Have The Relationship You Want

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

I mess-up all the time. Sometimes it’s just not leaving enough time to do something, or faulty prioritizing, or forgetting something at the market. Sometimes I actually hurt someone’s feelings. Sometimes I’m oblivious to what’s going on, and sometimes I just put my foot in it.

So what’s the message when my foot’s in my mouth?

I think everything that shows up in our lives is either a mirror or a message, and there’s always a lesson, and there’s always a take-away.

Most of the time these days, I’ve noticed the message coming in loud and clear: Pay attention! Be aware! Look around! Be here now!

Unfortunately, once my foot is in my mouth, or I’m sprawled on the pavement, or my husband is staring at me as though I’ve just committed murder, it’s a little late to process the message. A little late to undo the error. Oh, for do-overs.

So what, exactly, is a mistake, and what is a fair price to pay for making one?

I’ve come to think of a mistake as thinking a little bit too hard about me.

Sometimes what’s a mistake to one person is a boon to another, and some mistakes turn out to be lucky intuition, like the artist of any medium who forges a new road from his soul by mistakenly taking the wrong turn.

I can think of every man in my life until my lovely husband as a mistake. I can think of every man in my life as some kind of lesson. As a stepping-stone, a passage. Or I can see that every man in my life was exactly right for me at any given moment, and all I needed to do was see his message.

The message might have been Alright. Thank you for attending. Now you can move on. Or it might have been, I’m not supposed to go any further, please proceed without me. Or This is a very nice place to be, so sorry you’re not ready yet. I must have come across many men I couldn’t have, not because they wouldn’t want me, but because they knew I didn’t want me.

How to tell the difference between the mistake, the mirror and the message?

The mirror shows you where you are, the mistake shows you where you’ve been, and the message invites you to go where you want to be. I listen to them all, but I look for messages. Sometimes I can’t see them or hear them or feel them, because I’m too absorbed in the mirror, or too despondent over the mistake.

The thing about messages is, in order to see them, you have to be still.

In order to hear them, you have to be quiet.

And in order to feel them, you have to be in your body.

Mistakes are a loss of attention. They throw us off the gameboard into the sand trap. They’re us trying to take charge of the brave and thoughtful horse we’re riding, the horse who really knows the way, and steering him off course into the woods because we thought we saw a turn back there we missed.

The fastest way out of a mistake is to fight. Going dead inside and numb and depressed gets us deeper into the quagmire. Fighting is recovering our self- esteem by topping accusing ourselves - How could I have done that? or denying responsibility - It wasn’t my fault! or taking on responsibility that isn’t ours - It was all my fault…or lying to others - I didn’t do that! or lying to ourselves - I don’t care!

Fighting is saying Oh….. and then going down into that Soup of yuck and dread and pain and misery, and guilt, and everything we feel, until we touch love.

Touching love feels like oh, I did that, and I feel love for that person, that thing, or myself, and I feel sad for the pain I caused them, or me, and I’m still a good person, and I still absolutely, completely, deeply and profoundly love and accept myself. Touching love is all of a sudden stopping the resistance of that knot in your belly, and just feeling what you feel.

It’s stopping smiling, blaming, counting, imagining, justifying, excusing, making up stuff, wishing, hoping, and everything else and just feeling the weight of not feeling good. For maybe a good solid moment. And then, getting back on the horse, and riding it out of the sand and onto the road. The moment you turn to the horse and say, I’ve made a mistake and I can still ride like the wind, time starts again, the weather starts again, and the message signs all around start blinking.

A Message is another chance to pay attention. Another chance to dance with what shows up. Another chance to enjoy the moment. Another chance to catch another Message. And the message always is: There will always be mistakes, and mirrors and messages, because our lives are always moving, and we will never learn everything there is to learn.

Sometimes the Mistake IS the Message.

Love, Rori