Have The Relationship You Want

OMG – I LOVED this movie!

You don’t need me if you’re in this situation – just do what Meryl Street does!

She lays it all on the line, lays her heart out there, says the truth, doesn’t blame him…and won’t settle for less than she wants – a whole, real marriage.

Go see it, or rent it as soon as it comes out.

Some things I got from this:

My mother called me several times after she saw it to ask me what I thought. After I saw it and talked to her about it, her comments were nothing near what I expected. She said…

“He’s an ignoramous!  What would she want with him? How could he reject her like that?  He’s stupid?”

And I realized that this is what we all think… More…

I did this for fun, and because I thought you might like to hear me and give feedback on it here (I so seldom do these things….but I like Patricia…)

Patricia Raskin’s Positive Living

Have the Relationship You Want – Rori Raye

July 30, 2012 – 11am PDT

IN THE FIRST HALF HOUR of her program on July 30th at 11 am PDT, join nationally recognized multi-media talk show host and award winning producer Patricia Raskin, as she interviews Rori Raye, relationship expert who has helped thousands of women experience success in their love lives. She will discuss her book “Have the Relationship You Want” ; A Step By Step Guide to Transforming Your Love Life Overnight. Learn More »

Missed the Live Shows? Past Episodes are available On Demand and Podcast Ready.

I thought this was a fascinating article:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/19/demi-moore-ashton-kutcher-open-relationships-and-divorce.html

There’s so much I have to say about it – mostly it’s about:

There’s a level at which we women accept things – things we might not have ever thought we could accept, but things we kind of go along with, feel okay about, weigh the trade-offs of, make temporary decisions about, let time pass and hope weirdness will go away around, make excuses about, justify, reassure ourselves about, act cool around – until we aren’t okay with them anymore.

Sometimes the line is so small – no one else understands what was the “straw” that broke things for you.

Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves when the moment was when it was “okay,” and when the moment was when it was “not okay.”

It all turns into a blur, but a bad-feeling blur.

I don’t know what happened here for Demi – and I don’t believe (though I can’t know) that Ashton would have divorced her.

I don’t think there was any reason he’d want to leave her – I think he had everything he wanted, his cake and eating it, too – and is likely very offended that all of a sudden things aren’t “okay.”

When a man veers from “This is okay and acceptable in my relationship” to being a jerk who hurts a woman…sometimes it’s a very small thing, for him.

When you’re a celebrity – I don’t know how they do it.

There are no secrets you can keep.

No bargains or allowances you can make that people won’t eventually find out about.

No compromises that don’t come back to haunt you.

Everyone knows what it feels like to be humiliated – and we’ve seen many well-known women go through it majorly publicly – and I think, all of a sudden, we women have made some kind of a pact with each other.

We’ve kind of decided now, as a group, famous or not, that betrayal is not the straw that breaks the relationship. It’s not even about the sheer “jerkiness” of it. It’s the spirit  of the betrayal, and it’s the fallout.  Once everyone knows, it’s just not possible to carry on.

We’ve decided that we can no longer be the “good wife.”  I think that’s done, now.

Even if we love a man and want to carry on and patch it up – and he’s not trying to get out of the relationship or marriage – we just can’t do it anymore.

As the author of the article, Tracy Quan says, the key is when a woman feels “undermined.”

And that kind of says it for me.

The whole point, for me, of a romantic partnership is to assist each other to grow as a person.

And if what a man does affects a woman in a way that makes her have to choose whether she’s better off growing as a person by leaving him or by staying with him – and it seems that, no matter what else there is good and wonderful in the relationship, leaving him is the path to growth…then that’s the right road.

We could say, then, that staying with Bill Clinton was the path of growth for Hillary Clinton.  That, despite everything, the humiliation of his betrayal, all of it – he still was committed to her personal growth in a way no one else was.  That’s how she say it, and so she stayed – and I don’t think anyone would argue with her results.

Does this mean that we should stay with a man of power because it seems like the road to growth?

I’m not saying financial growth – I’m saying personal growth.  Growth as a person.

We can ALL see that Demi can surely meet many, many men who would support her personal growth, and that starting fresh is the way to go here.

So – the take away from this is – even though we’re not celebrities, with all kinds of obvious options – when a man who isn’t even betraying us is NOT supporting our personal growth – is that the time to leave?

Sometimes it’s subtle.  Sometimes the line is really, really blurry.

And I think now, that so many women are leaving so many men they might have stayed with before, is a great time to feel our own priorities and pressing needs.

Now’s the time to say what we want, practice warmth and love instead of fear and suspicion – and trust ourselves to leave when we’re endangering our well being.

Love, Rori

Here’s an excerpt from an article I found online:

Lady Gaga and the death of sex

An erotic breaker of taboos or an asexual copycat? Camille Paglia, America’s foremost cultural critic, demolishes an icon

“…Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…”

Here’s the whole article:

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article389697.ece

And here’s the comment I tried to make on the article:

Sorry – not a big fan of anyone who’s about “demolishing” others. More…

The 4th of July is about our independence from England…But more than that, it’s about the creation of our own country.

If there could be a metaphor about love here filled with the kind of love advice that talks about being independent and inter-dependent in a romantic relationship…would that look like cannons, and battle, and sparklers and conflict?

Or would that look more like the coming together of battle leaders and statesmen to negotiate an experiment in how to run a country without a king or queen. How each person (theoretically) could have a bit of power to make the big decisions and somehow be represented.

Or maybe it’s everything: Conflict, passion, attack, surrender, leaders and followers, negotiating, statesmanship, creating union, creating freedom, creating a new model for life, making decisions. Standing on your own two feet. Believing in yourself. Believing in each other. Plus romance, sex, laughing, sitting around…

So, let’s just call this independence from tyranny, and at the same time, creation of a harmonious new union More…

Okay – I’m trudging through this saga picking up so many scenarios to work with…I like the movies so much better!

And the reason why the books don’t work – in my opinion – is that we only hear, see and feel Bella’s experience.  So when our hero finally makes an appearance in “New Moon” – he’s already lost his glow.  He’s lost his hero status.

Yes, I get the Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights thing.  Yes, I get the teenage thing here.  And we women are very capable of filling in the holes – but this hole-filling is exhausting.  I wanted my hero Edward the way he was in the first book – always there.

And…that leads me to the fantasy, and the really terrific thing that Stephanie Meyers, the author of these books, helped us and so many girls out More…

It’s taken me a while to process this and make connections.

What is it about deceit that’s almost worse than cheating in the first place?

I mean – truly – we ALL lie.

We lie to protect ourselves.

We say we lie to protect other people, and sometimes that’s true, perhaps – but mostly we lie to protect ourselves from what would happen if we told the truth.

And if your man lied about being with friends watching sports on TV when actually he was at a club with those friends – because he was afraid More…

Thank you J, for giving us that brilliant short version of the Good Wife (and I’m still holding hope that the whole Kalinda/Peter thing didn’t happen…). And Mercedes – thank you for your take on “reframing reality” and Alicia’s line “What can you say to make me fall in love with you again?” that struck a chord with so many of us.

We all have our own scenarios where we would want to have said that. And yes, we all want do-overs.  Some help that maybe this isn’t as bad or humiliating as I think it is.

And yet, I just think this episode, dramatically, was about Alicia losing her cool – and yet still asking the basic question.

After being a model of restraint, she breaks down, goes after Peter in the hallway (very uncharacteristic of her) and just starts wanting to throw things in his face, but still doesn’t.

She’s still Alicia, using words the way we wish we all could – but without her normal control. Instead of answering him back with her own venom, she answers his original question at the moment he showed up: “What can I do to make this More…

We’re having a passionate discussion (between J. and I) about a fictional bunch of people!  The Good Wife TV show.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s practically my favorite show ever, I love the heroine, Alicia (you can likely watch it online.

At the end of last night’s show – many things happened, but mostly an ugly thing (I was so hoping it wasn’t true – and perhaps it actually isn’t, but we won’t know for now…)  came out about Alicia’s husband’s past indiscretions, this one involving Alicia’s best friend.

From J:

Rori, I was wondering if you’ve noticed this too? And I don’t know if you are still watching the Good Wife, but it was all so good – Alicia was owning it – until she screamed say something to make me love you. And it was too late, his “switch” had flipped. Would love to hear your thoughts….

I write about relationships a lot; I post on a relationship blog. I’ve written about this phenomena I’ve witnessed.

With men – all men! – there is this point past which if you push, you lose. A man will do anything for love. He’ll endure harassment, suspicion, More…

Not writing about this would make me seem out of touch – and yet I am.  I just now saw some video clips and a moment-by-moment written description of the day at several sites…and…well…I love it.

I would be lying if I didn’t say I teared up.

She’s so calm and lovely, he’s so…well, royal.

I love the pageantry.

I don’t like that it’s cost Britain so much money (I think they made a terrible mistake making today a “bank holiday” – will cost them billions).

And real life is still kind of scary with security, arrests, bad apples.

And yet – they rode away in a sports car with Wills driving, and they seem as normal as people can be in that situation.

I mean – what would it feel like if the whole world were into YOUR love life?

It must be an odd way to live…and I imagine that’s why it took Kate 9 years (of course, we don’t know who made the decision when, but they’ve been living together quite a long time) to decide if she wanted this kind of life.  And she seems totally okay with it.

So…I’m just going to use this situation to ask – does your love life have to look like anyone else’s?

Can you be happy with several lovers, living on a boat, traveling non-stop, married to a pleasant but not exciting man, married to a couch potato More…