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HAVE THE RELATIONSHIP YOU WANT A Step-By-Step Woman’’s Guide To Transforming Your Love Life Overnight!

Rori Raye

HAVE THE RELATIONSHIP YOU WANT Copyright 2005, 2007 by Coach Rori, LLC

For information: Rori Raye http://www.HaveTheRelationshipYouWant.com

Any reproduction, republication or other distribution of this work, including, without limitation, the duplication, copying, scanning, uploading and making available via the Internet or any other means, without the express permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law, and the knowing acquisition of an unauthorized reproduction of this work may subject acquirer to liability. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions of this work and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’’s rights is appreciated.

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A Special Message to My Readers Hi, this is Rori, I’’m so thrilled you’’re about to read and work with the Tools in this book —— that you’’re ready to be loved, cherished and adored the way you truly want and deserve —— and I know it will all happen for you more quickly than you imagine. The love life you dream of is within your reach, and I’’m totally committed to helping you get there. The Tools you'll find in this book were created as a result of my experience with years and years of excruciating, painful, humiliating ““relationships”” with men, dry spells where there were no men at all, the ““awful”” years of my marriage where everything I said, did and thought actually did more damage and took my self-esteem on a downhill slide. Throughout the years I tried many things and finally discovered the right combination of words and behavior that turned it all around for me. First, I got married, and then, I turned my troubled marriage into a glorious, amazing thing that’’s lasted for more than twenty years. Because every Tool I developed for myself saved my love life, I know this book will change yours -- whether you're in a relationship, married, dating, or sitting home alone and dreading dating. The Tools will help you if you're looking for Mr. Right, or think you may have encountered Mr. Right and need to know how to draw him in and make him stay forever. They will help you if you’’re with your Mr. Right, but things are going wrong and what you need is an instant, total turnaround for the relationship you have. The Tools will help you if there’’s a man in your life who wants to be your Mr. Right, but you're just not sure about him. And they

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will help you save your relationship or marriage even if it's on the verge of breaking up. Because I'm married I often use my husband as an example. I also bring up the men I dated and suffered over to help illustrate and guide you through these Tools. So, wherever I refer to my husband, or to a man I was once with -- substitute whatever man you’’re with or want in your life right now. This might be the man you're dating, the man you live with, or the man I’’ll ask you to visualize. As you work through the book and start ““doing”” the Tools, you will begin to use every man you encounter (including the man you may be with right now) to experiment and practice on. These are Tools that will allow you to easily draw a man in. They will teach you how to help a man to fall in love with you and stay in love with you in a way that makes you feel loved forever. They will help you get rid of the walls and the blocks we women have all been taught to put up between ourselves and a man. They will get you connected, almost instantly, with a man’’s heart. They will repair the damage to your relationship, no matter how much your man is withdrawing or how bad things feel right now. And these Tools will rebuild your faith in love and your hopes for yourself, so that you’’ll believe and see for yourself the Truth -that there are so many great men out there who want you, and that you can create the relationship of your dreams with any one of them. These Tools are the basics of the Rori Raye system for getting the love, romance, and commitment you want, from the great man you want. Be sure to write to me, or visit my blog at http://blog.HaveTheRelationshipYouWant.com, and let me know how the Tools are working for you. I know they will quickly and dramatically make all the difference for you in your love life. Love, Rori

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CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………..………………………………5 1……Ground Rules………………………………………………………………..……7 2 ……The 5 Keys………………………………………………………………....……11 3 ……There’’s More To You Than You Know……...…….14 4……Figuring it Out…………………………………………………………...……19 5……What Do I Want? …………………………………………………….……26 6……Four Changes to Relationship Bliss………………....……33 7……Through the Woods……………………………………………………...39

Key #1 8……Choose Relationship………………………………………………..……48

Key #2 9……Choose to be the Masculine or Feminine Energy Partner……………………...……………………60

Key #3 10……Support the Team…………………………………………………………65

Key # 4 - Respect the Masculine

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11……Say Goodbye to Old Negatives………………………………………………70 12……Recapturing Affection……………………………………..…………………………74 13……Stop What isn’’t Working……………………..……………………………………79 14……Listening at Levels 1 & 2……………………………………………………..……84

Key #5 –– Express the Feminine 15……What is Feminine Energy?…… ……………………………………..…………90 16……What Do I Feel? …………………………………………...………….…………..……96 17……Requesting and Negotiating………………...……………….………………106 18……Being a Girl……………………………………………………………….………………...112 19……Overfunctioning…………………………………………………………………………115 20……Vulnerability……………………………………………………..…….……………………126 21……WellBeing………………………………………………………………...……………………133 22……The Rori Raye Mantra………………………………………………………………137 23……Translations –– How to Choose Words………………...…………139 24……Processing……………………………………………………………………..………………143 25……Fearlessness………………………………………………………………...………………148 About Rori Raye……………………………………………………………………………………152

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INTRODUCTION

What If: ……every time you saw your partner you felt excited? ……you knew exactly what you wanted and could get it –– without even asking? ……the relationship you’’re already in could be the relationship of your dreams? ……even though you’’ve been in and out of so many relationships looking for ““Mr. Right”” your head is spinning and your heart hurts, you could start fresh, use what you’’ve already learned, and attract exactly the relationship you want into your life? ……it could really be different?

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can have what you want. You can be cherished and adored. You can be happy. And it can happen quickly. Many years ago, my now two decades long marriage was awful. I was bouncing emotionally in and out of it, I was anxious, miserable, furious. Our daughter was small, and I felt trapped. There was no sex, no sleep, no fun, no peace. Couples therapy didn’’t help at all –– it only made me feel angrier and more helpless. Desperate, I read, experimented,

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made stuff up and concentrated on my side of the relationship. It was a total shock when my marriage turned completely around in two weeks. Now, my relationship with my husband is truly sensational –– and it gets better every day. This workbook will introduce you to the principles and tools of the Have the Relationship You Want seminars, workshops, teleclasses, and personal coaching. In these pages you’’ll find enough information, exercises and powerful questions to transform your relationship –– all by yourself, without the cooperation of your partner, without even talking to him about it –– practically overnight. I encourage you to dive into the exercises. I applaud you for taking the risk of changing things as they are in order to get what you want. When the new tools you’’ll find in this book work for you for the first time, you’’ll be amazed. They will continue to work, and take you as far into love as you’’re willing to go.

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CHAPTER 1

GROUND RULES ““If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you’’ve made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand.”” –– Unknown

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irst, I want to set the ground rules. What we’’re going to be about here is getting you the big ticket items –– Affection, Great Sex, Fun, Respect, Romance, Excitement, Pleasure, Harmony, Emotional Safety and Support, a framework for negotiating what you want–– and a Soul-mate Connection with the man you have or the man you’’re about to meet. This is not about finding better, cleverer ways to get him to do what you want him to do and to behave the way you want him to behave. It’’s not about managing and controlling him better, so that he doesn’’t feel like you’’re managing and controlling him. It’’s not about tricks –– it’’s about Letting Go to get what you want. It’’s about giving up all forms of control and man-management in order to have your dream relationship. It’’s about treating your man as though you trust and respect him even if you’’re not there yet.

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Okay, I want to illustrate this physically. Hold out your hands and tighten your fists like you’’re holding onto something. Imagine your man, or your date, is standing right in front of you –– and what you’’re holding onto with your clenched fists, is him. You have his shirt in your hands. Don’’t let go. What do you imagine it’’s like for him? What’’s he thinking, what’’s he doing? Is he squirming, trying to get away? If you’’re married, he won’’t leave. He doesn’’t want to leave. He’’ll just stand there, or sometimes he’’ll bat or push you away. Does that sound familiar? And what does it feel like for you? How does it feel to be grabbing onto his shirt like that? Tension in your stomach? Okay, now look at your hands. It feels like you’’re grabbing on, right, but look at where your knuckles are –– the part of your hand that’’s closest to him. You’’re really pushing him away with your fists! So you’’re both grabbing on and pushing away at the same time. How’’s that feel? Are you afraid of what will happen if you let go? Don’’t let go. All right, now let go. Release and relax your hands. Now turn your hands, effortlessly now, palms up and out. What does that feel like? Okay. Clench your fists again, hold on again. This is control. Open your hands, palms up. This is

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surrender. Clench them again. This is control –– wanting, trying to get, trying to keep, arranging, managing. Now open them and turn them up and outward. This is receiving, allowing, being open. How does it feel? This workbook is meant for you to carry around and write in –– writing can often help us access feelings and information that thinking sometimes blocks. And a month from now, it will be great to revisit what you’’ve written and add to it all the changes that have happened. So when you pick up this book, pick up a pen. Start now –– write about how it feels to clench your fists and pull and push your man. Write what it feels like to want to control him and the relationship.

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Now open your hands and let the palms face up and outward again. Write what it feels like to let go of the clenched fist and receive. Let both the positive and negative feelings about it come up and onto the paper.

We clench our fists and try to control so much because we are afraid what will happen if we don’’t. So whatever you think or feel, write it down.

We’’ll be looking back at this many times as we go along –– for now, let’’s just jump right in!

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CHAPTER 2

THE 5 KEYS TO CREATING A GREAT RELATIONSHIP ““Many of us spend our lives saying we would give anything for love, while we’’re often really pushing it away.”” –– Merle Shain

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f you’’re not used to it, love can be scary. If you’’re used to always being in control, being in love can feel like being crazy.

This workbook, and the workshops and seminars that coach you through using its principles, are designed to take you step by step from the easiest to the most challenging techniques and exercises so that you can go at your own pace. Each of the 5 Keys lays a foundation for the next. As you use the most challenging tools in Keys 4 & 5, you will find yourself revisiting the basics in Keys 1,2 and 3 for support and encouragement and to help renew your commitment to the program.

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CAN I FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM AGAIN? Absolutely. Falling in love again with the man you already have in your life can feel just as scary and exciting as it did at the beginning. Falling in love for the first time with the good man you’’re about to meet can be thrilling. I offer you a roadmap to the land of intimacy –– filled with excitement, vulnerability, sensuality, respect, and love. In this book you will learn: •

How to completely redesign the entire concept and dynamics of your marriage, your relationship, or your first date.

•

How to communicate in a completely new way.

•

How to tap into the power of being a woman by tapping into the power of Feminine Energy.

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The 5 Keys to a Great Relationship will take you on a step-by-step How-To process. They are: THE 5 KEYS: 1. Choose Relationship. 2. Choose to be either the thinking, action-oriented, decision-making, masculine energy, GIVING partner, or the feeling, expressing, sensual, feminine energy, RECEIVING partner in your relationship. 3. Support the Team. 4. Respect the Masculine. 5. Express the Feminine. Let’’s start with a question:

What do I want?

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CHAPTER 3

THERE’’S MORE TO YOU THAN YOU KNOW ““The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.”” –– Sioux legend

SYNCHRONICITY

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anting something is essential to getting it. Once you want something fiercely enough, not only are you more able to figure out how to get it, it seems everyone else on the planet wants it for you too. One word to describe this is synchronicity. You put out strong, clear energy that you want something, and soon you’’re bumping into people in the street who can help you get it. We’’ve all had these experiences. Part of how synchronicity works is that it doesn’’t know the difference between what you think you want, what you say you want, and what you really want. If you use most of your energy thinking about how miserable you are, and focusing on what you don’’t like about what’’s going on in

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your life, it’’s like signaling the world to keep on sending more of the same your way. No wonder we feel stuck! The more we complain, the more we spin our wheels. We feel like we’’ll never get out of the hole of our stale relationship, never ever find a great relationship, never get off the treadmill of too much to do and too little time, never be happy. We listen to the negative voices in our heads because we don’’t trust ourselves. We’’ve created routines and habits that we don’’t know how to break. I’’ve been there, we’’ve all been there. But there are ways out. WHAT WE BELIEVE ““Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”” –– Marianne Williamson Our lives are created out of our beliefs about ourselves and the world. We can change our circumstances by changing our beliefs. One way to do this is by using techniques that can alter our minds, bodies and spirits from the inside out –– such as: * Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis seek to bring up memories and emotions that are buried in our minds and hearts and bodies through talk. This would include some

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kinds of hypnotherapy, and work you can do yourself –– like writing out your feelings and thoughts in journals. * Bodywork therapy brings up buried memories and emotions by working directly with the body. This would include Rolfing, Reichian therapy, massage, Mind-Body Integration, yoga, Rebirthing, all kinds of deep breathing and guided meditation techniques. Every day it seems there are new Mind-Body forms of healing and new practitioners. Another way to change our beliefs about ourselves is to work from the outside in: Behavior modification therapy identifies habits and routines we’’re stuck in and asks us to consciously change them. Hypnotherapy works this way too, and so do affirmations and New Year’’s resolutions. You learn to replace negative thoughts and actions with positive ones the way you learn to stop biting your nails and grow longer, stronger ones. The thing is, when you bring up what’’s buried on your inside, your outside will change. If you tap into pain and anger you’’ve held in your subconscious your whole life, you’’ll suddenly find yourself more relaxed and with a new point of view about everything. That’’s because it’’s often the feelings and beliefs we don’’t know about –– the ones buried in our subconscious –– that run our lives.

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RECLAIMING OURSELVES You can visualize this by looking at your entire self as a circle. Put another circle in the center that’’s almost as big as the first. The outer layer is what’’s conscious, or what you know about yourself. What’’s in the deepest circle is the buried treasure –– what you don’’t know about. The big mystery of ourselves. What I know

What I don’’t know

It all belongs to you. It’’s all your own energy, the stuff of your own life. When you connect with the emotions and thoughts in your mind and body that you don’’t know about, and suddenly know about them, the outer circle gets bigger. It goes deeper. There’’s more of you. I call this Alchemy –– a sort of magical, elemental, chemical change. When you reclaim parts of yourself that were once unreachable, you become a new person –– sort of how adding a new ingredient to a recipe makes it an entirely different

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dish, with a whole new name on the menu! You will begin running more of your life with the feelings and beliefs you do know about. Romance will become less of a mystery to you, and the parts that are still –– and ought to be –– mysterious will be easier to enjoy, appreciate, and sometimes just get through. You will start making better choices because you now actually do have choices. And then your actions will begin to change on their own. When those changes happen on the outside, more buried feelings about yourself will begin to come up. It’’s a cycle of healing in which you are continually clearing out obsolete beliefs about yourself and the world by learning more about what makes you who you are.

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CHAPTER 4

FIGURING IT OUT ““You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.”” –– Anonymous

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’’ve done talk therapy, psychoanalysis, hypnosis, Reichian and Rebirthing bodywork, written many books, plays and film scripts and even more journals, and participated in some therapy techniques that are so far out on the edge I’’m embarrassed to talk about them. And everything worked. Everything opened up my heart or my mind a little bit more. I became addicted to the ““ah ha”” moments of therapy. But nothing changed in my relationships. My first marriage to a man I adored had disintegrated, leaving my selfesteem somewhere below floor level. I was working my way through dead-end relationships –– some passionate, some creepy, some where I was hanging in for no reason and knew it, and some where I was hanging in oblivious to the

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heartache ahead. Relationships that didn’’t go anywhere, boring ones I didn’’t want to go anywhere. Still choosing men who couldn’’t go anywhere anyway. Romances lasted way longer than they should have because I put up with so much. I made completely wrong choices from beginning to end. I thought I was ready to make the leap into a great relationship, but I didn’’t know how. GETTING READY FOR MY MR. RIGHT For me, information was the missing link. I was successfully working on myself, uncovering old feelings, changing my actions, but I was like a child in some ways. I needed information. I needed a How To. Getting the great relationship I wanted and then keeping it great was like learning a foreign language. I needed an instruction book! And a tutor with a track record. I found the instructions in magazine articles, in books, and from men themselves. I experimented. I took the information into the real world and used dating as a tutorial. I picked men’’s brains, asked about all their old relationships and what they thought and did and felt. And then I met my husband. He fell into my lap. I couldn’’t shake him off no matter how hard I tried. And I really tried. I thought he

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wasn’’t my type, I thought he was too nice. I didn’’t get that intense thrill from being with him that I felt when I was with my Karate instructor or the fellow who was almost a Jesuit priest. I put him off for weeks, and then, finally, I looked at him sitting across from me in my living room and it was as if a mist ––straight from a romance novel –– wafted across his face. It was absolutely crystal clear to me that he was ““the one.”” That I was going to marry him and be with him for the rest of my life. And I was not happy about it. I was still hooked into that whole ““junkie”” mentality of chasing men who either didn’’t want to or constitutionally couldn’’t want me. I resisted him, but he won me over. His good-guyness became exciting, as I found myself actually being taken to dinner, asked out consistently, pursued, and looked at as though I was a goddess. He was actually adorable –– much more handsome and appealing than the Karate instructor or the would-be Jesuit priest or any of the hundreds of men I’’d sifted through my life –– and I finally got it.

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I wanted to get married and have children, and there he was –– right in the nick of time, ready to marry and have kids with me –– my perfect-for-me man. We’’d met on my 38th birthday, he asked me to marry him on my 39th birthday, we were married four months later, and my daughter was born right after my 40th birthday. And then the nightmare started all over again. BACK TO START First, affection slowed down. Laughing and being silly stopped. Sex stopped. I was getting nervous and anxious and not sleeping well. He was moody. Angry. Withdrawing from me. We tried couples therapy, which only made me feel angrier and more hopeless. This went on for almost four years until, in desperation, I figured it out. I’’d found instructions for attracting my man, but had no idea what to do with him when he was mine. I’’d gone back to the only behavior I knew –– what I saw in my own home between my mother and father, and what I’’d done in all my other old, dead-end relationships, including my first marriage. I slowly began to see that what was wrong with my now miserable marriage was the same thing that had been wrong with all my relationships. It wasn’’t that he was the

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wrong man, or couldn’’t be intimate, or any of the other things I’’d thought and heard about ““men””. It was me. I had to find new instructions, a new mentor, a new tutor. But not one single woman I knew was any more happily married than I was. Again I read, I experimented. I went on a search for information. I tried everything I found, everything I already knew, and then, like a brick hitting me, a light went on in my head. SMALL CHANGES MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE I noticed that I was saying and doing things that were completely destructive to my idea of what a great romance and marriage should be. I was making sure there was no real intimacy, trust and passion in the relationship, and I was angry with him about it! Then I realized how all the men I’’d ever chosen had similar characteristics, and that the relationships had all disintegrated in the same way. It was changes on my outside –– overhauling my language, actions, and attitudes –– that caught my husband’’s attention, softened our interactions and opened the door for me to make the even bigger changes on my inside.

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It was my newfound willingness to feel my feelings and express them in a way my husband could really hear that turned my marriage around forever. I taught myself to trust myself by setting boundaries and standing by them. Then, slowly, I learned to surrender my need to control everything in my life. I stopped trying to control my husband. I learned to surrender to myself, to love, to intimacy and finally, to trust my husband. I began to believe him when he said he loved me. I began to believe he was just fine without my help and supervision. Sex came back. Affection came back big-time. Fun came back. All of a sudden we were a team, instead of two ““leaders”” fighting over who was in charge. I stopped trying to ““delegate”” chores to him. He started smiling at me, talking with me. All this happened in less than one month. Now, more than fifteen years later, my marriage just gets better every day. Sometimes I stand around amazed at my good fortune. I know that my husband is the same good man he was before, and that our good marriage has created a

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place for us both to grow into the best people we can be, fully supported, fully respected, fully cherished, fully loved. And now I look at my lovely husband, smiles on both our faces, our daughter dancing around our loveseat like a woodland fairy in some pastoral scene, and feel grateful to my toes. If I’’d known then what I know now……runs through my head. So If I could help you know now what I learned over many years and heartaches, what would I tell you? LOVE DOES NOT TAKE HARD WORK. It’’s a myth that you have to ““work”” on a relationship. All you need is an instruction book, a mentor, and partner to work with. The relationship or first date itself is the tutorial. Every minute you are with your man –– or the man you are about to meet –– who you are and where you are will be reflected back to you. Watch, listen, learn, practice, and be willing to receive love. I hope my journey of trial-and error can save you time and pain. Read it, do the exercises, and watch in amazement as your own relationship turns wonderful.

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CHAPTER 5

WHAT DO I WANT? ““Having someone wonder where you are when you don’’t come home at night is a very old human need.”” –– Margaret Mead

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any of us don’’t even believe we deserve what brings us pleasure and so we don’’t allow ourselves to want it. Many of us squelch down the desire so quickly that we don’’t even give ourselves a chance to know if we want something or not. In this book, I’’m going to ask you to focus on what it is you want for yourself, not what you want others to do. Focus on understanding where your desires are coming from, what they’’re leading you to, how it would look if you had what you want, and getting clear on the first steps to take toward your wants. Sounds easy, but do you actually know what you want?

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YOUR IDEAL RELATIONSHIP Even if you believe that you do know what you want –– it’’s the specific, sensual details of your desire that starts the wheels in motion. Throughout this book, we’’ll be using guided imagery and fantasy to help bring vague desires into 3-D wants you can actually see and feel. Let’’s start by imagining the perfect relationship Your man doesn’’t even have to be in this fantasy. Close your eyes and imagine what a perfect day in a perfect relationship looks like, sounds like, feels like. Imagine getting up in the morning. What’’s the bed like? The sheets? What does your man (real or imaginary) smell like? Look like? What does he do as soon as he sees your eyes are open? Take it from there. Imagine every possible moment of the day. Now, here’’s the very important trick to this exercise –– while you are fantasizing a perfect day in your perfect relationship, it may trigger visions of very yucky moments in your not-so perfect relationship. You may be enticed down a road of rehashing miserable moments from the past and drawn into imagining them, and dreading them, in the future. You may find yourself getting angry, or sad. If and when this happens, Stop. Don’’t think about it, just Stop.

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This Stopping will be a very important tool for you throughout the program, and I want you to start practicing it now. Stop what you’’re doing. Completely turn away from the unhappy thought and the conversation in your head about it. With as little energy as possible (and this is important –– no wrenching, pulling, no belittling or getting angry at yourself or him) simply turn back to the happy fantasy. No matter how many times you have to do it, keep turning back to the happy fantasy until it plays out to the end of the day. Ignore everything that isn’’t wonderful, perfect, blissful. For some of you, this was easy. For most, it was a struggle. As soon as your own husband or boyfriend –– or a past lover who broke your heart –– gets into the picture, whatever you’’ve been doing, thinking and feeling about him will come up. Most of us have been coping so long, living in the land of ““Just not happy”” that to switch gears into the positive is the first challenge of this program. When you’’re at the absolute end of the perfect day, falling asleep in his arms (or in your own arms –– it’’s important to imagine exactly what you want, not what you

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think you’’re supposed to want), open your eyes and start to write down what you remember. The plot is not important –– what’’s important are the tactile, sensual details: the colors, smells, emotional feelings, physical feelings, weather, environment, energy. Go back into your imagination and ask yourself : What does it look like, smell like, taste like, feel like in the bed, in the kitchen, the living room, out for the evening in your perfect relationship. Does he call you a special name? What does he do for you? What do you feel for him?

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When you’’ve filled the page (and perhaps more pages –– on your computer or in a journal,) look over what you’’ve written. Pick out 3 of your favorite observations. Circle them or rewrite them here:

An example would be: He touches me on my cheek and looks into my eyes, and I just melt. Or He’’s walking around in these silly boxer shorts and smiling, and I just think he’’s adorable. Or He cleans off the dinner plates and then takes out the garbage, and I didn’’t even ask him. Look at your 3 chosen moments of relationship bliss. See if you can find one thing from each that symbolically sums up that wonderful moment. For the first example, you might think of melt. For the second, you might think of boxer shorts, or your husband (real or imagined) smiling. For the third, you might think of him standing by a cleaned off table. Come up with what is meaningful to you. Circle or rewrite you’’re your three short versions of blissful moments.

This exercise has many sides to it.

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First, you’’re giving yourself a structure, or a bitesized vision that you can recall at will to bring you back, instantly, to the remembered wonderful moment. (This is sort of like the sense memory exercise for actors.) Second, during the exercise you were focusing exclusively on the blissful moments, and ignoring anything negative. This is a crucial skill to acquire. Third, in the process of focusing on the blissful moments, you stopped yourself whenever you went into the old habit of negativity. Learning to catch yourself in old habits is essential to transforming your relationship, and in the process, yourself. MAGIC WAND The tool of being able to return again and again to the positive, as gently as you can, works like a magic wand. You can wave it over any moment of relationship conflict. Instantly, you’’ll see a way out of the cycles and patterns of anger and defensiveness that got you into trouble in the first place. You’’ll be able to take a moment to breathe, and to use the 5 Keys. All you need is a moment. All you need is one breath. Practice stopping the negative and returning to the positive every moment of every day.

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You can do this easily: First, stop the negative thought dead in its tracks; Second, look around at something that pleases you –– either something real, like a pretty dress in a window or a pretty car next to you on the road –– or something from your imagination. This is where your three short memories of real or imagined bliss come in handy. Pull them out every time you stop a negative thought. When you find yourself irritated at work, or driving, or waiting in line –– whip out a positive memory. When you begin to beat yourself up (as we all do) about how many negative thoughts you find yourself stopping, return to a happy memory of yourself! Important: –– you are not clench-fisted pulling and pushing at your thoughts. You are opening your hands to the happy, the positive, the lovely, and simply sinking back, very, very gently, into that happy, positive, lovely place whenever you remember to do it. This ability to be flexible and move effortlessly from control to surrender, from negative to positive, from clenched fist to open palm, will help you ease into the changes that will turn your love life from what it is now into what you want it to be. Practicing flexibility and noticing how flexible and observant you really are will help you see how easy it can be to make those changes.

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CHAPTER 6

FOUR CHANGES TO RELATIONSHIP BLISS ““Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”” –– Jalal ad-din Rumi

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s we begin working together through the 5 Keys to a Great Relationship, you’’ll begin to see a pattern. You’’ll see that I’’ll be asking you to make changes in order to get what you want. I’’ll be asking you to step out of your comfort zone –– one baby step at a time –– to get all the Big Ticket items you yearn for and all the daily nuts and bolts items of making a home and a life together you want. I’’ll be asking you to make changes in the words you use and the way you choose to express yourself. I’’ll be asking you to respect and love yourself first and foremost. I’’ll be asking you to look for the simple answer –– in black and white

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–– even though you believe what’’s going on at any moment in your life is complex and in the gray area. I’’ll be asking you to look at the big picture from a completely different perspective. And I’’ll be asking you to take a chance, to risk the unknown, to brave fear and discomfort to get to where you may never have been –– inside a truly intimate relationship. I’’ve summed up these leaps of faith I’’ll be methodically asking you to make in a ““Mantra””. It’’s a poem you can use as a meditation, as a reminder, as a jolt when you’’re confused or angry. It goes like this: Trust your Boundaries Follow Your Feelings Choose Your Words Be Surprised Trusting your boundaries means you believe in your ability to take care of yourself, to treat yourself well regardless of how you’’re feeling about yourself, and to insist that you be treated well, no matter what your man or the conflicting voices in your head may be saying to you. Following your feelings means you focus on your feelings. It means that, rather than trying to think your way through a conflict or something that’’s bothering you, you

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look inside for feelings and sensations that are real in the moment. Choosing your words means you stifle the automatic responses you find most comforting. You respect the power of words by either saying only what you feel in your own body –– without so much as referring to your man or his actions –– or not speaking at all. Taking a breath before you speak, respond, react in the same old ways gives you a moment to find a new, better way to respond, or sometimes, to do nothing. Being surprised sums up the whole experience of giving up control. Instead of using your energy, intellect, and emotional resources to predict and determine the outcome of every moment of your relationship, you let it go. You allow yourself to be surprised! No matter how hard you’’re wishing for change, when it comes, you’’ll be surprised. Most of us don’’t take well to surprises. We like everything spelled out in advance, we like to be prepared. No one can be prepared for the surprises of love. For the way your heart feels, the way your body tingles, the way making a decision to be with someone for all of your life feels, and the way it feels in the middle of that decision, when things aren’’t going the way you’’d dreamed.

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If everything always turned out the way we expected, if every turn in the road led to where we thought it would, life would be pretty dismal. Not only would we know about the good stuff, we’’d know about the bad stuff. If we knew everything in advance, there’’d be no anticipation. Fear about the uncertainty of the future would be replaced with dread. Life would be a board game with no dice. Even if we could know the future, we couldn’’t have it both ways –– know what we want to know and not know what we don’’t want to know. How could we decide whether we wanted to know something without first finding out what it is? So we’’re pretty much stuck with not knowing anything, really. We have no way of knowing how anything will turn out, so we can’’t even know if we should even want it at all! We have to make our best guess. We have to make choices. And yet, most of us (remember the clenched fist exercise in Chapter One?) do our best day in and day out to gain, maintain, regain, exert, demonstrate control over something in our life. We want to control the outcome of events and the behavior of other people. On a deep level, we know we can’’t have that kind of control –– it’’s wishful thinking. But we still want to. And we

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still try. And that effort makes us tense. And worse, it makes us closed to the possibilities of synchronicity. It makes us closed to the outstretched hearts of real live men. A much better plan is to give up control over what we can’’t control, and take control over what we do control: Our choices! CHOICE AND CONTROL There is power in choice. By not believing we have a choice in any situation we find ourselves in, we’’re able to be confused, feel dread, step in and out of commitments, get angry, disappointed, and create drama and conflict enough to distract us from the fact that we are afraid to choose. Choice is completely different from control. Much of this book will be about defining that difference, and showing you how your life and your relationship will flourish once you give up control and begin making choices. Control is pretty much trying to change something or someone else. Most of us live our lives believing that this change we want to make will make us happier.

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We also believe that what we have in mind for the other person or situation is good for them, too, and that it’’s truly what we want. Yet, from experience, we all know this is not the case. ““Be careful what you wish for”” is a saying we’’ve all heard. And it’’s true. Do you remember a time you were successful in changing someone’’s behavior and it turned out badly? That’’s because we often think small. We’’re looking at one tree in a huge forest and trying to change the shape of a leaf. If what we want is love, adoration, cherishing, care, affection, great sex, (the whole forest) why are we using all our power to get our men to take out the garbage (a branch)? And we often do try with all our power, our might, our wits –– any way we can –– to get our way. To change that one leaf we find so difficult to live with.

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CHAPTER 7

THROUGH THE WOODS

““Into the woods, and who can tell what’’s waiting on the journey? Into the woods and through the fear you have to take the journey…… Into the woods, each time you go, there’’s more to learn of what you know……”” –– Stephen Sondheim

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s it really the wayward leaf that’’s so upsetting? Or the idea that we are in a relationship with another human being who is not actually under our direct control? That we are completely powerless to change anyone in our lives but ourselves? Is it the leaf that’’s so offensive, or is it that it’’s easier to complain about the leaf over there than to look inside ourselves for our real feelings? I remember all those dark nights lying in bed next to a man I thought I hated. It took a momentous, shockingly quick turnaround to love for me to see I was just afraid. I was afraid, to use the forest analogy, that inside I was just rotting bark.

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I was afraid I didn’’t know how to stand up for myself, didn’’t know how to feel, didn’’t know how to speak. He seemed to me a tree I couldn’’t depend on to keep me from harm, from danger, from getting lost. I didn’’t trust myself enough to keep myself from harm, from danger, from getting lost. So there was no way I could trust him! But love and relationship is supposed to be about going into the forest. We’’re supposed to expand ourselves –– the sum of the two of us together is greater than just two. We’’re supposed to take each other, accompany each other, support each other through the woods –– not hold each other back. Why else but out of fear are we so willing to sacrifice the forest for a twig? For now, let’’s treat this forest sacrifice as a habit. A series of habits constructed by us to distract us from the scariness and depth of the woods. Are we afraid we’’ll get lost in it? Lost in love? Do we choose men who have no business being in a gorgeous forest with us so that we can stay firmly attached to one tree? Are those men and those restricted relationships all about safety? A way to fend off the demands of intimacy? Though we feel called to find our soulmate, what if ours is standing right in front of us? What if it’’s we who are

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afraid? We who are waving around our macho bravado, yelling ““Do this, do that”” and trying to take charge? CHEMISTRY ““A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”” –– Ingrid Bergman How did we get where we are? Can you remember what it was like the moment you laid eyes on your husband or boyfriend, or last romantic partner? Were you instantly attracted? Was he? Was there no romantic attraction at all, but a warm, friendly feeling? Did you feel more than he did at first? Or was it the other way around? Or did you both make a beeline for each other? These questions are about chemistry, one of the many aspects of relationship over which you have little or no control. There is considerable research about romantic chemistry. The short version is that we are romantically and sexually and emotionally attracted to men and women who

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are somewhat like our fathers and mothers, and enough not like our fathers and mothers. This involves looks, personality, pheromones (invisible particles of smell that figure crucially throughout the entire animal kingdom,) voice, and indefinable spiritual qualities. Pheromones match up to what your used to, to what gives you instinctive feelings of home and comfort, with just enough touch of the exotic and unknown. Though friendships may change to romance, and romance to love, and friendship, romance and love may die, chemistry is a mystery when you’’re caught in it. If a man is ““into”” you, he’’s ““into”” you. And if he isn’’t, he isn’’t. Just knowing this one truth is powerful. Our men are with us because they are ““into”” us. Men will keep calling, jump over obstacles to find us and get to us if they want us. And men usually know what they want right away. What we choose to do about that is the only control we have over our romantic destinies. If we can learn to accept that power, instead of trying to make our men over into some image we have in our heads, everything in our relationships will change.

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MEN ARE LOYAL There are many myths surrounding men. And I believe women have made them all up to avoid some basic truths: The truth is –– Men are loyal, brave and strong. Men have a tremendous capacity to love, commit, nurture, cherish, understand, support, and be there for us. If they want to. And that’’s it. Men, unlike us, tend to do what they want. They tend to do what they know gets them what they want. When they commit to us, what they want is love, respect, sex, intimacy and romance. And they believe in their hearts, groins and spirits that we are the women to give it to them. We do not have to do anything to make them feel this way. No matter how hard we try, we can not make them love us, care for us, and be there for us if they don’’t want to. What we can succeed in doing –– and most of us do this really well –– is in making them not feel this way. We can make them not want to love us, care for us, and be there for us.

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MEN WANT TO STAY Men don’’t leave. They do the best they can to stay with the woman they’’ve chosen, and only leave when they can’’t get what they need. So what do men need? They need what women need: love, companionship, all the good stuff you dream of in a relationship. With one difference: Men respond to a woman on a simple and basic level. And then they do something about it. You may call this ““following their dicks,”” but I call it ““following their guts.”” They don’’t stop to think whether you’’d make a good mother for their children or a great companion when they get older, or whether you have enough power and prestige in the world or make a great living. They trust themselves. They trust their instincts. They believe in their abilities to know when you’’re the ““one,”” and once they’’ve found you, it’’s difficult to talk them out of it. Once they’’ve committed to you, they’’ll tolerate a whole hell of a lot to stay with you. Women, on the other hand, tend to make decisions about men. We check them out, are attracted to things about them other

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than our response to them and how we feel about ourselves in their presence, and then talk ourselves into and out of relationships. And this is only healthy men and women. Men and women who are bent on hurting themselves and using a relationship to do a good job of it find each other. And still, women will talk themselves in and out of the relationship, at all stages, while men will stay until they can’’t get what they want, which in this case is unhappiness. That kind of relationship is what’’s called codependent, where both parties are glued to each other by a mutual need to punish themselves. A man who goes into a relationship looking for selfpunishment and then changes, and finally realizes he would rather be happy, will still often stay in the relationship, withdrawing rather than leaving, until the woman throws him out (and often into the arms of another woman) by rejecting him. A woman who goes into a relationship looking for self-punishment and then changes, and finally realizes she would rather be happy, will often leave, no matter how scary it is and how alone she might be after leaving.

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FEAR OF INTIMACY –– OURS ““I felt it shelter to speak to you.”” –– Emily Dickinson Much has been made of men’’s so-called ““Fear of Intimacy”” issues. I, for one, don’’t believe that ““Fear of Intimacy”” has ever stopped a man from committing himself to a woman he really wants. The nature of a man is to Go for it –– and he knows what ““it”” involves –– the whole kit and caboodle of relationship. He’’s ready and willing to give his whole heart to the woman he wants. Women, on the other hand, make relationship decisions based on many factors other than their deep connection to the man. They judge a man’’s potential, and suitability, and use their heads a lot more than men do. When we women marry, we’’ve thought it all out, envisioned the relationship far into the future, and commit ourselves on many levels, but ““Fear of Intimacy”” keeps us from really committing with our hearts. I believe that women, more than men, fear losing autonomy and independence –– that we guard our opinions, and in most cases, the full extent of our personalities and soul from being seen, and in many ways prevent the relationship from going deeper as time goes on.

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Men, believing that women know the way, will follow our lead in the relationship. Then, we either lead them further into the heart of relationship, or keep it in the comfortable holding pattern of the head.

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CHAPTER 8

KEY #1 CHOOSE RELATIONSHIP ““We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”” –– Anonymous

IF YOU’’RE MARRIED OR IN A RELATIONSHIP

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ow do you know if your husband or boyfriend has what it takes to step up to the plate and be a full partner for you? You don’’t. Key #1 is about deciding, right now, up front, if he’’s worth your commitment to him. We’’re not talking about his potential, and we’’re not talking about the quality of the relationship –– because we’’re going to work on that, but we’’re talking about the man –– we’’re talking about exactly the way he is right now. If you’’re married or engaged, this is about making the commitment 100% to be in the relationship you have, to the man you’’re with.

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If you’’re not married or engaged, then you are officially only ““dating”” either many men, or one man who’’s asked you to be exclusive and you’’ve agreed. If you’’re dating, then don’’t commit 100% to anyone but yourself. Commit instead to your desire to be in a relationship –– commit to the idea of relationship –– commit to what’’s best for your ideal dream of relationship. Commit to wanting to be married! IF YOU WANT TO BE MARRIED What if Mr. Right-for-You really is out there looking for you? Are you willing to commit to being in a relationship? We say we are, but are we really? Not wanting to be lonely, or wanting a date for Saturday night isn’’t enough to keep a relationship together. It’’s your decision to share your life with someone that opens up the doors to your dream relationship. Really think about it. Is there space in your life for someone else who has legitimate claims on your time and energy? Is there room in your home for a man? Are you a perfectionist who needs everything in its place?

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Ask yourself: Do I really want a relationship? Am I really willing to make time and energy for it?

Are you more attached to your possessions, ideas, opinions, independence, freedom, and life style than you are to the idea of a relationship with all its messy physicality and messy emotions? Ask yourself: Am I willing to let someone who is not completely perfect into my heart? Into my emotional life? Write what that would look like to you in your daily life.

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And what about the level of relationship you’’re willing to commit to? Do you want to be married? Is there a glimmer of desire in you for marriage and family that you’’re hiding even from yourself? Are you afraid to have big dreams and big expectations for your future? Ask yourself: Am I ready to say flat-out that I want to be married?

A man who’’s found the woman he loves has no trouble committing to marriage. But we women often consume our romantic energy with planning and thinking and organizing, just to keep from feeling our real desires. We retreat behind a wall of busywork –– cooking, doing, offering, functioning –– that blocks our men from accessing our feelings and denies them what we want most, romance. FIGHT OR FLIGHT When things aren’’t going well in a relationship, survival skills get activated. One part of you wants to run, leave, go to Tahiti, find another man. Though this part can

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get bold and fearless –– which often feels good –– it usually only distracts from the real problems and the real solutions. The other part just wants to tear your man apart. This is the part that is so scared of the relationship breaking down, the part that has so little faith in the relationship itself that all you can do is attack, and then cry. Most of us go back and forth between these two. We’’re one foot in and one foot out of the relationship –– sometimes at all times. And then we turn all that anger and confusion on ourselves –– making ourselves at fault, making ourselves wrong, feeling bad, feeling guilty, feeling yucky. Making the commitment to the relationship gives you clarity. It allows you to let the bond of the relationship carry you over the tough parts rather than your bond with the man himself. It allows you to: Activate the warrior in you –– the parts of you that are brave enough to neither run nor succumb to attacking. These parts are willing to show the depths of how you really feel –– hurt, disappointed, angry, scared, thrilled, ecstatic. They’’re brave enough to express your feelings without attacking your partner. Step back into the observer –– the part of you that can see what’’s going on all around you. It sees the whole of the

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relationship and can put things in perspective. The observer can help you take a breath before you fall back into old ways of reacting that don’’t work and give you a chance to try some new ways of being and expressing yourself. Activating the observer will help you break some of the old patterns of your relationships. Cutting loose the brave warrior in you will help you stand by yourself. It will help you require top-notch treatment and loving from your man and refuse to tolerate sub-par treatment and loving. It will encourage you to open your heart, be vulnerable to love and express yourself authentically. Choosing the partner you have stops the confusion. A woman I once knew well was always one-foot-in and one-foot-out of her relationship. When things were bad, she was as good as single –– with all the pain, loneliness, and freedom that gave her. And then within hours she’’d bounce back to the other side, becoming so frightened of driving her husband away that she became sticky sweet. Just too nice to be believed. After an argument, he was simply frightened of her intensity, and tried to cool things by giving her space. He knew he’’d done a bad thing, but he was completely unmoved to rectify his mistake, because he knew she would first scream at him, then stomp out, then return nicer than ever, and everything would be okay for awhile.

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But he didn’’t really like this nice, sweet, servicing woman who came back to him. He didn’’t respect that woman. And he didn’’t know how to be with her and her feelings, so he just tuned out a little more, which frustrated her, and soon the resentment grew, and then there’’d be another mistake, and another series of bouncing in and out of the relationship. I asked what was it about not committing to the relationship that was so appealing. She said it made her feel more in control. I asked her what being in control looked like. She said it looked like taking care of herself. I asked her what taking care of herself looked like when things were going badly. She thought about it, and said ““If I could just stand there, stand still for a minute, and tell him exactly what I’’m feeling and have him really hear me.”” And what then? I asked. ““Then he takes care of me,”” she said. And we both laughed, but she knew she’’d hit on something, because the next time things went bad, she didn’’t run out to the store or down the street, and she didn’’t slam doors or jump in front of the basketball game and scream at him, she just stood there. She stood there, shaking, she said, and she told him what it felt like to be her at that moment, and then she noticed that he was transfixed. He was watching her, and listening to her. She noticed, for the first time, that he was paying attention. And

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then, instead of yelling back at her, or stomping into another room, he apologized. He just said ““I’’m sorry.”” He said he’’d been oblivious to what was going on, and he was sorry. And she decided that it was good enough for the moment, and she just went into the kitchen to think about it all. And then he left the TV set and came into the kitchen and touched her shoulder. And she was so surprised. I asked her how that happened, and she said ““I just made up my mind, and I don’’t know why, but I just decided that I was married to him and I’’d just damn well better try something different.”” My friend’’s husband was able to step up to the plate. So if you’’re married or in an exclusive relationship, ask yourself: Is my man good enough, right now, exactly the way he is, for me to recommit to him? Let’’s say for a 10-week trial of this program. Is he satisfactory –– at least more satisfactory than unsatisfactory? Think about it. Exactly the way he is. For those of you who are so angry and disappointed you can’’t think of anything satisfactory about your man at all, I’’m going to ask questions to help you see him, as he is, without all the drama of your relationship, and all the feelings, said and unsaid, that stand between you. So, are you going to keep your man, or throw him back?

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If you want to give your relationship a fair shot at becoming fantastic, you’’re going to have to commit 100%, full-out, no matter what happens, no matter how you think it’’s going, to doing the work. You’’re going to have to face yourself fearlessly. How do you decide if he’’s worth it? Start by asking yourself –– do you still love him, even a little? If there’’s anything left, write it down. I still love my man - this much:

Then ask -- do you respect him, in any way, even a little? Look for areas you may not have thought about. Is he a good father? Is he a good driver? Does he work hard? Is he a good dancer? Does he show up on time? Write all these things down. Don’’t even bother with the negatives. Most likely you’’ve been living in the land of ““How awful he is”” for quite a while, and we’’re going to deal with that later.

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I like my man for these qualities:

I respect my man for these qualities:

Look at your list. Think about it. Is there enough about him that you like, respect, maybe even love, that makes him more satisfactory than not? Note: If you are being physically abused, your man is ill. Nothing you like about him makes an abusive man satisfactory in any way. He is unacceptable. Please go directly to the phone or the Internet and find help in your area. The work you need to do is not toward saving your relationship, but toward saving yourself –– so that you will never again tolerate being disrespected or abused.

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Okay, if, objectively, your man, at this moment, is more satisfactory than not satisfactory, ask yourself: Am I willing to put my whole heart, mind, body and spirit into transforming my relationship? Will I commit to the Turn Your Relationship You Have into the Relationship You Want program for 4 weeks no matter what? You’’ll see as you begin trying some of the techniques that things will change for the better very quickly. The clarity you’’ll get from seeing these great results will motivate you to continue. At the beginning, you may have to ““fake it ‘‘til you make it”” –– and you’’ll still get many of the results you want. But to truly transform yourself and your relationship, it takes absolute, iron-will, total commitment that will carry you over the scary places real relationship and real intimacy take you. The scariness of intimacy is all part of what creates the passion. If Mr. Right is right around the corner, and he is, you’’ll want to look at whether you’’re welcoming him with open arms or really, no matter how much you say you want him, blocking his path. Unlike a relationship with a not-so-good guy, where the passion can come from feeling off balance and insecure most of the time, the passion in a relationship with a good,

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steady, loving man comes from the exhilaration of being able to show your soul and be loved for it! To get the most out of this workbook, I encourage you to feel as though you were committed –– or even to imagine yourself as totally committed –– to the idea of relationship. Commit without any expectations. Instead of assessing the man you have, or the relationship you’’re in, or the way your love life looks on a daily or weekly basis, make an appointment with yourself to revisit your commitment in 10 weeks. It’’ll help you get more out of the 5 Keys, and keep you focused on the exercises.

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CHAPTER 9

KEY #2 CHOOSE TO BE EITHER THE THINKING, ACTION-ORIENTED, DECISION-MAKING, GIVING, MASCULINE ENERGY PARTNER IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP, OR THE FEELING, EXPRESSING, SENSUAL, RECEIVING, FEMININE ENERGY PARTNER ““Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.”” –– Houssaye

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his may go against everything we’’ve been taught about being equal in a relationship. In my model, men and women are equal in relationship –– but we freely choose to come at it from different ways. Many years ago, when I was turning around my marriage, I read many books that helped me. Parenting books, Shirley Luthman’’s wonderful book about Masculine and Feminine energy, Intimacy: The Essence of Male & Female,

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Shakti Gawain’’s Living In The Light, books on Assertiveness Training for women, and Dr. Patricia Allen’’s great works, Getting To I Do and Staying Married And Loving It, in which she goes deeply into the concept of Masculine and Feminine energy, its basis in psychological theory, and how it works and doesn’’t in our relationships. More recently, the works of David Deida, especially his Dear Lover, can help you understand these concepts from a male point-of-view. All these books so changed my life that my own work is now completely devoted to helping women actually use these concepts. To break them down into bite-sized Tools we can easily follow, anytime and on our own. And here, Key #2 starts with Dr. Allen’’s concept that a Relationship needs a Masculine energy partner and a Feminine energy partner –– one of each, regardless of gender or who chooses which role. That you either wear the pants in the Relationship, or he does. And that you’’re free to choose either role –– but you can’’t have both. In other words: One of you gets to be the ““boy,”” and one of you gets to be the ““girl.””

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Do you know already which you’’d like to choose? To help you make a choice, think about what you want in a relationship and what you want your man to be like. If what you want in a partner, or perhaps a husband, is a Masculine, respectable, stable John Wayne type -- someone who’’ll cherish your feelings and adore you for just being who you are –– then you have to choose to be the girl. If what you want in a partner is more a fun, sensitive, emotional and expressive fellow, you may want to choose to be the boy. How do you see your ideal partner in your ideal relationship?

How do you see yourself in your ideal Relationship? Are you in action, handling things? Do you want to always be in control, keep the books, make the decisions, be respected for all that you do, and cherish your

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man’’s feelings ahead of your own? Then you’’ll want to choose being the boy. Or are you surrendering to romance, allowing your man to treasure your feelings, concerning yourself with fun, your environment, taking time for yourself, allowing your man to be in action, handling things? Then you’’ll want to be the girl. Take some time to write down the fantasy.

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Where women are making a huge mistake today is in choosing to be the girl, and then taking the Masculine, actionoriented, take charge style we’’ve earned the right to use out in the world and bringing it home, into our relationships, where it doesn’’t belong. When you make this choice, you are making an agreement. You are agreeing to primarily carry the feminine energies in the relationship –– which means that you are no longer called upon to nurture your man’’s feelings, and that he assumes the Masculine pleasure of nurturing yours (we’’ll talk a lot more about nurturing, later). In return, you agree to treat him with respect. You agree that he will primarily carry the Masculine, decisionmaking energies in the relationship. If you’’ve chosen to be the boy in your relationship, you are agreeing that you will primarily cherish and consider your man’’s feelings and he will primarily respect your role as the decision-making leader of the team. Further along in the course and the workbook, you’’ll see how this works to everyone’’s benefit, and how individual issues can be negotiated.

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CHAPTER 10

KEY #3 SUPPORT THE TEAM ““Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”” –– Oprah Winfrey

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his seems obvious. Relationship is a team. A Marriage is a team. But often, this is the first thing that breaks down.

A Relationship is a team with 3 members. There’’s you, there’’s him, and then there’’s the relationship. As a couple, you create a brand new organism, with requirements and needs of its own. Some relationship problems can be solved simply by both of you considering the needs of the relationship. You both agree to give up a large part of the freedom of a single life in order to enter into a marriage or relationship team. You both give up romance with anyone else, you give

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up all kinds of small behaviors your partner can’’t live with –– smoking, or not bathing –– you give up thinking only of yourself, you give up having no responsibility to anyone else. You give up complete independence for interdependence. Relationship makes you deal with emotional traumas from the past, with bad, learned habits and with instincts you’’d rather not deal with –– the urge to be dependent, to always have your way…… Supporting the Team is about honoring the cornerstone of Relationship –– Friendship. A good place to start is: KNOWING YOUR PARTNER When you want to build a relationship with someone, you give energy to them. You’’re interested in them. You learn about them –– what makes them happy, what fascinates them, what irritates them. See if you can answer some basic questions about your man. What does he like for breakfast, for dinner? What does he like you to wear? How does he feel about his job? What upsets him most in life? Which is his favorite tie? What were the names of his childhood pets?

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Where would he like to live if he could live anywhere? What car does he covet? What’’s his favorite thing about being married? What is his biggest frustration about being married? When is his favorite time for sex? What’’s his favorite sexual activity? What’’s his all-time favorite movie? Who’’s the sexiest, most beautiful female movie star to him?

What don’’t you know about your partner that you wish you knew?

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What do you wish he knew about you?

A big mistake women make is in believing that we’’re too powerful for men. That being lawyers and doctors is what’’s keeping the love from our lives, that men can’’t handle it. I believe just the opposite. Part of being ““satisfactory”” is that your man feels basically adequate. He’’s essentially confident enough to be proud of what you do in the world, and he’’s proud that you –– a terrific woman –– chose him. I believe he’’s thrilled to have a crackerjack, smart, beautiful woman as his partner. What a Masculine Energy man can’’t handle, can’’t stand, and didn’’t buy at your wedding or when he started seriously dating you, is to be sleeping, eating, driving with, and playing with another man in women’’s clothing. What you do out in the world is completely different from how you are with him when you’’re alone together.

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He wants a woman who’’s very interested in him –– in both his mind and his body. A woman who accepts and loves and respects him, just as he is. A woman who can share her emotions and body with him. Confusing that kind of woman with a ““bimbo”” is a big mistake. If what you want in a man is a more Feminine energy partner, then he’’ll likely be more soft and cuddly, and he’’ll be able to appreciate your strength and decisiveness within the Relationship. Supporting the team is about having a soul mate kind of Relationship –– regardless of whether or not you believe right now that you’’re with your soul mate. It’’s about each person rooting for the other. It’’s about complementary energies creating romantic and sexual fire and emotional intimacy. It’’s about having an enduring, deep, safe place to become the best person you can be, emotionally, spiritually, physically. It’’s devoid of competition. It’’s concerned with the wellbeing of the relationship and not about being right. It’’s about behaving like soul mates. It’’s about believing in yourself and your partner and the relationship, and about having faith.

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CHAPTER 11

SAY GOODBYE TO THE OLD NEGATIVES ““The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”” –– Thomas Merton

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ow often have you and your girlfriends sat around complaining about your husbands and boyfriends?

We all have. There are things about men in general we don’’t like, and things about our men in particular we find frustrating. And we also need to talk to our friends about our problems and get help. But chipping away at our partners either in our own heads or out in public undermines our sense of Relationship as a team. What we have to do is change our notions about men and the labels we give them. We need to begin to turn our energies toward our partners, instead of away.

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MEN ARE WONDERFUL Let’’s start by listing the qualities you don’’t like about men in general.

Alright, now what do you like, appreciate, think is cool about men in general?

How does it feel to focus on the second list, what you do like about men? Do you notice a difference in how you feel inside when you focus on this list instead of the first list? I’’m going to ask you to keep this second list in mind. Whenever you think of referring to or find yourself picturing your husband or boyfriend as –– something in the first list here –– Stop. Take yourself back to the good list.

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The first step of Key #4 is to reframe your opinion, or ““perspective”” of men in general. Now let’’s look at your own man: YOUR MAN IS WONDERFUL Many women are stuck in a view of their husbands and boyfriends that won’’t allow him to change into Prince Charming. Whenever you hear yourself criticizing and running down your man to yourself or a friend, Stop. Absolutely stop, and replace the negative thing you were about to say with something you really do like about him. So we’’re going to find some of these things you like about him. Right now, you may not care at all about your husband or boyfriend as a person. You may be too angry or disappointed to care. ABOUT ANGER A little psychological background. Remember the circles –– all of you as a big circle, and what you know about you in a smaller circle in the middle of the big one? Well, a lot of the space you don’’t know about –– your subconscious, the feeling stuck in your muscles and organs, energy patterns -- is filled with anger. There’’s also pain -- and believe it or not, Joy!

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For most of us, the huge well of anger is the most challenging to get at. Where men are more comfortable with anger than pain, we tend to be more comfortable with tears than anger. We can barely even acknowledge it. And it’’s a fact that depression is merely anger turned inwards –– to yourself. But the day to day anger we do know about –– when we’’re upset or frustrated or disappointed –– we even suppress that. Suppressing and repressing anger can make us physically sick. Being nice and good when we’’re feeling angry is enraging to our inner selves. Taking care of this part of ourselves is our first duty to our total health -- whether it’’s soothing and calming it with some TLC, or shouting at it to be quiet for a moment while we get our wits about us. We know about much of the anger we feel toward our husbands, our boyfriends, all men. Sometimes we know we’’re angry when we’’re angry –– but few of us have any idea of the magnitude of murderous rage that lives in that space we don’’t know about. And most of it has nothing at all to do with our husbands, our boyfriends, or all men. But it has everything to do with how willing we are to love and to let love in.

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CHAPTER 12

RECAPTURING APPRECIATION ““If you judge people, you have no time to love them. –– Mother Teresa

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ater, we’’ll talk about how you can make peace with this unknown rage and pain and get more of what you want in love.

For now, let’’s skip over all the anger –– there’’s enough to fill up every hour of every day if you let it cycle in and out of your thoughts. Just tell your anger you’’ll get to it, but now you’’ll just focus on how wonderful your man actually is. You may be surprised at what you come up with. Remember the Relationship Bliss exercise? This next exercise is the beginning of seeing not what you imagine, not what you dream, but what you actually do like about what actually is. We’’re moving from imaginary to real. We’’re going to be moving back and forth between these realms so that reality becomes rich with your imagination and what you can imagine becomes real.

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To start, this will help re-awaken your interest in your man, and help you recapture some affection and admiration for him. Write down at least three things or qualities about your partner that you do like and respect –– that actually perk up your interest in him when you think about them. Let’’s keep it in the present. .

If this is hard –– think about even the smallest thing that you like about him. Perhaps he’’s a good father. Perhaps there are small, sweet things he does –– the way he is with the kids, or with your relatives –– something he does in the mirror. Perhaps you like his sense of humor, or think he’’s smart about something. Perhaps he’’s honest, he works hard. Now we’’re going to bring these feelings of appreciation out, so your man can hear them. This can be very challenging. It may feel unnatural, because we’’re so used to not appreciating what he does. Here’’s an example: He takes his dinner dish into the kitchen.

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In the past, you may have been hung up on the obvious question –– Why doesn’’t he just rinse the dish and put it in the dishwasher? –– and said as much to him, and gotten nowhere. So this time, you’’re going to forget about that and just honestly appreciate the very small thing: Wow. He brought his dish into the kitchen. And you say –– ““Thank you.”” What are some small things your man already does that you take for granted, or think are too puny to be acknowledged? Actions like changing the light bulb, or running the disposal, or putting gas in the car?

What can you say to acknowledge these small things that feels genuine to you?

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At first he may be suspicious –– but I promise you that small thing will get to be a lot of small things, and then a lot of big things if you’’ll just approach it from this small, truly appreciative way. An important note: This can’’t be fake. This isn’’t dog training, or man training, because that wouldn’’t be respectful. Actually, you’’re not training him –– you’’re training yourself. You’’re training yourself to respond when he does something you like –– no matter how small. ““Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully, when you dare to be vulnerable.”” –– Dr. Joyce Brothers What are some more things from your lists that you can turn into honest expressions of appreciation, or something you like –– perhaps his hair, or his suit, or how handsome he looks?

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Remember a moment when you felt affectionate and fond. What was he doing? How did it feel?

What about a time when you felt admiration? What was he doing? What did it feel like?

What would it be like if you could feel that for him now?

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CHAPTER 13

STOP WHAT ISN’’T WORKING "Relationships –– of all kinds –– are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost."–– Kaleel Jamison

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he next element of Respecting the Masculine is more challenging. In fact, women have told me they can’’t do it. They won’’t do it. Even though they know it would help their Relationship, they say they just don’’t want to. I ask you in advance to please keep an open mind and imagine how this might help you. Recently a friend who’’d called to ask for help with her marriage told me she didn’’t want to do this crucial element.

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She had an entire argument against it, saying the whole idea was not in her nature. ““Okay,”” I said. Then, the next day, she called out of the blue. ““I think it’’s working,”” she said, her voice low. The fastest way to see immediate change in your Relationship is to: STOP WHAT ISN’’T WORKING THE FOUR RULES FOR RESPECTING THE MASCULINE PARTNER Rule #1: Don’’t try to control your partner. Rule #2: Don’’t try to control the outcome. Rule #3: Stop yourself before you criticize, judge, advise, warn, coax, ask the ““innocent question,”” or try to change him. Rule #4: Learn to take No for an answer.

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It makes no difference what the particular issues are between you and your partner –– sticking to these Four Rules will change your relationship. It will eliminate so many of your conflicts that there will be space for new, better, happier, more authentic communication. If you’’ve chosen to be the Masculine energy partner in your relationship, your partner will need to be willing to adhere to these rules. If you’’ve chosen to be the Feminine energy partner, and stick to these Rules and allow your husband or boyfriend to behave naturally, you will see results almost immediately. Okay, let’’s talk about this. How does this work? Remember a recent conflict. Let’’s see how using these rules would alter the conversation. 1.

Don’’t try to control your partner.

If you live with a man, trying to control him might include saying things like Please take the garbage out now. Or I need you to change the light bulb, or pick up after yourself, or do what you said you’’d do. Or, if you’’re dating someone, saying things like Please call me more often, or You said you’’d call yesterday, or I need you to do this or that, or I need to know this or that……

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If you’’re single and ready to begin a great relationship, this would include approaching a man in any way (Hi, haven’’t we met?), inviting a man anywhere, offering your phone number before he asks, looking for a pen or paper to write your number on, driving him or meeting him anywhere, or in any way dampening his pursuit of you by doing it yourself. 2.

Don’’t try to control the outcome.

An example of trying to do this might be:: You want to go on vacation to Alaska. And no matter what the discussion, you have brochures, you’’re fighting for Alaska. Or, if you’’re dating –– offering to pay for anything, plan anything, get anything, do anything except lean over and unlock his car door after he’’s opened the door for you. This is also about all that stuff that goes on in our heads involving the question Where is this relationship going? 3.

Stop yourself before you: Criticize –– Why are you doing this? Judge –– You always do this, Advise –– You really should do that, Warn –– You shouldn’’t do that, Coax –– Oh, come on, do that, Ask the Innocent Question –– How come you’’re wearing that shirt and not the one I bought you? with a sweet smile on your face. This is almost the worst of all, because

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it’’s really an attack dressed up as if it isn’’t –– which is totally disrespectful just for being so obviously phony, or

Try to change him. 4.

Learn to take No for an answer.

This means not responding to ““No’’s”” with demands for explanations or re-considerations, like: What do you mean you won’’t come to dinner with me and my mother? But you …… Why do you have to work? Look, you said……But it’’s a good idea…… You can see that the Four Rules will absolutely end almost all the ““drama”” in your relationship. It cleans up the communication so you can start over. In fact, it may clean it up so well that you’’ll begin experiencing a lot of silence. You’’ll also notice less tension in the air. Your man will smile more. He’’ll breathe easier. His heart will open. Now we’’re going to talk about the first new communication technique that respects your partner. It’’s about:

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CHAPTER 14

LISTENING AT LEVELS 1 & 2 ““Put love first.”” –– Mary Manin Morrissey

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evel 1 Listening is ““It’’s all about me.”” Level 2 is ““It’’s all about you.””

Listening to someone and then feeling heard by them is an unbelievable experience –– and it’’s very rare. Listening at Level 1 and 2 is a coaching technique I learned at Coaches Training Institute. I’’ve adapted it here as a Tool that works almost instantly with almost anyone –– and you’’ll be amazed at how quickly your relationship with a man will shift once you get the hang of it. Most of us are at Level 1 all the time. Most of the time, we aren’’t really listening, we’’re thinking about ourselves –– what we’’re going to say next, what we think about the other person, that our pants are too tight, we have a pimple on our chin, anything but the person right in front of us.

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When we’’re in a conversation with someone, and we’’re thinking about how what that person is saying relates to us, we’’re at Level 1. I may be sitting or standing here talking with you, but actually I’’m all in my own head about me. Oh, that happened to me too! Or I wonder if he likes my hair or I wonder if he’’ll ask me out. There is nothing wrong with Level 1 listening –– in other words, being all about ourselves –– except that it limits our ability to really relate to others. Level 2 listening is the complete reverse of Level 1. Imagine how, when you’’re utterly in love with someone, all you can see is their face, all you can hear is their voice, all you can smell is their breath and cologne. Their words and the feelings they express are, in that moment, the most important things in the world to you. In fact, the only things in the world. When you listen to your man, really listen at Level 2, you will change your relationship. And as a result, he will change –– almost overnight. A man you think you’’re not attracted to might suddenly open up and become really attractive to you once you find out about him. To do this, just relax. Relax completely and be ““over there,”” with him.

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Let yourself go as though you no longer exist. Your thoughts are just passing through –– you’’re over there. You don’’t have to talk, or smile, or do anything. Just listen. We’’re going to practice Level 2 listening right now. In the seminar, we work in partners and the exercise goes like this: * Find yourself a partner, and turn your chairs toward one another. Introduce yourselves, please. And hold up your hand when you’’ve decided who goes first. * Okay, if your hand’’s in the air, you’’ll be talking first. Talk at absolute Level 1, meaning, ““It’’s all about me.”” Talk about what you did today, or something that’’s on your mind, anything, but talk to the other person as though your only job is to focus on yourself, and their only job is to focus on you. * Listeners, all you have to do is listen. Get comfortable. It doesn’’t matter if you’’re leaning forward or leaning back. Look at your partner. Look at her face, her eyes. Try to stay focused on her words. Really give yourself over to her completely. You are at Level 2 Listening, which is all about her –– it’’s over there.

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If you notice your mind wandering back to –– Oh, that happened to me too, or Yeah, I agree –– which is Level 1 –– shift back to her. When you’’re really at Level 2, you’’ll be completely immersed over there. Okay –– go. * All right, now let’’s reverse it. Listeners, talk about yourself, or something that happened to you, or something you’’re thinking about, and pay absolutely no attention to what your partner is doing or thinking. Talkers, now it’’s your turn to completely reverse the energy. Focus your complete attention over there, on your partner. * Okay –– what did it feel like to listen like that? And what did it feel like to be listened to like that? Could you tell the difference between Level 1 and Level 2? If you’’d like to work with a friend, by all means practice it the way we do in the workshop. If you are working alone, let’’s do the exercise differently: Put yourself in front of a mirror. Imagine that you, in the mirror, are going to hang on every word you, in front of the mirror, say. Your mirror image will follow wherever your thoughts go, giving you total attention. Go ahead and talk about your day. Tell your image everything that happened to you today –– the emotion of it, the detail of it, what was

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important about it. Laugh, cry, say whatever comes to mind. Pay little or no attention to your mirror image. Now, when you finish up, think about how it felt to completely unload your mind and heart while your mirror image did nothing but listen. She did not interject, offer advice, even go uh-huh. If you imagine that you in the mirror were listening intently and compassionately, you may feel as heard, as light and unburdened as you would practicing with a partner. Now, in order to reverse it, we’’ll do without words altogether. Look at yourself in the mirror, and become completely absorbed in your image’’s eyes, hair, nose, mouth, smile –– with this important agreement: You must pretend that this mirror image is someone else. In this way, you can look at the mirror image’’s hair and notice that it has gray in it, or curl, or a highlight, without thinking about it. In other words, as soon as you say to yourself Oh, I have to color my roots, you’’ve moved back to Level 1 Listening. Your job is to observe with attention and compassion the qualities of the face in front of you, and to commune instinctively with the emotions conveyed by the face and the person in front of you. You are to forget that the image in the mirror is you.

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Try this for a few minutes and see what it feels like. It may feel like a mental vacation. A moment to observe and feel without thinking. Without bringing your observations back to yourself. Now take what you’’ve experienced and practice it out in the world. I encourage you to practice, practice, practice. Practice with your boyfriend or your husband, your children, your friends, your relatives, and total strangers. Practice and notice when you go back to Level 1. The more you do it, the more natural it will become to listen at Level 2.

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CHAPTER 15

WHAT IS FEMININE ENERGY? ““To love at all is to be vulnerable.”” –– C.S. Lewis

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eminine energy is the exact opposite of the high octane, going and doing, stress-led life. It’’s about intuition, sensuality, fun, feeling, expressing. If Masculine energy is about doing, Feminine energy is about being. So, what would it be like to just be? This takes us to the core of the whole ““self-esteem”” issue for women. THE VOICE ““I have spent hours completely involved in what I thought other people wished to see me doing. The fear of hurting, fear of authority, the need for love have put me in the most hopeless situations. I have suppressed my own desires and wishes and, ever eager to please, have done what I thought was expected of me.”” –– Liv Ullman The negative, overly careful, seemingly rational and reasonable words you’’ve heard since you were a child are now in your own head. They hold us back from going after what

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we want and from trusting ourselves. They have some of us so tight we can’’t even imagine what it would be like to be loved, just for ourselves –– without having to do anything. We hear an inner voice shouting at us with those words that spark fear and hesitation: You can’’t, you shouldn’’t, you mustn’’t, you aren’’t good enough, you’’re not beautiful enough, not thin enough, not smart enough, you don’’t deserve to feel good or have a great relationship, all the good men are taken, you’’re stuck, he’’ll never change, it’’ll always be the way it is. This is the ““Voice.”” For now, let’’s treat it as a habit –– a bad habit. And let’’s just simply ignore it. Don’’t even dialogue with the ugly Voice in your head. Just as you’’ll Stop yourself before you run down your mate or your date with negative labels, you’’ll Stop yourself before you run down you. WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT BEING A WOMAN? Let’’s take a moment and imagine it –– what would it be like to trust yourself, to be loved just for being yourself? What’’s it like to love being a woman? Of course you love being a woman. Or do you? Let’’s start with the same kind of lists we made about men.

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What are some things you don’’t like about being a woman? Some examples might be: Not making as much money as a man for the same job, being thought of as weaker……

Now what are some of the things you adore about being a woman? Some examples: Wearing beautiful and soft (even transparent!) clothes, showing emotions, having babies……

You can probably guess where I’’m going with this. I encourage you to choose to focus on this second list, the things you adore about being a woman. Pick something out of this list, and create a structure for it. If you like dressing up, put your favorite necklace out where you can see it, or wear it to remind yourself what you like about being a woman.

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Take a look at the list. How do you feel when you read through it, imagine it? In the same way you worked through the perfect relationship fantasy, be open to good feelings when you look at this list. Focus on what you uniquely love about being a woman. If you want to, fantasize about a gorgeous wardrobe or whatever you love that says ““woman”” to you. If you feel great right away, terrific. If it takes a minute to feel happy, feel a smile on your face and your body loosen up, take the time. Connecting to what it is you love about being a woman is connecting to your power source –– Feminine energy. Ground yourself in this. If it’’s manicures that turn you on, consider the act (real or imagined) of getting a manicure a structure for returning to this feeling any time you want. If it’’s a ball gown, use that image for a structure. If it’’s sex and babies, use that image. Whatever makes you feel womanly, that’’s a way to get in touch with your powerful Feminine energy. Choose to love yourself simply because you are a woman –– no deserving or earning required. Later on, you’’ll see how this is the way your husband or boyfriend wants to love you, and the way you’’re going to begin to allow him to love you. For simply being, and acting like, a woman.

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Know that every time you take a even a baby step in a positive direction, your nasty Voice may jump in to put a damper on your spirits. Be prepared. Be brave. If you don’’t give the Voice energy, it will slowly lose its hold over you. So just ignore it. Say ““Thank you for sharing, and I’’m going to move on.”” Then move on. If you’’ve chosen to be the Masculine partner in your relationship, you enjoy being respected at home for your intelligence. If your partner wants this job, too, you’’ve no doubt been butting heads. Discuss this with him. Show him this workbook, and tell him what you want. Ask if he’’d be willing to let you make all the decisions, if he’’d respect your thinking, and if he’’d be interested in taking on the more feminine aspects of creating a fun, sexy, sensual life together. The fact that you both work, or the reality of who makes the most money, has absolutely nothing to do with the dynamics of what goes on at home. Remember –– if you choose to carry primarily the Masculine energy in your relationship, then you must stop trying to get your husband or boyfriend to ““act like a man,”” and you must begin listening to, treasuring, and considering his feelings ahead of your own.

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If you’’ve chosen to be the Feminine energy partner, it means you are agreeing that you will primarily carry the feelings in the relationship, and that he will primarily carry the thinking aspects of the relationship. You feel, and he thinks. This doesn’’t mean you never think, or have opinions, or do a great many things more competently and efficiently than he can simply because of your abilities. It means that making decisions, using his brainpower –– even if it means delegating tasks to you as the more able partner –– is what he wants respect for. It means he takes your feelings into consideration, but he is the accepted leader of the team. If your ideal Relationship is more of a free-form dance –– with Masculine and Feminine energies moving and changing fluidly –– than a traditional dance with the man leading, you can work toward that. That kind of fluidity comes as men and women mature, and as a result of an environment of trust and ease. My goal in this workbook, and in my seminars and personal coaching, is to help you move from an environment of competition and conflict into an environment of respect and cherishing of feelings. From there, nearly anything can be negotiated.

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CHAPTER 16

WHAT DO I FEEL? ““……And the trouble is, if you don’’t risk everything, you risk even more.”” –– Erica Jong

FINDING FEELINGS

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xpressing the Feminine is expressing feelings. The first step to expressing feelings is to know what you’’re feeling.

Finding authentic feelings sounds simple, but it’’s not. Most of what we think of as feelings are just learned, habitual patterns of covering up our real feelings. Sometimes we think we’’re mad, when really we’’re hurt. Or we’’re embarrassed, but covering it up. Sometimes we think we feel hurt and we really want to tell our husbands and boyfriends we’’re hurt, when actually we’’re simply frustrated. at our inability to control our men’’s behavior and the course of the relationship.

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This is something we’’re striving to stop by sticking to the Four Rules and staying in touch with our real feelings. Not only do we need to learn to dig up our real feelings, we need to learn to express them in ways our husbands and boyfriends can hear. We’’re going to start small, and simply. Let’’s try this technique right now for getting in touch with feelings: 1.

Shake out your arms and legs.

2. Now stand or sit still. Settle yourself down into yourself. You can keep your eyes open or closed. 3. Breathe –– when you exhale, let sound come out. Imagine the chatter in your head dropping down into your body. Imagine it dissolving as the energy from all the noise in your head comes down, into your neck, into your heart, into your stomach, into your pelvis. Let it hang around as low as you can tolerate. 4. Breathe into your body as low as you can, and let the breath fill the space of your body more and more. Feel yourself expand to accommodate the energy. and let it fill the space more and more. Thank your body for expanding. 5. Ask yourself for a feeling. Keep asking, until you get an answer that’’s an emotion or a sensation –– the basic

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emotions are: Mad, sad, glad and afraid. And then there’’s terror, anguish, joy, sexual excitement, silliness, embarrassment –– anything that has to do with you and no one else. A sensation could be ““My stomach feels tight. I’’m cold. My chest is in knots.”” Did you locate a feeling or a sensation? The next step is: PUTTING WORDS TO THE FEELING Most of us are just fine stuffing down our feelings. Until we finally try to give voice to the feelings and they come out all haywire. They come out as accusations, complaints, whining, drama –– often bigger than the feeling we actually started with –– and our boyfriends and husbands are often unprepared to deal with them. Then they get defensive or back away. Then we get angry because we don’’t feel heard. The truth is, often, we can’’t be heard because we’’re not really expressing a feeling. Instead, what we’’re expressing is an opinion, a need, a request for help. And often we’’re telling them exactly what

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would solve our frustration and discontent. In effect, we’’re telling them to do something. And they can’’t hear that. We believe this is helpful information for them. We believe we are expressing ourselves, but we are actually either attacking them or telling them what to do. Either way, what your mate or date will most likely do is shut down. If your man is shutting down during discussions, he is becoming flooded with emotion. He is overwhelmed by it. Believe it or not, he is much more sensitive than you are to emotion, and past a certain point, he shuts down. It’’s not his fault. It’’s the way men are built. But men can learn to handle your feelings. Instinctively, they want to cherish your feelings. They are constitutionally able to love it when you express your feelings. They can even handle you crying or screaming. It’’s all about the language you use, and the authenticity with which you use it. Men can hear real feelings –– they can hear you cry, and say ouch, they can hear that you’’re really angry. They want to know what’’s going on inside us, because that’’s their connection to the expression of feeling –– through intimacy with us –– and they want us to be happy.

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It’’s important to men that what we say and the expression on our faces match our real feelings –– if you’’ve ever seen anyone smile when they’’re really angry you know how difficult that is to understand and relate to. And it’’s important for us to get our feelings out as they come up, not just for communication’’s sake, but for our own health. Bottled-up feelings make us sick. If your interactions are ending with you becoming angry or upset and your man shutting down and withdrawing –– over and over again –– learning to Put Words to Feelings and the next sections on Negotiating will immediately work. We’’re going to practice putting words to the simple, basic feeling, and scrupulously and absolutely avoid even mentioning your man in the process. Even if you are infuriated with something he did, even if you’’re enraged, feeling murderous, you are talking only about you –– your feelings and sensations. I want to encourage you to practice trusting that he can hear you. I promise you that over time, he will. As you learn to express feelings as they come up, there will be less and less anger stored up and less and less venting in the relationship. Now I’’m going to ask you to begin saying the feelings you’’ve come up with in the Finding Feelings exercise. Try

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beginning with ““I feel……”” or ““I like the way this feels,”” or ““I don’’t like the way this feels.”” These are very helpful starter words. Write down what comes to you. I feel……

Most of the time, this is all you want and need to do –– express feelings in words. I know that sounds unbelievable, but it’’s true. You express your feelings, and give him a chance to respond. But sometimes you actually want something –– maybe more of what you already have, or you’’re not content and want something different. Sometimes you want your husband or boyfriend to do something for you. And most important –– sometimes you just don’’t want something. This is the beginning of a negotiation:

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PUTTING WORDS TO THE DON’’T WANT A big mistake we women make is in answering the question What do you want? with something along the lines of I wish my husband would……. You can fill in the blank with a lot of things –– Pay more attention to me, take out the garbage, listen to me, take better care of himself, be a better lover, stop watching sports on TV, tell me he loves me, tell me how he sees our relationship…… and on and on……. Wanting someone else to change is not the same as Wanting for yourself. Wanting is I want affection, I want more rest, I want sex, I want peace of mind, I want to be married, I want kids, I want to feel good. Or –– even more important for communication –– it could be a Don’’t want: I don’’t want to worry about money, I don’’t want to clean the house, or type letters, or wash dishes by myself, or be alone night after night, I don’’t want to wait for you, I don’’t have sex unless I’’m in an exclusive relationship…… This is very powerful –– saying No to what you don’’t want. I use this more than anything in my household. It

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makes me feel empowered, and yet is completely about me. There’’s no confrontation, no bad feelings, no attacking. I’’m just saying No. The challenge for most of us in saying No to anyone –– our children, salespeople, our friends, our boss, our men, is the fear and guilt we have about disappointing anyone. Anyone at all. We’’re afraid they won’’t like us anymore. Afraid they’’ll leave us. Afraid they’’ll be angry. Many of us cannot stand any kind of conflict. We cannot tolerate anyone else’’s discomfort, especially on our behalf. We must learn to say No in a simple, straightforward and respectful way –– one baby step at a time. One small No at a time. If this book can help you to say, in simple, direct words, and with simple, authentic feeling, what you do not want to do and what you do not want in your life –– your life will change completely, inside and out, without any major conflicts, upsets, or dramatic confrontations. I know it’’s possible. I’’ve done it myself.

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Learning to say No is one of the clearest messages of self-esteem and self-love a woman can express. It is one of the most attractive qualities any woman can possess. A woman who can say No is a woman a man can trust. The essence of Feminine energy in a relationship is Vulnerability and Authenticity. Allowing yourself to be seen exactly as who you are. Even if you believe you have self-esteem issues, even if you’’re really angry, you can start small by expressing a small authentic feeling or sensation. This will make you feel braver for the next time and next time and pretty soon you’’ve built a new habit. And your Voice will be quieter and your self-esteem will go up. You can see that this is way more profound than wanting your husband or boyfriend to take the garbage out. And though it may seem to you easier to just ask, over and over again, for him to take the garbage out, the truth is –– that doesn’’t work.

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Take some feelings you’’ve written down from the first exercise and turn them into expressions of Don’’t Wants: I feel………………..

I don’’t want………………

I feel…………..

I don’’t want………….

Now we’’re going to put together the tools you’’ve learned so far –– into a negotiation.

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CHAPTER 17

REQUESTING AND NEGOTIATING ““It is better to break one’’s heart than to do nothing with it.”” –– Margaret Kennedy

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efore you begin any conversation or negotiation, look at the Four Rules for Respect. Make sure you’’re clear on the reasons for talking with him at all about this. Are you simply sharing and expressing your feelings, and hoping in good faith that between you something can be worked out? Or do you have a specific agenda –– do you want something from him? The key to negotiating is to know that you can’’t make someone else do what you want them to do. You can’’t control anyone else, and trying just creates conflict and tension. Respecting your partner by not trying to manipulate him into giving you what you want is crucial to setting the relationship right. It takes a lot of self-control to keep from doing every clever thing you can think of to get your way.

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As soon as your partner starts getting that you are not going to try to bully or manipulate him, he will surprise you by beginning to act in a more caring way –– more like a man A note: Even if what you’’re expressing is a simple desire –– ““I want to go mountain climbing,”” ““I want to go to Paris,”” ““I want a big house,”” the first thing his mind may go to is that you’’re not happy. And he wants you to be happy. He may instantly try to talk you out of your desire. Perhaps because he’’s used to being on the defensive. Let’’s look at the elements of a negotiation for a woman who chooses to be the Feminine energy partner: 1.

Timing

One of the biggest mistakes women make is picking a bad time to talk. If you’’re not sure –– ask. Make an appointment. 2.

Start with a Feeling

Take a breath and express your feelings and your Want or Don’’t Want. Then ask him what he thinks.

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Remember this is an expression of feeling –– which is totally different from an accusation, or a statement of how disappointed you are in him. For any and all conversations or potential conflicts, this is the script: I feel……... What do you think? I don’’t want…… What do you think? I don’’t like…….What do you think we should do? This is the way all these kinds of interactions should go. You express, and ask what he thinks. Sooner or later he will catch on, he’’ll step up to the plate, and he will adore you for it. Don’’t pretend or try to be nice –– if you’’re feeling angry or hurt, express it. He can tell that you’’re upset. Smiling and pretending you feel fine isn’’t just not authentic, and therefore not intimate –– it’’s confusing. He can tell your insides and outside don’’t match. What you want is congruency –– matching up your words, your feelings, your expression and your body-language –– so there’’s no doubt where you’’re coming from. The Finding Feelings exercise will help you with this. Putting Words to your Feelings, Wants and Don’’t Wants will help him know what to do to please you. Keep in mind –– he may be so used to being told about his shortcomings that he’’s built a wall to keep himself from hearing you at all.

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Be prepared by committing to being as simple and authentic as possible. If you can, try starting with very small Don’’t wants –– about everyday movies and dinner destinations. Save the big discussions for when you’’ve built some experience, trust and ease into the negotiating process. Remember that men are easily overloaded. They get flooded and shut down when they can’’t handle all the emotional input. So take it slow. Start easy. Start small. Masculine energy wants results. Feminine energy is not about results. You are about expressing. You’’re going to have to have faith that the results you really want and need will happen –– but for now, forget all about having a goal in mind. I know this is the opposite of everything you’’ve ever heard. Forget goal setting. Forget results. Just express. 3.

Listening

If you’’ve asked what he thinks, really listen to him at Level 2. 4.

Resolving

Sometimes there’’s a plan you can agree to, sometimes it’’s left hanging. Learn to live with lack of closure. If you learn to accept uncertainty and the fact that not everything will always be buttoned down and handled just when you

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want it to be, you’’ll open yourself up to some wonderful surprises. 5.

Saying No

Sometimes the plan he’’s come up with, even after consulting and considering your feelings, isn’’t what you want, and you have to say No. For the Feminine energy partner, Saying No is the balance to the Masculine energy partner’’s decision making. Don’’t say No lightly. But if you have to, stick to your guns. Don’’t be wishy-washy because you’’re afraid of angering your husband or boyfriend or of making him unhappy. It is not your responsibility as the Feminine Energy partner to concern yourself with whether your man is happy when you express your feelings. It’’s the Masculine Energy partner’’s job to care about your feelings. If your man is not consulting and considering your feelings before making decisions, you must negotiate this! Start with finding out if it’’s a good time to talk. If it is, you might say ““I’’m feeling uncomfortable. Something’’s really bothering me, and it’’s something that’’s important to me. I want to be a part of the process when you’’re making a decision that concerns both of us. I don’’t want to be left out. What do you think we should do?””

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Imagine a common conflict between you and your husband or boyfriend. Imagine how it might play out using these negotiation tools. Write down the conversation.

If you’’re not happy with an answer, cross it out and try another. You’’ll find some patterns that you can use almost as scripts –– to fit nearly any occasion. Remember to stick to the Four Rules. Remember to stick to expressing, and to stop if you find yourself talking about him at all. Allow the discussion to play out, and if you find something funny, go ahead and laugh.

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CHAPTER 18

BEING A GIRL Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ““Pooh!”” he whispered. ““Yes, Piglet?”” ““Nothing,”” said Piglet, taking Pooh’’s paw. ““I just wanted to be sure of you.”” –– A.A. Milne

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o far we’’ve talked mostly about respecting and communicating. I want to emphasize again –– this is not a return to the docile woman of the 50’’s.

There is nothing docile about being a girl. Being a girl means you have total regard for yourself, and will not compromise about the way you’’re treated. The most important task for women today, and the piece of the puzzle that we’’ve all steadily lost touch with, is re-learning how to simply be. If Masculine energy is about doing, then Feminine energy is about being. So what’’s it like to just be?

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Being a Girl means treasuring and believing in our feelings, trusting our intuition, surrendering to our sense of what’’s right for us. It means experiencing our emotions and allowing others into our emotional lives. Just being is magnetizing rather than pursuing, intuiting rather than thinking. It is often about Not doing. Not trying to please others, Not trying to manage situations, Not performing or pretending. Being genuine and authentic requires the stomach for really looking at deep issues, feelings, patterns and lies that are at the bottom of our urges to pretend and perform –– even when that’’s not what will best serve us or anyone else. I once saw a totally marvelous woman on a reality TV competition fold during a presentation. She choked. Instead of deeply preparing for her presentation, which was her agreed-on task, she used her energy worrying about what everyone else was doing. When it came time for her to show her heart for the presentation, she was tied up in knots. If we look at our emotions as though they were on a vertical line –– with ecstatic joy up at the top in the stratosphere and unspeakable pain at the bottom, deep underground, most of us hover somewhere in the middle. To me, going upwards into joy feels like a liberating, flying,

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floating experience, and going down into anguish feels like literally going down the tubes. It may feel differently to you. To find the real treasure of Ourselves, we have to be willing to follow our feelings down the tubes as well as into the stratosphere. We have to be willing to take a look at what we only think is the ugliest part of ourselves. Our ““dark”” side may seem dark, but it’’s only different from the part we think of as ““light.”” All the parts of our personalities and psyches together make up our wholeness, and judging any one of them to be ““not worth allowing out”” is the big lie most of us have operated under for most of our lives. The process of taking care of yourself and discovering your own power sometimes takes you up, and sometimes down. But the sure thing is, you can’’t go any higher up than you’’re able to go down –– because what holds you back is the same fear. This process liberates you, one feeling moment of your life at a time. Even though you may not yet feel safe exposing your deepest emotional self to your man, even a small start will make a huge difference. Men marry for intimacy, but they don’’t know how to achieve it. Men look to women to chart the course. It’’s up to us to be brave enough to start.

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CHAPTER 19

OVERFUNCTIONING ““A masculine man can’’t fall in love when he receives, only when he gives.”” –– Dr. Patricia Allen

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verfunctioning is doing too much.

It’’s doing more than your fair share, doing other family members’’ work, and helping where no help is needed. It’’s stepping in when you know you could do a better job, stepping up to rescue someone, jumping in to save the situation. How did we find ourselves here? If we choose, and remember, this is a choice, to be the Feminine energy partner in the relationship, and then continually take Masculine energy home with us, we completely deprive our men of the pleasure of being men. We make it unrewarding for them to act like men, and they become lazy and complacent and vaguely resentful and

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stop trying to make us happy. They opt out of Masculinity, hand it over to us, and let us do it all. You can see how this leads to chronic conflict. In a huge effort to keep everything in the household, the relationship, and our daily lives running along smoothly, and in an even bigger effort to keep our resentment and anger quiet and hidden, we Overfunction. Let’’s take a look at how you’’re Overfunctioning –– Do you find yourself picking up after everyone, or taking all the dishes in all the time, or doing your husband or boyfriend’’s chores because he forgot, or generally acting like Superwoman? NURTURING IS MASCULINE We all –– men and women both -- think of nurturing and caring for our young, our spouses, parents, friends, relatives and others whom we assist, guide, teach or help in some way, as a feminine aspect of ourselves. It isn’’t. This is a huge issue for women. Nurturing and caring for others may seem to be a female trait –– motherhood is certainly female, and yet so much of motherhood is about action! Nurturing is about Doing. Giving. Your energy goes out

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of you and toward or into someone else. When you give, you are acting from a Masculine energy place.

Feeling compassion, connection, love, sensual delight in the way your baby feels to your touch, excitement at the way your lover feels to your touch –– is completely different from reaching over and picking the baby up when it cries, from driving the kids to school, from reaching over and massaging your husband or boyfriend’’s back when he never massages yours, from starting the conversation with a man you’’ve never met because he seems too shy to take the first step, from soothing a man when his feelings are hurt by you or anyone else. Feeling and Being is totally different from Doing. There is nothing wrong with Doing. We all are a mix of Masculine and Feminine energies, the Feeling and the Thinking, the Being and the Doing. The kids need to get to school, and the baby needs to be fed. But the man doesn’’t need to have his back or his feelings massaged. At our best, we move back and forth fluidly between Masculine Doing energy and Feminine Being energy. At our worst, we become stuck in one or the other. Most of us experience ourselves stuck in Masculine energy. We’’ve taken

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on the Doing of the world –– in fact many of us feel as though we are actually holding up our world. Because we are so accustomed to the idea of nurturing being feminine, we become confused. We think being loving to our men means nurturing them. We completely miss the joy of loving our men by experiencing them. Experiencing men, like experiencing a sunset, or a walk in the forest, or a work of art, or childbirth, or rain, or sex requires that we let go of the urge to Do: To photograph the sunset, to hike through the forest, to write about the art, to push the baby out, to dodge the rain, to work toward an orgasm. And we’’ve forgotten how to let go. Our minute-byminute need to keep our profoundest and seemingly darkest feelings hidden blocks all feeling. A running commentary from our minds becomes our normal sense of experience. But it doesn’’t have to be that way. Baby steps of practicing experiencing feelings will take you further than any amount of trying to force a breakthrough. When directed toward men, our nurturing energies are often perceived as mothering. Our actions seem intrusive. We seem to be judging men and finding them coming up

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short –– otherwise, why would they need taking care of? On the other hand, they love attention. Don’’t we all? To help you 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 take may seem huge. I’’m asking you stop doing for your man and your family what they don’’t really need you to do. Even though he’’s grown accustomed to your doing so much and may resent your not doing it anymore, your man will absolutely find himself relieved that you’’ve stopped doing it. What are some of the ways you Overfunction in your relationship? Write them down.

Overfunctioning can be about wanting to be appreciated, wanting attention and respect. But does it work?

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Do we get appreciation? No. It doesn’’t work because attention, appreciation and respect are what the Masculine Energy wants –– and as long as your husband or boyfriend wants to be the Masculine Energy partner in the relationship, you’’re not going to get appreciation and respect for what you do inside the relationship. So Stop. Just stop. Instead, Step Back and start being cherished for what you are. This is what your husband or boyfriend wants –– to adore you for who and what you are. Write down some thoughts about how you want to be appreciated.

Overfunctioning can be about not appreciating yourself enough to have reasonable boundaries. It’’s the classic self-esteem issue of feeling you can only be loved if you earn it. By serving, by being nice and good. And we can pass this on to our daughters. We think we’’re passing on good knowledge about how to get along.

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The truth is that the best role model for our daughters is a mother who knows her worth as a woman and is comfortable with it. A mother who does not tolerate subpar treatment and sub-par loving from men. How are you not appreciating yourself?

What are you tolerating that isn’’t good for you or that you don’’t like or don’’t want?

The best way to begin the process of ending your Overfunctioning is to sit down, make a list of all the things you’’re doing, and prioritize. Obviously, someone has to get the kids to school and soccer practice. But somewhere on that list you’’ll find a cutoff line –– where the world won’’t fall

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apart if you stop doing stuff. It may get a little messy, but it won’’t collapse. Write that list now. Write down everything you feel responsible for doing and getting done and making happen in your relationship, or relationships you’’ve had in the past and in your household. Number them by priority: 1 –– Really important and usually urgent; 2 –– Somewhat important, can slide sometimes; 3 –– You know, I’’m not sure I really have to be in charge of this one all the time; 4 –– What in the world am I doing spending my energy on this all the time? The Overfunctioning List

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Ask yourself What do I need to say No to?

What would I like to say Yes to?

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When you begin saying No and stop Overfunctioning, you may get initial grumbling from your man, and from everyone in your household. Can you live with that? Sure you can. Here’’s how: 1.

Keep to the Four Rules for Respect.

3.

Continue to express your feelings as they come up.

4.

Don’’t give in to the Voice and start explaining or defending yourself.

4.

Don’’t demand anything from yourself or anyone else.

5.

Trust your partner and your family.

6.

Appreciate what your partner does to pick up the slack.

7.

Tolerate imperfection.

8.

Practice expecting to be adored, and you will be.

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Saying No to what you don’’t want in order to be able to say Yes to what you do want will make an amazing difference –– not only in the relationship, but in the way you feel about yourself. You’’ll begin to see that some of your resentment and anger isn’’t about him at all. You may be jealous of some freedom or flexibility he has. As soon as you get that your feelings are about you not taking care of yourself, your resentment will fade and you’’ll get determined to find those Nos and Yeses and follow through. As a relationship coach, part of my job is to hold you accountable for accomplishing the goals you set for yourself. You may want to create a buddy system with a friend who’’d like to work on her own Overfunctioning. It works like this: Each of you chooses three things to say No to from your lists, and then you hold each other accountable for actually not doing those three things. With every other woman around you despairing that there’’s not enough time to do everything that needs doing, your small support system will be the antidote to Overfunctioning.

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CHAPTER 20

VULNERABILITY ““I only know the answer doesn’’t lie in learning how to protect yourself from life. It lies in learning how to strengthen yourself so you can let a bit more of it in.”” ––Merle Shain

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ow we’’re moving to the part where it gets really scary and really exciting. Once you set boundaries, once you stop controlling and start appreciating and expressing your feelings, you’’re going to feel exposed and vulnerable. That’’s how it’’s supposed to be. And that’’s what’’s at the bottom of all that controlling. We’’re so terrified of being vulnerable and exposed, so terrified of being intimate, of being married, that we run in the other direction. We feel compelled to control everything in the relationship.

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That’’s why we pick losers, or men we’’re not really attracted to, or men who don’’t want us, or are not ready for a relationship, or no men at all –– or push away the men we have who’’ve already demonstrated their commitment to us by marrying us. If having boundaries means standing up for yourself in a simple, straightforward, and respectful way, Surrender is about melting. If you’’re dating, it’’s even scarier because you have no way of knowing what’’s going to happen. You have no way of knowing whether you have a future with this man. By surrendering, you’’re saying you can’’t control the outcome and you’’re not going to try. Here are some powerful questions for you to think about and write about: What would it be like to just be?

What would happen if I let go of trying to control or manage my husband or boyfriend and his behavior?

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What are some of the things (reminding him, asking him to do things over and over, etc.) that I might be comfortable letting go of?

The way to step into authenticity and vulnerability is not to change your man so that you can trust him, but to learn to trust yourself first. This next exercise is a meditation. I call it simply a Sensual Meditation. The idea is to actually experience a new level of openness and vulnerability that might help you, anytime you want, to answer those questions on an ongoing basis. SENSUAL MEDITATION When you practice this, you may want to be alone in your home, or at least alone in your bedroom, and feel safe that no one will enter. Wear as little clothing as comfortable. Lie down on your bed. Spread your arms out to the sides and relax your legs. Bring your awareness to the air around you, the air touching your face, your hands, your feet.

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Breathe in and allow your body to meet the air around you as it rises with your breath. Consciously relax into the bed. Feel yourself melting, like candle wax, onto the bed. If your head is filled with thoughts and chatter about the day, or about how you feel doing this, just let them go. Sink your awareness into your body, and how relaxed and molten it’’s getting. Take your breath into each part of your body that you notice –– your neck, shoulders, stomach, thighs. Imagine that the air around you, and the sun or moon outside your window, are touching you, literally. Allow your body to make contact with them. Keep breathing, keep melting. Allow your heart to expand to meet and take in the air around you, and at the same time, allow the energy flowing from the ends of your fingers to move outward toward the walls of the room, past the walls, so that it feels as if you’’re being touched by more and more air, more and more space. Do this as often as you like, and as you become more comfortable, expand the experience even more by going without any clothes at all. Allow the air, the light, the energy in the room to touch you. Let the touch become more intimate, until you feel almost as though you’’re melting and floating away at the same time.

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Take some time to write down some of the sensory details of this experience. Try to express on paper the colors, sensations, textures, atmosphere of the meditation.

The more you do this, the deeper you’’ll be able to go. If you’’re willing, you can take it a step further, into a Sexual Meditation: THE FANTASY LOVER Here, the process is the same. Only this time you bring your husband or boyfriend, or your favorite movie star, or a fantasy man, through your imagination, into the room with you. Imagine him being there. Take your time looking at him, and using the breathing, relaxing and expanding techniques, let him get as close to you as you can tolerate.

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Imagine that he is very passionate, very sweet and loving with you, that the look in his eyes excites you. Go very slowly, allowing your imagination to take over, allowing your husband or boyfriend to take on the persona of the man of your dreams, allowing yourself to respond. Only go as far as you enjoy –– if your mind intervenes with anger, or other thoughts, and you are unable to let them go, stop for now and instead process the feelings that are coming up. As an alternative idea, bring in a fantasy lover that is not your husband or boyfriend. Allow yourself to go as far out, and as deep inside yourself as you can tolerate, allowing the sexual aspect of the meditation to go as far as you can tolerate. This exercise is about becoming a more sexual, sensual being on your own. Whatever you open up in yourself through these meditations becomes yours. The new energy you’’ve experienced on your own will transform your relationship beyond sex . Bring this experience into other parts of your life. When you touch any object, become aware of your arm, and how it’’s moving through the air, how it meets the energy of the object, how you’’re moving through space.

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When you have sex with your husband or boyfriend, breathe and melt in the same way, and allow your energy to experience the energy of his touch. Instead of trying to accomplish anything, respond to him by simply being. This is very different than being sleepy and just lying there. Opening your heart, breathing, melting, and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to his eyes, ears, and touch is extraordinarily sensual. And if it’’s new to you, it’’s also an act of bravery.

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CHAPTER 21

WELLBEING ““Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.”” –– Mother Teresa

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ealth is a real issue for women. If we don’’t get enough rest, if we’’re stressed out and burned out, if our hormones are out of whack, we can’’t relax, can’’t be, and can’’t respond. We just keep moving, keep doing, keep ignoring the lack of satisfaction in our daily lives. I encourage you to assemble a team of health practitioners in your life –– western medical doctors, holistic doctors, herbalists, wherever your research and references from people you trust takes you. Your team should be experienced with all the newest research and trends in women’’s health, so that you can eat well, take the best supplements, and treat your body right. I encourage you to be a participating member of your health team.

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Use your body wisely –– exercise, meditate, stretch, breathe. Practice being sensually present –– feel your surroundings, listen to people you know and care for, and listen to strangers you meet. Listen for birds, listen for children and music, and most of all, listen for the voice of your own heart. Your emotions are your compass in the world. Tune out the chatter in your head by allowing what you feel –– really, literally feel, touch, hear, see and taste in the present moment –– to fill your life. Try this portable Meditation:

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Sensual

Take it with you everywhere. Do it at the market, waiting in line at the DMV, sitting at the PTA meeting, at Speed Dating, at the movies. You can use it while you’’re waiting in your car to pick up your children, waiting for your date to arrive, washing the dishes, talking across the table on a first date or in the middle of a potential argument with your man. Anytime you feel yourself caught up in the chatter of your head, or split in a million different directions trying to

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multi-task. Anywhere you can take a moment to breathe and focus on what’’s right in front of you: PORTABLE SENSUAL MEDITATION Put your hand on the table, or chair, or shopping basket, or whatever is in front of you. Feel the surface of it. Run your hand along it. Take a deep breath and then let the air out. Now just allow yourself to feel the piece of furniture or the object –– wood, plastic, metal, glass. Stay connected to the object and the feeling of realness, of solidity. You may instantly feel all the chatter in your head stop and the energy from your thoughts move into your hand and the real thing you’’re touching. Don’’t worry if the feeling only lasts for an instant. That’’s all you need. Now hold the other arm gently out to the side, away from your body just a bit. Let it hang in the air. Imagine the air touching your arm, caressing it, imagine the light in the room touching you. Allow it to touch the skin of your arm. Take a breath and allow the air to touch your face. Close your eyes for a second and allow the air, and the sound of people’’s voices to touch you. That’’s it.

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This is a small, simple thing you can do anytime. If you can do even a little of that in public, imagine what you can do alone, in your bedroom, all by yourself, with no clothes on! Here are some questions for you to write about: Where can I take better care of myself physically?

What am I tolerating emotionally, physically, spiritually that I don’’t want and isn’’t good for me?

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CHAPTER 22

THE RORI RAYE MANTRA:

Trust Your Boundaries Follow Your Feelings Choose Your Words Be Surprised

I trust my boundaries –– I trust myself: I know I will not knowingly toss my pearls before swine, throw myself into the path of destruction, hide from the truth, go along with or tolerate something that is damaging to me. Now I can move to my feelings.

I follow my feelings –– I follow my emotions around my body and into my heart because they are my compass in the world. I love my feelings and know that I must go where I am, be where I am, feel what I feel, and go through the feeling if I want to feel better. Now I can speak.

I choose my words –– I am committed to clear, direct, feeling based communication. I honor my feelings by expressing

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them from my heart without trying to influence or attack my man. If I choose, Now I can let go of the result.

I allow every moment to be a surprise –– I don’’t have to know every outcome, I don’’t have to manage every situation, I don’’t have to make sure everything goes the way I want, and I absolutely don’’t have to know what my man is going to say or do next. Because I know what I will not tolerate, because I can feel what I feel, because I’’ve stated clearly what I feel and don’’t want, I can let go of control.

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CHAPTER 23

TRANSLATIONS –– HOW TO CHOOSE WORDS Speak from your heart to his heart instead of from your mind to his mind. –– Rori Raye

simple chart is a reference for the Rori Raye This Mantra, and all the feeling, expressing and negotiating work in Key #5.

It will help you change the words you use when you talk to men, and it will help you change the thoughts you think. Keep it where you can see it. Carry it around with you. Practice often with everyone you talk to, and see how fast it becomes easy and automatic. Whenever you hear yourself being concerned with something in column one –– Control Speak –– pull your thoughts down from your head and into your body. Breathe. Try to focus on what you’’re feeling in the pit of your stomach.

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Use the words in column two –– Surrender Speak –– to verbalize what you feel. Even if it’’s as basic as mad, sad, glad, or afraid –– getting the words out will clear the air between you and any man. And even more important for a woman: Releasing the energy of pent-up emotions will allow you to feel more relaxed, more in tune with yourself, your body, and your spirit.

Control Speak

Surrender Speak

This Column is About Him –– So it’’s His Business Only; It’’s Not My Business, And it’’s Off Limits to Me

This is About Me –– So it’’s My Business; It’’s About Being Vulnerable and Real; It’’s the Way to Go

Why is he doing that?

I feel mad, sad, glad, afraid, scared, angry, happy, disconnected, confused, shaky, uncomfortable, weird, upset, lonely, tired, exhausted

What is he doing?

““

What is he feeling?

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What are you feeling?

““

What do you mean?

““

I’’ll bet I know why he’’s depressed, angry, tired, quiet, etc.

““

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Oh, he’’s just……..

““

Oh, men are just like that

““

There’’s so much tension between us……He must be……mad, upset, having childhood memories, etc.

““

Why does he always have to do that?

““

You never listen to me!

““

I need you to do this or that

I don’’t want to do this, what do you think?

What if we (you) did that? Can we (you) please do that?

Why didn’’t you call me?

I don’’t want to go there, do that, see that, feel this, feel that, listen to this, be there, be here, stand here, tolerate this, have this, worry about this, think about this, take charge of this, plan this ––what do you think? Nothing

What’’s going on with our relationship?

I don’’t want that kind of relationship, what do you think?

Not noticing when he does something nice

Thank you. I like that tie, I like how you look, I love this restaurant, I feel so good here, I feel so good with you, that feels so good, etc.

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I want you to pick me up, open my door, etc.

I’’m old-fashioned. I don’’t feel comfortable meeting men, calling men, planning dates, etc.

Add your own here……

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CHAPTER 24

PROCESSING ““Being ladylike or gentlemanly and denying one’’s anger simply results in the unconscious sabotage of relationships. Expressing one’’s anger is transformative because it allows for a true and open, honest relationship. It makes way, therefore, for love.””–– Carol Pearson

D

eciding to express feelings -- even the ones you don't like -- in a way your man can hear is pretty much asking yourself to dismantle your entire defense system. You can do it overnight if you’’re brave enough, and yet, one step at a time –– baby ones –– will do the job faster than you can imagine without shocking your system. Taking the leap to speaking about our feelings when we've spent our whole lives working very hard to do just the opposite –– whether we're afraid of what someone will think or do, or whether we simply want to be more highly conscious people and have more refined emotions –– takes courage and commitment to the process.

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The way to refining our emotional reactions is in not resisting the ones we actually have. Denying who we are now impedes our progress toward who we want to be. The moment we acknowledge and share where we are at this moment, the more quickly we move through it, bond with the human being we've just shared with, and go on to the emotions we feel better about. Here are some steps to consider along the way: 1. The relationship comes before the garbage, the chore, the mess, the scheduling, the bill paying, the household issues. 2. Saying how you feel (without mentioning your man at all) honors the relationship and demonstrates to your man that you trust him. (No matter how it seems to you or him in the heat of the moment,) 3. Saying how you feel is sharing how you feel. 4. Sharing how you feel is sharing yourself. 5. Sharing yourself is not giving, it is surrendering your defenses and just Being 6. Just Being is allowing connection with the person in whose presence you are Being.

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7. In order to just be, you must surrender your defenses. 8. In order to surrender your defenses, you must trust your own boundaries. 9. Having boundaries means saying what you Do Not Want –– about the way you are treated and spoken to and the way your life is -- even if you have to say it over and over again. 10. Boundaries are about the relationship -- how you are treated, how you are spoken to, how your life is -- not about the garbage or the household chores. The garbage, the mess, the schedule, these are chores and details about which you have a preference. Sometimes you feel strongly about a preference –– I don’’t want to take out the garbage or paint that wall. Saying I Don’’t Want about a preference is another way of expressing and sharing a feeling –– it is not about your core boundaries. 11. If he does not take your feelings into account, trusting your boundaries (you are not being treated well) means you either continue to share how you feel about that, say what you don't want, and ask again what he thinks should be done, or –– if you cannot tolerate the energy –– leave the room.

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12. Negotiating is asking a man what he thinks you should do together to solve the problem, after he takes into account both your feelings and your boundaries. 13. Having boundaries means that if a man was to prove that he is currently unable to take your feelings into account –– to actually treasure your feelings when you express them in a sharing, non-judgmental way –– you would take care of yourself by having a heart to heart conversation. 14. A heart to heart conversation is a frank, honest, feeling based talk using all of the principles of Trusting Your Boundaries, Following Your Feelings, Choosing Your Words and Being Surprised (having no investment in the outcome). Use the techniques of saying I feel……I don’’t want……What do you think we should do? until solutions to your pain –– the emotional distance in the relationship, the amount of time together, the anger you feel and can’’t get rid of, the trash piling up, the light bulb that need changing, the mess in the living room, or whatever else has been gnawing at you and hasn’’t been fixed by small expressions of feeling and conversations in the moment –– are presented and agreed on. 15. This negotiation, even though it centers on solving a problem, must be about the relationship. It is about restoring, creating and enhancing harmony, connection, and romance.

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Only superficially is it about the garbage, the smoke detector, the mess, the schedules. Any business staff meeting can accomplish logistical goals. You can deal with these issues effectively in any relationship. The point is to conduct the negotiation in the way that best serves the relationship. For a woman who wants to be the receptive, Feminine energy partner, this is always about authenticity, vulnerability, and the expression of feeling. It is never about blame, responsibility, agenda, or outcome.

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CHAPTER 25

FEARLESSNESS ““I have never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love –– plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing –– turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn’’t want, could not use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.”” –– Elizabeth McCracken

W

e are afraid because we believe the lies we hear from the nasty Voice in our heads.

The Voice wants us to believe that we’’re not good enough, not beautiful enough, that we don’’t deserve a wonderful Relationship, and that if anyone saw us, really saw us as we really are, they wouldn’’t want us. It wants to keep us afraid to poke our heads out of the prettied-up, often completely inauthentic outer selves we show the world. It wants to keep us safe. But the effect of the Voice is the opposite.

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Not showing ourselves is not safe. It’’s just what we’’re used to. It’’s a habit. And just as you can break bad habits and transform your communications with others by sticking to the Four Rules for Respecting your Partner, you can break the bad habits of the Voice by simply refusing to listen to it. That’’s it. You ignore the voice. You treat the voice as a cruel lie and pay no mind. Because the Voice is so clever, what it says often seems like reality –– seems reasonable –– backed up by facts and statistics. But when you hear something from inside that’’s negative about yourself –– or makes you feel you can’’t or shouldn’’t or mustn’’t –– that’’s the tip off that it’’s the nasty Voice, and not your own true, inner voice. Your own voice will lead you to Love. It will lead you to listening, to appreciating, to surrendering to your Feminine energy, to being, to being happy. What would it be like to be fearless?

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What would it be like to be able to completely ignore the voice in my head that’’s always telling me what I can and can’’t do, what I should and shouldn’’t, must and mustn’’t do, and is always judging me?

What would it be like if I could be however I am –– without worrying how I look or what anyone else thinks?

Fear and anxiety are the tools we use to keep ourselves from experiencing pain. Whether it’’s pain we perceive out in the world, pain in our bodies or pain hidden deep in our minds and psyches.

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But fear often ends up ruling our lives far more painfully than whatever it is we believe we’’re afraid of. The Have the Relationship You Want workbook, workshops and coaching are based on the idea that small, seemingly insignificant changes in the words we use and assumptions we make can lead to huge changes in our relationships, and that these changes will feel so good our fears will melt in the face of them, allowing us to open up our minds and hearts. Just as learning to say ““No”” out in the world can increase our inner sense of our real, true and great worth, feeling more sensual and attentive to ourselves on the inside can lead to spectacular romance out in the world. It is my wish that every woman experience the joy of allowing the world in general and men in particular to see who they really are, down to their core, and then joyfully allow both the world and men of the world to love them, just as they are.

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ABOUT RORI RAYE

A

s a relationship coach, crisis counselor, actress, director, stage producer, mother, author, seminar leader, public speaker and wife of a successful executive coach, I know how challenging it is to balance the masculine energies I use in business and the tasks of daily life with the feminine energies I surrender to in my two-decadeslong marriage. Many years ago, I turned my own conflict-ridden and fading relationship nearly overnight into the vibrant, thrilling, totally satisfying marriage it is now. My husband is the same man he was during ““the awful years,”” and yet he seems to have changed completely. I know I’’ve been transformed. From the moment I made my commitment to refuse to try to ““manage”” my husband and my destiny, my life has been a treasure of peace, fun, love, success and surprises. Through my writing, speaking and teaching, it’’s my mission to help other women rediscover passion and joy in their relationships and marriages.

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