Have The Relationship You Want

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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