Have The Relationship You Want

For me, the Drew Barrymore character here was all about Hope. (Again – Spoiler alert – I tell it all, so see the movie first…)

She was confused, challenged by the same limited understanding of men and relationships that we’ve all suffered with, made worse by all the social networking alternatives and ways of contacting – and still willing to hope.

In the end, when she meets Mr. Right – it’s not because she’s trying to pick up a guy – it’s because she has a genuine business and personal connection with this man she’s never met before, but who she recognizes from his picture.

So – how do you stay smiling and hopeful when possibility after possibility drops away?

1. Take inventory.

That means – go around your home, take a look at and write down what’s great about where you are RIGHT NOW in your life.  Find the good stuff.

AND – toss out the not-so-good.  This means clutter.

If you’re going to be hopeful, you have to clear out your brains and your environment, because it’s so easy to get sidetracked and distracted from your mission when everything looks like a “shiny new object” and everything looks like an opportunity.

So – DE-CLUTTER.  Now.

Go to one drawer or one tabletop or one desk or one surface, and start throwing things away you don’t either love or need.  Everything.  If you’re not sure, put it in one place with everything else you’re not sure about.

Do this especially in your drawers and closet.  Holding onto ANYTHING that’s no longer holding a promise of looking good on you, being in style, or a color you actually adore on you is bad for Hope.

You can take it one room at a time, or one section at a time, or one drawer at time – do the thing you feel most moved to do – the thing that seems most fun and like you could work through the quickest.

You can make a list – or just go by feel – but…and this is important…DON’T GIVE UP.

You’re going to build hope in your own house by absolutely committing to finishing the job, clearing the decks, making room for…whatever shows up.

Now…

2. Go shopping.

This means food, necessities, and one pretty thing that’s very inexpensive, like a new pair of panties.

I want you to look around at all the things, all the colors, all the packages, all the so many things you could not even keep track of, and see this all as opportunity.  See that there are things in the store you can’t see from where you’re standing.  that from the egg section you can’t see the olives, and from the lingerie section you can’t see the shoes.

Essentially – all you can do is HOPE that there are olives and shoes.

Now…Buy a piece of poster board, a glue stick or tape, and if you don’t have any old magazines at home, buy one that has great pictures of things you want.

3. Go home and declutter some more, and then make a vision board.

That’s pretty simple – you take the magazine apart, cut out pictures and words that move you and glue them or tape them on the poster board.

Make it pretty.

There are lots of interesting ways to make it – a feng-shui way, a triggering way – let’s just make this a HOPE way – with no ideas about “manifesting” or making it happen.

Just look at it like a lovely vision and something you want, and enjoy it as much as you possibly can.

Put it somewhere you can see it all the time – and really imagine what it would be like to have each and every thing on it – to live that life…

Smile at it.

If you start feeling complaining and upset coming up because you don’t yet have all these things – just smile at yourself and the vision board, tilt your head, and say – I will!

Try it – think of the Drew Barrymore character and her happy ending.  I know you will have your Happy Ever After, too.

Love, Rori

For Ginnifer Goodwin’s character, I was torn between two words: Desire and Determination.

Desire feels good, it’s sexy.

Determination feels masculine – and yet that’s what made her character so singular and charming – her refusal to give up on her dreams, her determination to get what she wanted even if it meant hearing the truth from a man – the ugly, painful truth – over and over again.

She listened, she learned, she put herself out there, she experimented, she grew.

So let’s call this Tool “Determination in the service of Desire”:

1. Write out what you want.  Write it with DESIRE.

NOT some small, immediate goal like – I want him to call more often – in fact, absolutely NOTHING about a specific man – but like “I Desire that feeling of being touched and loved and at ease with myself.” “I Desire that feeling of security and comfort and excitement and being ‘first’ in a relationship.”

2. Now – feel what that Desire feels like.  Use the Riff Tool if you like – to stay focused on your body sensations and stay out of your thoughts.

See if you can turn yourself on with your Desire.

Notice if you’re fighting your Desire or pushing and leaning forward into it – or SINKING DOWN INTO IT (what I want for you…)

Now…

3. Add in some Determination.

See if you can formulate that in your mind without tightening your body.

It might feel tricky – like every time you move to an “I want this and I won’t stop wanting it, so I’m willing to experience and experiment and love myself like crazy until it shows up…” mindset, you trigger yourself into a spinning of the head.

So – just keep talking to yourself over and over, until you feel a pleasant tingle of Desire for your Determination!

Yep – see if you can sink down into your Determination – so it feels like a rock in you instead of a motor running…

…like this plant is sinking down into the soil…

Go ahead and imagine yourself holding yourself in your hands, like in this picture, and allowing yourself to sink down into the nurturing soil, to root yourself, to plant yourself…

4. Try it out there in the world.

Whenever you feel your motor running and your head spinning and find yourself Leaning Forward into something, locate your Desire and Determination, sink INTO them, and see if you can allow yourself to feel PLEASURE at the solid, rock-like, tree-like energy in you that is this Determination that comes from your Desire.

The Ginnifer Goodwin character actually throws herself at the Justin Long character – once.

And then, she learns.  She expresses her Determination and her Desire to him from a very clear place, and then she Circular Dates until – when he finally shows up – she’s Leaned Back.

She’s SUNK IN – very sure of her Desire and very Determined to see it through.

This is a very positive, happy image for me – I hope it works well for you, too.

Love, Rori

Okay – what drama.  What a shambles.  High energy Reality TV, a mess very much like what happens everyday with people  – men and women who get engaged to one sister or brother in a family and then want to marry the other, who move through life like they’re in high school.

People who don’t know what they want and who can’t find their feelings.

Jason finally found his – maybe.

If you don’t know what happened, this season’s The Bachelor picked Melissa for the win, for the wife – put a ring on her finger and declared his undying love and devotion.  6 weeks later, after some time together in real life (though not that much – this is show-biz, remember, and they had to keep it a secret), he lost his feelings for her, the communication and passion died, and – he says – she knew it wasn’t working as well as he did.

As he lost his feelings for her, his memory of his feelings for Molly, the runner-up he’d dumped on the podium just before he proposed to Melissa grew.  Molly dialed up, Melissa dialed down.  He couldn’t get Molly out of his mind.

And so – according to Jason, he was forced to dump Melissa on TV in front of us all.

And then, they brought in Molly, who he instantly professed his feelings for and asked out.

At this moment in time, Jason and Molly are dating, and she plans to move to his city soon.

And Jason – and Molly with him – is getting pilloried.  He’s being attacked for being a jerk.

Well – I’m not attacking him.  What did he do?  He did what any man would do – he followed orders. He could easily have broken his contractual obligations and told Molly beforehand, worked out a deal, and then, later, called Molly.  But no – they did it on TV. It may have been real, it may have been fake, Melissa might have known what was going to happen, she might have known a bit of it but been surprised by others – she and Jason emailed each other before and after – and it’s hard to tell.

And the only thing I know for sure and have a strong opinion on is this – Melissa – you should have kept the ring.

When I saw Melissa take the ring off her finger and hand it to Jason, who took it – I was appalled.

Now I understood why Melissa says she’s always the dumpee, why this always happens to her, and why she can’t get a relationship.

I don’t know what happened between them.  Something dried up – perhaps it was Melissa, perhaps it was just not a real good match deep down.  Perhaps Jason’s urges from his own self overcame the good judgment he thought he’d displayed with Melissa.  Perhaps Molly is the right woman for him and he felt compelled to turn her away out of fear – who knows.

Now, Melissa says she’s in a great place, she doesn’t regret anything.

But I do  know that if a man dumps you, you keep the ring. You sell it and buy yourself something really, really nice – like a car or a wardrobe or part of a down-payment on a house, or you throw it in the river, or you sell it on Ebay as “Melissa’s Ring” and cash in and give the money to charity.  The ring wasn’t a promise.  The ring was a gift.  And it was hers.

The thing is – how can we expect anyone to get a bearings on anything emotional in a situation like the Bachelor?  How can anyone get past infatuation and a HOPE that the person is who they think she or he is, or who they HOPE she or he is?

Here’s my take – I think Jason was wrenched between what he was attracted to and…what he was attracted to.

His body went for both of them, but mostly for Melissa. And his mind went for Melissa, and his sense of comfort went with Melissa, and his hopes for a family group were with Melissa.  She was the “appropriate” one – and she was the one who was most his “type.” She was a “DeAnna” type physically.   She was the nicer one, the cuddlier one, the most comforting.  She was homey and sexy. A “great girl.”

And Molly has an “edge.”

Her voice is a little grating, and she’s witty and combative.

She didn’t seem “right” to him on some level – though he was attracted to her in a more emotional way than he knew.

So – we can disregard whether this is all real or not – and let’s just treat it as if it is.

Jason swears he was in love with Melissa when he proposed.  I think he was filled up with Melissa’s “greatness” and his physical attraction to her, but then that just didn’t translate into “feelings” for him.  He says she would be the “perfect wife.”  “Loyal,” he said.  “There for you,” he said.

Well, that sounds more like a dog than a woman.  That sounds like your mother, not your wife.

He’d made a sexual connection with Melissa, and appreciated her incredible qualities, but he hadn’t made an emotional connection.

Somehow, he started to feel that Molly was easier for him to be with.  He took his energy from Melissa and gave it to Molly – so that when he finally saw Molly, 6 weeks later, she felt right to him still, and 6 weeks later, after spending 3 weekends together, he still feels right with her.

This is what Jason said to the Seattle Times right after the last show was aired:

Jason: Melissa is that person I thought going into it I would end up with. I guess in a way she’s similar to a lot of other girls I’ve dated in my life, which is part of the reason why I ended up picking her. It was just something I was so used to and something I always thought I wanted when realistically, there’s probably a reason why my past relationships haven’t worked out. What I really needed was somebody different and it was Molly.

He’s saying that for the first time in his life, he was able to see his toxic relationship pattern in action, and for the first time, he had the opportunity to shift that 180 degrees by switching to Molly.

He was Circular Dating on The Bachelor, and although he picked what he would have picked on the first night, he had enough time to do the complete opposite at the last second.

Let’s see if it works for him.  I’m personally pulling for him, and for Molly especially. And I’m rooting for Melissa to do the exact same thing in her life – to Circular Date now that she has some fame and visibility, and do something different from what she’s been doing up to now that hasn’t been working for her.

I watched the way Jason absently stroked Molly’s arm with his hand while they were sitting talking with Chris Harrison.  He seemed relaxed.

I watched them eating together – they seemed easy and relaxed – and what’s MOST important – he seemed more masculine than I’ve ever seen him.

So – let’s see what another 6 months bring.

The take-away from this is three things:

1. Don’t get engaged to any man when there’s another girl in the picture…unless you’re on TV

2. Don’t pay attention to what other people might think – do what you feel is best for YOU. Mistakes are a huge and important part of life.  If you’re not making them, you’re not really living full out. Don’t be afraid to reverse course no matter what anyone thinks, and don’t let your embarrassment stop you from changing your mind or trying something new

3. Don’t give back jewelry.

Love, Rori

(Spoiler alert – Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie!)

First, I so noticed from all the comments that everyone is triggered in a different way by the different characters.  I noticed that we seem to identify with a character not necessarily by who she is, inside, but by what HAPPENS to her in the film.

If you’ve been betrayed, you identify with Jennifer Connelly.  If you’ve been a vixen, you identify with Scarlett.  If you’ve had wretched luck in relationships, you identify with Ginnifer Goodwin, if you’ve been struggling with dating, you identify with Drew, and if you’ve been with a man a long time without marriage, you identify with Jennifer Aniston.

Well, that helps up to a point – but let’s go deeper into what’s helpful to notice.

Are you a woman who reigns in her emotions?  Who sweeps the uncomfortable under the rug? Who is so uncomfortable with conflict that you’re willing to live on the surface of your life?

Well, that’s the Jennifer Connelly character. She seems smart.  And she’s married.  Just the status of “being married” seems to confer on her the idea of “wisdom” – that she knows what to do and how to be and can offer advice – yet her love life is as unsettled and stuck as any.

What happens to her marriage is actually pretty simple. We’re told this: He (the Bradley Cooper character) married her “before he was ready” because they’d been together for so long, if he didn’t marry her he’d have been a “jerk.”  We don’t know exactly how he feels about her.

We’re shown a mix of loyalty, friendship, admiration, and love for her, but he also seems strangely emotionally detached.  He doesn’t seem an actual part of his own life.  He’s sort of sleepwalking.

So – we’re left to wonder – what did it feel like for the Jennifer Connelly character inside that relationship?

AND – almost ALL of us have experienced this kind of disconnect with a man – so how did that feel, and what happened between them to shift that, or cement it?

And – the most important thing – what, if anything, could she have done to help herself – either to breakthrough and get closer to him, or to simply leave out of a desire for more intimacy with someone more capable?

One word that keeps coming up for me with this character is “stuck,” but I want this to be about strengths, not weaknesses, about help, not stuckness – so let’s go deeper into her qualities.

We watch her struggle with her impulses – one moment she allows her fury to emerge, throwing things, breaking things, and then she immediately feels compelled to clean up and organize and be “reasonable” and “nice.”  Her urge to “fix” and “repair” when she learns she’s been betrayed way overrides her feelings of hurt, anger and pain.

The only moment we see her really let go is with her office friends when she tells the truth about her sexless marriage, but in the next, she’s working to repair that in an assertive way.

We don’t see neediness or desperation – only the horrible tension between her anger and pain and her desire to make everything “okay.”

Finally, it’s catching his small lie about cigarettes that sets her off on her course to herself – and again – it’s a dramatic solution.  The thing to remember here is – HE is the one who first mentions her kicking him out.  Almost as though the whole business with Scarlett was about ending the marriage.

This is an EXTREMELY common thing that happens.  A man who wants out of a relationship, but is not in touch with his feelings and his actual desire to leave, will behave badly so that the woman will throw him out.  That’s why it’s SO important to not accomodate him him in EITHER way – either by dramatically attacking him with anger and pushing him away and giving him an EXCUSE to go, or by excusing and tolerating and understanding his behavior.

The goal here – always – is to OPEN UP the feelings in the relationship to build INTIMACY.  It CAN be repaired – but it can’t be band-aided over, it has to be DUG DEEPER and build up from there.  The taller the building, the deeper the foundation.

So, let’s call this character about Responsibility.

To be fearless, to dig deeper, to face up to the truth, to deal, to accept, to keep moving, to try, to experiment, to discover, to be okay with doing the best you can. To NOT beat yourself up, and yet to be responsible for your life – that’s what we can learn from this character.

So – let’s try this:

1. Take a look at what’s going on in your love life right now. Write it all down, in a numbered list. Now…

2. Assign responsibility to everything that’s happening – to what’s going well and to what isn’t.

On your list, write down who has responsibility for this “thing” this situation, this experience – assign it to him, or yourself, or your mother, or your boss, or the weather or the person or thing or circumstance you MOST spend your time thinking about or associate with to this situation.

3. Now go back, and cross out every single name that isn’t yours, and write your name down instead as the person responsible.

4. Notice what you feel the moment you do this:

Are you feeling angry?  Perhaps angry at me for telling you to do this, or angry at yourself for whatever you did or didn’t do?

Are you feeling upset?  Do you want to blame someone, and now you have to blame you because your name is there?

Are you feeling sad?  Hopeless?  Like if YOU’RE the one who’s responsible, you’ll NEVER be able to figure your way out?

Or – perhaps – you’re feeling relieved to have some place to go for responsibility where you have some control.  (This is how I feel when I do this – all of a sudden I tune into feeling calm and peaceful, instead of looking for solutions “out there.”)

Now…

5.  Think about the Jennifer Connelly character.

She basically did everything “wrong.”

She sat on her feelings in Home Depot as a horrible moment unfolded out of nowhere, and attempted to patch things up.

She made a momentous, assertive, initiative, masculine attempt to rekindle the passion in her relationship, even though it easily could have resulted in rejection and humiliation.

Okay – Now – think about everything she did “right.”

She realized that the signs her marriage was crumbling and uncommunicative were there long ago, and that she hadn’t acknowleded them.

She was willing to be open and start fresh.

She was UNWILLING to be in a relationship based on lies.

She was UNWILLING to sit on her painful feelings any longer.

She was UNWILLING to BLAME HERSELF, and yet she was willing to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for herself.

And there it is.  Taking responsibility is the ultimate fearlessness, the ultimate way to reclaim yourself, the ultimate way to take back your power – from wherever you left it, whoever you left it with, and however long it’s been gone.

You can get it back.

Try this Tool, and let me know how you feel.

Love, Rori