Shadowing Practice: Why Do We Stay in Relationships That Hurt Us? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Most people who stay in relationships that are hurting them aren't confused about it.

They know something is wrong.

They've thought about leaving.

They probably told themselves they were going to leave.

And then they didn't.

And from the outside, that looks like a choice that doesn't make sense.

But the psychology behind it is a lot more complicated than just, why don't you leave?

And understanding it says, something pretty uncomfortable about how human beings are wired.

The first piece of this is attachment theory, which actually begins in the first few years of your life,

long before any adult relationship enters the picture.

When you're an infant, you form an attachment style based on how your caregivers respond to you.

If your needs were met consistently, if comfort arrived when you needed it, if the people around you were reliable,

you likely developed what psychologists call a secure attachment style.

You learned that relationships are safe, that people can be trusted, that closeness isn't dangerous.

But if your early environment was inconsistent, if comfort sometimes arrived and sometimes didn't,

if the people around you were warm sometimes and distant or frightening other times, you developed an anxious or avoidant attachment style instead.

And here's the key thing.

Those patterns don't stay in childhood.

They follow you directly into your adult relationships.

Someone with an anxious attachment style tends to crave closeness intensely, fear abandonment deeply, and stay in relationships well past the point they should

because the threat of being alone feels worse than the reality of being unhappy.

And because a relationship that is unpredictable and inconsistent actually feels familiar to them in a way that a stable, healthy relationship sometimes doesn't.

Then there's the sunk cost fallacy, which is one of the most well -documented cognitive biases in psychology

and one of the most brutal when it shows up in relationships.

The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to keep investing in something that's clearly failing, driven entirely by how much you've already put in.

You finish a movie you hate because you've already watched half of it.

You stay at a job that's making you miserable because you've been there for years.

The logic is, I've put too much in to walk away now, even when walking away would clearly be the better choice.

In relationships, this gets enormously complicated because what you've invested goes far beyond time.

It's memories, emotional labour, years of your life, plans you built together, a version of your future that involved this person.

Leaving means losing all of that the relationship, the history, the identity you built inside it, and the belief that the time you gave meant something.

So people stay because leaving feels like admitting that everything they invested was wasted.

And that particular loss is one the brain resists very strongly.

But probably the most misunderstood piece of all of this is trauma bonding, because it's the one that looks most irrational from the outside

and makes the most sense once you understand the psychology underneath it.

Trauma bonding happens in relationships with a specific pattern, cycles of tension, harm and then relief.

The relationship isn't consistently bad.

If it were, leaving would be easier.

What makes it so hard to leave is the alternation.

The periods where things are bad, followed by periods where things are good again, followed by bad again, followed by good.

The apology after the fight, the kindness that follows the cruelty, the version of the person who shows up after the version who hurts you.

Psychologists call this intermittent reinforcement and it is one of the most powerful forces in behavioral psychology.

The brain doesn't bond most strongly to things that reward it consistently.

It bonds most strongly to things that reward it unpredictably.

A slot machine keeps people playing because it pays out sometimes.

Randomly, unpredictably, just enough to keep you pulling the lever.

Consistent rewards would actually make it less addictive.

A relationship that is sometimes wonderful and sometimes terrible creates the same neurological pull.

The good moments hit harder precisely because they're surrounded by bad ones.

And the brain locks onto those good moments, keeps returning to them, keeps chasing them.

Because the relief of the good after the bad is one of the most intense emotional experiences humans can have.

This is why people in these relationships often describe being unable to leave even when they want to.

The bond runs below logic, it's neurological.

There's also the identity question, which doesn't get talked about enough.

When you've been in a relationship for a long time, especially one that's involved control or emotional manipulation,

your sense of who you are can become deeply intertwined with the relationship itself.

You stop knowing clearly what you think, what you want, what you value outside of this dynamic,

because over time those things were gradually defined for you by someone else.

This is sometimes called the loss of authentic self, and it means that leaving can feel genuinely disorienting on top of being painful,

because the relationship has become so much of how you understand yourself that you don't fully know who you'd be without it.

Leaving would require rebuilding an identity that's been slowly eroded, sometimes over years.

And that's a task that feels enormous when you're already exhausted.

And then underneath all of this is something even more fundamental,

which is that the brain experiences social rejection and loss using many of the same neural pathways as physical pain.

Loneliness is not a metaphor.

A threat of losing a relationship activates the same alarm systems as a physical threat to your safety.

Which means that for someone with an anxious attachment style

or someone who has been made to feel over time that they are lucky to be loved at all,

the prospect of leaving can trigger a genuine fear response.

Something that feels less like, this would be sad and closer to, I will not survive this.

Rational arguments don't reach

that place knowing something is bad for you doesn't automatically override a fear response that's running at that level.

The people who ask, why don't you just leave, are usually asking from a place that has never experienced that particular fear at that particular intensity.

And if they had, they'd understand why the answer isn't simple.

So why do people stay in relationships that are bad for them?

Because their attachment system was formed in an environment that may in consistency feel like home.

Because leaving means surrendering everything they've already invested because the cycle of bad

and good has created a bond that isn't about logic,

because their identity has become so wrapped up in their relationship that leaving means not knowing who they are, and because the fear of loss is,

for a lot of people, genuinely one of the most activating experiences the nervous system can produce.

Understanding the psychology doesn't excuse the relationship, it just makes clear that the people inside these situations aren't failing to see something obvious.

They are caught inside a set of mechanisms that are genuinely very difficult to override.

Mechanisms that, in other contexts, are the same ones that make humans capable of deep loyalty, strong attachment and lasting love.

The same wiring that makes us bond so deeply is the wiring that makes it so hard to let go.

Subscribe if this explains something you couldn't quite put words to before.

I'll see you in the next one.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Do We Stay in Relationships That Hurt Us?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: relationship, leaving, attachment, psychology, bond. This video has 86 sentences and 1253 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:44. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
attachment noun	/əˈtæt͡ʃmənt/	The act or process of (physically or figuratively) attaching.
psychology noun	/saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/	The study of the human mind.
invest verb	/ɪnˈvɛst/	To spend money, time, or energy on something, especially for some benefit or purpose; used with in.
strongly adverb	/ˈstɹɔŋli/	In a strong or powerful manner.
deeply adverb	/ˈdi(ː)pli/	To a deep extent or degree; very greatly.
wire noun	/ˈwaɪɚ/	Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die.
reward noun	/ɹɪˈwɔɹd/	Something of value given in return for an act.
consistently adverb	/kənˈsɪstəntli/	In a consistent manner.
genuinely adverb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/	In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly.
anxious adjective	/ˈæŋkʃəs/	Nervous and worried.
complicated adjective	/ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/	Difficult or convoluted.
comfort noun	/ˈkʌm.fət/	Contentment, ease.
arrive verb	/əˈɹaɪv/	To reach; to get to a certain place.
mechanism noun	/ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/	Any mechanical means for the conversion or control of motion, or the transmission or control of power.
sink verb	/ˈsɪŋk/	To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
walk away verb	To withdraw from a problematic situation.
pay out verb	To distribute money; to disburse.
show up verb	To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If it were, leaving would be · if they had, they'd understand
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	They've thought · you've already put · you've already watched
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are wired · were met · can be trusted
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who stay · fallacy, which is · person who shows

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 34 contractions and reduced forms, such as doesn't, don't, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, rejection /ɹɪˈd͡ʒɛkʃən/, manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like attachment, psychology, invest.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why Do We Stay in Relationships That Hurt Us? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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