Have The Relationship You Want

Here’s a situation – a VERY common situation, where a man is consistently defensive and on the attack in order to feel okay with himself. The cure is in my Toxic Men program, and I’ll touch on it here.

It’s about unearthing the anger in you, in him, in the relationship – and getting it out in the open in a NON-DRAMATIC way – so that it can be healed – and USED to bring you closer to each other.

Otherwise, the anger goes underground and does so much damage there that things are seemingly beyond repair – but it IS repairable. The key is in YOU.

SOMEONE has to start a new kind of communication, a new kind of attitude and approach, a new way of expressing all kinds of feelings – both verbally and physically – that actually CREATE INTIMACY, instead of driving it away.

To do this – you need more strength on the inside – more trust in yourself to state clearer, more consistent Boundaries – and a willingness to be completely vulnerable on the outside.

You have to trust yourself that you will not just BE there, vulnerable and open, when things don’t feel good – when there is even “modest” defensiveness and verbal abuse (I was with a man for a long time who was master of verbal abuse and manipulation – he was funny and charming, and so everyone always laughed, and I stood there wondering what was wrong with me…).

You have to know how to always stay open, and yet always feel strong enough to walk away. At any moment. That’s Power….

Here are 2 symptoms that anger is underground and running things:

1. Judgment and Criticism - you always feel as though everything you do is being “watched’ and “scrutinized” and “judged.”

Every time you do anything, he’s ready with a roll of his eyes, a snide comment – about what you did, about what you didn’t do, about his own needs that somehow it’s your fault aren’t being met (like where things are). Sometimes it’s about simple choices you make – or how you look or what you’re wearing. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s muttered, sometimes it’s done with a joke (so it’s even harder for you to pin down). It’s constant and never-ending. You feel like a child being berated.

This is about a lot of things, but it can simply be the most “controlled” way a man can express his anger (often his anger at himself – it might have nothing to do with you). He judges you constantly because he’s such a harsh judge of himself. His guilt about his irritation and anger leaves him this “mild” way to express anger – telling you what you’re doing wrong.

(By the way – we do this too…)

2. Withdrawing

He’s drifting away emotionally, spending less time with you, there’s less sex, less affection.

Almost all my programs deal with this and how to stop it and bring him close again – and here – let’s just look at the hidden anger component: He’s angry, he doesn’t know how to deal with it, and so he withdraws. It’s easier.

When you talk with him and try to be “understanding” and get at what the problem is – he just feels angrier, and withdraws more.

The obvious expression of anger is arguments, fighting, verbal and physical attacks – but I don’t want to deal with that here because this is about HIDDEN anger – where all you’re experiencing is the tip of the iceberg, and you’re living in fear of that iceberg surfacing.

And here’s a small step to the solution: Unearth the anger iceberg by YOU changing YOUR reactions.

Now – this is not a lifestyle – you don’t want to be with a man who is constantly berating you or withdrawing from you where you have to be the one always “changing” – this is an experiment, a test, a learning experience – and the goal is to unearth the anger and learn to TOLERATE the experience of it.

Once you can get through surface stuff and into the rage that lies underneath – without all the arguing and fighting and nastiness that only uncovers a tiny part of the iceberg and actually DAMAGES a relationship – you’ll start to feel things loosen up and more affection, attention and love start to fill the space between you.

Instead of running away, or making an excuse for yourself or DEFENDING yourself – you want to:

1. Notice what’s going on with you.

Are you being run by fear? Do you want to run away? Do you want to hit him? Are you going numb? Are you determined to do whatever you have to to make peace and get his approval?

2. Speak the DEEPEST feeling you can find inside yourself.

That could be “I feel scared.” “I feel so angry.” “I feel turned off.”

When he questions you, just keep doing what you’re doing, saying your deepest feeling. If you have to put it in context, say “When I heard (you can repeat what he said here, or paraphrase it…just enough to let him know what you’re referring to…) – “I feel so tense…it felt awful…it feels scary..I felt like running…I feel like running…This doesn’t feel good to me…”

3. Stand your ground.

Don’t apologize for yourself, explain anything – and do not blame him, either.

Look him straight in the eye, as best you can. Lean back. You are not attacking, you are expressing.

What can you expect with doing it this way? All kinds of stuff will come up for you…

You’ll feel shaky, you’ll feel upset – and you’ll feel ANGRIER than you’ve ever felt! And what’s more…as YOU feel more comfortable with YOUR anger – so will he.

He’ll start to let you “have it.” He’ll start to let his anger out. And you have to be strong enough to hear anger and experience the ENERGY of anger – AS LONG AS IT’S NOT DIRECTED AT YOU!!

This means – the moment he turns it on YOU – you say “I’m happy to hear your feelings, even your anger, but I don’t want to feel attacked…” and if he doesn’t change his words and copy what you’re doing (expressing his feelings instead of blaming YOU)…then you must TURN AROUND AND WALK AWAY…!

When this happens, and emotions start to  surface,  I know it’s tough – but, actually – it’s fabulous!!! You are starting to communicate in a way that is triggering YOURSELF and your stuffed up and old feelings.

Now – all we have to do is get a routine down for how to handle your emotions when they bubble up…The more you tell him the truth, in feeling messages, the more you will feel that you don’t WANT to feel – otherwise you would have done this a long time ago.

Believe it or not – this is amazing PROGRESS. And – ALWAYS – the first emotion that shows up is ANGER.

Accept that you are enraged – and just keep processing it and sharing it. This is going to feel weird for a bit – so it’s really important you have a way to relax – to meditate – to regroup and ground yourself. Stuff you love that you can focus on and feel better quickly.

If he’s a man who NEEDS to put YOU down in order to feel okay – he won’t let up right away.  He’s going to up the ante, and keep at you to try to get a “rise” out of you so that you’ll go back to the old, crummy defense patterns you used to be stuck.

He may start to panic, and so he’ll do the only thing he knows – attacking you. You’re going to have to acknowledge how awful that feels right away – instead of stuffing down and answering him reasonably.

Later on – you’ll get a sense of humor about it – and he’ll stop doing this very soon…when you start feeling more powerful.

Defending yourself with anger or cleverness will not help you here – it will just make him work harder to top you.

As you express your anger simply, and let him know it doesn’t feel good, that you feel attacked, that you feel afraid of him and what he’ll say to you, and that it’s making you feel turned off…all this will change….You are only at the BEGINNING of this…be patient, take baby steps.

Love, Rori

You know I love movies – and my husband was away this week, and so I got to wallow in chick-flicks and tear-jerkers, and here’s one gem I picked up from Nights In Rodanthe (way too sad for my taste, but very good for tears) – I can’t remember the exact words our heroine said, so I’ll paraphrase with my own thoughts:

There’s a different kind of love, a kind of love where it makes you better than you are – not less. Where you open up to the possibilities – your possibilities.

What she was describing is a relationship that lasted in person only for a weekend, and then for many months by handwritten letter – and straight from the beginning – she and the man (Diane Lane and Richard Gere) open up to each other. They tell their stories, and they tell the truth.

They challenge each other to not fall back into their old patterns, and after the weekend, each becomes MORE. and Better.

He is less ego-centric. Less defensive of himself and open to feeling who other people actually are, their feelings. He becomes more human.

And she stops putting herself last. She rediscovers her strength, her art, and feels free to express herself instead of stuffing everything down in order to cope and be “good.”

So – how can this work for you?

1. Right from the get-go…the first moment you make contact with a man – turn your attention on how you feel about YOURSELF in his presence.

I don’t mean how excited you feel about him, or how drawn to him you feel, or what you think about him and his “potential.”

2. Get curious about HIM. I don’t mean pepper him withn questions like in an interview – just, in your mind and heart, listen to him the way you would to anyone you might meet who has a great story to tell.  Believe that there’s a great story he has to tell, and relax while it’s unfolding into your curiosity.

3. Stay LIGHT.  By this, I mean don’t let a man’s moods or emotions or challenges or dark moments or chronic darkness bring you into the dark.  Don’t go into the dark just to keep him company.  Just to make him feel better.

Always be looking for the fun, the light, the good, the good-feeling – and let it run through you and take you where you want to be.  Be an example to him of what a great life and what great love IS.  If, and when he asks for your voice from the light – from where you’re at – share it with him.  Don’t try to take him anywhere or push him anywhere or protect him.  Just shine your “Light” and be a beacon for him.

Even if he’s a man you’ve never met standing across the room from you at a party.

4. Believe in yourself, so that only a man who believes in you can get through to you. if you’re not feeling that way about yourself right now – meet yourself where you are.  Start from exactly where you are and how you feel about yourself – and aim for LOVE.  Aim for loving yourself so hard, and believing that you can do what you’re meant to do and want to do, and have what you want to have so profoundly that ONLY a man who can make your vison of yourself and your life even BRIGHTER and BIGGER get’s allowed private time with you.

Let me know how this works for you…let’s all get BIG.

Love, Rori

Here’s a question from Maria that I want to jump off of (I edited it a bit) …

“l have a question, too and it may sound as stupid as it is simple. When a man treats you bad is it HIM or ME? Meaning – was he born with (or been given) a natural ability to treat others bad or am l just a very low standard girl? Maria”

Here’s my answer:

Maria – men treat women badly for lots of reasons.  They’re angry and don’t know how to deal with it…they’re afraid…but it DOESN’T MATTER.

If you ALLOW a man to treat you badly (assuming you’re not in a traumatic, helpless situation) – and this means ANY way that doesn’t feel GOOD and nourishing to you…then you must take responsibility for it.

There are lots of old sayings about this… most of them are about blame and shame and fault – and I’d like to stay away from all that.

We’re all here learning.  We’re all feeling our way through our lives, doing the best we can, experiencing being triggered all the time and feeling the pressure of our old habits and traumas and fears.  There’s just no point in assigning “blame.”

It’s all about responsibility, and owning your experiences, owning your feelings, and being watchful that you are in good-feeling places as much as you can.  Trying to “analyze” a man so you can “understand” him often leads to making excuses for him and does you no good…

There’s a song lyric:

“Oh, oh, oh, you treat me badly…and I love you madly…you really have a hold on me…”

When I think back on my love life – how this was me so much of my life – that I had no idea that a man I liked would truly want me – that the world was divided into men who wanted me that I didn’t want and men I wanted who didn’t want me (or only wanted me for now) – I see how this PAIN of love has been drilled into us.

We were all raised on Torch songs.  We were all raised on hopeless romance.

We were all raised to not RECOGNIZE bad treatment. To make excuses for it.  To find underlying, psychological reasons for it.  To blame OURSELVES for it – as though we provoked it (like so much you can read about what people think about Rhianna and Chris Brown – that she somehow is responsible for what happened to her by “provoking” him).

As a crisis counselor helping rape survivors – it was just heartbreaking to see (and experience) the self-blame and self-torture women who’d been abused and been at the receiving end of violence took on themselves (ourselves).

We think things are our FAULT.  And they’re not.  There is no “fault.”  Sometimes you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time – and sometimes the lesson (because you have to see EVERYTHING as a lesson in order to transform awful-feeling experiences into better-feeling one next time) – is to take better care of ourselves.

The most major reason why we try to assign “fault” and “blame” is our need for CONTROL and MASTERY.  When we’re in a situation that feels bad but we feel paralyzed and trapped and unable to move – the only way we can “compute” this in our brains is to say “It’s all my fault.”  At least, then, we have some kind of answer.

But it’s NOT the answer.

This is subtle, I know – talking about owning and responsibility as DIFFERENT from fault and blame – but i want you to really GET the difference here, because it’s actually HUGE.

So – if a man is treating you badly – In a “minor’ way by not being present when he’s with you, or not calling, or not following up, or forgetting things, or paying too much attention to other women in the room, so many other ways men distance themselves, or test us, or simply display their decision to not care about us properly…or in a “major” way with insults, neglect, verbal abuse, physical abuse and cheating…then instead of looking for “fault” or “blame” – just ask yourself:

“Why am I here?”

Just make this your simple process:

1. Experience – actually, truly, totally experience how YOU feel about YOURSELF when you’re with a man.

2.  If it doesn’t feel good – notice it.  Write about it.  Speak it out loud to yourself – until you can put it together in words to speak it directly to him: “This doesn’t feel good.”

3. Practice speaking this truth all the time – whenever things don’t feel good.  This is NOT about whether or not he takes out the garbage or calls you often enough to suit you. This is not about his behavior.  Not about what he does or doesn’t do.  This is NOT about making a man WRONG.  This is not about making YOURSELF “wrong.”

This is simply about learning to quickly and honestly answer for yourself the question – “Why am I here?”

When you can answer that for yourself no matter what’s going on – then you’ll get this whole, huge area we call “Boundaries.”

Sometimes we are “here” because it’s what we’re used to.  Sometimes it’s what we “think” is right.  sometimes it’s what we were taught.  Sometimes we feel “compelled” to be here because of a strong chemical pull to a man, or because we’re afraid to be alone.

It doesn’t matter what the answer is as much as how deeply we’re wiling to be honest with ourselves and tell the TRUTH.

I know many women, and have worked with many clients who KNOW they are trapping themselves in a bad-feeling situation, and yet simply will not move away from that situation.  But, even though they’re not moving away from the bad-feeling situation and putting themselves into places where they have a better chance of experiencing good feelings – they are taking the baby-steps of answering the question – “Why am I here?” and really, really – as painful as it is – hearing the answer.

In the end – it’s our choice, what we DO with the information we HAVE.  And the only information we have is about OURSELVES.

So – if you are “here” – and it doesn’t feel good – that’s where we start.

Love, Rori

I love walking my dog.  And drilling down even further – I love HAVING to walk my dog.  My code of ethics and what I believe being a good dog guardian includes is walking her every day – twice if I can, but once as a must.

So – I get out in the air.  I have to leave my cave of my mind and writing, and walk among people and trees, and do my Tools – be present, love every single thing I see, feel, smell, think, am.

And it occurred to me that if I felt that strongly about things that had to do with MY well-being as I did about the well-being of my dog – I’d be doing a whole lot more things for myself.

I’d exercise more regularly, I’d take care of my skin, hair, clothes, errands, everything – with more sense of purpose.  Or, at least, that it was ALRIGHT to SPEND that time and energy on myself.

So – who’s the dog in me?

Who, inside me, do I really WANT to take care of?

And – how’s that working inside you? Especially if you don’t have a dog that needs walking, or a child that needs tending – no matter how YOU’RE feeling?

I thought about this this morning: Let’s find something in ourselves that we absolutely, without any question, feel REQUIRES our TENDING, and that we feel totally COMMITTED to – and (and this is important!) that we WANT to tend to.

What can this be?

I looked around inside myself and thought of many things – the physical ones came to mind first – the physical tending.

And then I thought about the spiritual tending – meditating, resting, walking, being with others who’re meditating and tending to their spirits.

And then I thought about tending to my emotions – reading a novel and letting it take me emotionally, more sex and sensuality, really caring about other people and tending to them while I’m tending to me.

Then I thought about my mind – and realized – THAT’S where it’s EASY for me to tend.  Give me a crossword puzzle, or a Sudoku, or a problem of any kind to solve, and I’m on it.

And that’s my cage.  That’s where the dog needs to be walked.  And it needs to be walked OUT of my mind, and into my heart, my body, my spirit.

So – I picked one from each group.  You do that, too – right now.

Pick something you LOVE that has to do with your body – a bath, a walk, the gym, working out with balls and bands at home, makeup fun, hair fun, decorating yourself with clothes fun…

Then pick something that has to do with your spirit – doing your favorite Rori Raye Tools fills the bill there – try “Touching Objects” and “Being Present” with them (I think I start working with those Tools in my Reconnect Your Relationship program – and for now…just do these things “literally”).

Then pick something that has to do with your heart, your emotions, your feelings – perhaps something that triggers your sense of wonder, or triggers you to cry, or to laugh.  Perhaps that’s a movie, or volunteering for some cause you care about, or driving somewhere where there’s a gorgeous sunrise or sunset…

Let’s see if we can come up with whole great lists of these things – please send me your personal picks – and I want you to pick only ONE thing each for your body, spirit and heart – try it out, see if it has power for you, see if it’s something you can do REGULARLY – just like walking a dog.

I’ll come up with my list, too, and perhaps we can inspire each other as we go along.

The idea is to find a personal “calling” around these areas that are, truly, all together – our unique ESSENCE.

And how can this help you get the man and relationship of your dreams?

Simple – ATTRACTION.

There’s absolutely nothing in this world as compelling, attracting, and powerful and a woman who’s in touch with, and COMMITTED to – her essence.  And that’s YOU.

Love, Rori