take it away.

[00:01:35]>> Thank you, Adam, so much. So, I just want to introduce myself a little bit and tell tell my story. So, I grew up between two worlds. Okay. So Russian was my first language. My emotional inheritance actually comes from the Soviet Union because I was born during the Soviet Union and I I grew up there.

[00:01:52]So and then I lived in both Ukraine and Russia. And at some point I found myself in North America trying to uh love someone who had grown up with entirely different emotional ecosystem. Right? We both wanted to make it work. Of course we all do. We were both trying so hard.

[00:02:10]But something kept getting lost in translation and it wasn't vocabulary.

[00:02:15]Okay. So the moment that changed everything for me was when um we were both feeling unloved while we were trying to give everything we had. So and it was a nervous system problem layered on top of the cultural one and nobody was talking about it. So I went looking for a framework that could explain it and that's what brought me to you Adam.

[00:02:39]So, thank you so much. And um yeah, a regular attachment pattern. Okay, so it shows up everywhere, right? An anxious person is anxious with their boss, their friends, their their partner. The pattern doesn't care who you're in the room with. Uh but uh a cultural overlay is actually contextsensitive, right? So you function reasonably well okay in most areas of your life but then become a completely uh different nervous system around specific cultural triggers. Okay so the signal to watch for the reaction does not match the actual threat. So you get overly reactive. A partner being late is minor right in in in for a lot of people. But in if your cultural programming says lateness means disrespect or danger as it does in many German, Japanese or military households, your nervous system responds to this as um the marriage is ending. Okay, that's how bad it is. So the gap between the actual event and the nervous system response is a fingerprint of a cultural pattern uh amplifying the attachment one. Okay. And this is not just about immigrants. Okay. Religion, socioeconomic background, race, family model, right? Regional culture as well, military versus civilian, first generation versus third generation.

[00:04:02]Every one of these creates that distinct attachment ecosystem. Okay. So, an only child from a quiet boundary British household marrying a loud and meshed Latin American family and I love my Latin American friends.

[00:04:18]a person raised in a collectivist Indian home marrying someone from individualistic North American one or a first generation Chinese American raised with with one emotional rulebook partner with someone whose family had entirely different ones, right? So there's so many differences there. So when the two ecosystems collide in a marriage, both people are cross-cultural, even if they never left the same zip code or postal code to my Canadian friends. So at the nervous system level, right, cortisol blocks oxytocin. So when your partner's um uh culturally normal behavior consistently spikes your cortisol, bonding shuts down because when cortisol is high, you cannot bond with somebody, right? So, and Adam, you talked about this extensively in your other videos.

[00:05:08]That is not fixable through better com conversation. This is what a lot of therapists suggest. You know, communicate better in this. No, it's actually requires um working at a level of a nervous system itself. So, when the values differ sharply, it is often that both partners disagree on what matters.

[00:05:28]Okay? It is when they disagree on how those values are supposed to be expressed. So both believe in compassion.

[00:05:37]But what compassion looks like in practice can be completely different depending on where you were raised. So one partner's version of compassion lends in the other's person's nervous system as harshness. Perhaps one partner's warmth reads as enabling.

[00:05:56]Neither is wrong because both are disregulated.

[00:06:00]>> I've seen this so many times in clients I've worked with, even in my own friendships. As you know, uh our nervous systems are programmed to receive different information even from the same picture, the same color. These things can just massively spike our nervous systems in ways that the other person would never understand. Uh a Russian or an Eastern European nervous system is even trained a little bit to function differently, which is many men in the west say, "I will never marry an American woman." So they go to Eastern Europe thinking this will be perfect.

[00:06:29]They're so feminine. And then he walks in and he can offer her nothing that she's actually looking for because he does not know how to communicate safety to her. He does not know how to have conversations with her. A lot of my American men that marry Eastern European women, they say, "Adam, she's just so mean to me. She hates me. I think I need to leave." And the wife will come in and say, "Yeah, you know, we have some difficulties. I really think we're going to work them out. It's going to be totally okay." and their fully different visions about even even what their words mean and how their feelings are being experienced. It's it's so massively different. Arena, this is why I do send a lot of those couples to you because you you can experience and understand exactly where they're coming from and you can you can translate often to these people. Look, this is what her nervous system's saying. This is what you're actually hearing. This is the disconnect between you. I've seen you do this. It's brilliant. Those differences though they show up I know in five very specific wounds as we say. Arena would you walk us through that first wound of how this really shows up for people.

[00:07:30]>> Yes absolutely Adam and it's it's funny because as you're talking I can I can think of my clients and if if you guys are watching you know you can totally relate because this is what exactly what we've been talking about and and yes this this been an issue but um so wound number one would be the love definition gap. This is about it's it's not about the love languages. Okay, remember the five love languages. It's not about that. It goes deeper than that. It is about the fundamental definition of what love is supposed to feel like. So in collectivist cultures, right, love means sacrifice. Oh my god, I can think of my mom right now with, you know, full-time job, cooking, cleaning, and all of this.

[00:08:09]Yes. Uh sacrifice, staying even if it is hard, you know. And my parents been married for a very long time. I think it's been what over close to 50 years now. But yes, staying even if it's hard.

[00:08:22]Putting the family above the individual.

[00:08:24]Suffering quietly because it is what love requires. This is the default in Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Latin American and many Eastern European households. So in individualist cultures, right, love means presence and choice, right, Adam?

[00:08:43]I am so I'm here because I want to be here. This is the dominant framework in North American, Northern European and um Australian households. Right? So the emphasis on individual desire feels dangerously unstable to a collectivist nervous system. Right? If love depends on how you feel today, what happens when that feeling changes? Right? This is why it's so scary for a lot of the collectivist uh couples or or people.

[00:09:15]It's like, "Oh my goodness, what if you don't love me tomorrow? Are you going to leave?" Right? So from the other direction, a partner raised with an individualist definition uh reads that their collectivist partner is dutiful staying as martyrdom, right? Not love.

[00:09:32]All right? So it's it's kind of like it's why are you doing this to yourself?

[00:09:37]So the oxytocin microdose protocol, okay, requires small consistent repeated moments of connection, right? And I know you talked about it in your other videos, right? So but what registered as micro do is not universal. Okay? A meal cooked with with care is profound love in a Russian or Chinese household, right? with and barely but it barely registered in in a German or a British one, right? The the giver feels seen or or so sorry the giver feels unseen right in this case. So, and the receiver feels unloved and cortisol rises in both.

[00:10:19]Right? So, neither is withholding love, but they're each doing what they think love should look like in the culture that they were trained in or or the culture that trained them, right?

[00:10:34]Something they've seen, the examples they've seen from their family. So and is landing in in the nervous system of someone whose culture uh trains them completely differently. Right? So love at its core is uh to truly do and wish what is actually best for another person. That's what love is, right? You really you want them to be happy. You want them to to feel joy and fulfillment in their life, right? But what is actually uh best gets defined by the environment shaped by the culture right?

[00:11:09]So what kept people connected through famine right looks different than what builds a bond in a family sharing loud meals on a coast somewhere right it's different. So if those two people marry each other, they may have um enormously different expressions of love and no language to explain the gap.

[00:11:32]>> This is so true. Uh so my father uh well my grandfather was a first generation immigrant from Italy here to the United States. So the family meals that I grew up with, the concept of them is these big loud boisterous affairs where you're making sure everyone's not just eating but having a good time while eating.

[00:11:50]Hey, are you enjoying that food? How do you enjoy that? How you doing? It's talking. It's loud. It's boisterous. And then when I get together with my good friend Andre, right, from from Russia and from Ukraine as well. For him, it's not these big loud boisterous events.

[00:12:03]It's having the meals at all because from a family background of famine and starvation. It's like, are you taken care of? Yes, you are taken care of.

[00:12:11]Excellent. You are also taken care of.

[00:12:13]It's it's not it's not unfun. It's wonderful. It's just the emphasis is there. He used to laugh very hard because he would say after a meal I would say, "Oh, this person ate so much.

[00:12:23]That person ate so much. They were so happy." He's like, "Adam, where where does that come in as a definition of like why someone how they were happy?

[00:12:31]Why do you talk about how much turkey that you know this this woman over here ate, right? That doesn't make sense to me." But but our our different cultural backgrounds even even as immigrants now to North America are still shaping us from those ancestral pieces. And this gap gets so much bigger when we add attachment into the mix. We're assuming here two fully securely attached human beings trying to understand each other from different cultures. But when you add the attachment piece, the nervous system levels of an anxious person that's running a protocol of I'm not safe unless you love me right now and you must love me the way my culture defines love or I'm not safe at all. Not even just you don't like me, but I'm unsafe. an avoidant person who says, "I'm not safe unless you're respecting me the way my culture says you must respect me." And those huge massive disconnects. That's incredible. We also have the imprinted family model of even just what your core family was teaching you and what they trained you to believe. That could be healthy or unhealthy based on the attachment dynamics. Everything's just so massively different. And from all of these experiences, we are trying to get and give oxytocin and bonding hormones and neurotransmitters and feel loved and feel safe. So even what registers as a moment of connection is not universal.

[00:13:50]It's even cultural. If you say, "That was an incredibly romantic moment." Your partner might look at you and go, "What do you mean that was just picking up the laundry?" You or something like that. it it could be so vastly different underneath that love gap.

[00:14:06]Really, what we're looking at though is a loyalty question that's even harder to see. Arena, can you walk us through that loyalty question, please?

[00:14:14]>> Absolutely. So, I consider this, you know, the the second the wound number two. Okay. So, the second pattern is about what love uh belongs to first really. So, every family has a loyalty structure. Who comes first? Okay. So collectivist families families right put the extended family inside the marriage right so the parents the siblings the obligations of the family of origin they're not separate from the couple right they just they look like they're inshed right they're they're part of it they're part of that family so this is the norm again in middle eastern south Asian east Asian uh Latin American and many southern European families and eastern your European families to individualist families keep the family of origin outside the marriage right once you're partnered the couple is the primary unit and everything else is secondary. So when these two uh systems meet both partners feel betrayed and abandoned and neither understands why for one partner including their family is not is not a threat to the relationship right it is how love is expressed for the other it feels like being ranked second in in their own marriage. So, and this is uh direct level one trust breakdown, right?

[00:15:38]Because a level one trust requires that a person's behavior is predictable because they live by consistent principles. But when a partner's loyalty keeps running in the direction that was never negotiated because they never talked about it before, the other partner's nervous system is reads this as a d as a fundamental breach. So bonding stops at the foundation. And this is the most damaging pattern in cross-cultural relationships because most couples therapy never catches it because it gets framed as a family problem but not as a nervous system problem. So the loyalty test keeps recurring. One partner unconsciously forcing the other to choose between the couple and the family of origin.

[00:16:28]>> This is so devastating. I've seen this in a number of ways. But even even what you said a moment ago, the imshment, if you are if you're British or you're in an individualist, you might say that you're inshed with your mother if you call her more than once a year. And if you are the collectivist group, you might say we're only inshed if you're still being breastfed as an adult by your own mother. Right? There like the distinctions between what is right and and healthy and what's not are so vastly different. I I remember I had one couple who came in. They were both e even within cultures though they were both Italian and she felt threatened that he was calling his mother every Sunday to talk to her for one hour on the phone.

[00:17:09]Every Sunday he would call his mother, give her a download about the week, listen to her a week and have that conversation. And when I really drove in, like she she hated and resented her mother-in-law and said she wasn't allowed in the house because he had two wives. But when I really drilled in on this, it was because he wasn't spending that time sitting with his wife and talking with her. So the mother was getting more emotional intimacy from her perspective in that one hour a week than the wife was getting, and she felt abandoned and neglected. So, it set up this war between her and her mother-in-law that her mother-in-law had no idea. Her mother-in-law was actually and she would even say, "My mother-in-law's constantly coming over just trying to serve me and care for me and I hate her guts and I hope that she dies soon." It was like this vicious battle between the family. Even just the attachment piece, even within a culture, the attachment piece was so devastating for them. If they hadn't had that broken attachment, maybe they would have been able to work on it. But even then, it was just too devastating. I've seen this play out over and over again where a collectivist culture uh spouse talks to their parents about the decisions they're trying to make and what they're thinking and how they're acting. And if they're thinking of moving to a new city, maybe the parents think about moving, too. And the individualist person goes, "What are you doing? This isn't their decision. This is our decision. You should only talk to me and you should only tell them after decisions been made. And I don't really want them moving with us. That's weird.

[00:18:37]That's a weird thing. Even families moving in together. What happens when mom or dad, their their spouse passes away, and they're single. Well, in many cultures, it's normal for that person to immediately move in with you, the oldest child usually, and and live with you.

[00:18:51]It's it's normal. And by the way, you get a live-in babysitter, and you get someone who's right there with you. And it's this incredible experience, but it feels intrusive for people more in the Western realm because it's like, "No, you're an old person. You go live over there. You visit us occasionally. We pay a stranger to watch our kids like decent folks and you don't bother us because you're not our responsibility. Please go away. I don't have money to take care of you. It's this vastly different experience. And and I know it's often easy to make it sound like individualists are worse than collectivists. The collectivist cultures I work with plenty of people from these people from India and they say I feel smothered to death by my family. I can't escape and I can't get out. There there's dark sides of that too.

[00:19:32]Attachmentbased dark sides. We have to remember there's cultural pieces, there's attachment pieces, and there's family pieces. And all three of those are hitting your nervous system again and again and again. Even sending money home to your family who rely on that to survive. Now, that's a bleed on your family, your your your new family here, it's a bleed on your resources. How do you have that discussion? How do you even navigate that? Because maybe the family back there relies on that money.

[00:19:58]And if you say, could we not send as much? You're really saying, you know, I don't really care if your family lives or dies. get out of here. This pattern shows up in couples as either arguments that rip them apart or conversations they're afraid to have. So, it's this endless tension that just eats away at the bond that they have. And I see that again and again. And when that loyalty breach hits the nervous system repeatedly, it creates something very specific in the emotional expression.

[00:20:23]Arena, can you walk us through what that looks like?

[00:20:26]>> Love this one. Love, love, love the emotional expression. So every culture installs a different operating uh system for emotional expression. Right? So some teach that the emotional expression is connection and others teach that emotional uh control is strength. So if you can control your emotions, this is you're strong, right? So a Russian or Latin American household where emotions are loud and visible, right? Or a British and or a Japanese household, you know, where uh composure is dignity, right? or as an example a German household where directness is respect and emotional uh display is seen as weakness. Right? These are cultural operating systems. Okay? So when um a suppressor suppressor meaning somebody who suppresses the emotions, right? An expressor end up together. Both are doing what they have learned was healthy and both are disregulated by the other.

[00:21:22]Both are triggered by the other. Right?

[00:21:24]So, the suppressor uh reads emotional expression as instability.

[00:21:29]You're flying off the handle, right?

[00:21:31]You're you're too emotional. You're too sensitive. The expressor reads suppression as coldness or indifference.

[00:21:38]My goodness, I can think of a you know, my my clients right now as I'm I'm talking about this, but yes, cold, distant, indifferent, right? So, cortisol spikes in both directions, right? Bonding shuts down in both directions. So this is not that one person being too emotional or one being too cold. These are two nervous systems and each regulating according to their own cultural programming. This is the way they were programmed and each reading each other's regulation as a threat signal. Now they associate each other with what? Stress and cortisol.

[00:22:14]Right? So the assumed expectations, assumed expectations and uh you know for all of my clients watching this I I tell them do not we do not assume we ask questions, right? But assumed expectations are the most dangerous kind when they're not met. The betrayal feels enormous, right? But neither person can clearly name what was violated. So a partner whose culture says that men do not discuss vulnerability with their wives. It's very common in Arabic, East Asian, Eastern European backgrounds. Men do not talk about vulnerability. They do not share I got this. So somebody who is more expressive experiences their silence as well, it is experienced as protection. So they're protecting, right? They're protecting themselves and they're protecting their partner. I don't want to be a burden. I'm a man. I can take care of this. But their partner experiences as emotional abandonment because somebody who is expressive they they want expression as a connection as a way to connect with each other. Both are operating from inherited contracts they have never made explicit. This is something I've had to learn actually because a lot of my clients come in from Eastern Europe and posts Soviet backgrounds and and what looks like high suppression in many of their emotional outputs. It it can look like avoidant attachment style to everybody who looks at it at first. It can look like they either don't care, they don't want to connect, they don't want to bond, and that can create that almost identical experience from the outside. What they've learned though culturally is sure their ancestors were harshly avoidant but that reshaped how the culture communicates and what they communicate about that emotional display is is not welcome. It's kind of weak to be emotionally displaying in that way.

[00:24:01]You ex you express though and you talk in very different ways. It's not about avoiding. It's about not expressing this way. You avoid you express in a different way without rock-hard avoidance. That's the difference.

[00:24:13]There's still expression. They're still sharing. They're still bonding. They're still relating. It's just not done in this way. It's done in this way. And for us to look at that here in America, we go, "Wow, Eastern Europeans are the most avoidant people on the planet. How do you live?" And it's it's because the culture, the richness is just in a different area. It's just so different.

[00:24:32]And again, the imprinted family model.

[00:24:34]If maybe your family never corrected from the trauma of the past and they've handed down raw traumas, maybe you're Eastern European and avoidant at the same time. Or maybe you are securely attached because your family actually built that, but you're thriving in a different type of communication. Just remembering that both partners are running completely different operating systems. Neither one of them can see the other person's rulebook and they have to ask about it and have communications.

[00:25:00]We'll talk about that, but but neither of them can because you're not supposed to do that. Instead, one of them suppresses and goes quiet and the other one just yells a lot trying to get a reaction out of you, which is fascinating. If you are a suppressive person that thinks giving short one or two-word answers is polite and you're speaking to an expressive culture person who thinks one and two-word answers indicates hatred, rage, and an and an urgency to end the relationship, you're in for a bad experience. And that goes way beyond just anxious and avoidant people. That's a whole cultural aspect of why are you talking to me like this?

[00:25:39]What has happened to us? and then nothing lands correctly. None of the communication works. That's that's why this is happening. All of these unspoken rules though, they go even deeper into the structure of the relationship itself. Now, if you're hearing your relationship right now in what Arena's describing, and if you've been trying to fix it for years without getting anywhere, those two imprinted family models have been shaping every fight, every distance, and every moment where you've both tried and still missed each other. What Arena does, and she does it beautifully as a certified attachment coach, by the way, is work with couples at that level specifically. Arena walks them through exactly what that process actually looks like. And Arena, can you tell them here today?

[00:26:19]>> Yes, of course. So, week one would look like we will identify which of these five wounds is generating the most um generating the most conflict in the relationship. Okay? So we met out map out both imprinted family models so both partners can finally see what they're coming from and and where they have each been running. So week two we start with working on the nervous system responses right underneath the behavior building the capacity to stay regulated when the cultural triggers are you know fire up.

[00:26:55]And then week three, we start building something uh intentional together, a shared structure that draws both backgrounds and uh works for both uh nervous systems. Okay. And then from there, the work goes deeper into the relational layer because the wounds and the attachment patterns are just never separate.

[00:27:15]>> Arena, thank you so much. And to start working with Arena, make sure you go to the link below in the description. You fill out a short application. our team will reach out and make sure the fit is right and then they'll walk you through together what working with Arena will be like. Now, let's keep going. Arena, all those unspoken rules that we just talked about, everything that we just hashed out, I know that goes even deeper into the structure of the relationship itself. Could you please walk us through the next wound?

[00:27:41]>> Yes. And I keep saying that this is my favorite, but this is my favorite. All of them are my favorite. Uh, I mean, >> you have a passion for this work. I know that you do. That's right.

[00:27:49]>> Absolutely. I do. I do. And this is the unspoken gender contract, you know.

[00:27:54]Well, maybe because it is kind of like a very very dear to my heart as well. So, every family installs an invisible contract about what men do, okay? What women do and what is um owed. These contracts are not discussed. They're just observed. Okay? So, in many Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Latin American households, the roles are defined and and rarely questioned. Okay? So the man provides the woman manages the home and the emotional life of the family. So and deviation feels like a threat to the entire structure. So in most individualist western households the the those roles are negotiated. They're fluid and they're expected to shift with circumstances.

[00:28:44]So when two people bring conflicting contracts into a marriage and and remember contracts that were never discussed the relationship right the relationship becomes a constant renegotiation that neither person can can name right so every disagreement about who handles what is actually a collision between two inherited operating systems. So now this breaks vasopressin bonding sequence uh directly because what is vasopressin is it's released when two people solve stress together as a team. So collaborative problem solving builds the chemistry of partnership and Adam talks about it in other videos extensively about the bonding hormones. So if one partner's cultural script forbids collaboration across gender lines or defines roles so rigidly that there is no room for shared problem solving. Let's say the bonding chemistry from working as a team never fires. So they coexist without bonding.

[00:29:49]So the couples make it through this are the ones who make everything explicit.

[00:29:55]Okay? They ask questions. They build a bridge together that makes sense for their specific relationship and it's never the same. It's very individual.

[00:30:05]This is why we have to communicate about our needs and what it looks like, right?

[00:30:09]Which in exchange will bond you through vasopressin. So the couples that do not make it uh make make it interpret meaning without asking. So the couples that do not make it interpret meaning without asking. So they perceived negligence, lack of care, even maliciousness from behavior that was simply the product of different cultural script.

[00:30:31]>> This is so true and I'm glad you brought this up and I'm not here to say none other none of us are here to say that traditional values are not good or that they don't work. They absolutely can.

[00:30:40]But you know, you and I teach from the CEO and the COO model of marriage that it needs to work together. Yes, differently defined lanes, but each contributing and and each equal in value as well by the same token. So when the gender roles are rigidly inherited on one side and not on the other or if they're just inherited but not understood, then you're both just going to be thinking I am doing all the work and you're just over there living a different life. These roles were constructed originally for people surviving together so that they could understand and value each other's contribution and you're building a joint life. Many times I see women from from collectivist cultures who jump in and they end up doing both the CEO and the COO job at the same time and the man is just kind of sitting back there going, "Well, just tell me what you want me to do." And she's waiting for him to take over his role, but she's not complaining. She's not pushing until eventually she just burns out and blows up because she can't do it anymore.

[00:31:37]That's turning your chief operations officer also into the janitor who has to constantly clean up, too. By the way, she's not usually just doing two rolls.

[00:31:44]It's like five rolls in the home. And if you aren't sitting down and talking about what you're building and why you're not going to build vasopressin, each one of you is going to resent the other person and say, "I'm doing everything alone. Why aren't you working?" Then the person says, "What do you mean? I'm the one that's working."

[00:32:00]If you're competing, if you're exhausted, if you're burned out, if you're not building together, there is no masculine feminine dynamic. There is no vasopressant. There is no connection.

[00:32:10]So whether couples are wanting to do a free fluid easy genderless sort of experience in the west or a full lockedin traditional structure in the east or or some sort of blend of the two, they must be discussed and it must be fully on the table of what we're even trying to achieve as a couple and what we're contributing and how we respect and value those contributions. It may not be you make x amount of money and I make x amount of money. might be I'm bringing all the money and you are doing all this domestic labor on this front for our family. It may be a house husband with a woman who comes in with a trust fund. I don't know. But but building that together is so absolutely crucial. You won't respect yourself or each other if you don't build this explicitly. And I know that underneath all of that is the quietest wound of all. Arena, would you please take us through that fifth wound?

[00:33:00]>> Absolutely. And this is to all the my quiet disorganized humans out there, right? So when vulnerability is culturally coded as weakness, asking for help becomes dangerous or expressing needs becomes something to be ashamed of. This is embedded in many postsviet, East Asian, Germanic or military background households, right? Because stoicism is dignity. Need is a burden.

[00:33:27]Asking is weakness. Right? So this does not just affect the person carrying the shame. It affects the person trying to reach toward them. Sharing a need. I tell my clients, sharing your need is a gift to the other person. It's not a burden. It's a gift. It takes away all of the guessing. It takes away the guessing game. So when one partner reaches for connection and the other one's nervous system fires a cortisol spike in response to that reaching the reaching partner shuts down. They learn that reaching is not safe here. Right?

[00:34:03]So that pursue withdraw cycle locks in and it has nothing to do with one person being anxious or one person being avoided. vulnerability itself was made shameful by cultural inheritance long before this relationship even happened or or began. So this wound directly blocks the vasopressin to oxytocin sequence because you cannot build partnership level bonding without collaborative problem solving. Right? So shame makes collaboration impossible because collaboration requires admitting you do not have all the answers. Right?

[00:34:42]So that shame is inherited, right? The grandmother who believed need was a weakness or a community that equated stoicism with dignity, a history that required people to be hard um in order to survive. Perhaps in posts Soviet culture specifically, vulnerability was not safe for generations. That wiring does not disappear in just one generation. Right? So once you can see where the shame came from, then you can start building new associations in its place.

[00:35:15]>> And that's so key because this shame was not created in this one generation. It wasn't this person's childhood. So if you go back and say, "Why are you ashamed of this?" What do you mean? I'm not ashamed of it. It's just stupid and foolish. No one would do it. Everyone I know would be ashamed of this. Right?

[00:35:31]That's the structure. It's going to therapy and crying in therapy and trying to figure out for 10 years why you're ashamed of it. It's never going to work because it's it's the culturally ingrained piece. It's inherited through generations of people who had to be hard to survive. Hardness kept them alive.

[00:35:48]Avoidant tendencies kept them alive. Now it's been handed down to you through learned behavior. But that may not mean that you're avoidantly attached. You're behaving like one culturally. That wiring can't just disappear in a single generation. That's not how it works. It gets passed forward as values, dignity, strength, attachment styles of kids who watch it. They could be somewhat more avoidant than we might expect. But again, if that comes forward and maybe you immigrate to the west or or wherever it may it may be, you may have such a massively different experience of what your kids and grandkids grow up with, especially those kids in the modern world don't even understand where things are coming from. So then they go to therapy and say, "My dad doesn't hug me." And the therapist goes, "Your father is abusive and doesn't love you."

[00:36:35]And you go to the father and you're like, "Why don't you love your child?"

[00:36:38]He goes, "What do you mean? I I have never loved any human on the planet the way I love my child. I have done I have done everything for my child. What do you mean?" And it's this devastating wound. I've worked with so many first or or second gen immigrants who legitimately will look you in the eye and say, "My father didn't love me." And I've had the fathers come in before because they're Eastern European. Of course they do. The fathers come in to the sessions, too, and they say, "I would give anything for my child." And and I am deeply grieved that he doesn't think I love him. I don't know how to do that. And I say, "Well, he's right now telling you that he wants a hug." And he goes, "A what? A hug? Who would do that?" It's this, it's such a wild disconnect. But I mean, the expression of it, it's incredible. It it feels often like you have to cut off your cultural roots to even begin surviving.

[00:37:32]You have to deny everything that came before which isn't really how it works and that's not really what you need to do. There's a whole different approach here and I know that you are fantastic at teaching people this smarter approach. Once someone sees that this pattern is bigger than one single conflict though, what does an actual breakthrough look like when you're working with these clients?

[00:37:51]>> Okay, so the the the context test, right? Uh what it means is uh does this reaction show up everywhere or only in specific cultural territory? That's number one. So attachment patterns are broad but cultural ones are very selective. So you may f you may function with reasonable uh security at work, right? And then become a completely different nervous system around your partner's family for example, right? So then another one would be a proportionality test, right? So so the proportionality test you know rationally that it is not a big deal and yet what you're feeling your your body and how the way you're responding to it is enormous. So that gap is where cultural programming is writing. Watch especially for triggers organized around uh money, family obligations, gender roles, and what is appropriate to show in public versus in private.

[00:38:50]Yeah. And another signal would be catching yourself thinking. Everyone should know this, right? Uh you should know by now. You're you're 60 years old.

[00:39:02]You should know by now. Your partner grew up somewhere else and that somewhere else shaped everything, right?

[00:39:09]They do not have the same bakedin assumptions, right? So the practice is catching that thought and then replacing it with a question. Again going back to assumptions, we do not assume, we ask questions.

[00:39:26]>> So two things I pull from that. One, if you are securely attached with every Russian you meet, but avoidant with every American you meet, it might not be an attachment issue for you. It definitely could be a cultural issue.

[00:39:37]Specifically, if you're practicing secure attachment here, but over here it's just not clicking. look at cultural factors. Number one. Number two, something that that really resonates for me and for my clients is when they stop saying, "Everyone knows this. What's wrong with you?" And they start playing it from the concept of help me understand. What does this look like for you? What are your thoughts here? How does this line up for you?

[00:40:02]What What did this look like for you growing up? when you can begin expressing curiosity about your partner and everything becomes a cool learning opportunity and then you get to pick and choose and say, "Well, what do we want to do?" And you can almost build a mini subculture within your own relationship.

[00:40:20]That way, you're not beholden to what everyone in the old culture did. A mini subculture that's shaped and refined for what works for your family. That's something that you guys might be able to do. This opens up so much so much bonding but also just so much understanding because you get to actually look at each other as people again instead of instead of problems to be solved and instead of that weirdo over there it's this cool amazing partner that I keep learning cool things about and we get to investigate new things and then that's a great reason to be intentional because now we have to make a choice constantly and it's pretty cool like that's totally different. Can you please walk us through how to start identifying this together without it becoming another fight? Because it's so easy to turn this into one more argument.

[00:41:06]>> Yes, absolutely. So, it looks like a consistent disproportionate reaction to something uh culturally specific. So, a topic that shifts the emotional temperature uh dramatically when touched, right? So, rigidity uh where there is normally flexibility, right? If you're rigid, but you should be more flexible around it, that's probably something cultural, right? So, the approach that doesn't work um is framing it as a problem with their culture, right? So, identity defense activates immediately and then the conversation is over. Right? Now, we're just accusing or judging or never goes well. So the approach that works, lead with your own nervous system. Okay?

[00:41:55]Be responsible. I tell my clients, please be responsible for your own nervous system regulation, right? Not your family's expectations uh uh are unreasonable. You know, you can't really say, "Oh, your family's expectations are unreasonable." I I hear that all the time. Right.

[00:42:13]>> Your family's a mess. Yeah. Everybody loves hearing that, right?

[00:42:17]>> Yes. Yes. Exactly. But when this happens, my body does something I want to understand and I think it might uh connect to how differently our families operate it. Um also shared investigation, not accusation but actually shared investigation. I think this is very important asking questions trying to learn because when you ask questions you learn something new about each other.

[00:42:42]Vasopressin builds when two people solve a problem together. So frame the wound as a shared puzzle, right? And you are already creating the chemistry that makes repair possible.

[00:42:56]>> And the key piece here is again it's not two cultures and you have to make them compromise because historically that has not gone very well. This isn't one culture has to win either. It's again that intentional family model of here's a piece here, here's a piece here. What works for us? what what are we trying to achieve and which pieces fit best for our family? Also, which ones nurture our nervous systems the best? Even how could we shift how we relate and have communications? That's the core point there. You get to decide what your version of secure attachment looks like together. You get to craft that together and discuss it out loud. You can bring the loyalty, the warmth, the strength from your background. It's actually bringing the best of both cultures and getting the best of them while even cutting out some of the weaknesses that each culture inevitably has. Improve both of them together in one unified system. You bring yours, your partner brings theirs. And when you build together something that neither of you had in the past, your children will be more resilient now because they grew up inside this system that was the best of both worlds. You don't have to argue over who's best. Build the best together. Arena, could you please walk us through the first steps to actually building that for somebody?

[00:44:11]>> Yes. Love it. So, first the foundation of it all, the nervous system regulation, right? Nervous system education before the relationship skills, right? So, you cannot build a new pattern until each partner understand what is happening in their own body and why, right? So, we start with a mapping session, right? What did love look like in your family? um not in theory but in practice. So from that map you can identify where cortisol spikes uh are coming from right what triggers you not to assign blame but to give the nervous system a story that it can work with. Then translation work building a shared definition of love, care, support, respect in in this specific relationship. Not again not imported from either culture but negotiated consciously using Adam's what, why, how often framework, right? Love it. Because again when people come to me and say I want him to love me more. What does it look like? Especially a man is like what does it look like? What do you want from me? Right? So this is where that we get lost in translation. Now if when both partners can hold new patterns consistently for about 58 to 90 days, the brain begins to rewire, right? So that is when you know the work is taking hold, right? So, and every point of friction must be talked about right out loud as a curious question. Not as a blame, accusation or or criticism. As a curious question, you did this. Tell me about that. What felt overwhelming, right? What triggered you? Right? You seem overwhelmed. You seemed annoyed or something, right? Seemed again, you want to question that. So, I thought this I would do this. Tell me about your side.

[00:46:08]Right? curiosity instead of assumption.

[00:46:10]Once again, now what you're building is not a compromise between two cultures.

[00:46:16]Okay? This it is something new. You're building something new with each other.

[00:46:20]A mashup of both stronger than either, right? That gets the benefit of both and the weaknesses of neither. Okay? So a new cultural identity that belongs specifically to this relationship and this family, your own identity because you're a unit. Now this is why we call it a family unit. You're a unit. This is going to be specific to you. So the pattern did not form in a single incident. It forms through repetition.

[00:46:48]Consistency is the key here. What is not fixable is a partner who is unwilling to examine what they're carrying. Okay? So people ask this a lot. Ireina, when do I let go? Right? When do I when is it time for me to should I stay or should I go?

[00:47:07]Right? This is a willingness problem, right? You cannot do attachment repair with someone who experiences any examination of their program as a personal attack.

[00:47:18]>> I love this. And I'll add one more little piece. Uh because my business partner and I, you know, he's he's Russian and I'm I'm American to the core, raised in California, about as about as washed out American as you can get. And we do have quite a few cultural differences, even communication differences. One thing we've learned to do is if there's ever an awkward moment, we pause and we look at each other and we go, "What did that mean to you just now? How how did that land for you?" And we'll both look at each other. And then we'll explain it. we'll go, "Wow, that is really different than I expected." And then we can correct. We've learned those little cultural moments. It's actually a chance to learn about each other. But if there's an awkwardness, step in and ask question. Whoa. What did that moment just mean to you? Because that it's that felt a little weird. I heard the thump and I don't know what just happened.

[00:48:07]Doing that together turns it into a non-threatening experience because then we can we can learn, we can laugh, and he could say, "Oh, Americans." And I go, "Oh, Russians." Right? And we can we can have that joke and then we laugh and we we take care of each other, but we can delight in the differences that we get to share and and it's it's just a totally different experience. It's fantastic when it's not threatening. So the scope of this work, what people need to understand, you are rebuilding two imprinted family systems and creating a third intentional family system that does take years to do over time. It takes time. It takes even having those moments like my partner and I, my business partner and I do. It it makes it means confronting those odd moments and hearing the thump and going, "Wait a minute." And having that conversation the first 58 to 90 days, yes, they do begin to prove to you that it's different, that it's even possible. Hope is rebuilt. That's not a finish line.

[00:49:02]That's an initial launching point of rebuilding from two cultures. It's the point where the nervous systems really start getting real evidence something can change. The biggest thing and and I think you'll agree with this is seeing that your partner cares about you.

[00:49:16]That's really the biggest transformation piece there is because if your brain culturally is telling you my partner doesn't care and then you can get evidence that they do, then everything is recolored through a lens of they care about me instead of you don't care about me and here's more evidence to that.

[00:49:34]That evidence is everything else gets built on top of everything else. Both of you inherited family models that were built on different realities and different pressures and different definitions of what safety looks like.

[00:49:47]If those systems stay invisible, right, you will keep recreating them automatically inside your marriage and your children will inherit the confusion as well. So the work is deciding what stays, what gets left behind and what the two of you are going to build together. So what you build from that process is something your children will grow up inside of and that is worth it.

[00:50:14]>> That is absolutely the truth. Everybody out there listening right now, if you heard yourself in this today, maybe you heard your partner in this day, maybe you heard both of you in this today, if you keep having the same fight without being able to explain where it comes from, that's two imprinted family models running in the same house without a shared framework. That is what Arena helps people address. Again, she coaches in English and in Russian, and she understands what it takes to build something new from two completely different foundations. If you want help with that, go to the link below, fill out an application to work directly with Arena. My team will reach out and we'll help you figure out those next steps.

[00:50:50]Arena is also going to be joining me live on June 2nd at 12 noon Central time. So, you can drop your questions here in the comments on this video. Put your comments down there. Put all your questions. We're going to be pulling from those comments and we'll answer as many of your questions as we can over there in that liveream. Make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications so you do not miss that event. In the meantime, if you're ready to work on your relationship right away, there are five simple conversations that can turn everything around. I cover them in the next video, the five hardest attachment conversations that save your relationships. Watch that next. And if you know somebody whose relationship keeps getting stuck in the same place and neither of them can explain why, send this video to them. They need it.