Have The Relationship You Want

Here’s a question from Mary, and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been contacted by an old love who’s now “suddenly free.” It’s hard to know what to do…you want to give it a chance, and yet you want to protect yourself. Mary works through this just brilliantly, and I’ll help, too:

“Rori, Hello. I’ve been reading the blog for a while, and I’d love, love, love! to hear some advice for my particular situation. I can’t figure out how to post the situation other than in the comment box, so please pardon me for a deviation from the topic.

I’m single and my very first love contacted me to say that his wife filed for divorce. He’s out looking at houses, so he can move out, and would love to see me, as he has some business in a city near me. I actually have a business conference booked there during the time he’ll be there (pure coincidence), and at first I told him I’d see him. (He offered dinner.) It didn’t sit well with me, though, because he’s still married and living with his wife. I emailed him and told him that I’d like him to make a decision first – either way! And to take his time. Then I’d love to catch up with him when the crises is over. If he stays with his wife, maybe next time they’re in town, I can show them around. If not, we’ll have that dinner.

This is a guy I have loved since we were kids. We call each other on our birthdays, just to say hi, and we talk for about two or three minutes, always very respectful of our home situations. I know that if he does get divorced, every woman will want him. But I also know that before he marries any of them, he’ll want to see me first. Just to know for sure.

So I feel confidant to wait. And another reason for waiting is that kids always add things up and dates are important to them. If we didn’t see each other until AFTER he moves out, then if it does work out, everyone is happy. That makes sense to me.

But I hesitate about seeing him, and it’s not too late to change my mind, because it’s like I’m supposing that I know his motives. I’m imagining that it would be a date if we had dinner. Maybe he’s not thinking that at all! Maybe he’d just like to see me to say hi, after all these years. Or maybe he just needs support because he’s going through a rough time. So it’s almost embarrassing to say that I’d rather wait, because I’m the one who is interested in him, and that makes it painfully obvious. Almost like telling him too much.

He is going to ask me again. The conference is two weeks away. What do you think of this scenario? I’d really welcome your answer, Rori and feedback from anyone else.”

Here’s my answer:

Mary, I LOVE your speech, your language, your thinking around this.

First off, his WIFE filed for divorce. So, you have no idea if he’s still into her and being dumped, or if he’s unhappy and finally created the divorce.

If you were able to see him as a “friend” – which is possibly all this is…or a “look see” for him now that he’s about to be single – then you’d be fine seeing him…your vibe would be “friend.” But by expressing that there’s more to it for you, and you don’t even wish to START with this “friends” business, but want to consider any meeting with him as a “date” – it’s all clear, on the table, and upfront.

Very, very good for you.

Now – you’re really going to have to go deep inside you and see what feels GOOD for you to do – pass on this, or show up with NO AGENDA other than to track yourself and make sure you feel good throughout the experience.

Here are some possible scenarios:

1. Generally, if you want a man, generally being physically in the same place is the only way to even start a possible connection. So one scenario would be – you see him, and he “gets” you right away (it’s the “dream” scenario) – and you’re on track to Happy Ever After with him.

I’ve actually seen this happen – with a client who met her now husband two weeks after his wife passed away from a long bout with cancer.  He just KNEW she was the one the moment he saw her.

But this man already KNOWS YOU. So there are more possibilities.

You have no way to know how it will go for him, but, because you know him and love him, you have lots of hopes, dreams and mental analysis around this – all of which work against you feeling “free and easy” around it.

2. If you chose NOT to see him, one scenario might be that he just goes on dreaming bigger and bigger about you (isn’t that the way it goes for all of us?) – until he’s ready to actually see and actually experience a woman, rather than be led by his desperation, loneliness, fear, anger or desire to explore his new freedom – and then you are, as you say here, starting from a much better place.

3. If you DO see him now – and after all his “imagining” of you and in his present state (whatever it is) he doesn’t have an instantaneous “you are the one” feeling for you, he’ll still have to go through his process, and you’ll possibly be left feeling weird about it all.

4. If you DO see him now – he could have a great moment where he DOES “get” that “you’re the one” – and then, back to Scenario #1 with Happy Ever After.

So – how do you decide? Analytically, it’s a total toss-up – there’s no way to KNOW what’s “best.”

There IS no best. No right or wrong, no strategy.

The only way you can go here is by following the way you YOU FEEL – and yet, we all know, you will be feeling different things at different times. And you may second guess yourself and change your mind a hundred times – because, again,  there simply IS no right or wrong here.

It’s important, then, for you to know, really KNOW, that whatever you do – it will not be the end of the world or the relationship, and if you can be curious and open, and practicing – you will be fine no matter what your decision.

If you can use the situation to practice your Tools, to satisfy your own curiosity, to experiment, engage and experience – to take a chance, to see how you FEEL when you’re in his presence – you’ll be fine no matter what happens, and your “vibe” will be lovely, and you’ll feel strong and powerful, and you’ll be able to see exactly what’s up with this man instead of “dreaming” about him yourself.

If you decide to see him, and you’re NOT feeling good about it, but you can’t put your finger on it exactly (you can’t tell whether you feel uncomfortable because of his stuff or because of your own stuff),  just don’t let yourself hang with him if you start to feel yourself being “used” in some way as a “stepping stone” for him to get over his wife and get out into the world.

Don’t pretend, don’t be “cool” if you don’t FEEL cool, and don’t make idle conversation or allow it to be superficial.

If you see him, use the experience to practice Feeling Messages, to look for the Message HE’S bringing you, and to feel how it is you feel.

Make the experience real for you, instead of Imaginary.

IF you do whatever you do for THESE reasons – for your own experience and growth and knowledge about yourself and the world (and then get up and call the evening short if it DOESN’T feel like a good experience) – you can’t EVER go wrong.

Let me know what you do, and how it went…and don’t stress too much about your decision. Just work at keeping yourself in the wonderful self-focused place you are in this comment (and “confusion” is a totally okay place to be, even sitting at the table with him…as long as you’re aware of feeling it and are willing to allow your feelings to move and morph and be acknowledged and shared by you…) – no matter what…

Love, Rori

Halloween has always been one of my favorite – perhaps my actual favorite – holidays.  I just find it such a combination of fun, scary, pretend, meaningful, going outside your comfort zone, parties that don’t have family significance, neighborhood, childhood, being a mom with a flashlight, candy I can’t eat but can collect and touch, carnivals, dress up, touching my inner “stranger.”

This is one of my traditional Halloween essays…let’s make this Halloween about taking off the masks…

Some days, it’s always Halloween.

It seems so much easier to stay hidden behind a mask. If I’m feeling grumpy, or ugly, or awkward or nervous, or really, really angry, or really, really embarrassed, I’d like to keep it to myself.

No one wants to see that, not even me. I’m much too strong for that, much too organized, smart, capable and high on the consciousness scale to go there, into Ickyfeelingsland. I’ll keep it to myself.

And the playing pieces — the red and blue wooden ones and the plastic houses and fake money all just keeping jumping around inside me in their own little world. Little do I know you can all see the action anyway.

If I’m angry, you can see it. If I’m upset, you can feel it. If I put a big smile on my face but you can actually feel my anger, yeah, you may think I’m a wondrously complex human being — but our relationship will suffer.

Carol Pearson, in her book The Hero Within, says “Being ladylike or gentlemanly and denying one’s anger simply results in the unconscious sabotage of relationships. Expressing one’s anger is transformative because it allows for a true and open, honest relationship. It makes way, therefore, for love.”

We have so many reasons for not expressing our feelings openly and in the moment: It’s not appropriate. I’m wrong about it. What I’m feeling is so childish. I’ve done much too much work on myself to be feeling like this. They all boil down to fear.

Fear of retribution — He’ll get mad at me. Fear of what will happen — He’ll leave me. Fear of what he’ll think of us — He already thinks I’m a drama queen, now he’ll think I’m needy.

Yep, we don’t know what’ll happen. The risks, however, of speaking our feelings in bits and pieces and in words men can hear are minuscule compared to the risks of not speaking our feelings.

When we stuff them in, hold them down, try to refashion them through affirmations or being “our best selves,” we may think we’re being successful at it, but sooner or later one or all of three things will happen:

One, the pressure and energy will build up until it explodes and you come out swinging, screaming, crying, attacking, throwing things, slamming doors, pleading, apologizing, cowering, melting down, folding up, giving up and giving in. A relationship in which this goes on all the time is not fun for anybody in it.

Two, the pressure and energy will be ignored and allowed to build up until it explodes inside you and you get depressed or sick. A relationship in which this happens may seem safe, because everyone here avoids real connection and real love, but it doesn’t feel very good.

Three, you are able to hold in, cover up, and transform the pressure and energy until you become locked into a personality and state of being that is not your own. Everything may seem okay here until you get a glimpse that you’re living someone else’s life – and the way back to yourself seems overwhelming.

In Rori Raye terms, Saying how you feel in the moment is taking care of yourself and your relationships in the best way possible. Every time you say only “I feel disconnected,” or “I feel sad,” or “I feel soooo goood!” and then let your man come up with the next sentence, you are creating alchemy. Magic happens inside your body. The energy that’s been built up trying to keep the feeling hidden suddenly is released.

Both the feeling and the energy fighting it suddenly start flowing thorough you and become a part of you. It’s like reclaiming lost energy. Like reclaiming lost bits of ourselves. Like turning hay into gold.

The more we reclaim, the more we change and grow. We become new people – chemically. Our relationships are the culture, the medium in which we can grow ourselves. Staying frozen in the patterns of behavior we’ve known since childhood, even if our thinking and philosophies have changed and expanded, is still staying frozen.

Devoting our lives to constantly tracking, guessing, analyzing, measuring, trying to change what’s going on in our men’s minds, hearts and bodies is a sad waste of our considerable, wonderful energies. Making him our project is us dismissing who we are — as if who we are is helplessly linked to who he is.

How much more fun and satisfying it would be to like what we like and just simply not like what we don’t like. To love ourselves for who we are — even if we’re not quite sure at any given moment who that is — Halloween mask and all.

It takes courage to risk what we know to have what we don’t know. It takes faith to risk what we’re comfortable with to have what we yearn for. It takes a new belief to trust the person in front of you with your heart, little by little, until you both see that both of you are worthy.

Stand up for yourself. Be for yourself. Be for love. Receive love. Accept or reject what is in front of you. Tolerate nothing.

Love, Rori

If you sometimes feel like your man has all the Power in your relationship, and you feel almost desperate to get your strong sense of yourself back, I learned something very valuable (the hard way) this weekend that I know will help you, too.

If you’re at all like me, you value being “nice,” being “liked,” and being “well thought of.”

So, if you’re like me – being a “Drama Queen” is just out of the question.

Well, that’s all nice and good, wanting to be “mature” and “well spoken” and “thoughtful,” but for most of us, all that “carefulness” and “political correctness” gets us to the same place – pushing our men away!

How can that be?

How can we push a man away by being “nice” and “mature”?

Well, as I’ve known since the moment I turned my marriage around years ago, and as I teach my clients and write and create programs about for you, valuing “nice” and “mature” over AUTHENTIC can just kill a man’s love for you.

And it’s not because there’s something so wrong with “nice.”.

It’s because sometimes our “nice” is just not REAL.

Because we value being liked more than being Authentic, we can stuff down our feelings.

I still struggle with this – and as aware as I am about it, it still always surprises me when I choose the “high road” – choose to let something that’s bothering me go rather than speaking up about it.

These are the moments when my inner Drama Queen can actually HELP!

So – what does YOUR inner Drama Queen look like?

Is she so not welcome inside you that you’d do almost anything to not let her out?

Are you so afraid she’ll turn you into a raging Drama Queen out there in the world that you push her down and try to keep her covered up?

Well, the one thing I know is that if you don’t love your inner Drama Queen, and instead resist her as much as you can – that’s when you actually DO turn INTO a Drama Queen.

It’s as though the fight to keep her from taking over makes her squeak by you so you end up acting like a Drama Queen anyway.

Only – instead of YOU GUIDING her, so that her words come out THROUGH YOU, in Feeling Messages instead of attacks, and so her feelings inspire a man to HELP you instead of run from you – she comes out without your consent and without your control.

Your inner Drama Queen just jumps out and splatters all over everything. It’s those moments when we do or say something we wish we hadn’t.

And then you remember the moment when you first felt angry or upset and didn’t say anything about it when it happened – and you KNOW that if you’d just spoken out – authentically and truthfully in that moment, you wouldn’t have turned into a Drama Queen just now.

So – love your inner Drama Queen.

Loving her and embracing her will make it possible for you to avoid ACTING like a drama queen.

Let her speak to you.

Let her say what’s on her mind.

Let her into your heart, feel her feelings and use YOUR WORDS to say what’s going on inside you.

You can do this.

Your Drama Queen on the inside can make you calmer and easier on the outside.

Your Drama Queen on the inside can help you stand up for yourself and be stronger.

So – talk to her.

Ask her what her name is.

Ask her if she’ll help you be stronger, more direct, authentic, and VULNERABLE.

Try this Tool and see if you feel a little lighter, a little more in step with yourself – I know that I did.

In my Toxic Men program, I have a whole section on getting to know and embracing your inner “Stranger” – this will help you so much to stop attracting and being attracted to toxic and difficult men. You can take a look at it (and all my programs) on the “Rori’s Catalog” page here…For now, just listen to your inner Drama Queen instead of shutting her up, and see what she has to offer you – and let me know how she helps you.

Love, Rori

Here’s a letter I got from Jennifer…a very universal situation if you’ve ever been in the business of attracting and being attracted to unavailable, perhaps even Toxic men:

“Rori…I have been listening to you for about a year. My name is Jennifer….I am a 35 year old single woman who has had 3 long term toxic relationships in her whole life. (One was 7 years, one was 4 years and resulted in a broken engagement, which I broke off, and the last was a 1 year Long distance imaginary relationship).

Your programs helped me get out ofthat last one, the one year, passionate (albeit emotionally unavailable man scenario) relationship with a man that devastated me. We broke up in August 2008.

After that, in the span of 7 months, I lost my job, foreclosed on a house, and moved from Las Vegas, (I hated Vegas). I felt renewed, confident, scared, cried a lot, moved on, got stronger, and ordered “Targeting Mr. Right.”….which brings you up to speed…

I have been circular dating since early May of this year. I cannot tell you the difference that I felt at first….sexy, confident, attractive, alive….ready to take on the world! I was open and ready to experience whatever the universe brought me in the form of MEN!! I went out on about 7-8 wine/coffee dates, practiced all of your tools, listening with an open heart, open body language, trying not to judge, etc…

…I met one man I was REALLY crazy about…..he was the ONLY one who got past the first date….we have been out over 9 times, had great dinners, hikes, romantic kisses near the Golden Gate Bridge…awesome chemistry. He is 40, never married, very handsome, has had several long term relationships, even lived with 2 women in the past…..even admitted to commitment phobia in the past, but I refused to judge and decided to just have fun and enjoy him.

BUT to be safe and smart, I was communicating to him, that I JUST moved, that I was actively dating and seeking to meet lots of people, and that was were I was at, even though I really loved being with him,(which I communicated to him) all of which he supported and even applauded me for…at first…

…now it seems like he is backing away because I haven’t changed my stance, and I really haven’t…… I had been STILL going out on coffee dates, although I must admit, as we got closer and closer I stopped for about 3 weeks, even though I didn’t tell him I stopped, because I didn’t want to lose my sense of power for myself or to have him sense that I was trying to CAPTURE……….

Rori, you would be soooo proud of me, because this whole time, even though I have felt my feelings deepen, I have done everything possible to RELAX and RESIST the urge to THROW him into the CAGE, as you call it! And its the one thing that I instinctively feel that is making him back away from me….I have NEVER talked about wanting to be a girlfriend, or in wanting ANY of that, even AFTER we had sex for the first and only time, two weeks ago!!

( He knew I had only had sex with 3 other men my whole life) I think that he is used to all of the women in his life and THEIR CRAP and THEIR urges to CAPTURE, (he has said things like he felt like a sperm donor, or someone that was supposed to fit into their TIMELINES etc., so I KNOW he is used to women and their pressures) He has sent me messages that he really likes me, even holding my hand saying that he would love to be a father, etc.

So….. I deliberately DO NOT do any of those old behaviors, no matter what was happening and as we got closer, I feel like the stronger I got THEN he starts in the last 2 weeks or so backing away, esp since our sexual encounter which was very passionate and fabulous, by the way. Since then, he tells me things like…”HE Is not emotionally ready for a relationship, but he has deep feelings for me, that its not me, but his crap” and he want to take some time for himself….WHAT? I haven’t pressured one bit!

And despite him saying that, He still calls me or texts me everyday ( I NEVER initiate calls,which was one of your tools which I could always do easily).  So in the last two weeks his mood seems a little down, some of his texts went something like….”I wanted to take some time for myself..I am not ignoring you, just wanted you to know..how are you?” He hasn’t made any plans to see me in almost 2 weeks, all the while, phones and texts like this almost every day……

Last night he showed up at my apt here in the City, He lives 20 miles outside the city, and this is the first time I had seen him (since the last time we saw each other and had sex which was at his house, and he asked me to stay the night) So last night in my apt……….we kissed, talked a bit (his behavior was sooooo confusing..it seems like he is waiting for me to say that I don’t want to see other guys..I FEEL that…like, he won’t say anything until I do…all this looks like he can’t man up, so. …I looked into his eyes, and opened my heart and said….”What is going on? (I know…. mistake, but I said it with a feeling message right after which was…I’m here, I like you so much, and I’m confused and feeling a bit anxious about this..what do you think?”

He said he didn’t come over to talk, he just HAD to see me, kiss me, etc. So I dropped it, gave him a huge open heart smile and a deep hug, and said I was so glad to see him and that I missed him, he returned the sentiment, Then after 15 min he left. No plans for any future dates, nothing. I smiled and let him go, even though I was so hurt and angry at that moment………

I don’t have 3 men in my rotation yet…so I won’t let him go just yet….I am not “efforting” at all outwardly, but inside I feel myself becoming a bit obsessed with this…in your experience…what is going on? Is this how some men act when they know you are dating around? I refuse to abandon myself, Although its making me miserable and sad..every date I want the chemistry I feel with him and havent found it yet….is he just being a baby, like you said in T Mr. Right? Can he man up? And should I even give a damn??? Jennifer”

***Here’s my answer:

Jennifer, This was EXACTLY right – NO MISTAKE!!! -

You must ALWAYS SPEAK THE TRUTH…That’s what keeps fear from taking over….and that’s where attraction can grow.

Some men are simply not able to do real relationship.  You know you attract these men and are attracted to them because of your history with Toxic Men.

Circular Dating will smoke those guys out!

He’s not backing away because you’re a free spirit…he’s backing away either because the attraction is not deepening for him, or because you’re not as EASY as he’d hoped, or because he’s a Toxic man and somewhere inside he KNOWS he can’t do this, or he just doesn’t ever WANT to do this, he’s just fighting his attraction to you.  Or, he just wants sex.

He may have felt the pressure from you after sex, and he may feel it from inside himself…but it makes no difference…

Sex is meaningful to a woman, no matter how much of a rock star you aim to be…you can’t help but put out stronger vibes after sex – and if you don’t, you wouldn’t be authentic . That’s why sex should only happen when you know exactly what’s going on with you and you can speak it first.

Let him back off, and if he shows up again, try not having sex. Just tell him that you could feel the pressure, and you’d rather wait and just have fun with him. From what you say about his coming over…sounds more like a booty call to me, too…let’s see what the other women on the blog can offer you…

Love, Rori