Have The Relationship You Want

So I’m sick. A cold. Bad, obnoxious, noisy, icky cough. Not a big deal. We women blow through these things. But I ache, and I want to lay down. Puts me at a romantic disadvantage, I think. Don’t look great. Feel sloggy, so I must look sloggy to my husband.

All of a sudden, he looks even cuter.

Can’t do anything for anyone – don’t want to, anyway. Even so, I try to do myself out of my malaise. I write. I organize. I clean the kitchen. And just to make myself feel better, I have the urge to take care of my husband, who also has a cold. Or maybe my urge is not to make myself feel better, but to make myself feel more indispensable. If I don’t look good, I pretty sure better do good.

Suddenly, I realize all my activity is annoying. Sit down, I can hear him say, though he’s not actually saying it. If I got him dinner and massaged his head and brought him tea, he’d gladly take it. He’d take whatever I’d give. Take it all.

But he wouldn’t like me better.

In fact, he really doesn’t like it at all. Oh, he likes the good stuff, alright, but it doesn’t make him reach for me, or pet my hair, or try to have sex with me in the hallway even though neither of us can stand up for more than a minute. What inspires him to do that is the sight of me asleep in the bed at four in the afternoon because I feel lousy and I’m taking care of myself. He’s inspired when I take care of myself.

What he can’t stand is that air of  — I’m going to impress you all by getting all my work done and pretending I’m not exhausted, even though I let a complaint and an Oooooo I feel lousy slip out every once in awhile. He thinks, when I do that: Is she so much better than me? –  and turns away. So much for romance.

This is an extreme case, but it works the same if we’ve just had a bad day at the office, or our fellow hasn’t called, or we just feel somehow that giving to someone and nurturing someone is the way to his heart. It isn’t.

Have you ever noticed that on your worst days – bad hair, a cold, a huge pimple – you seem to be a man magnet? Every woman I talk to has noticed this (when she’s allowed herself to notice). It’s not because you look bad. It’s because you seem approachable. You seem vulnerable. Open. You seem, for a change in most men’s experience, to be a woman who might allow herself to be taken care of, by him. Instead of what he’s used to – a woman who’d be willing to take care of him.

Giving is what men are supposed to do. Women are supposed to receive the love, affection and gifts that men give, and then give love and affection back to them. Though many of us have caught onto this, it’s challenging to stop doing what we’ve always done, what we’ve been told is the way to do things, and to fly in the face of the fallout we fear. So I’m going to tackle one little issue – Nurturing.

Nurturing is masculine. If you want to get what he wants to give, stop nurturing your man.

Radical as this sounds, try it. Stop doing. Stop giving. Stop massaging a man’s feelings. Stop helping your date do the relationship thing and let him flounder until he figures it out. He will.

This whole concept of nurturing is a dilemma for most of us. We think of mothering, nurturing, caring for our young as a feminine aspect of ourselves.

It isn’t.

Nurturing and caring for others may be a female trait – motherhood is female – but it’s still about action! Nurturing is about doing. Giving. Your energy goes out of you and toward or into someone else. When you give, you are acting from a masculine energy place.

We are so accustomed to the idea of nurturing being feminine, we get confused. We think being loving to our men is nurturing them. Massaging their bodies, minds and spirits. There is nothing wrong with the idea of nurturing – it’s the form our nurturing takes that causes so much difficulty. We are all composed of masculine and feminine (yin and yang) energies. We move through them fluidly at our best, and are stuck in one or the other at our worst.

Too often, many of us find ourselves stuck at one extreme or the other. We either give too much all the time and then find ourselves resentful all the time, or we go the other way and make ourselves emotionally unavailable to our dates, our husbands, our boyfriends, and every man we meet.

Too often, our nurturing energies are perceived by men as mothering. Our actions seem intrusive. We seem to be judging them and finding them coming up short – otherwise why would they need taking care of? On the other hand, they love attention. Don’t we all?

To strike some sort of balance when we are all so mightily out of balance, I’m asking you to pull back to zero.

To at least imagine pulling back to zero. The baby steps you actually take may seem huge. When you stop doing for your man what he doesn’t need you to do, yet has grown accustomed to you doing and may resent you not doing (even though he’ll certainly find himself relieved that you’ve stopped doing them), things may get messy before they get better. But they will get better.

This is all about Overfunctioning. What does Overfunctioning and Overnurturing look like in YOUR love life?

Let me know!  Love,  Rori

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

How can you move forward in your life without “letting go” of him?  And still “dump him” and “stop contact”?

This is a jump off of the last post, inspired by the comments. Here are two that sparked me:

Erika said:
“…sometimes if I ignore a guy, I actually end up thinking about him MORE. It feels all unresolved.”

Then JasonSavage said:
“I advocate resolve through actively ignoring him and simple acts of symbolic detachment.”

And Daria, too, talks about really loving having men around her and feeling good about it.

The thing here is this – J, in the letter that started the original post, does NOT feel good with the “ex” who’s contacting her at this moment.  The idea of friendship is NOT clear and easy and about …friends.  It’s all clouded and complex and involves all kinds of triggers.  And this was not a Circular Dating relationship – this was BEFORE J figured out how to Circular Date – this was an exclusive relationship with sex.  And she still feels attached and emotional – as would almost ALL of us.

I often agree with Jason on most of this -  and though it’s a very harsh view coming from me, but you can see from Jason how a man sees ANY response we make to a man — no matter what we say, if we respond, the “friendship” is “on.”

What I’m going to add to this conversation is about what Erika calls “resolve.”  This is the same as what I call “closure” – and you know I don’t believe in closure.

This is the shocking, provoking part of what I say around this kind of thing:

Don’t even TRY to IMAGINE closure.  Forget closure.  Forget resolution.  Forget tying things up in a nice bundle, all knots untied, everything smoothed out.

This is just not part of having a real, PASSIONATE life.

Needing closure is something we women have absolutely been trained for.

We are perfectionist in many ways, managing things – so much of it comes from our genes – the need to cook, watch the fire, listen for the baby, and ward off intruders all at the same time.

This need for closure is, I believe – at the bottom of all our womanly stress.

So, I also say, forget about the whole concept of “letting go.”  It’s just not a viable image.

For me – (and I have a bunch of posts on this…most with horses in the pictures…) the idea is to keep moving down your own road, stick on your path, stay with your horse, keep moving, expanding, breathing, going deeper and deeper into your feelings and your life, becoming more and more passionate about life itself – and just not allowing ANYTHING to distract you.  Not allowing anything to “capture” you and throw you off balance and off course.

You can take a memory of a man with you down your road.  You can dream about him when you sleep.  You can take from what you had with him that makes you feel good and helps you understand yourself, that helps you riff and process and expand.

To do this – you DON’T NEED HIM TO BE AROUND IN REAL LIFE.

I’m going to say that again.  Once a man has outlived his usefulness in his concrete, human form – once his presence makes you go backwards and into your head and out of your body and feeling not good about yourself – you don’t want him around.  Period.  You’re done.  He’s history.

But that doesn’t mean he’s left the planet, or left your psyche.

He might still be in your rock band, or in your theater company, or at your yoga class, or sweating next to you at your gym, or sitting next to you at your work.  He might be the father of your children. He might be a superstar you see on billboards and hear about from friends and strangers every day.  He could be your lawyer, or your coach, or your children’s friend’s father.

It doesn’t mean he has nothing to offer you – even if it’s only a reminder of what you DON’T want.

And it doesn’t mean you have to be especially nice to him, or welcoming, or reasonable.

And it doesn’t mean you have to notice him much, or think about him, or wonder about him, or talk about him.

It just means he’s there.  He still lives and breathes.

It’s not about “reality.”  It’s about “energy.”

And this isn’t hocus-pocus or magic, because it’s not about HIS energy – it’s about YOURS.

The simple truth is – if you stop FIGHTING your feelings for him and pull toward him, and thoughts about him – and simply REFOCUS your mind, body and heart around something NEW – something that FEELS GOOD – something that’s MEANINGFUL to you – it will overpower the energy you’re showering on this undeserving man.

So – instead of rituals and symbolic acts to LET GO of him (because then it’s STILL all about HIM…) what we need here is rituals and symbolic acts to hang onto, hold onto, embrace, worship and adore OURSELVES.

The result we’re going for is not to free HIM – but to free US.

Can you imagine what that would look like and feel like?

What would it look like and feel like to feel free as a bird around your thoughts and feelings about a man?  To be able to do what makes you happy even though thoughts of him and about him continue to intrude?

I guarantee you that if you find things to immerse yourself in – things that capture your attention in a wonderful, fulfilling and satisfying way…they will way outshine any man’s old, worn-out pull on you.  Your light will expose the shabbiness of the man, the obsolescence of him.

You’ll start to feel this:  “Done.”

It’s not about “over.”  It’s not about “forgetting.”  It’s not about “Letting Go” so you “don’t” have a mental, physical or emotional experience around him when he isn’t actually there.  It’s about just getting so passionate about yourself and what you love in life that you become bored by him.

Most of the time, a man who is not good for us came into our lives for one reason:  We invited him in as a “do-over.”

It could be a do-over of our childhoods, when the only way we could get love and attention was by working our butts off.

It could be a do-over of a trauma where we felt helpless to take care of ourselves.

It could be a do-over of a mistake that feels desperately like it needs “closure” and “mastery.”

Forget about all that.

Instead – focus on being kind to yourself.  Focus on what you like.  On what makes you feel good.  Do that.  Think that. Take yourself there.

Erika talks a lot about EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique, and I love the technique too – here’s one little piece of it I’m going to apply to this post:

Say to yourself: “Even though I feel attached to this man and drawn to have closure with him, I deeply and profoundly love and accept myself.”

Then get back on your horse and ride – with him or without him, whether he’s hanging onto the saddle, gripping you for dear life, or trying to get you to stop and let him on, or whether you’re holding him with one hand behind you as you ride on.

The important thing is NOT what HE’S doing, or where HE is.

The important thing is that YOU are RIDING ON!!!

Love, Rori

We’ve been talking so much about dating – I wanted to talk about what happens in a long-term relationship, a marriage – when the connection gets so damaged it dies.  Here’s a letter from Jane:

“Rori, My marriage is dead. I am sad to say I don’t even know if I want to try and revive it. It seems impossible. I have changed so much after 19 years and I am a completely different woman and I feel I have outgrown him. We have 3 kids and that’s what keeps me here. I don’t have a job or a degree either and so I feel trapped. Jane”

And here’s my answer:

Basically – you’ve answered your own question.

First – Getting a part time job, or working towards a degree or some training for a job or business you would like (you can do it online or in the evenings) is the steps that will make you feel the best. Once you are no longer so dependent on your husband and have something outside the home you’re interested in – things will change for you.

This is basic “Purpose on the Planet” (from my friend Phyllis Chase, on my Commitment Blueprint program) exploration for you to do.  This is my “Out The Window” Tool.

It’s absolutely essential to have your own life, your own happiness, before you can connect or reconnect with another person.

It builds your confidence.  It makes you feel grounded.  It changes your “vibe” hugely and quickly.

Being focused on your children isn’t enough (I know – I fell into that one myself – which is why I found myself up all night nearly every night writing my novels.  I had a “calling” – and so do YOU).  This is about you’re exploring what it is you love to do, what makes you feel good inside, and then DOING that thing and discovering how to do it, and the pure sheer enjoyment of it.

And as you enjoy what you’re doing (and yes – this is in a Masculine “doing” sense) you’ll start to feel successful in your life – and – something happens then.  You start to become successful out in the world!

This is where you find WORK that has to do with what you feel GOOD at, and what you enjoy.

My husband is a business coach for entrepreneurs, and I know from watching him and following his work and teleclasses that ALL of us so easily pigeon-hole ourselves.  We are almost WIRED to be STUCK.  Stuck in all kinds of ways.

We find it hard to MOVE.  We find it hard to get out of our comfort zones, even though those comfort zones are all about PAIN.

My Tools are baby-steps to get you moving out of that comfort zone slowly, and then as quickly as you can – so you’re leaping out of it and discovering some real joy in that.

My husband’s clients instinctively don’t want to “do the work” required to become successful – and that’s why he coaches – his job is to light a fire under a business “wanna-be” and hold their hand and take them through the process of getting a good job that pleases them or starting a business that actually makes money.

if you feel unsuccessful at that – if you have no means of supporting yourself, it so totally damages your self-esteem, that all we feel towards a man who’s supporting us financially but not giving us what we need emotionally is RESENTMENT – right along with feeling grateful.  And that’s just a majorly horrific combo: resentment/gratefulness.

In an atmosphere of resentment (that we desperately try to balance by tuning into our gratefulness) – we completely BLOCK all emotional connection.  We just can’t break through the wall of fear we put up for ourselves – that even an honest CONVERSATION with a man could lead to disaster.

People would rather cheat on their spouses than truthfully talk about what’s going on in the marriage. That really shows you where the fear is.  Even the most brave of us – where love and security is concerned – would often rather lie than take a chance with the truth.

And the lie destroys our sense of well-being.

Jane – you’re living a lie, and that’s making you feel horrible.

Whether you’ve actually “outgrown” your husband is not even the point, here.

Sometimes, I think I’m more “evolved” than my husband.  And then we sit down and have a deep conversation about a difficult issue – and I’m just so amazed at the depth of his insight and willingness to participate  that I fall in love all over again.

It’s sort of – I have my specialties.  But I have my weaknesses, too – the comfort zones where I’d rather hang out and be “judgmental” of everyone else because I’m afraid to feel what I feel or to express what i feel.

And I can tell you honestly, that if I use the right, truthful words, and I really speak what I FEEL instead of what I “think” – amazing things happen.

Often, we have a wall up with a person without even knowing we have a wall up with that person (I know this is true for me) – and when we sink into our own feelings and then speak from there – that wall comes down, and we discover we actually DO have a connection with that person.

You are still there, in that marriage – for some reason. You are being kept there by not having found work that pleases you and pays you, or going to school, or taking some kind of classes to get a degree or real information that would HELP you find work that pleases you.

Perhaps you are there until you can find that work that pleases you.

Perhaps you are there until you can break through that wall of judgment and disconnection and FEEL again.

Perhaps you are there until you can FEEL, and then SPEAK your feelings.

Perhaps you are there until the energy shifts enough for you to be able to physically touch him in a connected way, and for him to feel invited to touch you.

Once you’ve worked with these ideas, you’ll have a whole NEW set of options.  You won’t feel so trapped and stuck. You can CHOOSE this marriage or choose another option.

Often, we stop feeling. We stop feeling, and we stop talking. And we stop touching.

And we just don’t know how to start again.

We fall off our horse and don’t have the energy or the will to climb back on.  So we just stand there. We walk in circles, day in and day out.

We feel paralyzed, and then we feel comfortable feeling paralyzed. Everything comes to a standstill.

The Tools and ideas here are a start for you to put some grease in the moving parts of your life, and some juice in the engine.

Your horse is there.  Waiting patiently, stirrups ready. The landscape is new and uncharted before you. Go.

Let me know how this works for you, Love, Rori