Have The Relationship You Want

Who’s wrong? Is it me, or is it you? I’ve been trying to figure it out all day. If it’s neither of us, then who is it?

I’m triggered. I triggered you. You triggered me. We’re both upset. Someone’s insensitive. Someone stepped wrong. Someone did something! Whose fault is it? No one? How can I be disappointed and angry if it’s no one’s fault?

If it’s no one’s fault, then why do I feel like this?

Ahhhh. I get it. I feel like this exactly because it’s no one’s fault. I’m too nice to blame someone else. I’m too “conscious” to process backward in time and blame my parents, and my genes, and even you. So I’m hanging out here in space. So…it must be me. It must always be me.

If the Universe brings me what I want (even when I don’t know what that is), and I’m sitting here in yucky stuff, then I must want it. Ahhhh…I’m to blame!

Wait! If it’s good stuff, I’m a manifester of my powerful, beautiful destiny. If it’s yucky, I’m to blame.

This doesn’t go well with my success dressing. Definite clash of colors and tone.

Here’s a Rori Raye way to match yourself up inside, and share how you feel and who you are with your man.

A very famous New York acting coach, Mira Rostova, once taught me how to turn scripted dialogue into human emotions. Some would say it was a highly “technical” way to approach acting. We’d analyze every word, figuring out not how we, as actors, would instinctively say the words or play the scene, but how human beings would actually behave. One of her tools was something she called “The Admit.”

‘The Admit” is simply saying What Is. No emotion at all. A man asks us for the time - it’s two o’clock. He asks us about our work - we’re secretaries or teachers or entrepreneurs. Our man asks us nothing and we tell him the best way to get to the freeway. In life, so many of us live out the dialogues of our life in “The Admit.” We feel blank, numb, on the surface. We go directly to the facts. If we do this enough, we can forget we ever feel anything at all.

And then we start playing the scenes of our lives in other “chosen” emotions. If we’re in “It’s my fault” a lot, then everything we say starts with I’m sorry. If we’re in “It’s your fault,” then everything we say, think and feel starts with Why?

If we’re in “It’s no one’s fault, it just Is,” then what? Confusion, depression, blank, numb, a desperate search to find out Why and find someone to blame? Please?

Try something else. First, try Finding a Feeling. Yep. Anything. Could be anxiety, tension, confusion, emptiness (works for that blank, numbed out state), anger (works for that It’s all your fault place), sadness (works for that It’s all my fault place), anything.

If what you feel is Nothing (like in that song from A Chorus Line) or I don’t know what I feel, look again.

Is it really just “two o’clock?” Are you really just a job description? Do you really have to get to the freeway at all? If you really sink down into yourself, you might find yourself appreciating that you even know the time, or that he asked. You might feel nervous that a cute guy walked up to you and tried to make conversation.

You may actually find you feel something about two o’clockness, or about the work you do. And about the freeway, you may discover how odd and helpless it feels to really allow yourself to be a passenger.

Just because your first thought may be judgmental - either about him Couldn’t he come up with a better line? Doesn’t he know the freeway is faster? or about you I look yucky! - doesn’t mean you’re feeling angry or irritated, or that you don’t care if you ever go on another date with anyone as long as you live, or even that you’re “insecure.” You could actually be feeling scared, or uncomfortable, or overwhelmed.

Even if, in this moment, you can’t be who you want to be - you can be who you are. Even if who you are right at this moment is no one you can quite put your finger on - you can simply be where you are. And you can put words to that.

You can actually say, Oh, it feels so great to go without a watch - I don’t know what time it is! Or, It feels so great to wear a watch that works - it’s two o’clock. Or, It feels great to be almost done with shopping and it’s only two o’clock! Or, I get to feel like a kid teaching teenagers all day, or I get to have fun looking at houses all day for my clients to buy and sell - I’m a realtor. Or, in the case of the freeway, just say nothing at all and feel how uncomfortable that can feel.

And then see what happens.

What happens, always, is that the dialogue moves from inside us to out in the world.

Suddenly, instead of talking only to ourselves and behaving as if we are somehow different than we feel at any given moment - as if the men in our lives are not real people capable of talking with us - we allow someone else into the conversation.

Most of the time, we don’t even give the guy a chance. We decide what’s up with us, and then what’s up with him, and then we guess about how to behave, and then he bounces off that. Before you know it, we’re in a dialogue with no one but ourselves. Connection can’t happen until we let him in - not just into the conversation in our heads, but into the feelings in our bodies.

We are all movers and shakers. We all make things happen and stop things from happening. Sometimes we are triggered, and sometimes we do the triggering. The problem in assigning the “fault,” or the “blame,” or “the responsibility” is in trying to figure out exactly who got the ball rolling in the first place. Sometimes we think it’s pretty clear, and sometimes we guess and find out later there’s more to it than we saw the first time around.

Most of us only go to It’s all your fault because our first thoughts are It’s all my fault. Then, again, some of us go to It’s all my fault because long ago, we were taught never to go to It’s all your fault.

What if it’s no one’s fault, but it’s okay to still feel awful?

Can you live with that? Sure you can. Feelings are just feelings. They come and go. They do not define us. They do not relegate us to categories and descriptions and labels. Feelings do make us human, touchable, wonderful, magnetic and individual.

Instead of spending your energy asking yourself Why? first ask yourself What Am I Feeling Right Now?

If the answer to the question What Am I Feeling Right Now? seems to always be I don’t know, then please believe me, you have feelings. You may not be finding them just yet, but they’re really there. And there are great, wonderful, ecstatic feelings to be found along with the yucky ones.

Feeling is like breathing. Sometimes we hold our breath. Sometimes we forget to breathe. Breathing is simple to us, complex if you really think about it. Feelings are complex, and really simple if you think about it. Like breathing, feelings are not about Why? Feelings, even the absence of feelings, are about Right Now.

Mira was right that so many of us real people speak so much of the time in “The Admit,” whereas actors, wanting to juice everything up, want to find emotions to play. Be the actor of your own life. Find out what’s behind your thoughts, not by climbing up into your brain and asking “Why?” but by sinking down into your feelings and asking “What?”

When I left Mira and found another teacher, one who worked in a completely different and very organic way, I discovered many, many more layers of real human behavior than all of my “Whys?” could touch. It’s my life’s journey, and now my life’s work, to follow feelings, rather than try to put them in boxes with labels.

Find yours, baby step by baby step, and treasure them. As you cherish your own feelings, so will every man you meet, even one you’ve lived with for years.

It’s not a matter of whose fault it is. It’s a matter of how you feel.

Love, Rori

Okay, This is when my daughter was little, and my husband looked like Hugh Grant (he still does…the more current one is a little down the page here…)

I’ve been going back and forth whether or not to share him with you, but decided what he has to offer is more important than any privacy concerns I have (you can google him, after all). Jeff (his name is Jeffrey Levine) is a business coach with an MBA who, while he was finding that so much of the coaching would always come down to the work/life balance thing with the executives he was coaching, fell in love with working with these men on fatherhood issues.

I talked him into helping women turn their husbands into better fathers without wrecking their marriages…and so he wrote a book specifically for women, and started coaching women (he has free newsletters, too…) about how to INFLUENCE men.

Here’s one of his articles, and if you’re curious about him, here’s his blog - TurnHimIntoABetterDad.com/blog. You can get his free newsletters there, and comment and ask him questions - he’ll answer you. We actually NEVER talk about what I do and what I write, or about the coaching and writing he does (I’ve asked him NOT to read my eletters or blog posts) — so when I read his book to proof it, I was shocked to see my own ideas and Tools coming from the other side - a man’s side - and the man I was living with’s side to boot. Very weird. Here he’s talking about…basically, how to talk to a man…(I picked it up from his blog)

Forget The Story, Just Tell The Truth

I recently read a book called “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future.” It’s a terrific read and I highly recommend it. Among other things, the author Daniel Pink talks about the power of “story” – how telling a story enables you to communicate in a way that your fellow humans naturally understand.

However, in the arena of relationships, telling a story rarely helps the situation. In fact, I advise my clients to steer clear of their story because it’s your story that’ll get you into trouble. When you remove the story completely, you’ll have a far greater chance of being heard.

Guys often aren’t great listeners as it is – and when you launch into a story there’s more of a chance that he’ll hear it as judgment and blaming. You see, the problem is, even if you mean what you’re saying in your story, guys think that you’re “making stuff up.”

I recommend that you strip the story from your communication and instead focus on expressing your truth – cleanly and clearly – without the story.

Let’s look at a simple situation:

Your husband has agreed to fix that broken cabinet door for months. You’re worried that your toddler or dog is going to get in there and it could be potentially dangerous. Despite his promises to handle it, another weekend passes and it’s not done.

What might the story look like? It might include phrases like this: “You’ve been saying for months that you’re going to fix it and still haven’t. I wish I could rely on you but I can’t.” (finger pointing and blaming) “You know, your son could get stuck in there and get really hurt” (making stuff up) “Just like when you said you’d trim the trees and fix the pool – just another example of you not keeping your word. You’re unreliable.” (judgment) “How many times have we talked about this?” (guilt)

Your story is your attempt to build your case and in some cases justify your anger. But the truth is, you don’t need to justify it – you’re entitled to your anger and your disappointment in him. The question is, how do you enroll him in making a change?

Not by blaming him.

Not by telling him a story about his past failures.

The only chance you have of shifting his behavior and helping be a better dad and husband is by communicating your feelings in a direct, clear and non-judgmental way. That’s the only thing that’ll work.

Here’s How To Do It

“Tom, I know you’ve been busy. And there’s something I need to share with you. I’m having a problem and I don’t know exactly how to express this. Is now a good time for us to talk?”

You’ve set the table that the conversation might be challenging, and you’ve asked permission to have the conversation now, or to find a better time.

You continue: “Tom, I really rely on you, I realize that. And when I need you to handle something in the house, and you don’t do it, I don’t know how to express it to you in a way that doesn’t start a fight.”

Do you see how this gets the conversation off on a completely different foot than if you told your story?

Then ask in a direct, clear way for what you want: “Tom, I’m not going to feel comfortable until the cabinet’s fixed, so I really need for you to fix it within the next couple of days. If you can’t please let me know so I can hire a handyman to do it.”

Forget the story. Speak your truth without blame and judgment.

Jeffrey