Have The Relationship You Want

If there’s distance between you, there’s anger.

If you’re being “extra nice…” you’re angry.

If you’re giving more than you’re getting…you’re angry.

There are two parts to this puzzle:

1. Whether or not you can touch your anger and how you feel when you do, and…

2. What you do with what you feel.

Let’s say you can’t figure out why you’re “blue.”

Ask yourself…Where am I angry?

You may be surprised at the question.  You may say to yourself…I’m not angry, I’m sad.

Ask again.

Keep asking until you connect with your anger (I can guarantee you’re feeling it…just don’t try to ask yourself – ‘Why am I feeling it?’)…and then follow through with touching it, looking at it, embracing it, admiring its power, and owning it.

You can ask follow-up questions:

Who am I angry at?

What am I angry at?

How angry am I?

Once you’ve just got in touch with your anger…don’t hold it at arm’s length.  Get close to it.  Study it.  Play with it.  Put your arms around it.  Put your heart around it.  Say…Where have you been all my life?

Once you’re all touchy-feely with your rage, you’re going to notice some other feelings show up and try to muscle in on your new relationship.

You’ll notice guilt creep on over.  And then fear.

That’s because anger is such a powerful feeling  (let’s face it, in the grip of rage, we feel like we want to kill someone.  To push him off a cliff or smash him in two.  Own up to any such impulse.  Pretend you’re an actress and you have to find the power in your anger in order to get your much-deserved Academy Award for your “raw” and “authentic” presence in your own life…) — it’s SO powerful, we’re actually afraid we might DO something like that – kill him and wipe out half the planet doing it.

And you won’t.  I know you won’t.  You’re just too fabulous a woman to bother doing that.

So, now you have to accept, look at, embrace the guilt and the fear, too.

And, if you’re doing this right, you’ll also uncover grief.  It may be so intense you blank out and go numb for a moment…so when you touch it, even for a split-second – give yourself a “high-five.”

Okay…first step accomplished.

Now…what are you going to DO with all that emotion?

Are you going to cut loose and wail at a man?  Are you going to demand he change, now, or buddy,  you’re out the door?

Are you going to go the “spiritual route” and play nice?  Get all understanding and compassionate and neutral and try to have a reasonable discussion?

Or are you going to just stuff it down for another day and go about your business?

Here’s where the art of being you works so brilliantly…

1. If you’re by yourself and in your own home where you can feel all private and safe, that’s terrific. You can jump up and down, you can punch the air with your face, you can lay down on the floor and start breathing into all that anger and grief and guilt and everything else you feel until you get so bored you want to turn on the TV and watch something stupid — or even better one a get out and take a nice walk in the neighborhood and look at and kiss some beautiful trees.

You can pet yourself and hug yourself and make yourself some tea and allow yourself to giggle over all this intensity you’re feeling or allow yourself to cry over everything you’re feeling, and shake a bit –  and then you may feel like doing something like dance around the room…

2. But most likely you’re out in public. You’re sitting across from a man in a restaurant. You’re walking with him from the car. You’re stuck in the car with him. You’re in his house or your house and all of a sudden you feel the intensity of how deeply he is ignoring you, dismissing you, not interested in you, or just plain mean.

Well, you first have to do the first part of this which is to figure out a way, logistically, to feel what you’re feeling — especially your anger.

This usually means you have to get up and go to the ladies room. Or you have to turn around and walk back to the car or you have to stop talking and turn your face away from him while you’re walking. You have to sit at the table with your head in your hands blocking out everything and simply tuning in to what’s going on with you and asking yourself questions that you need to ask.

I prefer the bathroom, but I have learned to just sit there feeling my face turn red and my body want to fight or flee, with my face in my hand, in total silence, and process through these questions and my feelings amazingly quickly.

So I know that you can too.

3. Now, here comes the “action” part. What you DO if you’re out in public or he’s right in front of you in your kitchen.

I’m going to have to write a lot of posts about this because there are so many pieces to this, but let’s start here.

If the first part is about “processing” through your feelings, then the second part is how you express that to him.

And to make things simple here again to give you just two options:

1. You speak the truth in Feeling Messages — you sayI. (If you have not finished processing through the truth might be I feel confused, or I feel uncomfortable, or something else that expresses how you feel in a way that makes you feel like you’ve really expressed yourself  (without, of course, talking about him or making him wrong).

2. If you’ve done this more than a few times with a man, if you’ve had to express the same thing to him over and over (for instance, he’s asked you not to do something so that he can do it for you himself,  only he hasn’t taken the time to do it and you’re finding yourself waiting… or he’s dismissed your feelings and you’ve told him many times how bad you feel when that happens) — then you WALK AWAY.

Simple… you just turn around and go in the other direction.

You go find the ladies room in a public place, or you go home in a taxi or your own car, or you take yourself to a bedroom and close the door. You can say This feels bad and I don’t want to feel this, and then walk away, or you can say I don’t want to do this right now and walk away or you can just say I want to go home and walk away, or you can even just turn and walk into the kitchen and not say anything.

What ever you do — you have to feel this:

You have to feel as though you have HONORED your anger.

This doesn’t mean you have to feel like you hurt him, or a person at work or another circumstance who has hurt you. It doesn’t mean you have to do damage. It doesn’t mean you have to have revenge. It doesn’t mean you have to have some kind of physical or emotional effect on him. It does not mean you have to have a result of any kind.

Honoring your anger feels like you are WHOLE

It feels like you are in one piece. You don’t feel shattered, you don’t feel disconnected from yourself, you don’t feel conflicted — you don’t feel like your anger and your guilt and your grief are all pulling on each other from different directions.

You feel all of a piece. You are you. Whole. Complete. Beautiful. Angry.

Don’t look for a result of the feelings going away. That’s not the point. Feelings are powerful things and they keep moving around all the time. They move through your body.  The more they change, and the more you attend to them with the intention of honoring them and ALLOWING them to move anyway they choose, they will begin to morph into better feeling feelings.

And, as a bonus, when the anger gets felt and expressed — when YOU can do it FIRST — everything will open up in a relationship.  Love comes back from behind the barricades set up by the effort, on both your parts, to make the anger “behave.”

I love your anger. I love all of you. I love all of me. Let’s rock.

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 close to my heart that I haven’t really talked about much before…this letter states the problem exactly, and I’d love to get a dialogue going around it…

“Hi Rori,
I am 27 years old, I been with my high school sweetheart for almost ten years. We have been engaged for about ten years except he hasn’t officially proposed to me because he doesn’t have the money to purchase a ring. I love him and I know he loves me, but one of our biggest problems is our communication. It’s hard to explain, I feel as if one day we are very close and in touch with each others feelings, and the next day we get into a small fight- because I forgot to call or didn’t think about doing or saying something.

I feel like he bites my head off for small things, and if I apologize, (which I seem to do very often) it still doesn’t matter, he still remains upset with me and doesn’t want to get past it and move on. I feel tired of constantly feeling “inadequate” in our relationship. I feel like I’m always walking on eggshells. When I approach to talk to him about “our last fight” he says things like “you can talk all you want but I have nothing new to say.” This type of response from him makes me feel like I can’t fully trust him. One day he tells me that I should trust him more and be able to share anything, because he loves me and he wants to be that support for me. Yet, when I do, he shuts down….

I feel so confused and lost because I feel like he is not following through with his talks about how much he cares about me. I hate fighting with him and everytime it happens I just want to hurry up and make it better, either by apologyzing and clearing the air, etc. so that we can continue to enjoy each other. But, he is totally different, he could care less about making up. He stays like that for a few days until he finally decides that the whole situation is silly and that we should move on. I’m tired of this emotional drain-pattern, in my opinion is not normal.

I feel like we fight more than we make love, and as soon as we begin to reconnect, some stupid fight manages to sneak up on us and then we disconnect again!!! I don’t know what to do in order to feel secure in this relationship, secured to know that he is as crazy about me as I am about him. I don’t want to end the relationship because he truly is an amazing guy, I just don’t know how to inspire him to really SHOW his love for me. Do you think I’m been flaky and emotional?? I feel so insecure about myself right now…

Hope you can give me a helpful advice, Thanks Mary”

Dear Mary – I’m VERY familiar with this – you’ve got a MOODY man.

He has emotional issues. and the way he’s dealing with trying to keep himself together is by blowing steam out at you. The nicer you are, the more understanding you are, the more you tolerate this kind of thing – the worse it’s going to get – because your very “niceness” and “understanding” make him feel even WORSE about HIMSELF – and then he feels angrier with YOU for making him feel that way.

Plus (some bonus…) it completely destroys his ATTRACTION to you because he considers any woman who’d be “nice” to him when he KNOWS he’s being a “jerk” to be pretty much “worthless.” His respect for you will go down – and your self-esteem will take the plunge with it.

Step 1 for you: STOP being overly nice.

When he gets upset. say “I feel awful and I don’t want to fight.” Let him blow off a bit of his anger, and then say “This feels awful, I want to feel close to you, and I don’t want to fight…” and then LEAVE the room! If all he wants to do is vent at you – DON’T be his punching bag!!!

Say – “it would feel great to talk about how we can not have these kinds of fights. I’d love to talk about what’s going on and it doesn’t feel good.”

There may also be something he’s feeling bad and guilty about that you have NO IDEA about (and it may be something you DO know about – work, family, kids, money…) – and so he’s taking it out on you. (And please don’t start getting worried or suspicious – I just want to make you aware – but an attraction to or flirtation with another woman, though it’s just one of hundreds of possibilities of things that might be bothering him, is a possibility. I’ve seen this kind of thing sneak up on many a bright, lovely woman when her man is angry, tense, combative, starting arguments, and making drama.)

My guess is this has nothing to do with you (or any other woman) – and everything to do with something going on with him in his life outside of you that’s making him feel bad.  Money issues alone (and you mention he can’t afford a ring…) can do this to a man.

What you need to do next is to learn to…

Step 2 – TALK

So – how do you talk about problems in a relationship without doing the dreaded “relationship talk”?

First, you have to write this out. Write out a speech full of Feeling Messages and business-like fact gathering. Your goal here is INTIMACY and CLOSENESS – NOT to get him to change, or do what you want.  The DIALOGUE alone is what you want – and ANYTHING that happens is part of that…

Start with “I’ve noticed we’re angry a lot, and fighting a lot, and it feels awful. I don’t know what to do. I know there are things we’re both upset about – (money…sex…whatever’s always coming up), and it would feel so good to talk about it and solve some of it.  Can we talk? Is now a good time? What do you think?”

Let him respond.  Really listen to him, without thinking about your own agenda.

If you’re feeling frightened of his possible anger, and you can feel yourself wanting to walk on eggshells, say “I’m feeling afraid.  I’m afraid of your anger.  I can feel myself wanting to tiptoe and walk on eggshells, and I don’t want to do that.  That feels awful.”

If at any point he starts attacking you verbally – try a Power Speech (my Toxic Men program is all about Power Speeches) – where you say something like - “I hear how angry you are.  I hear that you’re angry with me…This feels scary, and yet I want to feel heard, and so I want to hear you…and yet I feel really, really bad, and now I’m feeling attacked, and I don’t want to feel attacked.  I’m happy to hear how you feel, and I don’t want to be attacked, and so I’m going to leave now…” And just walk backwards and away.

Don’t let him strong-arm you, and don’t let him attack you.  Screaming at you is not attacking you.  Leaning forward with his face red and his fists in the air is pretty scary, but as long as you’re sure he would never touch you or physically hurt you, you want to be able to stand there while he turns red and screams “I’m just so frustrated with you!” (Even though you’d NEVER say that to him – you’d just say “I’m feeling so frustrated!”)

The more anger that’s unexpressed, the more distant the relationship.  There’s no way to heal this without the anger coming up.  You have to be able to hear it without folding – even though it may trigger an old traumatic reaction inside you and make you want to run or scream back – or just freeze.  See if you can do none of those things (it takes practice) – and simply say how you feel.  And when you’ve had enough – just say – “I’ve reached my limit, I can’t hear anymore,” and leave.

If you do this, you’ll break all your old patterns, and you’ll feel so much better and stronger inside.  And if he still can’t join in the dialogue to save your relationship – and without attacking you – then you will likely feel less and less for him.  It will be YOU losing interest in HIM.

Remember – this isn’t about you being understanding and tolerating him however he is.  This is very specifically standing your ground and building YOUR tolerance for being present when he’s angry, and knowing when to walk away when you’ve had enough.

It’s sort of a fearless, powerful thing to do – and he’ll get it right away.

You may be shocked to find the whole anger experience turns into a crying experience – yours AND his – though he’ll likely do anything he can to keep from going there, and anger is a really standard way men get to stay away from their pain.

Remember, too – you may be aware of the pain underneath his anger – but he’s NOT A LITTLE BOY.  Do not “understand” him and be “nice” to him because of the pain you know is underneath. Just build your own ability to tolerate being in the presence of intense emotion – especially YOURS (this is where Modern Siren comes in…) – and you’ll be surprised how quickly things get intimate, and the blow ups become less and less a part of your relationship.

Try getting your mind around this, and then practice in your imagination.  Let me know what happens next time…Love, Rori

How does relationship conflict hurt your body?  Your health?  Your mind?

Okay, we all know stress is a demon – but I saw an article in the newspaper with actual data for women.

It seems that women in “strained” marriages are more likely than other wives to have high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease.

The research was done at the University of Utah – they studied more than 300 couples who had been married for more than 20 years.  They answered questions about their relationship and mental state and took tests.

They found that the women in high “strife” marriages were more likely to have depression (that one I could have guessed) – but also “metabolic syndrome.”

They listed things like a thick waist, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and abnormal blood sugar that showed up in these women – but here’s the kicker: Tim Smith of the University of Utah said:

“What we found is that negative aspects of the marriage – a high level of conflict and discord – were associated with increased levels of metabolic syndrome for women and not for men.”

In other words – men are just fine with a crappy marriage.

They guessed that the increase of “metabolic syndrome” was explained by the fact that women in “strained” marriages (as they put it) reported more levels of depression – which is – a known risk factor for heart disease.

They’re presenting this study currently at a meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society – a place where they at least consider the effects of emotions and mental states on the body  – but still, where your illness can be “all in your head” regardless of the actual physical symptoms.

This is something so many doctors unfortunately say about actual illnesses they just can’t diagnose or define – rather than say it might have been “caused” by your head, and therefore might be “uncaused” by your head, or “affected” by your head – they often say it’s “all in” your head and don’t even consider the possible actual physical components.

So – what does unhappiness in a relationship do to your body?  A lot.

So – sometimes the pain we feel is ours, just triggered by a person who happens to be a man just doing something he normally does without meaning to trigger us.

And sometimes the pain we feel is being triggered by that person on purpose – by US.

Sometimes we CHOOSE a person on purpose – BECAUSE he triggers us, BECAUSE he makes us feel bad.

So – blaming him isn’t really going to help us deal with why we’re THERE in that situation.

That means we have to figure out why so many of us women are in relationship situations that are bad-feeling enough to make us SICK!  And not just mentally upset and depressed and blue – we’re talking bodily illness sick.

There’s an old saying in the therapist community – about how we each have to choose to either be “sorry or sick.”

And that means – when you become willing to look at your OWN stuff – you unearth all kinds of things that make you feel “sorry.”  You’re sorry you did that, put yourself there, stuffed that down, forgot that, didn’t honor yourself there, are doing this, saying that, are in this place…

But the only other alternative to that – to constantly being aware of who you are and where you are and how you feel every time you feel triggered (because that’s telling you where you’ve BEEN, without having to dig all that past stuff up – just feeling it NOW is enough for the lesson to work) – is to stuff it all down, limit all awareness, keep a mask plastered over your face and your feelings and your soul – and be “sick.”

We women have lovely sensibilities.  We pick up things that men miss.  We’re wired differently, and thank goodness for that.

So – choose “sorry” over “sick.”  The “sorry” will pass, and you’ll make a clean, clear space for “happy” to enter and fill you up. And…don’t bother with beating yourself up.  “Sorry” isn’t about that.  “Sorry” is just taking responsibility for yourself and feeling moved by it all so you can keep moving.

The willingness to choose “sorry” will give you the ability to find your way through the maze of old habits and bright shiny objects and land at “happy.”

I’m not just talking about being in a marriage, or long term relationship – I’m talking about those 1 week and 2 month and 4 month and 6 month and 1 year relationships that are so easy to fall into when you’re not following the Rori Raye rules of Circular Dating.

I’m talking about that “stuck” feeling – where what you want and what you have and what you want to feel and what you actually feel are so different you feel pulled between sorry and sick and are afraid to choose.

So – Here’s to not ever getting trapped somewhere we don’t want to be because we’re choosing not to see What Is right in front of us, what is True for us, what might make us feel “sorry.”

I for one am EMBRACING “sorry,” so I can stare “sick” right in the face and laugh.  Join me.

Love, Rori