Have The Relationship You Want

I love letters with what you and I might call “extreme” situations — where we all gasp and swear we’d never let that happen to us — but we KNOW, deep down, that it COULD happen to us, that we have, and may still be, tolerating things we don’t like and playing “small” when we are, in fact, HUGE goddesses — all of us.

Let’s see how we can use this to help you:

“Dear Rori,
.
I wanted to share with you the wall I’m up against.

Brief intro:

17 years of Bliss, 3 children, were very happy, we moved and all went pear shaped.

He broke up over email and its been texting and emailing and fighting for 3 years. He comes back, he leaves. He spends more time with us than away.

Recently he has said he loves me and ‘ maybe’ wants to come back. He wants total freedom to come and go as he pleases. Me to ask no questions, For starters we stay in separate houses, and take it slow, he can still flirt and go out with other woman, and if I get upset the that goes against me and him getting back together.

He doesn’t want a jealous wife. I am not to question his behavior or where he goes, if I have a complaint I should tell a girlfriend not him. that will go against me. Over the next few weeks, he will judge me and my behavior and attitude toward him as to whether he thinks he wants to come back to me and his kids…

So I will be on trial – and I will be judged on behavior, attitude. etc. There is no problem with physical attraction, for my age and 3 kids I look great…

He will be flirty and being smutty on facebook etc with other woman and if I complain that will go against me.

Here’s the great bit, If I use – I feel, I felt, I am feeling with him .. that will go against me. If I try to play him with all the junk he says he reads on these web sites. .. so he’s across all of this..

How do I deal with this. i am not good at playing games, and he’s onto all these methods…

What do I do ? No Bliss”

***Here’s my answer:

Basically, No Bliss – What are you DOING???? (This is going to be tough love – don’t read if you don’t want to hear it.)

If you think that by allowing yourself to “be on trial” and wait for him — you’ll get him back, you are dead wrong.

The only way you have a chance of getting this marriage back (and I can’t imagine why you’d WANT to now –there are all kinds of great men out there who’d want you 3 kids and all…) is to put your wedding ring on your right hand, and START DATING. Break up with him. Tell him this is a separation, and so that you will be dating also. Period. If you can’t do this, then, please, get some therapy to help your self-esteem –and get my Targeting Mr. Right program – it will help you date without all the weirdness attached…

AGREE with him. Tell him that you don’t want the marriage at this point while you’re both discovering what it is you really want (this is not a game – this is TRUE for YOU, if you’ll let yourself see this…).

Good luck! You can DO THIS!!!

***Okay, now let’s see how we can use this…

For most of this letter, it sounds like No Bliss is joking, doesn’t it? Like she sees the humor in his ridiculous demands and behavior, and is almost about to wipe her hands of him…but then…you know she’s not joking at all. No Bliss is really caught up in all this.

And it’s so easy for us to say “ewwww” – but after 17 years and 3 kids and “bliss” — any one of us would feel invested and, well, caught up.

And this brings me to the hard question: “What do you do when things change? Unexpectedly. Suddenly. Seemingly without warning. What do you do when your man goes berserk all of a sudden?”

And my answer is: Unless there’s instantaneous dementia from a physical accident or a drug reaction — there’s no such thing as “all of a sudden.” There’s no such thing as a surprise that’s this huge. No way.

This kind of thing has to be growing. Gathering steam. It could be underground, where you don’t want to look. It could be right in front of your face, where you still don’t want to look.

You could be feeling your reaction to it, and not know what that reaction’s about. This is where we women can get “tunnel vision” and just look at everything and everywhere except at the exact spot where everything’s going wrong.

So much is subconscious – where we can’t see it –so let’s say we go into a temporary state of being where we’re not aware of what’s going on around us.

So — let’s say that when we get “unaware,” it’s not our fault.  BUT — if we don’t choose to LEARN from that unaware experience — then we embark on the non-stop beating up of ourselves that I FORBID you to do!

So, along with everything else we’re going to do here, I want you to EMBRACE and LOVE even your passing unaware moments. Let’s just say that the unaware moments describe not seeing what’s right in front of us just because it’s hard to see.

Now…The man just up and walks, he runs around, he blames you, he puts you in a cage of behavior with one THREAT: He will get mad, and then he will walk even FURTHER away.

And this threat is the one that decks every single one of us.

Even if we don’t want a man anymore, the moment he threatens to GO – we want him back.

It’s like LOSING is worse than being unhappy.

Well – sometimes losing is “loosing” — just opening our iron grip and letting a man do whatever he wants to do.

Because I can tell you this — if a man doesn’t want to be with you –he’s nothing to you. Period. He’s a drain on your energy, your spirit, your heart, your health, and “loosing” a man like that is the only thing that will serve you.

(Also — it’s the only way to invite him to come and get you. (After he cleans up his act, of course –because who would want a dreadful man in the state that this one is in?)

Waiting around for a man who is acting like a single man, jerking you around and daring you to “start something” is hardly worth even a moment to “contemplate.”

The answer is NO.  No, I don’t care if you get mad. No, I don’t care what you think.  No, I no longer care what you do.

The only thing you have here to say YES to is shared parenthood.  That means you stay civil, you stay calm, you refrain from arguing.  You work only for the good of your children.

You consider yourself separated, tell him so, and go about building a new life for yourself.  Should he ever regain his senses and want to come back (and the fastest ticket to that is to forget about him and get a great new life), then you’l think about it.

This letter riled me up, and No Bliss, I hope I was able to give you a bit of a push to discover your own sense of being “done” with this man for now, except as the father of your children.

And while you’re creating this new, fabulous life (right NOW, please) – you will be working with my Tools to undo whatever your part is in this.  Even if the only thing you can put your finger on is “unawareness.”

You will be discovering how you got here, and how you can have something blissful again – even if it’s not with this same man.

Love, Rori

If you’ve ever wondered why you’re finding yourself anywhere you don’t want to be…let’s talk about it.

Why do we cause ourselves so much pain?

There is a reason we’re attracted to and attract men who are not good for us — from simply “not into us” or “just not right for us,” all the way to abusive, mean, neglectful and disinterested.

The reason is in a pattern that got started long ago.

One day, at “crossroads” moment of our lives, we made an internal choice to “frame” what “reality” is. We made an internal choice about what “love” was — what it meant to us, what it looked like, what it was supposed to feel like. We made up “rights and wrongs” and “rules” around that choice, and learned to fit everything that came along for us into those rules. We created a belief in that “reality” we set up.

And all this was happening “underground.”

It wasn’t a “conscious” choice – we weren’t aware of it, and we fought against it and resisted it and suffered with it whenever it showed up. This underground belief became the foundation of our experience. It led us from one experience to another, where each one felt kind of the same, and had the same tinge of “pain” around it.

The way this all happened, the reason this underground, foundational belief became a pattern in our lives, is because at that moment when it all started, we truly WERE in a helpless situation. We were powerless.

We may have been very young, or overpowered physically by an accident or a person. It may have happened over and over again, or it may have been a one-time experience. And it created a full, complete picture for us of what life is and what LOVE is.

Because POWER is a huge theme here — the quality of our entire lives has a HUGE effect on the power we feel in relationships.

In other words, you may be struggling through horrible relationship after horrible relationship — and then, once you get your career together, and are doing work you love, and start loving yourself and feeling good about you — your dream man just shows up and it’s easy sailing from there.

For now, though, let’s just talk about love.

To many of us – Love is simply “pain.” Without discomfort and pain and misery, it doesn’t feel like Love. Without having to WORK hard at it — it doesn’t feel like love.

Because this is usually so far beneath our waking “consciousness” – because on a conscious level we would never KNOWINGLY choose a “bad” man for ourselves, we’d never knowingly make ourselves unhappy — we WRAP a man or an experience like this we’re involved in in a pretty package of some kind.

We make up excuses, we paint the whole thing in a way that LOOKS — if only to us — good. Or at least okay. Or, if necessary, we say it’s fate, or chemistry, or that we’re in an impossible situation beyond our powers to change.

At bottom, what we’re actually doing is USING a man – just going out and flat-out HIRING him – to HURT us. We don’t know we’re doing it, because we BELIEVE this is RIGHT for us. We believe this is all we can have, we EXPERIENCE it as love and almost ignore the pain.

Some of us ignore small things, some of us ignore major things. And it’s so easy to judge another woman who’s allowing major unhappiness, even though we are doing the same thing ourselves – just on a smaller level. And, in my experience — the WORSE things are for you, the FASTER and more amazingly you can experience a total turnaround in your life with just tiny, baby-steps.

That’s why you ALWAYS have HOPE!!!

The worst Overfunctioners (like I was) turn their relationships around the fastest when they stick to my 4 Rules.

Learning how to use Feeling Messages completely turns around the entire LIFE of a woman who is always in her brain, and pushing men away by trying to control them.

And stepping away from a painful MOMENT — even just one MOMENT — can change your life if, deep in your subconscious, you believe that love, to you, is supposed to feel like pain.

Here’s a comment on this blog from Sarah, who’s in an extreme, painful situation:

“Rori, I am in a terrible place right now. I am in love with a toxic man, and don’t know what to do about it. He has a fetish, and it rules his life. I do this for him all the time, but it is still not enough. I found out he is now meeting other women in secret to do his fetish and lying to me about it, saying he is working late. Now, he takes care of himself during this, so there is no sex going on, but the fact that he is meeting these women is killing me. He is just really selfish.

I do love him, but am incredibly betrayed and hurt, as he promised me he would never see anyone else. We are not married, but we do live together. We’ve been together 15 months. A lot of times we are together, he is nice and sweet, but then sometimes he is not. I don’t know how to tell him I know about this, because I found out by looking at his email. I am afraid to confront him, but I know it needs to be done, as I can’t live like this anymore; I am always jealous and paranoid. I want him to change and not do this anymore so we can be happy, but I don’t think its possible. I am afraid to leave. Thanks, Sarah”

Sarah, Welcome, and thank you for your heartfelt comment.

I wish I could be with you in person, take you by the shoulders, shake you, hug you, and help you get a sense of yourself. You are lost in a sea of toxicity – this one man is just the “agent” you “hired” to hit you over the head and inject you with poison.

It’s YOU poisoning yourself…and we have to work really hard here to get you some self-respect and self-love, and I know you are in the right place with all these fantastic women. (I’m always very tough with this at first…so you can SEE what’s going on, because your tolerance for punishment is so high, I have to really go heavy-handed here, so sorry, but it’s the only way I’ve experienced that works — “tough love.”)

You must dump this man, now, forever, and do not look back. Period.

Now, it’s easy for me, a friend, a family member, a counselor to tell you that…but I want you to listen here.

The fetish isn’t the problem. Everyone’s got something going on, it’s a matter of the basics of relationship – loyalty, attraction, feeling good.

You CANNOT be IN LOVE with a man who lies to you. You BELIEVE you are – but you’re wrong.

You’re ADDICTED to him. You are like a junkie — and not just for love, but for punishment.

I know you must have a seriously painful childhood behind you, with lying, abuse, distrust, pain…and THIS is what we must address. You are staying with this man to KEEP yourself from dealing with what’s really underneath, and as you peel back the layers of how you’ve been protecting yourself from inner pain by heaping MORE pain on yourself…things will get clearer.

Please read EVERYTHING on this blog, in my newsletters, and anywhere you can find about increasing your self-esteem. Start here with the Power & Self Esteem category. Self-love is your work right now.

This man is NOTHING.

He is NOTHING to you.

I’m telling you the truth…please consider what life would be like if you believed what I’ve written here.

What I want for you is HOPE – but a different kind…not hope for this relationship, this man, but for your LIFE.

You are in a position now in which you must stand tall and RESCUE your own life.

***Now – for all who are in much smaller versions of this pattern (and we ALL have this going on about all kinds of things – our work, our daily life, our health, our love lives – no matter how small…):

Take a moment to ask yourself  What if everything I believe about love is completely made up — and I made it up — and I can unmake what I made up and make up something new?

This whole blog, and all my work is about making up something new.  Something that feels good.

As we make new things up, and take baby steps AS IF those things we just made up were REAL — that’s when magic happens.

This post has a lot of themes, ideas, and Tools…I’ll put them in step-by-step form in the next posts…Love, Rori

Here’s a situation – a VERY common situation, where a man is consistently defensive and on the attack in order to feel okay with himself. The cure is in my Toxic Men program, and I’ll touch on it here.

It’s about unearthing the anger in you, in him, in the relationship – and getting it out in the open in a NON-DRAMATIC way – so that it can be healed – and USED to bring you closer to each other.

Otherwise, the anger goes underground and does so much damage there that things are seemingly beyond repair – but it IS repairable. The key is in YOU.

SOMEONE has to start a new kind of communication, a new kind of attitude and approach, a new way of expressing all kinds of feelings – both verbally and physically – that actually CREATE INTIMACY, instead of driving it away.

To do this – you need more strength on the inside – more trust in yourself to state clearer, more consistent Boundaries – and a willingness to be completely vulnerable on the outside.

You have to trust yourself that you will not just BE there, vulnerable and open, when things don’t feel good – when there is even “modest” defensiveness and verbal abuse (I was with a man for a long time who was master of verbal abuse and manipulation – he was funny and charming, and so everyone always laughed, and I stood there wondering what was wrong with me…).

You have to know how to always stay open, and yet always feel strong enough to walk away. At any moment. That’s Power….

Here are 2 symptoms that anger is underground and running things:

1. Judgment and Criticism - you always feel as though everything you do is being “watched’ and “scrutinized” and “judged.”

Every time you do anything, he’s ready with a roll of his eyes, a snide comment – about what you did, about what you didn’t do, about his own needs that somehow it’s your fault aren’t being met (like where things are). Sometimes it’s about simple choices you make – or how you look or what you’re wearing. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s muttered, sometimes it’s done with a joke (so it’s even harder for you to pin down). It’s constant and never-ending. You feel like a child being berated.

This is about a lot of things, but it can simply be the most “controlled” way a man can express his anger (often his anger at himself – it might have nothing to do with you). He judges you constantly because he’s such a harsh judge of himself. His guilt about his irritation and anger leaves him this “mild” way to express anger – telling you what you’re doing wrong.

(By the way – we do this too…)

2. Withdrawing

He’s drifting away emotionally, spending less time with you, there’s less sex, less affection.

Almost all my programs deal with this and how to stop it and bring him close again – and here – let’s just look at the hidden anger component: He’s angry, he doesn’t know how to deal with it, and so he withdraws. It’s easier.

When you talk with him and try to be “understanding” and get at what the problem is – he just feels angrier, and withdraws more.

The obvious expression of anger is arguments, fighting, verbal and physical attacks – but I don’t want to deal with that here because this is about HIDDEN anger – where all you’re experiencing is the tip of the iceberg, and you’re living in fear of that iceberg surfacing.

And here’s a small step to the solution: Unearth the anger iceberg by YOU changing YOUR reactions.

Now – this is not a lifestyle – you don’t want to be with a man who is constantly berating you or withdrawing from you where you have to be the one always “changing” – this is an experiment, a test, a learning experience – and the goal is to unearth the anger and learn to TOLERATE the experience of it.

Once you can get through surface stuff and into the rage that lies underneath – without all the arguing and fighting and nastiness that only uncovers a tiny part of the iceberg and actually DAMAGES a relationship – you’ll start to feel things loosen up and more affection, attention and love start to fill the space between you.

Instead of running away, or making an excuse for yourself or DEFENDING yourself – you want to:

1. Notice what’s going on with you.

Are you being run by fear? Do you want to run away? Do you want to hit him? Are you going numb? Are you determined to do whatever you have to to make peace and get his approval?

2. Speak the DEEPEST feeling you can find inside yourself.

That could be “I feel scared.” “I feel so angry.” “I feel turned off.”

When he questions you, just keep doing what you’re doing, saying your deepest feeling. If you have to put it in context, say “When I heard (you can repeat what he said here, or paraphrase it…just enough to let him know what you’re referring to…) – “I feel so tense…it felt awful…it feels scary..I felt like running…I feel like running…This doesn’t feel good to me…”

3. Stand your ground.

Don’t apologize for yourself, explain anything – and do not blame him, either.

Look him straight in the eye, as best you can. Lean back. You are not attacking, you are expressing.

What can you expect with doing it this way? All kinds of stuff will come up for you…

You’ll feel shaky, you’ll feel upset – and you’ll feel ANGRIER than you’ve ever felt! And what’s more…as YOU feel more comfortable with YOUR anger – so will he.

He’ll start to let you “have it.” He’ll start to let his anger out. And you have to be strong enough to hear anger and experience the ENERGY of anger – AS LONG AS IT’S NOT DIRECTED AT YOU!!

This means – the moment he turns it on YOU – you say “I’m happy to hear your feelings, even your anger, but I don’t want to feel attacked…” and if he doesn’t change his words and copy what you’re doing (expressing his feelings instead of blaming YOU)…then you must TURN AROUND AND WALK AWAY…!

When this happens, and emotions start to  surface,  I know it’s tough – but, actually – it’s fabulous!!! You are starting to communicate in a way that is triggering YOURSELF and your stuffed up and old feelings.

Now – all we have to do is get a routine down for how to handle your emotions when they bubble up…The more you tell him the truth, in feeling messages, the more you will feel that you don’t WANT to feel – otherwise you would have done this a long time ago.

Believe it or not – this is amazing PROGRESS. And – ALWAYS – the first emotion that shows up is ANGER.

Accept that you are enraged – and just keep processing it and sharing it. This is going to feel weird for a bit – so it’s really important you have a way to relax – to meditate – to regroup and ground yourself. Stuff you love that you can focus on and feel better quickly.

If he’s a man who NEEDS to put YOU down in order to feel okay – he won’t let up right away.  He’s going to up the ante, and keep at you to try to get a “rise” out of you so that you’ll go back to the old, crummy defense patterns you used to be stuck.

He may start to panic, and so he’ll do the only thing he knows – attacking you. You’re going to have to acknowledge how awful that feels right away – instead of stuffing down and answering him reasonably.

Later on – you’ll get a sense of humor about it – and he’ll stop doing this very soon…when you start feeling more powerful.

Defending yourself with anger or cleverness will not help you here – it will just make him work harder to top you.

As you express your anger simply, and let him know it doesn’t feel good, that you feel attacked, that you feel afraid of him and what he’ll say to you, and that it’s making you feel turned off…all this will change….You are only at the BEGINNING of this…be patient, take baby steps.

Love, Rori

This is a jump off from Susan’s comment about placating her depressed man and wanting to undo all that->

Here’s what’s going on:

We placate a depressed man because we’re afraid.  It’s a coping mechanism we’ve learned and used our whole lives to keep our trauma reactions at bay.

We’re afraid for a lot of reasons.

Depression isn’t a feeling. It’s a COVER for feelings.

If you’re prone to depression, it’s like a heavy lid over the soup of your feelings, making you numb, listless, sad-seeming.  The “soup” keeps steaming out, and it’s usually icky feelings that come up – grief, pain…actually comforting feelings we’re used to.

if you’re prone to anxiety (my lid looks like this) – then you feel jumpy and fearful when the soup of your feelings is in tumult and strong feelings are trying to come up to the surface.

When you’re with a man who’s depressed or anxious, and you consciously step back and simply focus on your own life, on being happy, on doing for yourself, on loving yourself – it feels weird and awful – because…

1. You’re afraid if you don’t do the placating, usual behaviors you do around him – his lid will pop and all his icky, horrible, scary feelings will come flying out at you – AND this is true!  They will!  And…

2. You’re afraid that his feelings flying out at you will be completely terrifying for you, and so your own lid on your own soup pot gets shaky with anxiety (fear) and your own feelings start to bubble up. And…

3. As you actually DO the things you don’t normally do – stepping back, smiling, not asking questions, not sitting down with him, not “doing” for him – you are actually REMOVING the lid – the cover from your soup pot – and FEELINGS underneath the anxiety actually come to the surface.

You start feeling things you don’t LIKE to feel.  You feel fear, and helplessness, and old pain, and old anger, and new anger…everything you’ve been safely stuffing down by placating him.

This is all new, and all scary, and just downright weird.

It doesn’t feel “nice.”  It’s not what you were taught to do.

And here’s how doing this ANYWAY – little by little (and don’t expect yourself to rip that lid off your soup in one try – please be gentle with yourself – you have to feel your way through this) will slowly begin to change your life in fundamental and hugely powerful ways:

Just KNOWING to expect all this upheaval will help you.  Just expect that when you step back you will feel weird. And then do it anyway.

Smile, even though he’s moping.  Leave the house, even though he looks lonely.

And when you start to feel stronger, and learn how to use feeling messages and can go several “rounds” with a man in deep, connected conversation while staying in “Dance Position,” being in Strong Surrender and feeling strong inside…then…

Talk with him.

Sit down, do a “negotiation” like in my ebook – where you share your feelings about being in his presence when he’s depressed – your urge to help – your willingness to research cures for depression and let him know what you’ve found – what he’d like you to do about helping him – and that it feels bad to be around him when he’s down.

Now here’s the really powerful part:

The bottom line of depression is anger.  A depressed person is sitting on tons of rage.  And we sense this on a deep level – and so it’s actually frightening to be around a depressed person.

People usually would so much rather be around a depressed person than an angry person – for so many obvious and subconscious reasons – and so we almost automatically feed the depression rather than being able to facilitate the anger.

When a depressed man starts to get angry – that’s good.  It’s our job to let that happen, and move away from it if we need to – but not try to “reason” with it or “talk it down.”

Now – you can see that this feels like a minefield to most of us.  I mean, who would knowingly be willing to unearth and be present for rage in someone else?  We’d get triggered!

And yet – as you’ll find out – when that anger surfaces, all of a sudden the tension goes away.  The juice in the relationship comes back.  He comes back to life.

This doesn’t happen overnight – and your process of hearing and experiencing all that anger coming out instead of sitting safely beneath the surface is monumental and crucial for you – because YOU are sitting on rage, too!

That’s the thing.  When he’s stuffing it – you feel it more.  Then you stuff it, and he feels it more.

When you both slowly stop stuffing and start expressing (for him it will look more like a scary vent – for you – well – you know how to “Fall To Your Knees” – to “Sink Into Feelings” and use “Feeling Messages” so it will look and feel like a glorious, charismatic reclaiming of yourself and a vast feeling of personal power and self-esteem) – everything will change for the better.

And – if he’s not capable of change – you’ll know, and you’ll also know what to do.

In the meantime – expect messiness. Expect “ugliness” – and embrace it as BEAUTIFUL.  Expect “bouncing” in your feelings, and just ride with it.  Hang onto your feeling messages, stay with yourself and on your beautiful Horse, and just keep going toward the life you want.  It starts inside you – with the courage to experiment, retrack if you need to, and just keep going.

Let me know if this tidbit of understanding makes you feel braver.

Love, Rori