She Wants MORE Connection – He Backs Off

Does this show up in your relationship?
She wants to BE with him. He wants space.
She wants MORE CONNECTION with him. He wants to be left alone.
Does this show up in your relationship? Where? Leave your comment below.

You Pull, Your Partner Pulls Away! What’s Up With That!

We see this dynamic played out in almost every relationship. One person wants more and energetically pulls on their partner to come closer. The one being pulled on backs off and resists in reaction. This resistance, of course, has the puller only pull harder. This pattern repeats and reinforces itself, sometimes for years.

This pull–repel dynamic in relationships shows up most often as one person criticizing and complaining about not enough connection and presence from the other, and their partner backing off wanting less criticism, more space and more appreciation.

Unfortunately, pulling away breeds more complaint, and complaint breeds more pulling away.

What keeps this dynamic going is our presumption that our partner criticizing or pulling away is something they are doing TO us on purpose for some negative reason. We take their criticism or pulling away personally.

Christian and I believe that we are inherently good people and everything we do has a positive intent and is meant to take care of a positive concern. There is nothing BAD intended. But when we look at our partner from the outside, it doesn’t always look that way.

Let’s look at this dynamic more deeply.

If you criticize me, it looks on the outside like you are putting ME down and not appreciating ME for who I am and all I do. I am pretty sure you are saying something about ME when you dump on me about what I did and didn’t do. This does not at first glance look like there is a “positive intent” in your actions anywhere, thank you very much.

But inside the person criticizing, there is an intense desire to FIX some issue or problem so THEY can feel close and loving with you again. THEY are actually not intending to put you down and make you feel like shit! They are screaming, in their own garbled way, for love and connection. They are actually saying, “I can’t FEEL you. I can’t FEEL us. Where are you??? Help me to feel love again?”

From the other side, if you are pulling away from ME, it looks from the outside like you don’t want to be with ME. It looks like you are rejecting ME or like you are not committed to our relationship. It looks like I am not important to you, that I am not special or desired or wanted.

But inside the person pulling away, THEY feel unappreciated and unacknowledged. THEY believe THEY are not enough and that whatever THEY do will never be enough. THEY don’t like being criticized or judged and so they back off in an effort to feel less hurt and rejected. THEY just want to feel loved and appreciated.

Both of you WANT LOVE!! That’s it! Can you see that? A desire for love is what is underneath all of this craziness! Unfortunately, your move towards love feels like a personal attack to your partner, and vice versa. Both of you are screaming for LOVE, crying out for LOVE in your own way. But neither of you are hearing this CALL for LOVE because you are too busy screaming yourself!

What to do?
Provide what is desired! Provide what is missing!

Instead of criticizing, appreciate.
Instead of pulling away, step in closer.

And if you want to add in the graduate school step, thank your partner for wanting to be close to you when they are criticizing you and watch what miracles you create! Thank your partner for how perfect they are when they pull away and notice what happens!

This will replace the pull-repel dynamic in your relationship with a mutual giving of love and appreciation dynamic that will create an upward spiral of nourishment, love and support in your relationship. Coincidentally, both of your needs will be met beyond your wildest imagination.

Now, for this to work, the withdrawer needs to accept and look for appreciation. And the criticizer needs to accept and look for where their partner is stepping closer. You both need to look for and reinforce WHAT YOU REALLY WANT!!

Now, here comes the rub: This is TRUE for EVERY issue in your relationship!!

If your partner interrupts, there is something positive desired for HIMSELF! He is not trying to curb YOUR full self-expression. Find out what it is he wants and figure out another way to give that to him, and the interruptions will stop. Your button about being interrupted and then yelling at your partner to not interrupt is not you trying to curb your partner’s expression either. You just want something positive too – to be heard! You BOTH want something GOOD!

If your husband doesn’t want to be with your kids, there is something good HE is trying to give to HIMSELF too. He just wants to feel good. He is not trying to take YOUR kids away from YOU. Find out what he really wants and figure out another way to give that to him, and he will then want to be with your kids. And on the other side, when your wife wants you to be with her kids, she is not trying to have YOU feel bad, she just wants to give HERSELF an experience of family and connection and love.

When we personalize what isn’t personal, and when we assume mal intent instead of positive intent, we make ourselves miserable, we set ourselves up to be in perpetual reaction, we close off the discovery process and we actually PREVENT ourselves from coming up with relatively simple and easy solutions to what appears to be INSURMOUNTABLE problems.

If you are in the middle of this cycle, slow it down. Investigate. Ask questions. Be like a detective trying to discover clues, without judgment of good and bad, right or wrong. Be a neutral explorer. Assume YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING about what is going on with the other person. Find out what they are trying to take care of and what they REALLY want (experience). Then you do the same and express what you REALLY want (experience). Then move TOGETHER to take care of each other and to provide the experience you desire – which is some version of LOVE.

Move towards love, look for love, offer love, be love, listen with love, look with the eyes of love, assume love and you will experience LOVE.

Or, look for where your partner is a creep doing bad stuff TO you, and you will get to be right about that.

You get to choose.

Be right and miserable, or be willing to be wrong and feel great wonderful LOVE.

Choose love, friends.

What are you not saying? The honesty & transparency discussion cont’d

Last week, we got so many great questions and comments from our stated commitment to be more transparent and honest with you. So we’ve been thinking deeper about that.

What do you think about being honest? How has honesty affected your relationships? Share your thoughts!

This is painful to admit….

Something “hit” us yesterday that was kind of painful.
It was one of those “How-could-we-not-have-seen-that?” moments.

It’s actually embarrassing and scary to admit, but we’re making
a new commitment to you, so we will.

Sonika & I are relationship coaches, right. We teach
honesty and transparency.

Well, what “hit” us is we have not been walking our own talk.

Ouch!

And where we haven’t been walking our talk is in
relationship with YOU!

We have not been honest and transparent with you.
We’ve been thinking we should communicate with you ONLY
when we have “real information” and “concrete tips” to share.

We’ve been thinking we shouldn’t mess that up with what’s
real and personal for us.

This is actually one of the biggest mistakes in intimate relationships!
We’ve been doing with YOU exactly what we tell people NOT to do!

We’d like to apologize for that.

Our “make-up” is to be different from this moment forth.
We commit to being honest, transparent, real and personal with you,
not just “information providers”.

For now, know that we appreciate you so much. We are grateful for people
like you who are willing to engage in this sometimes risky, and infinitely
rewarding conversation of loving relationship.

More to come….

Hiring the Heavens in Relationship. There’s one place you can always look for help…

Ever feel hopeless and powerless in your relationship? As if nothing you do really helps or makes a difference?  Or that you’re just alone?

Well, there is one place we always look for help. We are amazed at the level of direct help we receive from Spirit, God, or the Angels (those are our favorite terms, but you can insert you own).

Our dear friend Jean Slatter wrote a little book (literally, you can read it in 2 hours) called Hiring the Heavens! From her, we’ve learned how to get a lot more direct and specific when we ask “the Above” for help. Jean tells the most fantastic stories of how she hires heavenly help for very specific tasks like finding the right outfit, finding lost jewelry, or getting help with running her business. She actually claims that the “spiritual assistants” are standing in line, just waiting for us to ask for their help!

What’s really cool is we’ve persuaded her to get on the phone with us at talk about how to use this in relationships, “Hiring the Heavens in Relationship”.

You’re invited! We’re talking with Jean on Wed 5/18 at 5Pm Pacific.

Register for the call (it’s free) at http://hiringtheheavensinrelationship.com/optin

We personally can  hardly wait to have this conversation with Jean, and we look forward to seeing you there too!

Get $300 off 2-Day Rel. Training, Sac., CA Radical, new, cutting edge! Singles & Couples. Promo code: Coupon

One of Biggest Mistakes Singles Make

Exploring a new relationship with someone is both an exhilarating experience and a frightening one. Here you are opening your heart, soul and body to someone with wild abandon and love with absolutely no commitment or guarantee of any future. There is immense possibility for creating the relationship of your dreams on the one hand, and great risk and uncertainty on the other. Somewhere, you know, without a commitment or promise, you could be abandoned or rejected and deeply hurt at any time.

It is challenging to open your heart to someone so completely with no promise or certainty. The discomfort of “not knowing” the future that comes with the joy and exhilaration of intimate bliss can be emotionally quite unsettling. The unsure mind wants to comfort itself with “knowing” the future and attempts to answer questions like, “Is this “the One?” Are we going to be together forever? Does he or she love me? Do I love them? Is this what I really want? Am I settling? Will I be happy?”

Unfortunately, trying to answer these questions too soon results in people rushing into making relationship determinations and decisions before their time, or forcing others to do so. This focus on determining the future gets in the way of allowing the relationship to organically unfold. People end and start relationships too quickly because they cannot stand to be with the uncertainty of the questions.

In truth, it takes time to assess whether or not you are willing to commit and spend your life with another. It takes recurrence with someone over time to know whether or not you can trust one another, work through breakdowns together as they arise, create new experiences harmoniously together, successfully fulfill your desires and take care of your needs, etc… It can sometimes take people a couple of years before they feel resolved enough in their relationship choice to commit to marriage. So what do we do with all the emotional discomfort in the meantime?

Make peace with the questions, both yours and theirs. They may be here awhile. Know that questions do not necessarily mean you do not want to be together or that you don’t love each other. Expand yourself to include both the deep love you are experiencing with your new partner and the questions that abound. The questions are part of the dating process.

Focus on the now as much as possible. Instead of future thinking, focus on what is good and wonderful about your relationship now. Enjoy the experience you ARE having, not the one you imagine you will NOT BE having later. Be in a mood of appreciation and gratitude for the wonderful experiences you ARE sharing together. Speak them out loud to each other. This practice will soothe your fears.

Instead of asking future questions that instill doubt and fear, ask questions that instill joy, confidence and hope. Ask questions like, “How can I express my love more today? Where can I be more honest and transparent? How would I be if I trusted the perfect unfolding of this relationship? How would I be if I knew this was my perfect partner or a divinely inspired step towards my perfect partner?”

And most importantly make sure to keep nourishing yourself outside the relationship. Take bubble baths, listen to uplifting music, get together with friends, dance, exercise, meditate, get emotional support from a coach, keep working on your own personal development, etc.  Participating in activities and engaging in practices that keep you feeling good about yourself are crucial. They will help you stay centered and expand your emotional capacity to deal with the uncertainty inherent in the initial phases of courtship.

Lastly, know that your questions will get answered over time, almost by themselves. Allow love to flourish and take you where it wants to go.  As much as possible, enjoy the rush that comes from the unfolding of love, and don’t rush to decide where it will all end up too quickly. If you do, you may very well prevent love from growing at all.

 

 

 

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Get $300 off 2-Day Rel. Training, Sac., CA 3/13&14! Radical, new, cutting edge! Singles & Couples. Promo code: “twitter” http://ow.ly/48l9D

My Husband Still Has Feelings For His “Ex”

Question: Hello Sonika, this is a personal question, I have been married for almost 15 years and my husband still has feelings for his ex, this hurts very bad and she showed up at my mother-in-law house and my husband did not think anything was wrong. How do I continue to trust him? I am scared to move on because I will get hurt…

 

Answer: I will be honest with you. Most people still have “feelings” for their ex – whether love or hate, because they were once deeply connected. These feelings do not at all necessarily mean that there is a desire to be with their ex again however, or that he doesn’t completely love and want to be with you. It is also not uncommon for in-laws and ex’s to remain in each other’s lives after divorce, especially if they still think of each other as extended family. Again, it does not necessarily mean that his ex-wife still has hooks in or desires for your husband.

I would encourage you to get help to explore how you could feel more secure in your marriage, and how you can use what is happening to reinforce the love he has for you, rather than bringing up hurt for you and producing more distance between you and your husband.