Chapter 4: The Art of War

Rule number one in negotiation: never lead with your position. The first move almost always costs you power.

But I didn’t know that then.

So, when I heard the familiar sound—an email coming through on my laptop—and saw his name with an empty subject line, I felt the first warning shot.

Somewhere in my mind, I imagined that a prenup would invite a conversation where we would sit down together, review the terms, and talk through his intentions as partners.

Instead, I faced a screen asking me to click the only option there was: a stripped-down email holding a contract with no explanation—just waiting for me to fall in line.

I understood he had more to protect financially, but I didn’t understand his retreat, the quiet withdrawal that marked me as a threat and not a partner.

And I hesitated to make a move.

I had always been financially responsible. I started working at fourteen, bought my first investment property at twenty-one, and then waited tables full-time after my daughter was born, so that my then-husband could return to college first, because he was the “smart one”. But when we divorced at twenty-five, I became the main provider.

And my fiancé knew all this—how I dug in, returned to school, worked three jobs, and built a career so I could raise my daughter in one of the best school districts possible. Dropping her off at NYU was one of my proudest moments: watching her step into a life that, decades earlier, had cast the odds against her.

Clearly, none of this mattered now. A new line was being drawn.

Had I invested eight years into a bottom line that was about to define my worth? That’s when I realized that hard work had nothing to do with it. We just played a very different game—one that I’d witnessed before—seeing him in action—always grateful I wasn’t on the opposing team.

Never imagining I would someday be the opposition.

A year earlier, I’d tried to start a conversation about the prenup. The more I talked, the more he buried himself under the sand of our dialogue, waiting for it to be over. That was the day I saw something in his face I’d never seen before—something that left me unsettled, without knowing exactly what it was.

 Now, I understood.

 Next week Chapter 5: The Castle—Where the story began.

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This tactical email changed everything.

He had gone to great lengths to make Paris our fresh start—but his retreat at such a pivotal moment introduced me to a man I’d never met.

When the veil lifted, I began to see exactly why I’d chosen someone who lived on the high wire.

I never liked school—but I always loved making money.

Even as a kid, I was fascinated by the freedom it promised.At ten, I knocked on doors selling stationery and wrapping paper, offered to pull weeds and wash cars, and made flyers to market my babysitting business.

Every time I earned a few dollars, I’d hop on my bike and ride down the hill to the local savings and loan—depositing cash like I was already running my own company.

Once I got my license, I recruited girlfriends to help me spray-paint house numbers on curbsides. Even after splitting the profits, I made more in one evening than I did folding jeans for a week at The Family Tree in the mall.

But when I became a single mom, the money game changed.

I stepped into uncharted territory with no degree, no partner, and no safety net.

So I shifted into a gear I didn’t know I had—driven by love for my daughter, belief in possibilities, and an undercurrent of shame I hadn’t realized was there—whispering I’d never make it.

And as much as I resisted it, part of me believed I’d never be free.

So when I met someone who had built a life outside the system—who had succeeded at a level I hadn’t—I was drawn in.

He had what I wanted. He had what I thought I didn’t.

Somewhere along the way, I started measuring myself by his standards—dismissing my own wins and inflating his—convinced I could learn everything I needed from someone who had already arrived.

That was my first mistake.

Over time, his priorities eclipsed mine—until my life became secondary.

So by the time I opened that email, I wasn’t the same woman who had raised a daughter on her own.

I had let the comfort of his lifestyle lull me into a deep sleep.

And that’s why I’m sharing this.

I meet women every day who are stuck and don’t understand why. They have a life they’re grateful for—but it’s come at the expense of something far more valuable.

I spent eight years chasing something I didn’t know was already inside me—until the pain of betrayal pushed me past the limits I hadn’t been willing to cross on my own.

What’s calling you forward? And what if it’s not about chasing—but about finding the courage to trust yourself like never before?

Thank you for being part of this journey.

If you're curious about what's coming next, mark your calendar for 

Friday, June 20 from 12–1 PM ET

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Chapter 3: Shiny Objects

Bayshore Drive had never felt so beautiful. Each shop more brilliant than the next and each restaurant buzzed with energy and laughter. Through the Banyan trees, I could see the light dancing off the water, which sparkled in the sun.

We were back home in St. Petersburg and walking into his sunset—one that he had masterfully painted himself.

Besides the champagne toast a thousand feet up in the air—he had done it again—proving his love valiantly at the top of the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the city I loved most.

And as we walked hand in hand down the waterfront boulevard, all I wanted to do was show off my beautiful engagement ring and tell our story to anyone who was willing to listen, but I couldn’t.

And that’s how it always worked.

There would be these magical moments—orchestrated with emotion, texture, and tone—causing me to fall under a spell, sometimes lasting hours and sometimes days, until it wore off—leaving me withdrawn, confused, and unable to discern the truth from reality.

Without realizing it, these ups and downs had started taking a toll—glitches that left me second-guessing myself – hypervigilant—chasing down shadows that I just couldn’t see.

There was a whirlwind to our romance that required a level of engagement that had me neglecting my own truth, and the irony of him placing a ring on my finger that didn’t fit—after making such a grand gesture—caused the record to skip again and again.

But, I wouldn’t let myself rest in a place of my own knowing, even after the jeweler confirmed he had my ring size. I rationalized it away, it was just a matter of resizing it and going back to the store to pick it up. After I did, I got back in the car, slipped it onto my finger, and all the magic returned—the proof that allowed the music to play again.

Settling back into my apartment, I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked down at my finger with a sense of pride and accomplishment. We did it, I did it. And in that moment, I could feel the warmth of the sun streaming in through the front window, meeting me in the stillness of the day—until my pride gave way to a familiar sound—an email coming through on my laptop

As I double-clicked on his message, my heart started racing again.

Next week: Chapter 4—The Art of War. The email that changed everything

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After writing Chapter 3, I wanted to offer something more than my own words. So I did the research—to find a clinical, science-based explanation that might give language to what some readers are living through themselves.

While I’m not a therapist or psychologist, I am a certified coach, and what I’m sharing below is grounded in established psychological principles—freely available and offered in the spirit of support and clarity.

What I found was so profoundly accurate, I didn’t want to change any of it.

This is how therapists, trauma-informed coaches, and even some psychiatrists might describe what I was experiencing:

“Those magical moments—orchestrated with emotion, texture, and tone—align with something called love bombing or emotional manipulation. It’s when intense affection and grand gestures create a kind of high that feels like a drug, releasing dopamine and oxytocin. It can feel euphoric—even sacred. But it’s not love.

Falling under a spell is often part of a trauma bond. The brain craves those emotional highs, and when they vanish, you crash. You start to feel dysregulated, disoriented.

Withdrawn, confused, unable to discern truth from reality—these are the aftershocks. This is what emotional abuse and gaslighting can do. They don’t always show up as bruises. Sometimes, they just leave you questioning your own instincts.

Hypervigilance and chasing shadows you can’t see is what happens when your nervous system has been hijacked. Therapists call this C-PTSD, codependency, or unresolved relational trauma. Your brain starts scanning for danger before your body even knows why.”

At the time, I had no idea this is what was happening. I just knew something felt off—and yet, I stayed. I kept trying to earn peace. Trying to make the magic moments last longer. Trying to hold onto the ring that didn’t fit.

If you’ve ever felt like this—if you’ve ever found yourself chasing shiny objects, hoping they’d prove your worth or secure your safety—please hear me:

You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. And you’re not alone.

You may be stuck in a cycle your nervous system didn’t ask for—but has gotten used to.

And naming that? That’s where the healing begins.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

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Chapter 2: Weaving the Web

After being together for eight years, I knew when he was keeping something from me.

But that knowing lost its power the moment he brought up traveling again. He loved to go; I loved to stay. This time, he was suggesting an engagement trip—even though we’d tried that once, two years earlier, and it fell apart. So why now, with our schedules packed and no time to plan? And why spend the money on an engagement trip—at the cost of a honeymoon? It felt rushed, forced, and too much all at once. But I was too tired to fight him.

We were gone all the time, sometimes together, but mostly apart.

His business took him around the world, and mine had me flying back and forth between a sister company on a regular basis. Between trips, I’d return to Cincinnati as often as I could—to see my daughter, family, and life-long friends.

At 49, I was exhausted and longing for simplicity. The idea of rolling over one morning to the man I loved and a quiet proposal was all I really wanted.

However, I’d learned to acquiesce to his larger-than-life plans and his don’t-ask-don’t-tell way of being. Although this left me in the dark by design, the alternative was too taxing.

And here we were again, pretending all was well while fighting a darker battle—him playing his king, all the while forgetting that I held the piece that would win the game.

Then he found the perfect moment to ask what I hadn’t expected—filling the room with silence, on the verge of tears. I was drained from traveling, but I couldn’t say no. 

Since the beginning of our relationship, Paris had always been off the table. He had taken a trip across Europe after graduating from high school and swore he would never return to this city. His disgust for whatever had happened there had somehow overshadowed his entire trip.

For me, Paris held incredible memories. It was my first home, where my family was once the closest, and a place I promised myself that I’d always return to.

And he knew it.

Unknowingly, my yes, had set the stage for what was coming.

A diversion—something so shiny that I’d never question what he was really proposing.

Next week: Chapter 3—Shiny Objects. Where the ring didn’t fit, and neither did the story.

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I still remember the first time I heard a phrase at camp—the recovery center—that spoke directly to this chapter: “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

This was it—my pattern. Being in relationships, both personal and professional, where privacy, ambiguity, and the unspoken were the default settings. Unless I asked the hard questions, things stayed that way. Don’t ask, don’t tell—not as policy, but as a pattern.

Without clarity, there’s room for misunderstanding, miscommunication—and most dangerously, a blurring of responsibility and accountability.

There’s a reason confusion becomes home for the codependent.

It’s not just the chaos—it’s the familiarity of the almost.

Almost loved. Almost told the truth. Almost safe.

In relationships where secrecy is the norm and clarity is optional, confusion is not an accident—it’s a strategy.

A way to avoid confrontation, delay loss, or stay needed.

And when you’re codependent, you get used to living in that fog.

Because to demand clarity would risk the very connection you’re terrified to lose.

So, you adapt. You become fluent in mixed signals.

You call it grace. You call it patience.

You call it love.

But it’s really silence.

And silence is where the web begins.

And that’s why clarity became my superpower.

Not because I always had it—but because I lived so long without it and saw what it cost me.

I spent years saying, “I don’t know what I want,” while building a life that looked great on paper but felt like a slow disappearance. Until one day, the confusion became too heavy to carry. So, I walked away—from the title, the illusion, the multimillion-dollar lifestyle—to figure out what I actually wanted.

That decision freed me.

And from that freedom came something more—a mission.

Not just to move on, but to help others move forward. Because I know what it’s like to live in the fog of confusion, to lose time, money, and pieces of yourself to uncertainty.

Now, clarity is something I offer others—individuals and businesses who know there’s more, but feel stuck, unsure of how to realize it.

Because clarity isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about finally asking the right questions.

And that changes everything.

Has uncertainty ever stopped you from going after what you truly wanted?

It’s one of those questions that shifts everything—because awareness is the first step to change.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

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Chapter 1: Paris. The Beginning of the End.

Although it was April in Paris, it felt more like November. The sky was gray and the mist was heavy, leaving a chill in the air that had us reluctantly sharing an umbrella.

Looking back now, I should have seen the storm coming, but over a lifetime, I had learned how to ignore the reality of what I didn’t want to see.

We had come so far, and now the only thing that stood in our way was a long shuffling line, weaving slowly back and forth under the towering monument—hundreds of feet above—calling us up to what would eventually become the beginning of the end.

I was finally going to be engaged to the man I loved, after waiting eight long years, and through more ups and downs than I was willing to admit to anyone.

Instead, I’d remind myself that relationships took work, compromise, and were never perfect—and force myself to be grateful for all we shared—our daughters, our families, much less the homes we got to travel between.. And then there was the three-carat diamond ring we had spent the holiday picking out together just a few months earlier.

In the back of my mind, I tried to forget that ten years prior, there’d been another man, another engagement, and another diamond—but no wedding. A week before the big day, I woke up from a deep sleep, panic-stricken—not thinking of the 200 guests, my daughter who was flying in from college, much less my family, traveling in from various states and countries to celebrate the big occasion.

Cold feet had me pacing the wooden floors, back and forth, and back again, trying to figure out the best way to jump off this fast-moving train headed in the wrong direction—until I just leapt—daring the darkness and the consequences that I couldn’t see.

Whatever I would face would at least break the fall, which was better than agreeing to a life that I wasn’t sold on.

In retrospect, I recognized a part of myself that wanted much more, a life that I hadn’t realized yet and never would, if I walked down the aisle with this man.

And here I was again. A different man, but that same knowing.

---

This chapter sat quietly in a file on my laptop for nearly a decade before I did anything with it.

It first emerged while journaling one morning, just weeks after returning home from recovery—still learning how to sit with myself, how to listen.

I hadn’t set out to write anything special. I simply sat down and started.

And somehow, my writing began telling me a story of the day we got engaged.

The sky. The chill. The irony of the storm.

It was like I’d stepped back in time and was being shown the details I’d missed.

Each line held grace, and its beauty was undeniable.

That’s why I captured it—wanting to know more, but recognizing it left as quickly as it came.

And all I could do was file it away, so I’d always know where to find it.

I returned to it often, hoping to pick up where we’d left off.

But the story had already told me what it came to say.

And then it was still.

Until 2022.

That was the year my business completely stalled. I had no clients, no income.

But I did have the gift of time—time to rethink what I was doing.

And the chance to see that I’d been focused on the wrong things—trying to be everything a coach should be on social media, instead of grounding myself in the reason I started this work in the first place.

That’s when I returned to my 2015 folder and opened the document titled PARIS—making it Chapter One.

Buried inside it was the why behind everything I wasn’t doing. The real reason my business was stalling. And finally—I got it.

That’s when the memories returned—along with the slow process of chiseling away, finding the words that captured moments in time across an eight-year romance that ended in Paris.

Sometimes, it takes a while for clarity to catch up with us.

And when it does, doors open.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

Next week’s chapter: Weaving the Web—The Setup Disguised as a Dream

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Introduction

Introduction: Addicted to Love

I was twenty-one years old when Robert Palmer took home a Grammy for Addicted to Love, a music video that helped define the MTV era.

This iconic clip featured the British rock star with an abstract band—a group of look-alike female models with pale skin, heavy makeup, and dark hair, hypnotized under his perfect control. 

The leading man wore white, his fashion accessories wore black, and behind them a red sky painted a story of danger, seduction, and entanglement.

Every move of the video was perfectly choreographed, from the lingering beat of the snare and cymbals, to the length of each model’s skirt—all designed to entice just long enough to pull you in, tease, and then let go at the precise moment.

The editing was masterful, layering in Palmer’s soulfulness with his sartorial elegance, allowing him to captivate and steal my imagination with complete subtlety, while flaunting words that would someday change my life forever.

You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love.

When this video came out, I was a young mom who had married my first love because we had gotten pregnant. Robert Palmer’s MTV video left me spellbound—watching something I didn’t quite understand and hearing lyrics that had nowhere to land.

At 49, the words finally made sense.

By then, I had divorced my daughter’s father, been engaged three times, and even called off a wedding a week before the big day.

But when the last engagement took me from the high of a romantic Paris proposal to a painful low I never saw coming, I finally woke up.

The betrayal I felt—not just from him, but from myself—sent me researching, after a stranger on the other end of the line used a word I never knew was real: love addiction.

It was then I realized: The lyrics described someone I didn’t know I’d become.

Smiling. Complying. People-pleasing. Living for someone else’s life—at the expense of my own.

Disconnected from who I really was—because achieving had become more important than being.

A pattern had been running my life—and therapists didn’t name it, coaches didn’t see it, and even a one-on-one with Tony Robbins, in front of thousands, didn’t reveal it.

That’s why I’m telling this story.

And why it starts here.

Copyright © 2025 by Christine Bunnell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

Cover design by Holly Shoemaker, editing by Christine Bunnell

This work depicts actual events in the life of the author as truthfully as recollection permits. While all persons within are actual individuals, names and identifying characteristics have in some instances been changed to respect their privacy.

For more information, contact the author at www.theBbrand.com