Relational Dynamics

Relational Dynamics looks at what happens when two people bring their own needs, fears, beliefs, coping mechanisms, and nervous systems into a relationship. Your behavior affects theirs, their behavior affects yours, and over time those reactions can create patterns that neither person necessarily intended.

Maybe one person gets anxious and wants reassurance while the other feels pressured and pulls away. The more one reaches, the more the other retreats. Or one person avoids conflict to keep the peace, which means problems never get addressed, which creates resentment, which makes future conflict even harder. What each person does makes sense from their own perspective, but together their behaviors create a cycle that keeps reinforcing itself.

This is why understanding relationships requires looking at more than whether someone's behavior is "good" or "bad." The same behavior can come from very different places, and what someone wants to do isn't always the same as what they're emotionally capable of doing. Your nervous system state can also completely change how you interpret something, what you feel, and how you respond to it.

These frameworks look at what's driving behavior, how our internal states affect our relationships, and why wanting something isn't always enough to make someone capable of doing it. Understanding the dynamics underneath the behavior makes it easier to see what's actually happening between two people instead of only reacting to what's happening on the surface.

Below you will find the following:
Unhealthy Relationship Schemas | Relational Operating System | Capacity vs Willingness

Unhealthy Relationship Schemas

The DSP Model breaks unhealthy relationship patterns into three schemas: Dominant, Self-Protective, and Performative. They can look very different, but they’re all trying to solve a problem: how do I feel safe, protect myself, or hold onto the relationship?

Dominant (control-based) patterns seek security through power. This person may feel powerless or out of control in some way and use control or dominance to restore a sense of security. This can look like manipulation, possessiveness, conditional love, or controlling someone else’s choices.

Self-Protective (fear-based) patterns seek security by avoiding emotional risk. This person may feel like their needs are less important or be afraid to take up space in the relationship. This can look like people-pleasing, withdrawal, avoiding conflict, or over-functioning to keep the relationship stable.

Performative (identity-based) patterns seek security through maintaining a role or image. This person may be concerned about how others see them or about the kind of person they believe they’re supposed to be. This can look like hiding problems, suppressing needs, taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, or staying because being a “good partner” matters to how they see themselves.

Understanding what’s driving the behavior makes it easier to understand the behavior itself. Two people might both take responsibility for their partner’s emotions. One does it because they’re afraid of conflict, rejection, or what will happen if their partner is upset - that’s Self-Protective. The other does it because they believe taking care of their partner’s feelings is their responsibility and it makes them a good partner - that’s Performative. Knowing the root cause can help make sense of someone else’s behavior, and is critical for someone to make changes.

It’s important to know that these schemas are not always independent of each other; they can and often do overlap. Also, they are learned patterns, so change is entirely possible.

The DSP Model helps you look beyond what someone is doing to understand what need the behavior is trying to meet. That distinction matters because changing a behavior without understanding what’s driving it often just means finding a different unhealthy way to meet the same need.

Relational Operating System

The ROS model explains which internal state is driving thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behavior at any given time. There are 3 distinct states, and your brain is constantly shifting between them: Panic, Emotional, and Regulated.

In a Panic state, the survival system takes over. When the amygdala (the brain’s threat detection center) registers severe danger, it triggers a survival response. Reactions are automatic and urgent, like lashing out, being defensive, or shutting down, and happen almost immediately, in milliseconds. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex essentially goes offline, taking things like logic, reasoning, perspective, and impulse control with it.

That’s why ‘take 3 breaths before you react” isn’t very helpful advice. You react much faster than you can think to yourself, “take 3 breaths first.”

In an Emotional state, emotions are running the show. The amygdala is still the main player, but the threat isn't triggering a full-on survival response. It still registers a threat, just not at the same level of intensity. Logic and reasoning still go offline, making it hard to think clearly. Your reactions then are faster, stronger, and more emotional than they likely would’ve been if you’d had time to think first. This is what it means when people say “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

In a Regulated state, the amygdala activation goes down and executive function comes back online. Having access to logic and reasoning means you can better balance your emotions with things like evidence, perspective, and context. Impulse control is also part of executive function, which is why impulsive moves like lashing out or things you know you’ll regret tend to happen in an emotional state.

*It’s important to note that using logic and reasoning does not mean your conclusions will be true. If you start with inaccurate information, even the best logic will draw wrong conclusions.
The information your nervous system starts with is whatever it learned about relationships in childhood. If your earliest relationships we’re unhealthy or unstable, it likely learned a lot of wrong things. Vulnerability leads to pain. Conflict threatens connection. You’re not good enough. Other people's emotions are your responsibility. Even healthy, loving families can unintentionally reinforce unhealthy beliefs.
Because of these beliefs, your nervous system can misinform you and drive behavior and choices that you believe are right, even when they’re not.

Reactions are nervous system responses driven in part by which state you’re in. Understanding how you move between these states, as well as what your nervous system learned from your early relationships, is critical to having healthy relationships now. The ROS Model helps you separate This is how I feel, so this must be what’s true from This is just my nervous system’s immediate interpretation of what’s happening right now.

The Capacity Matrix

Choosing to do something requires both desire / willingness and capacity. If you’re not willing, it doesn’t matter if you’re capable. If you’re not capable, it doesn’t matter if you want it.

Yet we say things like “If they wanted to, they would.” When someone doesn’t show up for you like you hoped or choose what you wanted them to choose, the fact that they didn’t doesn’t tell you much about whether or not they wanted to.

Ever want to bring up a difficult topic or have a hard conversation, but you never actually do? Ever know someone who wants to end a relationship but can’t bring themselves to do it? In these situations, it’s clear that what they didn’t do has nothing to do with whether or not they wanted to. Those are easy to understand.

Some situations get more difficult though. People can be deeply in love with someone yet still reject them because they are too afraid of getting hurt. It happens all the time, sadly. Fear is one of the most common things that hold people back, and overcoming big levels of fear requires cognitive and emotional skills that some people don’t have.

This matters because when someone doesn’t show up, communicate, commit, leave, or make a change, it’s easy to decide their behavior tells you exactly how they feel. Maybe it does, maybe not - you can’t know for sure. They may lack willingness, capacity, or both.

Capacity isn’t an excuse, and understanding it doesn’t mean accepting a relationship that isn’t meeting your needs. Someone can genuinely want to give you something and still be unable to give it. You can understand why and still decide that what they’re actually able to offer isn’t enough.

The Capacity Matrix helps you see the difference between They didn't do it, so they must not have wanted to and They didn't do it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t want to.

UNRAVEL frameworks are original models developed to explain the psychological and neurobiological patterns that shape unhealthy relationships.