Have The Relationship You Want

Do you ever feel tempted beyond endurance to tell a man how you feel?  Even when he’s not there, or he’s not interested, or he doesn’t care, or he hasn’t called you in weeks, or you’ve been broken up?

And then when you do it – you call, or email, or write, or met with him – and you get it all off your chest (usually in the name of “honesty”) you feel WORSE than ever?

I remember this happening to me in ways that I don’t even want to remember.  Humiliating things.  A man I adored, who after he dumped me for another woman (he met her and flirted with her and connected with her right in front of my face, in the same restaurant booth we were all sitting in) – who offered to come over so I could “get it out at him”- who offered to let me hit him.

I said “Yes,” he carefully took off his watch, first, and put it on the dining room table – correctly assuming I’d never want to hurt his WATCH by stomping on it, and then I started swinging.

When he left I felt horrible.  I felt like I’d been a puppet, doing something that LOOKED like it was for “me” and getting my feelings out and all that…but actually was for HIM – to make him feel better, to absolve HIM from his pain at dumping me (and “using” me as a “friend with benefits” for the year-and-a-half before), to close things out for HIM.

So what can you learn from my humiliation?  Simply – talking to a man about your feelings when there is NO RELATIONSHIP – is all about HIM, not about YOU.  You CANNOT feel better by being “honest” and “Open about your feelings” when you have an AGENDA.

My agenda for this man was, still – and this is beyond belief – SEE him, BE with him, demonstrate to him what a powerful woman I was (hah), and my hugest issue, to PROVE that I actually had the guts to be angry.  Truly – I needed to prove to MYSELF that I could be angry, that I could DEAL with him. And – perhaps get him back.

You don’t have to do any of that.  In fact – I FORBID you to do any of that.

Getting stuff “off your chest” does NOT have to be done in his presence.  You can get stuff off your chest with my Tools, the mirror, your journal – and then you can TRANSFORM the thoughts that are weighing you down into feelings that will lift you up.

Communicating with a man only works if HE can “catch” (great word courtesy of Todd Creager) your feelings.  If he WANTS to catch your feelings.

Most of the time, in most BAD and DONE relationships, a man only wants to relieve his own guilt and bad feelings.  He wants to turn you into a “friend” – or get “closure” on things so he can wash his hands and move on.

DON’T FALL FOR IT!

So, then, how do you use Feeling Messages in a situation where a relationship is “over” but he tries to see you anyway – to be “friendly”?

It’s been so long since I wrote my ebook – I realized, after reading your wonderful posts and letters, that I wanted to make Feeling Messages very, very clear.

A Feeling Message is not an attempt to make something happen.

It’s not about GETTING something from a man, or getting something clear, or getting any kind of result – even getting stuff off your chest so you can “feel better” (and we all know that NEVER happens – we only feel worse).

A Feeling Message is about SHARING.

It’s about SHARING your FEELING STATE.

It’s about sharing where you are, how you are in a being sense.

It’s not about your mindset, or what you think, or what you feel about who he is and what’s going on, it’s not about an opinion, and it’s not about spewing your stored up feelings all over him to release the tension and anxiety and try to “shake” things up.

A Feeling Message is simply YOU…BEING.  And then speaking how you are being – out loud.

You are saying, out loud, the state of your…just Being.  And the LANGUAGE of that state of “just being” is in Feeling words.

Even if you feel agitated, uncomfortable, miserable, sad, – even if what you feel is terror or rage – it’s STILL simply a state of Being, a state of feeling.  Your Feeling State.

And it’s this simple Sharing that HONORS him, honors the relationship, whatever it is, and totally honors YOURSELF.

It says to any person present that you are STRONG – because you are ABLE to FEEL your state of being – instead of trying desperately to improve it one way or another by trying to make something happen.

That means:  I feel bad is a Feeling State.  I feel hurt is a confusing word, and I recommend you don’t use it, because it almost says “you hurt me” (hurt is a verb, an action word, as well as a state of feeling, and we women tend to use hurt often – and when we do – we don’t mean I’m feeling hurting, we mean You hurt me, more often than not). Try I feel painful, instead. Or I feel hurting.

I explain this completely in my ebook, and I demonstrate it with volunteers from the seminar participants in my programs – especially in Modern Siren, where I really go into feelings and their expression – and the Strong Surrender Tool.

Let me know if you’re confused – and let me know your stories about trying to express your feelings even when you KNOW you have a hidden agenda (trying to get back together with him, trying to get him to do something or say something…) and you KNOW he isn’t listening.

Love, Rori

This comment from Sandra is so universal – so much what happens to us women over and over again, I wanted us to work with it:

“Rori, I have your Commitment Blueprint, and I’m working on the steps. In the midst of changing myself and picturing my man leading me across the bridge to the relationship I desire; he tells me he doesn’t want to lose my friendship. Ever. Then he reveals he is seeing someone else. Becoming exclusive with them.

I had been living in the imaginary relationship. Taking the crumbs of good and ignoring the bad. I changed. Stopped contacting him. Stopped being sweet to him. Started seeing other guys. Told him I had friends and I didn’t need him, a guy friend. Completely cut off contact. I’m even trying to see him as a “Muse” who is guiding me and helping me.

However, part of me wants to fall into old patterns. I want to tell him how I feel, in the hopes that it will enlighten him and he will realize he cares for me, too. I want to accept the “just friends” relationship because I believe the relationship he is in will fail and I want to be near by when it does. It physically hurt, how much I missed him. I was finding my purpose and dating and being busy but he was in my mind.

So, I emailed him. I said “I miss you.”

He said, ” as you should,” and now I’ve asked him if we could talk.

So, Rori, what have I done? What do I do? I want to be honest and tell him how I feel, and still practice all the steps to finding the relationship I want. But, I also want to have him in my life. I miss him. The relationship was not what I wanted but it was something.

From the moment I met him I feel like he is the one for me. We clicked like I’ve never clicked with a man before. Do I tell him that I wanted more, and if he can’t give it I accept him and move on? Or do I keep it to myself and keep working on me, and wait to see if he comes back around?

Your Commitment Blueprint is wonderful and I will continue to follow the advice. I’ve downloaded Christian Carter’s information in the past, as well. Thank you so much for your guidance, thus far.
I feel confident. Sandra”

Here’s my immediate response:

Sandra, Welcome, and as all the wonderful women on this site will tell you – go back to what you were doing.  No contact – Do Circular Dating – focus on your POP and yourself and new men and new experiences.  Drop him like a cold potato.

It doesn’t MATTER what YOU feel – it only matters what HE feels in terms of what’s possible between you.  HE has to miss YOU.  That means you have to be outta there.  If he changes his mind, he’ll find you – but don’t even hold your breath.

The “click” you felt was most likely the “click” of a TOXIC relationship pattern you feel comfortable in.

For most of us – “safe” and “click” mean that we’re IN our Comfort Zones – and for most of us – our Comfort Zones are truly TOXIC. We do NOT want to STAY inside there.

We do NOT want to live our lives inside our Comfort Zones. And yet – as you say, as you feel, and I hear your pain and frustration – we DO want to live there.

The pull to live within our Comfort Zones forever is so strong that the moment we venture outside we tend to on-purpose clobber ourselves until we run back in for protection.

Inside our Comfort Zones – all decorated with the feelings we have of “he’s the one for me” – we can stay safe within our comfortable, familiar misery.

The ONLY thing that makes ANY difference – that means ANYTHING – is HOW MUCH ENERGY HE WANTS TO GIVE TO YOU.

If he labels it “friends” – then that’s what it is. If he labels it “I like you,” or “You’re sexy, I want to spend the night with you” – then that’s all it is.

It’s UNMISTAKABLE when a man’s energy is coming towards you. He calls, he listens, he tries hard to get near you.

And the ONLY way he can DO that is if YOU’RE FAR ENOUGH AWAY FROM HIM for him to make that effort.

This is the brutal situation the book “He’s Just Not That Into You” – (and the movie too, hopefully, which comes out soon) – is all about.

You CANNOT make a man be more “into you” by talking to him about it, by wanting him, by missing him, by “being honest with him” about the way you FEEL for him – not in this way.

You cannot take Step Three of the Commitment Blueprint 7 Steps – which is being “an Invitation” – by CALLING HIM, or REACHING OUT TO HIM – or ANY Leaning Forward energy. This is “Rori Raye Language” – so I have to basically reframe some familiar words and concepts so you can experience them differently – in a Leaned Back way.

By making a REQUEST for his company (“Can we talk,” “I miss you”) BEFORE he contacts YOU – You will simply be literally “mailing” him an invitation to friendship or friendship and sex – but until HE makes a move toward YOU – you are NOT an Invitation.

An Invitation is an OPEN, “inviting” thing. It draws a man in by its mystery and sense of promise. It’s a “lure.” An Invitation, in Rori Raye language, is not a “Request” for his company. It’s an Invitation to more amazing, fantastic, thrilling stuff, the stuff that you ARE – should he show up.

I know I make that clear in the Blueprint – but I want to use the imagery here to help you get that into your body.

So, Sandra, and for all of us (me, too – I have to remind myself at all times) there is no such thing as “relationship” and “marriage” without some romance and passion. Otherwise it’s just “friends.” And this is the case even if there are some sexual problems involved – health issues, all kinds of problems.

Even THEN, you can FEEL the sense of romance and passion and the ENERGY coming from a man.

So – look for this energy coming at you. Do NOT look for or believe in a “click.”

I loved this little picture of the “fairy” – it demonstrates for me the BEAUTY of fantasy – and of an Imaginary Relationship. If you KNOW it’s “Imaginary” – let’s say a fling with a major-watt movie star – then you can ENJOY it.  That’s what Circular Dating is all about – enjoying men and being with men, and enjoying YOURSELF when you’re in the PRESENCE of a man.

But if we live like this little fairy – trying to turn everything lovely and imaginary into something real and concrete – we will always feel disappointed, hurt and angry – and we will always try to repair the vision when it collapses.

Sandra – please don’t even try.  Let him do the heavy lifting.  If you continue to do what you were doing – REALLY get out there and focus on how you can ramp up your LIFE – sooner or later he will cross your path, notice the difference in you – and then we’ll see what happens.

But by trying to reach out to him now – you are showing YOURSELF that nothing’s changed inside you.  That you made a feeble attempt at getting a life, but, really – it was ALL ABOUT HIM.

And I do not WANT you to be ALL ABOUT HIM.  I want you to be all about YOU.

In my Modern Siren, and soon my new Targeting Mr. Right programs, you’ll see how this idea of being the CENTER of your life, and the CENTER of a wheel, a “Target” with men all around you, trying to get to you – is the vision you want to keep in your head, your heart, your energy field, your body.

If you’re in the Center, and you’re so fully occupied with all the Energy, from all the men everywhere who are stationed AROUND YOU – trying to get to you (and yes, they ARE) – there’s NO WAY you can be moving from your Center to reach out and try to get to ANY MAN.

Let me know how this lands for you, and I’ll keep talking about this (I can feel my own energy welling up around this issue…)

Love, Rori

This fabulous letter is from Pamela Tames, who has a great site http://SeasonedSex.com – and to me – it just speaks so powerfully about how we all go to our “Default” position when we don’t feel comfortable – and how getting aware of what that is for each of us, and using my Tools to experiment with different ways to go “Off Default” – no matter WHAT you think of the results when you first try exploring and experiencing something new – is the way to go here:

I Am My Heart from Pamela Tames:

I spend a lot of time blogging about sexiness. Deep down though I know the more important question is how to do relationships well. Which is why I’m such a Rori Raye devotee. Recently something she wrote in her email newsletter bridged the themes of sexiness and relationships and taught me an important lesson in being myself.

It started with my birthday dinner about a month ago. Half a dozen girlfriends got together at a restaurant including my best friend, Susan. Susan is a professional mom, which means she rarely gets out. This was the first time she was meeting my other friends.

For whatever reason, the group didn’t mesh. I kept thinking our energies would all come together and flow with conversation and laughter but at the last minute, the group kept unraveling. Susan and I left last, walking to our cars arm in arm.

“I’m sorry,”I said, “That didn’t go the way I thought it would. My friends are so different.”

“You didn’t seem yourself,” said Susan. She went on to explain how I seemed to be trying to hard to keep my friends in shock and awe with my sexual adventurer act.

“It’s like you’re afraid to let people see the real you, “Susan summed up. “The real you I know and love.”

I gave her a big hug and thought how lucky I was to have such a loving, honest friend. I’d always struggled with being authentic. I knew she had a point. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been comfortable all night. I had jumped my favorite facade–sexy vixen (albeit now middle-aged).

Flash forward to a Rori Raye’s email newsletter. I’m reading about how to attract men. Towards the end she writes about the heart. I suddenly got it.

It was like the word, “heart,” exploded to life and jumped out of my computer.

The heart is like a magnet with great powers of attraction. My habit of hiding behind masks (or who I thought I should be) was having the effect of blocking my heart’s power. It was as though my heart was hidden behind a lead veil. Nothing got in and nothing got out. As a result, most of my decisions were made in my head, out of fear and insecurity.

Of course, I’ve read all the stuff about the heart and how so many of us live in our heads, our mausoleums of useless ideas. Reading Rori that day, it all just clicked.  I saw how it’s just a choice, as easy as saying I’ll have the bacon and eggs today, not the pancakes. I’ll feel love, not fear.

Cut to the relationship. I’d been in on-again, off- again mode with my boyfriend of over a year. We’d have the same fight, yell the same things, wear each other down, and storm off in our separate directions. All this heart stuff had happened after our last break up, which lasted a month. And then somehow, we got back together.

This time the relationship felt lighter, easier, and freer. I wasn’t torturing him with made up rules in my head and lists of do’s and don’ts. I was just enjoying him, who he was. I was just feeling, not thinking.

I turned to him and massaged his neck as we sat side by side at a Sushi counter.

“You’re like a different person to me,”I said in a whisper. “You’ve transformed into a wonderful man.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

“Do I seem different to you, too?” I asked curiously.

“Yes,”he said without hesitation. “I feel love. I feel accepted.”

“You didn’t feel that before?”I said.

“No,”he said looking me in the eyes. “I knew it but I didn’t feel it. Feeling it changes everything.”

“I am so glad,”I said beaming. “I feel so happy just being me.”

Thank you, Rori, for showing me the most important relationship is the one with my heart.

***First, Thank You, Pamela, for this gorgeous letter, and for opening up this discussion – I’m going to work a lot with this concept of our DEFAULT POSITION. The emotional and reactive place we go to whenever we feel triggered and uncomfortable.

I know that mine is to first feel sad and a sense of loss and fear and insecurity – then I jump to anger and vengeance and an “I-don’t-care-about-you” independence, then I work my way through to a general feeling of love and okayness for myself and everyone else who was there when I got triggered, or whose consistent behavior is finally triggering me. (My husband, of course, because he’s the one who’s always there…).

So – let’s talk about this.  What is YOUR Default Position? What do you GO TO, a part of your personality that feels “safe” to you – when you’re feeling Triggered and uncomfortable?  – and we’ll work together through all your comments and answers.

Love, Rori , and Thank You again, Pamela

Just came across this great article, by Deborah May for Oprah.com – an interview with Laure Redmond who wrote “Feel Good Naked”:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/01/23/o.nude.attitude/index.html

The book, I hope – tells us how to actually DO this – feel good naked (I’ll check it out and let you know) – but it got me thinking.  This should be an easy Tool for us to do right now:

Logically – every study ever done tells us that it’s not about HOW we look, in an objective, culture-eyed way – but about how we FEEL about how we look.

In other words, if we LOVE how we look, we become beautiful, aglow with confidence.  And if we HATE how we look, we carry that feeling as if it’s painted on our body.

So, a man is attracted to us or not attracted to us NOT by any “objective” measure of how we look – even if we think we’re on one extreme or another of “safe middle ground” – but he is attracted to us or not attracted to us through the filter of what WE THINK about how we look.

So – what HE thinks about us is a DIRECT RESULT of what WE think about us.

Now – this is nothing new.  We all know that our self-esteem determines how others perceive us, how they relate to us, how they judge us.  It’s what WE think first, then what everyone else thinks sort of follows suit.

So – why, then, is it so HARD to think highly of ourselves?  I mean – if the logic of it is so simple, what’s to be so hard?

Without going into psychology, let’s just say it’s HABIT.  Okay, so we don’t look like a centerfold.  We’re past some age cut-off line in our own heads. We can’t seem to think of ourselves as “sexy” without feeling embarrassed for ourselves.  We care less and less about the way we look, and give up on making our bodies look and feel better to US, because we somehow either don’t SEE the value of it, or we’re OVERWHELMED by the value of it.

So what?  If it truly doesn’t MATTER – if the BIGGEST thing that matters is how WE feel about how we look – we should be able to MAKE UP ANYTHING we want!

So – let’s make it up!

Take off your clothes.  Stand in front of a mirror (I’m doing this too, right after I write this down.)

Now – put your eyes into “soft focus.”  Go all fuzzy and dreamlike and magical and goddessy with your eyes.

Imagine a soft summer sun shining on your body, putting its light in the greatest places on your curves, your arms and legs, your folds, your everything, and leaving some of you in mysterious shadow.

Now, imagine what it would feel like to love this picture.  To absolutely adore being in this body – no matter WHAT.

That means – shut off any Nasty Voices in your head that aren’t writing love poems to what you see in the mirror.

If you feel embarrassed, or wrong, or silly – that’s great.  See if you can sink BELOW the “silly” and “wrong” and relax your shoulders and your pelvis and FEEL what it would feel like if you just “lived” with the Nasty Voices – but only LISTENED to the Voices that said how gorgeous you were, and how much you wanted to TOUCH you.

I mean – who’s the audience, here?  If WE’RE the only ones that truly matter, if OUR opinions, thoughts feelings are the MAJOR players here – who’s in CHARGE?!

Who gets to DECIDE THE TRUTH!

It’s well known that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  It’s absolutely true.  You KNOW it’s true.  I know it’s true.  We’ve all seen this over and over and over.  The woman with high self-esteem gets the great man no matter what she looks like to  US – but we think there’s some secret there.  We think there’s got to be something about what she looks like or DOES that we don’t know about that gives her so much confidence and attracts her man so much – but the truth is – she just MADE IT UP!

She just LOVES herself.  She just can’t think of a good enough reason NOT to adore herself.

How about this for a Mantra: Confidence is the fall-back position. (I just made that up.)

In other words – if nothing else makes sense, if there’s no REASON for you having confidence other than what YOU think – then – confidence is the logical choice!

Because no matter what you think is true, the truth is – you’re making it up anyway!  You’ve just been making it up BAD.

So – let’s make this up GOOD.  Let’s make up confidence as the logical, fallback, default position.

Let’s make you being gorgeous JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE – no other reason – the logical, fallback, default position.

You don’t need a reason.  You don’t need reassurance, approval, anyone to say anything, a compliment…anything we’re all looking for to tell us what the total effect of what we look like is.

The total effect of what we look like is BEAUTY – if you say it is.  So…

I SAY IT IS.  Go ahead, say it:  “I’m beautiful.  I’m beauty.  I love my body because it’s mine, and I get to love it, and so I’m loving it…”

Touch your body – softly, slowly, and every time you touch it where it feels good and soft and smooth and YOURS – say it out loud.

I’m going to the mirror right now…let me know how it feels to FEEL GOOD in your own skin.

Love, Rori