Have The Relationship You Want

I got this post in a newsletter from Dr. Margaret Paul – it’s about how we all Lean Forward by starting a conversation, or talking, or focusing on something we need to talk or think about, and just generally focusing on a man (Margaret uses the example of a man doing this – so imagine yourself in that situation) – in order to AVOID our own FEELINGS.

Here’s the Post:

Addictions can take many forms. One fairly common yet subtle form is to start a conversation to get your partner involved with you so that you don’t have to feel and take responsibility for your feelings.

We all have many addictive ways of avoiding feeling our painful feelings and taking responsibility for them. Some of the ways are obvious, such as using substances and processes. Some of the ways can be very subtle.

Leon often struggled with feeling empty inside. Inner emptiness is a symptom of a lack of love inside, and Leon frequently created this inner lack of love with his self-judgments and staying in his head – ignoring his feelings. Sometimes he would fill the emptiness with food, work or TV. But other times he would act out addictively by bringing up issues – generally the same issues over and over – with his wife Susan.

The major issue he focused on was how they spent money. He would start the conversation by stating, “We really need to talk about the money situation.” Susan would feel a knot in her stomach, knowing that Leon was aching for an endless discussion about money that would likely end in a fight and distance. She felt like she was in a no-win: if she talked about money, it would go on for hours and end in anger. If she didn’t, she would be accused of withdrawing and running away from problems. There seemed to be no good way out for Susan.

Eventually, Susan learned to trust her feelings and say to Leon, “I will be happy to talk with you about anything when you are open, but right now your energy feels closed. Let me know when you are feeling really great and then we can talk about it.” Not surprisingly, Leon never approaches her to talk about money when he is feeling good!

Carole periodically says to Rick, “We need to talk about our lack of communication.” Rick immediately knows that Carole is feeling badly and is trying to feel better by getting in to a long and drawn-out conversation about their lack of communication. If he engages, he ends up angry. If he doesn’t, he gets blamed for not communicating. Rick has learned to disengage just as Susan has, saying, “I’d love to communicate with you about anything when you are open, but right now my experience of you is that you are angry, and we are not going to get anywhere. Let me know when you are feeling good and then we can talk about anything you want.” Again, when Carole is feeling happy, she never brings up their lack of communication!

The subject can be anything – child raising, how time is spend, how much TV kids watch, health, nutrition, how clean or dirty the house is, chores that need to be done. It is not that these things don’t need to be discussed – they often do. But there is a huge difference between approaching your partner from a true desire to learn and resolve issues, or a desire to avoid your anxiety, emptiness, loneliness, heartache, or helplessness.

Lovingly Disengaging

If you are the partner at the other end of what may feel like an attack – even though it is couched as a question or a statement of wanting to talk – your best bet is to trust your stomach! If your stomach gets tight when your partner comes to you to talk, trust it. Learn to take loving care of yourself by refusing to talk when you are picking up your partner’s needy, abandoned, or angry energy. Recognize that your partner is acting out addictively to avoid responsibility for his or her own feelings, and that trying to talk will only create more conflict.

However, it is most important when you disengage, that you do not withdraw your love. It might even be helpful if you give your partner a sincere hug, coming from your compassion at knowing that your partner is hurting. Let your partner know that when he or she is open to learning, you will be there – to talk about an issue or to be of help with whatever your partner is feeling.

I’ve been getting Margaret’s newsletters for years now, and love her work…she’s co-created a powerful process called Inner Bonding®, that helps you heal your pain and discover your joy…you can get her Inner Bonding Course free (and the newsletters I get, too) here: http://www.innerbonding.com. You’ll find lots of articles and blog posts there, and Margaret works by phone, too.

This post is at: http://www.innerbonding.com/show-article/2353/avoiding-your-feelings-by-focusing-on-your-partner.html

I’d like to explore this more…how we women are taught to “talk” things out – when what we’re actually doing is changing the subject – (the subject is actually and truly how WE’RE FEELING INSIDE – regardless of the situation or circumstance that triggered those feelings)…so let me know how even just being aware of this works for you.

Love, Rori

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

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