TL;DR: The author examines how conscious awareness interrupted a destructive emotional pattern, revealing a powerful turning point inside a transamorous relationship.
When I wrote “When the Honeymoon Ends: Powerful Truths at Work Like Magic,” I described a stage of relationship development many people never fully understand until they are inside it.
The “honeymoon phase” is intoxicating. There, projection is still doing much of the work. In that phase, the relationship’s novelty conceals through chemistry what’s really happening. That undeniable flood of endorphins and other positive chemicals in our bodies hides patterns of belief that ordinarily would trigger insecurity in both parties.
From another perspective, the perspective that is the practice through which I help clients with their relationships, what’s happening in the honeymoon stage is, two people see one another from the pure positive lens that is their “enlightened” way of seeing the world. They see each other as they see themselves – free of fears, negative expectations, free of insecurities. That’s why the honeymoon stage feels so good.
That’s also why, when “the honeymoon is over” many are bewildered about how they got where they are. Desire no longer overrides unresolved thought and belief momentum. That momentum then, begins to taint what was once blissful. Common, familiar belief patterns surface and what was once blissful turns burdensome.
Meanwhile, desire overrides unresolved momentum allowing a perception that ignores what’s always there. During the “Honeymoon”, both people can temporarily feel larger than life.
“Reality” begins pressing upward through the fantasy. And when it does, that moment offers an opportunity for glorious expansion for both parties. If, that is, both parties are aware.
Old attachment “wounds” reawaken, fear of abandonment emerges, possessiveness appears and control strategies activate to sooth those “wounds”. These are the opportunities. But, for many, this is when people withdraw. Others become hypervigilant while certain other individuals unconsciously begin creating chaos. That’s because chaos is more familiar, more comfortable to them than stability and love.
And that is where the real work begins.
An extraordinary moment
“Bob” recently experienced one of the clearest examples of this dynamic I’ve witnessed in some time. What made it remarkable was what he did with what happened.
During one of our sessions, he described how one evening he became triggered around his transgender partner. Jealousy surged through him over something she said or something he believed she had done. The specifics of the trigger matter less than the pattern it activated internally. Almost immediately, he recognized an old impulse arising inside himself, one he knew intimately from previous relationships.
He wanted to blow everything up.
In earlier periods of his life, Bob had a tendency, particularly during emotionally overwhelming relationship moments, to create massive upheaval. He spoke candidly about old situations where he nearly detonated entire relationships, jeopardized his stability, and created destruction around himself simply because the emotional intensity became too great to regulate.
Many people reading this might understand exactly what I mean. Some people do not just react emotionally. They escalate situations until the entire relational field falls apart. Once that process starts, they often feel powerful, righteous, or liberated while simultaneously destroying the very thing they value most.
As Bob recognized that impulse beginning to rise in real time, he fell back on what we talked about in our sessions. He realized this relationship he had, which was powerfully affirming his transamory, was way more valuable than his desire to feel safe in the moment. He also realized the beautiful connection he’s found with his transgender partner I’ll call Maria, was something that brought him a completion he’d never felt before.
For Bob, that moment of recognition was extraordinary. And it was enough to shake old, knee-jerk responses to insecurity.
Benefits of “The Practice”
Most people can’t catch themselves like Bob did until after the damage is done. Awareness usually arrives post-explosion. They send the text or they cheat and then later regret those acts. They will scream or they will disappear. Sometimes they project, accusing their partner, or they provoke them, hoping the partner will do the dismantling.
In other words, when people don’t catch the impulse, they will unconsciously sabotage out of the need to protect themselves from an imaginary experience, one that’s not real. Afterward, they’ll reflect on what happened and wonder why they did it. But it’s too late by then.
What unfolded for Bob, however, was different. As a result of his work with the Transamorous Network processes, which build powerful cis-trans relationships, he became conscious while the pattern was activating. What’s remarkable, to be honest, is, Bob didn’t really allow much of the actual process into his life. He preferred to drive his sessions and not do homework assignments which are part of the process.
But the conversation itself is powerful. It alone influences clients in ways they find remarkable. Just yesterday, at the time of writing this, two clients mentioned positive contributions to their lives meeting with me has created. Clients who put in to practice what I share in-session, enjoy an altogether richer experience.
The “Blow it Up” Strategy
For Bob, his awareness was powerful. The old momentum was still there, his nervous system activation was still there as was the primal emotional energy, the energy to destroy a really good thing. Yet another layer of awareness emerged alongside all that.
So instead of becoming the reaction completely, he observed the reaction occurring inside him. That distinction may sound subtle, but it is not subtle at all. That distinction changes destiny. And Bob saw that.
One of the reasons I emphasize conscious awareness so strongly in my client work is because awareness interrupts momentum. Momentum itself is not evil or even bad. It’s actually very positive when harnessed. Momentum, once a client understands what it is, allows clients to create anything they desire, including ideal romantic relationships.
The practiced energy that momentum is, therefore, is actually good. As such, most destructive relational patterns are not happening because someone is “bad.” And all relational patterns are based on momentum. Patterns people label “bad” are happening because the nervous system has rehearsed a particular emotional strategy so many times the body executes it automatically.
For some people, that strategy is withdrawal, while, for others it’s manipulation, accusation, physical abuse, even infidelity.
For Bob, historically, one of those strategies involved dramatic destabilization. Blow it up before vulnerability fully lands, it asserts; burn it down before abandonment can happen naturally, it cries; create chaos before intimacy becomes too exposing, it pleads. Again, many people live this way for decades without ever becoming conscious of it.
Yet Bob saw it while it was happening.
An Amazing Shift
Even more importantly, Maria’s response helped stabilize the moment rather than inflame it. That mattered a lot. In prior relationships, Bob likely would have entered a feedback loop where both partners amplified each other’s insecurity. This time, though, the emotional field shifted in a different direction.
Maria saw what was happening and, as I often counsel my trans clients, she asked a question, then relaxed. That communication opened a door to reflection. It made space around the impulse which gave Bob time to respond rather than react. Maria’s choice wasn’t something independent of Bob’s awareness. Rather, it was a reflection of it.
Bob had practiced for a year being aware of his inner state and doing something about that. So when the crucial moment arrived, all aspects of the Universe, on the subject of his relationship, reflected his improved awareness. “All aspects” included Maria.
That was the “miracle”, the “magic” of manifestation available to everyone who chooses to line up with what they want instead of being lined up with what they don’t want. As a result of that alignment, Bob could choose in the face of automatic impulses. Having that choice is literally relationship gold.
Many trans women and trans-attracted men don’t have such a choice. They move through the world in-deliberately, unaware of what they’re creating in relationship, partners, friends, life circumstances. It’s no wonder so many don’t find the love they’re looking for.
People dramatically underestimate the spiritual significance of interruption. When a person can bring deliberateness to where they were once oblivious, amazing shifts happen.
Powerful shifts
When someone who has unconsciously repeated a destructive pattern for twenty years suddenly pauses in the middle of the pattern and chooses differently, that is enormous. The external world may barely notice. Yet internally, an entire timeline may have just shifted in favor of the person experiencing their life. That’s how my trans clients produce amazing lives including, lovers arriving at the perfect time, jobs landing in their laps with no effort on their part and more.
It’s how Bob produced his deep appreciation for his trans-attraction, transmuting it into transamory.
Now, the fact that Bob interrupted the pattern once does not mean the pattern is permanently gone. I do not believe in pretending people are suddenly “healed” because they had one successful moment of awareness. Human beings are layered. Momentum revisits us. Emotional patterns often recycle repeatedly until they lose energetic charge through conscious practice.
Bob understands this.
Part of what made his realization so powerful was that he was not pretending the tendency no longer existed. He recognized clearly that this old impulse still lived somewhere inside him. The difference was that he no longer identified with it completely.
That’s the real growth.
Enduring love
Many people think transformation means becoming incapable of darkness, fear, jealousy, rage, insecurity, or destructive impulses. In my experience, transformation more often begins when a person becomes capable of witnessing those impulses without automatically obeying them. Awareness creates choice. Choice creates new momentum. New momentum eventually becomes our reality.
This entire episode also beautifully illustrates why the end of the honeymoon phase is not something to fear. The honeymoon phase feels wonderful, yes, but it is often unstable because it depends heavily on projection and emotional amplification. Once reality begins entering the relationship fully, however, both people finally get the opportunity to meet each other consciously rather than symbolically.
That meeting can be terrifying. It can also become profoundly intimate.
Bob and Maria are now entering that territory together. Their relationship is no longer operating purely on erotic novelty, fantasy, projection, or idealization. They are beginning to encounter each other’s deeper emotional architecture. Fear is surfacing, attachment is surfacing. Insecurity is surfacing too. Old survival strategies are popping up. Remarkably, however, love remains present.
That is the part many people miss.
Is the past prologue?
Real intimacy is not proven by the absence of activation. Real intimacy is revealed by what two people do when activation appears. Do they weaponize it? Do they flee from it? Might they collapse into it? Or do they become conscious inside it?
Bob did something many people never manage to do. He recognized the bomb while his hand was still on the trigger. Then he stopped. For someone with his history, that is not small progress. That is explosive progress.
The flood of chemicals that make the honeymoon stage so swooning offers tremendous opportunity. For that feeling is how a relationship can remain through the life of the relationship. Most people, however, allow old patterns to surface, turning what was once blissful into something not that.
Sometimes they turn it into something much, much worse, all in favor of hidden sabotage patterns and a false sense of safety.
It’s not a foregone conclusion this happens. Past is not always prologue. My clients are discovering this. If you’re struggling with finding a partner, building a relationship or find your relationship is on the rocks, I suggest you contact me.
