Have The Relationship You Want

Here’s a letter I got from Jennifer…a very universal situation if you’ve ever been in the business of attracting and being attracted to unavailable, perhaps even Toxic men:

“Rori…I have been listening to you for about a year. My name is Jennifer….I am a 35 year old single woman who has had 3 long term toxic relationships in her whole life. (One was 7 years, one was 4 years and resulted in a broken engagement, which I broke off, and the last was a 1 year Long distance imaginary relationship).

Your programs helped me get out ofthat last one, the one year, passionate (albeit emotionally unavailable man scenario) relationship with a man that devastated me. We broke up in August 2008.

After that, in the span of 7 months, I lost my job, foreclosed on a house, and moved from Las Vegas, (I hated Vegas). I felt renewed, confident, scared, cried a lot, moved on, got stronger, and ordered “Targeting Mr. Right.”….which brings you up to speed…

I have been circular dating since early May of this year. I cannot tell you the difference that I felt at first….sexy, confident, attractive, alive….ready to take on the world! I was open and ready to experience whatever the universe brought me in the form of MEN!! I went out on about 7-8 wine/coffee dates, practiced all of your tools, listening with an open heart, open body language, trying not to judge, etc…

…I met one man I was REALLY crazy about…..he was the ONLY one who got past the first date….we have been out over 9 times, had great dinners, hikes, romantic kisses near the Golden Gate Bridge…awesome chemistry. He is 40, never married, very handsome, has had several long term relationships, even lived with 2 women in the past…..even admitted to commitment phobia in the past, but I refused to judge and decided to just have fun and enjoy him.

BUT to be safe and smart, I was communicating to him, that I JUST moved, that I was actively dating and seeking to meet lots of people, and that was were I was at, even though I really loved being with him,(which I communicated to him) all of which he supported and even applauded me for…at first…

…now it seems like he is backing away because I haven’t changed my stance, and I really haven’t…… I had been STILL going out on coffee dates, although I must admit, as we got closer and closer I stopped for about 3 weeks, even though I didn’t tell him I stopped, because I didn’t want to lose my sense of power for myself or to have him sense that I was trying to CAPTURE……….

Rori, you would be soooo proud of me, because this whole time, even though I have felt my feelings deepen, I have done everything possible to RELAX and RESIST the urge to THROW him into the CAGE, as you call it! And its the one thing that I instinctively feel that is making him back away from me….I have NEVER talked about wanting to be a girlfriend, or in wanting ANY of that, even AFTER we had sex for the first and only time, two weeks ago!!

( He knew I had only had sex with 3 other men my whole life) I think that he is used to all of the women in his life and THEIR CRAP and THEIR urges to CAPTURE, (he has said things like he felt like a sperm donor, or someone that was supposed to fit into their TIMELINES etc., so I KNOW he is used to women and their pressures) He has sent me messages that he really likes me, even holding my hand saying that he would love to be a father, etc.

So….. I deliberately DO NOT do any of those old behaviors, no matter what was happening and as we got closer, I feel like the stronger I got THEN he starts in the last 2 weeks or so backing away, esp since our sexual encounter which was very passionate and fabulous, by the way. Since then, he tells me things like…”HE Is not emotionally ready for a relationship, but he has deep feelings for me, that its not me, but his crap” and he want to take some time for himself….WHAT? I haven’t pressured one bit!

And despite him saying that, He still calls me or texts me everyday ( I NEVER initiate calls,which was one of your tools which I could always do easily).  So in the last two weeks his mood seems a little down, some of his texts went something like….”I wanted to take some time for myself..I am not ignoring you, just wanted you to know..how are you?” He hasn’t made any plans to see me in almost 2 weeks, all the while, phones and texts like this almost every day……

Last night he showed up at my apt here in the City, He lives 20 miles outside the city, and this is the first time I had seen him (since the last time we saw each other and had sex which was at his house, and he asked me to stay the night) So last night in my apt……….we kissed, talked a bit (his behavior was sooooo confusing..it seems like he is waiting for me to say that I don’t want to see other guys..I FEEL that…like, he won’t say anything until I do…all this looks like he can’t man up, so. …I looked into his eyes, and opened my heart and said….”What is going on? (I know…. mistake, but I said it with a feeling message right after which was…I’m here, I like you so much, and I’m confused and feeling a bit anxious about this..what do you think?”

He said he didn’t come over to talk, he just HAD to see me, kiss me, etc. So I dropped it, gave him a huge open heart smile and a deep hug, and said I was so glad to see him and that I missed him, he returned the sentiment, Then after 15 min he left. No plans for any future dates, nothing. I smiled and let him go, even though I was so hurt and angry at that moment………

I don’t have 3 men in my rotation yet…so I won’t let him go just yet….I am not “efforting” at all outwardly, but inside I feel myself becoming a bit obsessed with this…in your experience…what is going on? Is this how some men act when they know you are dating around? I refuse to abandon myself, Although its making me miserable and sad..every date I want the chemistry I feel with him and havent found it yet….is he just being a baby, like you said in T Mr. Right? Can he man up? And should I even give a damn??? Jennifer”

***Here’s my answer:

Jennifer, This was EXACTLY right – NO MISTAKE!!! -

You must ALWAYS SPEAK THE TRUTH…That’s what keeps fear from taking over….and that’s where attraction can grow.

Some men are simply not able to do real relationship.  You know you attract these men and are attracted to them because of your history with Toxic Men.

Circular Dating will smoke those guys out!

He’s not backing away because you’re a free spirit…he’s backing away either because the attraction is not deepening for him, or because you’re not as EASY as he’d hoped, or because he’s a Toxic man and somewhere inside he KNOWS he can’t do this, or he just doesn’t ever WANT to do this, he’s just fighting his attraction to you.  Or, he just wants sex.

He may have felt the pressure from you after sex, and he may feel it from inside himself…but it makes no difference…

Sex is meaningful to a woman, no matter how much of a rock star you aim to be…you can’t help but put out stronger vibes after sex – and if you don’t, you wouldn’t be authentic . That’s why sex should only happen when you know exactly what’s going on with you and you can speak it first.

Let him back off, and if he shows up again, try not having sex. Just tell him that you could feel the pressure, and you’d rather wait and just have fun with him. From what you say about his coming over…sounds more like a booty call to me, too…let’s see what the other women on the blog can offer you…

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

Okay…just got this from a member of my Customer Service team, Jolene,  who helps us all by sorting through all my emails before forwarding them to me…and it was like getting hit with a light bulb…

“Rori, Have you ever posed a question to your bloggers about why they don’t do Circular Dating and continue to try to analyze and wait around for a man? It just seems to me that the letters we get (like the ones you addressed in recent eletters) are from women who still don’t get it. Or maybe they know, but they just don’t want to do it. Why don’t they want to do it? Jolene”

And here’s the thing:

When we’re “into” a man…it’s SO HARD to do anything that feels the slightest bit different. We think we’re being disloyal. We feel guilty.

Because we’re AFRAID!!

We’re truly terrified of rocking the boat.

We’re afraid of making him mad.

We’re afraid that if WE flirt with other men to keep ourselves strong and diva-like, HE’LL start flirting with other women just to keep EVEN with us!

AND…I HAVE heard of things like this happening…but NOT for the reason you think!

Are we so afraid of displeasing a man who has not committed to us that we FREEZE ourselves?

Are we so afraid of facing, head-on and truthfully, what IS ACTUALLY going on in a relationship that is making US unhappy – that we just tolerate “whatever”?

That we just…WAIT?

Now..how does THAT image feel?

The problem happens when we start Circular Dating to “get back” at a man. or to play “games,” or to “play hard to get.”

Anything you do on the outside that’s FAKE, that’s meant to cause some sort of reaction in a man is playing with fire, and is working AGAINST YOU.

What you want to do is BECOME “hard to get.” For REAL.

That means, you have options, and YOU are in a position to CHOOSE him or….NOT!!

In other words…where does a man “get off” sewing up your time, energy and love…without life-long commitment? I mean…”Really!”

Yes, Circular Dating might make your man ANGRY.

The thing is…so WHAT??!! So WHAT if he gets angry?

Those of us who’ve lived our lives trying to get what we want and need with sugar and honey, and working to win people over and be liked, and those of us who’ve been actually abused, and so tried to “get along” in order to simply SURVIVE…are afraid of doing ANYTHING that might anger someone else.

We are always in a position of “explaining” ourselves. We are always concerned about “hurting” him (actually we’re concerned with angering him”).

We always think it’s up to US to “make the peace.”

And Circular Dating is sort of radical. It’s subversive to all that. It’s putting your OPTIONS ahead of someone else’s feelings. It’s not trying to get what you want by giving someone else what he wants.

It’s simply being forthright, open, vulnerable, truthful, and pro-active about what YOU want, and allowing everyone (and believe me there are TONS of great men who are despairing of ever finding a woman who actually has HER OWN RUDDER and follows her OWN DREAM) to want to connect to YOU.

It is becoming the object of desire rather than remaining the “chaser” of desire.

It’s a completely different way to live your life, in which loyalty and fidelity and exclusivity are EARNED by a man, rather than somehow “expected.” It’s flying in the face of convention and convenience and what we all did in high school. It’s being willing to live without a “boyfriend” because what you want is a ‘husband” and “family.”

So…no WONDER you’re not Circular Dating? Well – I’m here (we’re ALL here, in this wonderful community) to CHANGE that convention. To CHANGE that “expectation.” To END the “rules” of the “game” as they stand now. And to actually END the GAME.

There IS no game. Not anymore. There’s only you, what you want and need and deserve, and the men who “get that” and want to be with you.

There is no more time, energy and love left for any man who does not want you.

The days of settling for less love are over.

The days of calling being loved by a good man “settling” just because he doesn’t fit your “mental picture” of what you want in a man…are OVER.

Circular Dating is not a game. It’s not a strategy. It’s a therapeutic, pro-active Tool to get your Masculine energy engaged in the SERVICE of your Feminine self. It’s a Tool to get you out in the world so you can PRACTICE the Inner work of the Siren you truly are.

I’m your head cheerleader…so let’s get on with this. Get your toes wet in the ideas of Circular Dating, learn how to do it for REAL. (Not how you imagine I mean you to do it, or how you guess or piece together how I mean for you to do it…there are very subtle and important things about doing this right that make all the difference in how your “vibe” will shift for the good of your life, and doing it half-way or with the wrong mind-set will just keep you where you are and allow you to say “it didn’t work”…when it DOES WORK!!!)

Let me know how my Targeting Mr. Right program helps you.  If you don’t have it yet, take a look at the letter I’ve written around it on my catalog page over on the “sidebar’ here – just that letter alone will help you understand how Circular Dating actually works.

Let me know how I can best help you to move from focusing on one man to Circular Dating…and to get what you want!

Love, Rori

I love this guy. I get these every day from Tut.com. He’s Tom Dooley (of The Secret…yes…), but I think of these as from The Universe…

I can assure you, Rori, that the time will come when you, too, will ask, “In what fields did I sow seeds to deserve so very, very much?”

Then I’ll remind you that the whole sowing-seeds-cause-and-effect concept was just a myth, because you were born deserving.

Hosanna in the Highest,
The Universe

Yeah, should’ve told you a long time ago, Rori. My bad.

Tom’s whole thing is this:

Thoughts become things…choose the good ones.

And I love this. It’s not about turning your negative thoughts into positive ones via affirmations…it’s about CHOOSING the good ones out of all the thoughts you have going on at any given moment. And how do you choose the “good” ones…?

Not by some kind of mental “judgment” that “this is good and this is bad” …but how it FEELS when you think it.

How, if you were to follow that thought and DO the thing that thought is thinking about doing, or the place that thought is thinking about putting you in…how THAT would FEEL.

Same with all the feelings you have. Instead of trying to label a feeling as bad to have (grief, let’s say)…and trying to turn it into something else by distracting yourself or talking yourself out of the feeling…go INTO the feeling for a moment. Honor it. Let it know it’s welcome in your repertoire of feelings. Embrace it, sink down into the feeling Soup where it came from. And THEN…

Feel what ELSE you feel. There are so many floating around in that Soup at any given moment.

If you feel yourself in your head thinking thoughts – choose a different thought that shows up…that drifts by. See if some better-feeling thoughts lead you to some better feeling feelings. See what’s connected to what…what good feeling thing leads to another good feeling thing.

See if there’s something in the Soup that jumps out for your attention that feels a bit better than where you are now…and just GO with THAT one!

I know it sounds too easy…but truly…we make it all so HARD on ourselves.

We cling to our bad feelings as if they are BADGES. We all feel so instinctively guilty for simply feeling Good — we get into our heads trying to JUSTIFY feeling good. Trying to put down in writing how we DESERVE this good feeling.

So…this short note says it all.

You don’t have to DO anything to deserve to feel good. That’s the natural way of things. Feeling good. When bad things happen, and tragedy strikes, and day-to-day challenges seem impossible to get past…yes…the icky feelings get triggered, the fear, the guilt, the sense that we’ve brought all this down on ourselves (after all – if we believe we deserve to feel good only because we DID something to deserve it — then we must’ve done something bad in order to be feeling something bad, right? Well – not right. Wrong.

Think about innocent babies born into unloving, abusive homes. It’s such a horrible thing to contemplate, we struggle to find meaning in it. When it all gets painful to consider – the way people suffer all over the world…I go to trying to figure out a reason why, too. But now, I prefer to bless my personal good luck. I prefer to be in the troop that is working for peace as fully and powerfully as I’m able – to harness all my abilities in the service of good feelings for ALL.

Bottom line…the difficulty for so many of us is – Is it okay to feel good when others are suffering?

And my answer – that is the ONLY choice. The only way you and I can have any effect on the world, can help raise it out of misery, is to engage in creating peace. And everything we’ve ever heard on that one is true – it begins with us. It begins inside you.

Peace happens when the people who feel good and believe in feeling good and are not run by fear or pain and continue to promote feeling good (not by numbing pain) tip the scales in power over those who are driven by fear and greed. This happened in Liberia, where the women rose up, took possession of their country, and stopped war.

You cannot access your full power to affect change in yourself and the world until you claim your entitlement to feel good…no matter what. That’s where the power is. Even anger can feel good, too. Feeling feelings can feel good, just because you feel alive and feeling, and that feels good.

Everything is transformational. Things are always moving. Allow yourself to be moved. And just — and it seems so simple, but try it — make the intellectual decision that you HAVE many choices in any moment. Then choose the good-feeling choices.

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