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

Rori Raye

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HAVE THE RELATIONSHIP YOU WANT

Copyright 2005, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2014 by Amare Inc

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

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A Special Message For You...

You can have the relationship you want. You can be cherished and adored. You can be happy. And it can happen quickly. I know, because I’ve been where you are right now – wanting so desperately to feel completely loved. When I finally learned how to not only attract a good man, but to inspire his lifelong devotion and make sure our connection was always deepening – I did it using the Tools in this book. Many years ago when I was single, I was as unhappy with my love life as any woman I’ve ever coached. I had no idea what “I was doing wrong” – or why every “relationship” I was involved in, and every man I loved, seemed to be more a figment of my imagination than anything real. I’d invest all my time, love, energy – even over years – into something that turned out to be “friends with benefits” or just evaporated into thin air. I questioned my judgment. I questioned my attractiveness. And then I met my husband. Only a few years into the marriage with this man who clearly loved me and wanted to be with me, I was as unhappy, unfulfilled and confused as I’d ever been. I call these “the awful years” of my marriage. I was bouncing in and out of it emotionally, I was anxious, miserable, furious, sleepless and scared. There was little sex, little fun and no peace. Couple’s therapy didn’t help at all – it made me feel angrier and even more helpless. Desperate, I read, experimented, made stuff up and concentrated on doing what I could do to make myself feel better. So – 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. In these pages, I’ll show you how to transform your own relationship or make that one special man fall deeply in love with you, regardless of how bad things seem right now. And you can do it all by yourself, without the cooperation of your man, without even talking to him about it – practically overnight. (You can read all about my story and exactly how I transformed my own love life at the end of the book.)

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How To Use This Book

This book is the foundation for everything I teach. In order to get the most out of it, I encourage you to read it in chronological order and do all the exercises (“the Tools”) in each chapter. This will help you quickly understand the reasoning and concept behind the new skills you’ll be learning, then easily put those skills into practice so you can start experiencing the love life you’ve always dreamed of. I’m so thrilled you’re reading this now, and 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. And they will continue to work, taking you as far into love as you’re willing to go. Love, Rori

P.S. This is your very own personalized copy, so please make sure you keep it all to yourself. Doing so helps me keep serving you and creating valuable content. If you have any questions about your order, please contact my support team at http://www.HaveTheRelationshipYouWant.com/contact.html and provide either your order code or the email address you used during purchasing. Order Code: V8F55E Email Address: [email protected] Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Contents

Overview The 5 Keys To A Great Relationship Key 1:

Fall In Love With Yourself Absolutely

Chapter 1

Stop Believing Your Nasty Voice & Love Yourself

Chapter 2

Tool: Love Your Nasty Voice Exercise: How To Love Yourself

Visualize What You Want

Exercise: Your Ideal Relationship

Chapter 3

Turn Away From Icky-Feeling Thoughts

Chapter 4

Choose Relationship And Commit To Having It

Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Exercise: How Do You Decide If He’s Worth It? Key 2: Choose Feminine Energy

Masculine And Feminine Energy

Key 3: Give Up Control And Get Partnership

Give Up Control

Exercise: Identifying Your Overfunctioning Tool: Giving Up Control

Chapter 8

Allow Him To Take The Lead The Rori Raye Mantra

Chapter 9

Support The Team

Chapter 10

The Truth About Men

Chapter 11 Chapter 12

Key 4: Receive Love From The Masculine

Respect The Masculine The 4 Rules For Respecting The Masculine Partner

Why We Should Appreciate Instead Of Criticize

Exercise: Finding Appreciation

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Listening To Him Changes Everything

Chapter 13

Exercise: Listening To Him Exercise: Practice Listening To Him On Your Own Key 5: Express The Feminine

Chapter 14

Getting Your Needs Met

Tool: Finding The Feelings

Chapter 15

Expressing Your Feelings

Tool: Feeling Messages Tool: Saying What You Don’t Want

Chapter 16

Getting Your Needs Met Through Negotiation

Exercise: Negotiating Conflict

Chapter 17

How To Choose Words

Chapter 18

Vulnerability

Chart: Translating Your Thoughts IntoWords

Exercise: Surrendering In Practice Tool: The Sensual Meditation Tool: The Fantasy Lover Tool: The Portable Sensual Meditation

Chapter 19

Putting It All Together

Chapter 20

I Believe In You

My Story About Rori Raye Catalog

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Overview

Why It’s So Hard To Feel Loved As women, we’ve all dreamed of being loved, held, touched, emotionally cherished and committed to for life by a man we can respect and love. And I know you’ve already tried nearly everything you could think of to have this kind of love life you’ve always dreamed of. Though your dream of love may seem like a long road from where you are now, getting to your goal – toward any goal – involves a series of steps. Each step in this book is in the form of a new skill, or Tool, designed to bring a man toward you with hardly any effort at all on your part. Each Tool is designed to make you magnetic to a man – instead of invisible. When you put the Tools in this book together, it becomes a roadmap you can follow toward your goal of a great relationship, no matter where you’re finding yourself right now. And that roadmap gets you back on track to your goal no matter what happens “on the road.” Even if you get sidetracked or stalled – the Tools will get you where you want to be. The principles behind my Tools are simple, and yet what you’re about to learn is the complete opposite of everything you’ve ever read, heard or been taught your whole life.

The Way Men Fall (and Stay) in Love Is Different From The Way We Women Fall We’ve been taught, whether through our upbringing or through books and movies, that men should love us just because we’re smart, pretty, funny, clever, a good sport, sexy, good in bed, have a good personality, are a good friend or because we’re a decent and nice woman. Only, they don’t. Men don’t fall in love because of some checklist of qualities that look good “on paper.” We think they do, because that’s the way women get excited about a man. We make checklists, we check off boxes on the check lists, we weigh and value and label and think and analyze and try to solve problems and figure a man out. We fall in love with ideas. We fall in love with a man’s potential. We fall in love with our sexual attraction to a man. We are enamored with how we’re Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

feeling around him. And we fall in love when a man treats us the way we treat ourselves, whether that ends up being pleasurable or painful. Men, on the other hand, just feel in their “gut” (we might refer to this as “thinking with their dicks”) whatever it is they feel about us. It can make a man act clueless, or angry, or depressed, or insensitive. It can make him move in toward us fast, or it can make him withdraw and run away from us. And when a man falls in love with us, he falls hard. He might feel sexually attracted to 100 women in a room – but he only falls for one.

What Really Makes Him Fall for You What inspires a man to fall in love? What makes him want to be around you? A man is compelled to be with you and to love you because of reasons that have nothing to do with: • Being as smart as he is. (Actually, you just need to be “smart enough” to understand what he’s talking about and what’s important to him.) • Being nurturing and helpful. (The more nurturing and helpful you are, the more masculine energy you are and the faster and further you’ll drive him away. You’ll learn more about masculine and feminine energy throughout this book.) • Being good in bed. (You just need to have a good time yourself when he makes love to you. You just need to LET him love you.) • Making good money, having a good job and being successful. (You just have to be able to take care of yourself and perhaps half your children’s financial needs. In other words – you have to be able to be okay without a man.) • Working hard to move the relationship forward. (Even THINKING about moving the relationship forward makes him stall even more. Yes, it’s frustrating to have had all this wrong information all these years.) • Making him the center of your world. (Making him the center of your world is the fastest way to kill his attraction for you.) • Playing hard to get. (Playing anything is the second fastest way to kill the attraction.) • Being childless. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

(Children create new, different, fresh and VERY powerful bonds for a man, and create deep“family” feelings in him – which makes you MORE attractive.) Here’s the basic truth about love and relationship: A man can’t connect to you through his mind, or his body, or what you have in common spiritually. Those are all myths, and the reason why we so often struggle to truly connect with a man. We think if only we say the right things and act the right way, as in the list above, it will logically lead to a man adoring us and wanting us forever. Only it doesn’t work that way. Men are simple, but they’re not stupid. In some ways, they listen to their hearts and guts way more than we women do. All a man cares about is how he feels when he’s around you. He wants to feel turned on – sexually, emotionally and romantically – and he also wants to feel completely safe to be himself. That means totally, 100% accepted and loved for who he is. If he doesn’t feel safe expressing who he is, he can’t really feel safe to be himself around you, and that prevents him from truly connecting with you.

When You Give Him Safety, He Gives You Intimacy The way a man will feel safe around you is if he feels that you feel safe to express who you really are around him. That means no pretending, no denying, no stuffing down of your true self. You can’t use your logic and intellect (or your body) to connect to him, and he can’t think his way into loving you. The ONLY way he can connect to you is through his heart, and the only way you can connect to his heart is to go through YOUR heart. If you’re in touch with and constantly sharing what’s in your heart with him, you’ll connect with his heart. Love will happen and he’ll fall for you. So here’s your job: To change the assumptions you’ve been operating under, and do EVERYTHING DIFFERENTLY! Even more than what you’re not doing – what isn’t working for you is what you ARE doing! What isn’t working is the result of trying to be everything to a man that doesn’t connect with his heart. You’re trying to be his best buddy, his therapist, his sex kitten, his business partner or a woman he has a “family” obligation to. We’ve all been taught to think this way, and do things this way, and then we wonder why love isn’t showing up. This happens because instead of operating from our hearts, we operate from our heads – thinking, analyzing, figuring out, solving, doing, making things happen, explaining, managing Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

and “telling.” And the one place where love blossoms – our hearts – is a place we’ve all been taught to avoid like the plague, because we’ve been taught to avoid and hide our emotions: • We’ve been told to “think through” our problems and “get over it” whenever we’re overwhelmed with emotion • We’ve been told to avoid conflict, rise above our passionate feelings, and stay calm and cool But it’s through our heart and our emotions that true connection can actually take place with another human being. A man will feel connected with you because he’ll feel safe to experience and express his emotions, because you’re comfortable experiencing and expressing yours.

Using Your Feelings To Connect With His Heart As a woman, you have the unique ability to access and express your emotions, which is the single best way for you to connect with a man where it counts... his heart. In this book, you’ll learn to use your feelings to make a man feel safe and turned on. You’ll learn why your feelings matter, how to know what it is you’re feeling (versus just thinking), and then how to express those feelings in a way that’s magnetic and increases intimacy and trust. As you do this, you’ll be able to connect with his heart. He’ll feel he’s finally “home” with you. Here’s an important extra bonus: If you’re not used to this way of relating with a man, you’ll very likely experience scary feelings of vulnerability when you use the Tools in this book. You’ll feel exposed and not in control of the situation. That’s actually a good thing! Because when you use these Tools, another unexpected benefit will show up. Your confidence and self-esteem will rise up to a level you never thought possible, because you’ll be and feel more authentic and more “yourself” than ever before. You’ll see that the “control” you were feeling before was a false sense of control, and you’ll “get” (in a series of “a-ha” moments) that vulnerability is critical for you. It’s essential to your creating a deeply intimate and loving relationship – with anyone, not just a man. This book is about turning your love life around. And this means completely reversing everything you’ve been doing up to now that hasn’t been working. But it doesn’t mean you’ll have to do a lot of work, or that it’s going to require you to pretend and playact.

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to bring more affection and adoration to your love life. This book is not intended to change who you are – it’s intended to help you become more comfortable in your own skin. What you’ll “get,” on a deep level inside yourself, is that it’s not about what you look like or what you do for a man that changes things. It’s about how comfortable you are in your own skin, in your own body, in your own heart and mind and soul that turns him on. Why? Because the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the more a man believes – down to his toes – that you’re comfortable with his skin. In other words, if you’re able to express yourself honestly, authentically and without judgment, he believes you’ll accept him when he’s being honest and authentic. He will feel safe around you. And, again – because this is so important – a man falls in love when he feels safe with you. So this is a complete turnaround of everything we women have ever thought, been taught and practiced our entire lives. A man falls in love because he feels safe around us. He falls in love because he connects to our heart, and we connect to his.

We Need to Stop What Doesn’t Work We women are born desiring deep emotional connection to each other, to men and to the planet, but we’ve been raised to stuff our real selves down and skitter along the surface of life. We’ve settled for creating endless, superficial interactions that go nowhere and so end up in situations where connection can never happen. We’ve been taught to use all the wrong parts of ourselves to create connection and love, such as our looks, our intellect and our sexuality. When that connection doesn’t happen, and when we get disappointed by men, we end up feeling hopeless that true love can even exist for us. And we’ve been trained to believe things about certain emotions – like anger, disappointment, fear, frustration, expectation, guilt and shame – that undermine our belief in the possibility of emotions like joy, bliss and peace. We’ve been trained to “go” in certain directions, and say and do certain things when we feel anger, disappointment, fear, frustration, expectation, guilt and shame – and those directions are simply the wrong ones. Our training has been our undoing. We need to unlearn all the things that don’t work. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

The 5 Keys

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)

If 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. Learning to “undo” is much easier when you go in baby steps and have simple, practical techniques that really work. That’s where my Tools come in. And don’t worry, you can go through each one at your own pace. To make things even easier, I’ve broken them down into my 5 Keys to a Great Relationship – each of the 5 Keys lays a foundation for the next.

THE 5 KEYS: 1. Love Yourself Absolutely 2. Choose Feminine Energy 3. Give Up Control And Get Partnership 4. Receive Love From The Masculine 5. Express The Feminine Think of these 5 Keys as your roadmap to the land of intimacy – filled with excitement, vulnerability, sensuality, respect and love. Key 1: “Love Yourself Absolutely” is about your beliefs. Beliefs about men, about any one particular man, beliefs about how relationships work, how the differences between men and women work – and exactly why you need to change your beliefs to get what you want in love. Key 2: “Choose Feminine Energy” is about feminine/masculine energy, and why it’s so important to reclaim your feminine “girl” energy, give a real job to your masculine “boy” energy and know how to switch hats between the two. We women have been trained to operate 100% of the time in our boy energies, and that pretty much ensures we will never fully attract a masculine-energy man who knows how to love us. In this section, you’ll be able to decide which energy primarily works best for you and your relationship, when to use your different energies, and how to make subtle shifts in Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

words and body language to inhabit either your masculine or feminine energy. Key 3: “Give Up Control And Get Partnership” is about how feminine energy means giving up control, why this works and how to do it – even if giving up control seems to go against our instincts. Key 4: “Receive Love From The Masculine” is about how to truly let a man love you. I know this sounds easy, but receiving, next to giving up control, is the last thing in the world any of us wants to do! How can this be? How can we not want to receive love? I’m going to explain why we’re all so afraid to receive love, and why intimacy is even more scary to us than it is to men. You’ll learn how to listen deeply and how to come from a place of appreciation and gratitude instead of criticism and anger. Key 5: “Express The Feminine” is about the power of your feminine energy expressed through your words, your body language, your “vibe” – your very presence in the world. You’ll learn how to turn your emotions – even all the old, hardened ones you’ve been denying or bottling inside – into the most attractive thing about you to nearly any man. Your feelings truly are your biggest asset – they’re your major weapon in your arsenal of being a woman. Emotions make you irresistible and powerful. You’ll learn how to identify your emotions, how to put them into words, and how to use them to connect with his heart.

How The 5 Keys Work Together To Create The Relationship You Want Using the Tools contained within these keys will help you start to unwind and unknot all that wrong training. You’ll be able to reset your entire mental, emotional, physical and spiritual ways of doing and experiencing things, recalibrate your beliefs about men and relationships, and set out on a new course for love. You’ll learn why controlling and managing kills attraction and drives a man away. Right now, you may believe you need to take control of your relationship in order to fix it. You may think you need to be the one to move it forward, to make all the plans, to take care of everything on a date, in your relationship and in your household, to advise and criticize your man in order to “get things done” the way you want them. But a man doesn’t want to be managed and controlled. He wants to be respected and accepted for who he is, and he wants to feel he has the ability to make you happy. When you criticize and manage, he feels like he’s failed. He stops feeling safe to be himself around you. He begins to lose attraction for you. He doesn’t even know this “consciously.” He doesn’t know why he feels the way he does – he just feels it.

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On the other hand, simply being where you are and who you are and receiving love as it comes to you (even if you have to imagine it coming to you) increases attraction and literally magnetizes a man to you. Staying emotionally open no matter what’s going on allows you to receive love, even if you don’t think it’s coming at you. You’ll also learn why choosing to be the feminine-energy partner in your relationship will get you what you want from your man. You’ll discover how gratitude and appreciation – even for the seemingly small things – repairs relationships and builds trust. It allows you to receive love from the masculine and create an environment where you can be adored. I’m so confident that with this completely new mindset and these new skills, you’ll not only regain hope – you’ll have the relationship you want.

Change Can Happen Quickly How fast can you turn your love life around? Change can happen quickly when you turn around everything you do and think. I know you’ll turn things around 180°, because I’ve seen it happen over and over with my clients. I know you can do this, because I’ve done it. I had as little self-esteem, self-love and selfknowledge as anyone I’ve ever coached. My habits and the way I treated myself and thought of myself, and the dysfunctional way I related to men, were as deeply ingrained in me as in every woman I’ve ever coached. When I look back on my love life, it’s a jumble of memories of feeling humiliated almost nonstop. I could never attract or keep a man who might know how to love me and be emotionally close to me because of my own competitiveness, my inability to speak clearly and truthfully about what I was feeling, my passive-aggressive way of expressing all my stuffed-down anger, my “Overfunctioning” (more on this later) and my tragic inability to feel what I was feeling. For most of my life, I tried to be a good girl. I had a stiff upper lip, rarely expressed pain if a man treated me badly, put up with all kinds of humiliating experiences and smiled when I really wanted to scream or cry. In a sense, I was a liar. I was pretending all the time. Slowly, over time, I tried different things and experimented with new ways of being around men. I stopped pretending. I opened my heart. I stopped trying so hard to fix everything and do everything and just allowed myself to experience being with a man. I developed the effortless Tools that I’ve been using and teaching my clients ever since. My love life turned on a dime – not just once but twice! – during two separate challenges. I want to give you hope that you’re in the right place, and that you’ve made the right Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

decision in getting this book. However things are right now, whatever you’re enduring now in your love life, I know these Tools will help you. When women use the Tools I’ve developed, amazing results happen. Men show up out of nowhere, or men who’ve been difficult for years all of a sudden turn around and become loving, warm and affectionate. Dating is no longer dreadful. Instead, it becomes a great therapeutic tool that transforms you from chronically single to blissfully married in the blink of an eye. I’ve seen this happen over and over again, so I know it’s true and I know it can happen for you.

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Key 1

Fall in Love With Yourself Absolutely When you’re stuck in anger at yourself and men and the situation you’re in, when you’re stuck in blaming yourself or a man or a situation, when you’re stuck in guilt and despair and the inestimably “icky” feeling that you won’t and can’t ever be happy in love – it gets more difficult, trickier, and like a neverending obstacle course to make the changes that actually CAN get you to lasting happiness. Making any change toward moving in the happy direction you truly want to go begins with changing what’s going on inside your head. That means changing your beliefs – about yourself, about men, about relationships, and about what you deserve. This Key will help you move past what’s keeping you stuck. It’ll clarify what exactly it is you really need and want, so you can manifest it.

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Chapter 1

Stop Believing Your “Nasty Voice” & Love Yourself “The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.” (Sioux legend)

Wanting 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 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 unsettling, angry 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. In this chapter, we’re going to take some first steps “out” of this “stuck place” – and it all begins with changing what’s going on inside our heads. The basic truth here is that the road to your dream relationship starts with you. It starts inside you, and all of it starts with what you believe about yourself, about men, about life, about relationships, about who you are and what you deserve. Our lives almost never turn Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

out all the scary ways we imagine they will. In order to change the results you’re getting out in the world, your whole “vibe” has to change. And as you take the first steps in this chapter of getting to know yourself and how you’re operating better and more deeply, the “vibe,” or “aura,” you project to men will change. As your “vibe” changes, the kinds of men you attract will change, and the man you may be with right now will experience this shift in you and respond completely differently to you. Your first step is to discover what it is you believe about yourself that’s holding you back, what voices in your head you’re listening to and following down the wrong roads, and changing all that around – so a NEW kind of love can come into your life. You’ll see that my approach and Tools to deal with the “Nasty Voice” in your head is totally different from anything else you may have tried. It may feel completely “counter-intuitive” to you, and that’s GREAT! In this section I’m offering you a new approach, new Tools, and new “homework” for you to get the relationship you want. Let’s start here:

Your Subconscious Is Running You: Change From The Inside Out And The Outside In Our lives are created out of our beliefs about ourselves and the world. We can change our circumstances and change our lives by changing our beliefs. Beliefs are formed under the surface of what you’re aware of, or in your “subconscious.” Your subconscious is operating whether you want it to or not. The less you’re aware of what thoughts and feelings are going on inside you, the more your subconscious thoughts and beliefs and habits and training are running you and your life. I’m going to call this subconscious world simply “What You Don’t Know” and your conscious world “What You Know.” You can visualize this idea of what’s “subconscious” and what’s “conscious” by looking at your entire self as a circle. The outer layer is what’s conscious, or what you know about yourself. What’s in the deepest circle is the buried treasure – the subconscious and what you don’t know about yourself. It is the big mystery of who you really are.

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What you want to do is get to know a little of What You Don’t Know by observing yourself and paying attention. When you connect with the emotions and thoughts in your mind and body that you used to take for granted, and suddenly study them, the outer circle gets bigger. There’s more to you than you knew, and your world expands. You reclaim a part of yourself that was previously unreachable and unknown. You’ll become more conscious of the PATTERNS that show up by getting to know your habits, triggers and feelings inside you that cause habitual words and actions. Once you bring up what’s buried on your inside, you can choose how you want to be on the outside. For example, you’ll realize why you keep ending up in the arms of the same kind of man, over and over. You’ll recognize that your subconscious is preventing you from really connecting with a man, because every time you get close to a man, you feel scared and close off. You may discover that your feelings are telling you you’re afraid of intimacy. When you know your patterns, you can replace the “icky-feeling” thoughts and actions that come up with “happier-feeling” ones. In this way, you can work from the outside in. I like this focus on happier-feeling and icky-feeling thoughts and actions WAY more than the old-fashioned terms “negative” and “positive.” This way, you don’t involve yourself in judging, labeling and defining. (In other words, using your head to understand.) Instead, you use your heart to feel your way through life. It doesn’t matter whether something is “negative” or “positive” on paper. It only matters Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

how it feels to you. By working from the outside in by changing our words and actions – even slightly – you’ll create a whole new pattern that builds self-confidence and good feelings. You can heal yourself, know yourself better, and get what you want in love. You can change the “vibe” you project out to others, and to men in general. In this way, becoming aware of the hidden patterns in your thoughts and behavior and working to replace the “icky” with what feels better, will improve all your relationships, including the one with yourself.

The Nasty Voice Some of us carry the icky-feeling, overly careful, seemingly rational and reasonable words we’ve heard since we were children – we carry them around in our subconscious. We’re not aware that we’re still listening to the messages of childhood or of an earlier time in our life. These aren’t benign messages, either. They often hold us back from going after what 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 “Nasty Voice.” We’re afraid… of love, of relationship, of intimacy, of success… 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. Not showing ourselves is not safe. It’s just what we’re used to. It’s a habit. You can break the bad habits of the Voice by simply refusing to believe it. That’s it. Notice I don’t say, “Don’t listen to it,” because I want you to let the voice know you hear it – it’s a part of you that you want to KNOW. It’s part of the inner circle of What You Don’t Know that you want to include in the larger circle of What You Know. You want to listen Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

when it speaks (or screams) – you just don’t want to BELIEVE what it’s saying! Because the Voice is so clever, what it says often seems reasonable and true, sometimes even backed up by facts and statistics. But when you hear something from inside that feels icky when you hear it, or makes you feel you can’t or shouldn’t or mustn’t, that’s the tipoff that it’s the Nasty Voice and not your true, inner voice. Your True Voice will lead you to Love. It will lead you to listening, to appreciating, to being present and to being happy. This in turn, will open up a man’s heart and soften the vibe between you and him.

Tools For Tuning In Here are a series of Tools for you to deal with your Nasty Voice in a completely different way than you’ve likely ever tried (or perhaps even heard about). The reason for these Tools and why they work is simple: Love isn’t something you can turn on and off. You can’t shut yourself down some of the time and then open yourself when you decide to. You’re either all shut down, or you’re all opened up. All the time. So – I want to start you with YOU. With staying open to YOU. Nasty Voice and all. All the time. The more you can hear yourself, get to know yourself, tolerate the scary things going on inside your own head, the more you’ll develop real, honest-to-goodness intimacy with yourself. And as you become more intimate with you, you will automatically and magically become intimate with a man. It just happens that way. As you do these Tools, see if you can imagine how working this way with yourself will help you with a man. Because it will.

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Tool: Love Your Nasty Voice First – let’s learn to recognize your Nasty Voice (and any other voices you hear in your head telling you you’re wrong, not worthy or foolish). To help you, work backwards from your icky feelings. Start to notice if you suddenly feel guilty or ashamed or embarrassed. That’s your big clue that your Nasty Voice is flying high and on the move. Now, let’s treat your Nasty Voice as a valuable part of you. A part that thinks it has a job to protect you. Because, even though it has a weird way of showing it, your Nasty Voice loves you and wants love from you. The problem is that the Voice’s protection is carried out in a nasty way that makes you feel icky, and the more we pay attention to it, the more we try to protect ourselves by beating ourselves up, and then we get further and further away from love. So – we want to do three things: 1. Acknowledge the Voice, 2. Love and embrace the Voice, and 3. Stop giving it your attention. I want you to love every single, solitary part of you – even your nastiest Voice. The more you love it, in fact, the softer it gets and the less it screams at you. You get your sense of humor back, and the Voice starts to join in the party that is your life. You begin to trust yourself, and the Voice starts to trust you, too. Here’s how to love your Nasty Voice, step by step: 1. Embrace the “Voice” • Physically put your arms around yourself and hug yourself. • Breathe. • Feel yourself opening up to the “Voice” instead of resisting it or fighting it. • Sink into whatever you’re feeling – experience it, and see how much you can open up to tolerate the energy of being in such close, loving contact with your Nasty Voice. 2. Tell it: “I hear you, I love you, I will never abandon you. But I’m not going to go in the direction you want, and I’m in charge here.” • Say it to yourself with all the love in your heart, because this is your most vulnerable self screaming at you. • Even if you have to embrace your Nasty Voice 100 times a day, and tell it you’re not following it’s orders because you’re in charge here – do that. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

• Don’t allow yourself to get into a discussion with it. Your brain and your Nasty Voice will ALWAYS win and make you feel icky in order to protect you the only way it knows how. Just do this Tool until you get the hang of it, and include your Nasty Voice in the party that is you. This Tool is the first STOP and UNDO Tool, and it’s a very gentle one. Later on, I’ll ask you to stop some habits and words cold in their tracks. For now, I want you to keep your eyes on what you want – love forever – and simply tell yourself that you’re in charge. This STOP Tool is the most basic and simple one. Just as I’m going to ask you later to stop running down your date or your mate – even in your mind – I want you to stop running down you, first. Just follow this 2-step Tool when your Nasty voice starts screaming at you, and you’ll already be making headway to knowing more about yourself and shifting everything for the better. Now that we’ve established a “no beating yourself up” policy, where you love and embrace even the nastiest voice inside you that wants to tear down everything you do and say, let’s take another step toward finding and building on your strengths as a woman:

Exercise: How To Love Yourself Take a moment and imagine it: What would it be like to trust yourself and to be loved just for being yourself? What would it be like to love yourself for just being a woman? Of course you love being a woman. Or do you? What are some things you don’t like about being a woman? Write them here. 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? Again, write whatever comes to mind. 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. Take a look at the list. How do you feel when you read through it, imagine it? Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Be open to happy 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. It is connecting to your feminine. 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. Choose to love yourself simply because you are a woman – no deserving or earning required. Later on, in the section on feminine energy, 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. Know that every time you take a even a baby step in a happier-feeling 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, if you don’t fight it or resist it, or tear it down or yell back – or believe it at all – it will slowly lose its hold over you. As you get used to the voices in your head, and as you respond to them with love and kindness and the authority I want you to have as the “one in charge,” everything will feel better.

The Purpose Of Fear And Anxiety Fear and anxiety are the tools our brains and habits 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. Okay – total and complete fearlessness is not our goal here. It’s not reasonable! You’d be a daredevil, you’d take way too many risks, you’d...wait a minute – can you hear the Nasty Voice cropping up here? Telling you what you should and shouldn’t do, feel, think, try out...? The Nasty Voice, and fear and anxiety, is your subconscious mind’s way of “monitoring” whatever it thinks might be risky for you. But fear often ends up ruling our lives far more painfully than whatever it is we believe we’re afraid of. Ask yourself what it would be like to be emotionally fearless. How about physically fearless? spiritually fearless?

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What would it be like to be able to love and embrace 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 – and yet not believe it? Use the Tools and exercises in this chapter to embrace your “Voice” as a part of you, and yet keep it in its place. Remember, with love, to say you’re in charge. The reason for this is so important, I want to say it over and over again: If you shut yourself away from your Nasty Voice, and fight it, and resist it, and let it take charge of you and beat you up – that’s what you’re going to find out there in the world of love and relationship: Resistance and struggle. You’ll find men who are shut down, or your man will shut down, or you’ll shut down around him. You’ll fight and resist each other and resist love. All the while, you’ll wonder why intimacy seems so impossible for you. If you embrace and love your Nasty Voice, that’ll be the hardest thing you have to deal with! If you can hear and love the voice in your own head that’s verbally hammering you, and let it know you’re not going to believe it or listen to its screaming warnings and ugly judgments, and that you’re committed to staying in charge of yourself – you’ll attract men who want to love you. You’ll turn around your love life because the man you’re with will feel safe and compelled to love you. This book and my programs are based on the idea that small, seemingly insignificant changes in the words we use on our outsides and assumptions we make on our insides 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. 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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Chapter 2

Visualize What You Want “Having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night is a very old human need.” (Margaret Mead)

Many 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. We’ve never taken the time to contemplate what would really make us happy and what we truly desire from a relationship. We get all caught up in why the current situation we’re in isn’t working, why the man we’re with isn’t cutting it, and so we’re constantly focusing on what we don’t want and what doesn’t feel good – instead of visualizing what it is we want. 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?

Exercise: Your Ideal Relationship Even if you believe that you do know what you want, it’s the specific, sensual details of your desire that start 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. Why is it important to go into so much detail?

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Just the way your beliefs hold you back in love or allow you to go further out into love than you ever thought possible, the way you think about things and imagine things makes a HUGE difference in the way your mind either helps you or hurts you. When you let your “wants” stay vague in your imagination, your Nasty Voice has way more chances to get in there and stir things up. And your true desires have a harder time getting through. And shockingly, we often think we want something that looks and sounds good, but it isn’t really what our hearts want. If that’s the case, a war rages within us, and we don’t even know why we feel sort of “off.” Getting into the details of what we want is what clears up all the confusion. It brings our fears more to the surface so we can deal with them, and it brings the intensity and passion of our desires into full focus. Knowing exactly what feels good to you with a man in your imagination makes it so much easier for “synchronicity” to help you get exactly what you want. And the easiest, most obvious benefit here is that you’ll know it’s right because you’ve felt it before! Let’s start by imagining the perfect relationship. (If you’re with a man now, he doesn’t even have to be in this fantasy. ) 1. 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. 2. 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 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. 3. 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? 4. When you’ve filled the page (and perhaps more pages – on your computer or in a Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

journal) look over what you’ve written. Pick out three of your favorite observations. Circle them or write them down again. 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.” 5. Look at your three 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 “melting into him.” 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. 6. Circle or rewrite your three short versions of blissful moments. This exercise gives you a bite-sized vision that you can recall at will to bring you back, instantly, to the remembered wonderful moment. It ignores anything that brought up “icky feelings” and just focuses on WHAT YOU WANT. Focusing on what you want will help lead you toward new possibilities, and is an important basis for creating the relationship you want.

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Chapter 3

Turn Away From Icky-Feeling Thoughts “It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine.” (Byron Katie)

As you were fantasizing about a perfect day in your perfect relationship in the previous chapter, it may have triggered visions of very yucky moments in your not-so perfect relationship. You may have been enticed down a road of rehashing miserable moments from the past and drawn into imagining them, and dreading them, in the future. Even after doing what was supposed to be a “positive” and uplifting exercise, you may find yourself getting angry – or sad. Instead of focusing on what you want, you’ve gone down the road of dwelling on what you DON’T want. Whenever this happens, STOP. Just turn away from the icky-feeling thoughts and return gently to the happier imagery you’ve written down or created. This is important: It doesn’t matter if the new thoughts you’re returning to are “happy” or create “happy” feelings – what DOES matter is that they feel “happier.” Just simply “betterfeeling” than the other ones. An improvement you can feel. As you learn to do this, you’ll automatically become more aware of your feelings – which we’ll build on later... This Stopping will be a very important tool for you throughout your transformation, and I want you to start practicing it now. When you sense yourself going down the slippery slope of judgment, ickyness, despair, blame, guilt or anger – just stop. Completely turn away from the unhappy thought and the conversation in your head about it. Remember how you dealt with the Nasty Voice in the previous chapter? And how I called it the first STOP Tool? That’s because stopping what doesn’t work is even more important than doing what does work. In other words – what you’re paying attention to (as in paying attention to the Nasty Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Voice in the old way where you believed in what it says) GROWS. If you feed it, it grows. Loving it is not the same as feeding it. You love it by hearing it, embracing it, opening your heart to it, and then going in the direction you want to go, regardless. Feeding it is centering your attention on it and following its instructions. It’s very, very important that, just as with the Nasty Voice, you don’t fight the icky visions or the fear, or whatever shows up for you. They just “feel icky.” And they “don’t work.” No matter how many times you have to do it, keep turning away from the icky and 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 is easy. For most, it is 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 our better-feeling feelings and thoughts is a tremendous challenge. It takes practice, but you can do it. Practice 24/7 Can Turn Things Around In Days The tool of being able to return again and again to the happier-feeling image, as gently as you can, works like magic in helping you turn a moment of relationship conflict into an opportunity to breathe and gain perspective. All you need is a moment. All you need is one breath. If a thought or word or action makes you feel distant from a man – and from yourself – return to the better-feeling thoughts every moment of every day. Practice stopping what you’re doing, and, instead, “turn away” from the thoughts that don’t feel happy. First – catch yourself thinking and following the icky-feeling thought. Second, stop the icky-feeling thought dead in its tracks. Third, 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 an icky-feeling thought.

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Open your heart to the happy, the upbeat, the lovely, and simply sink back, very, very gently, into that happy, upbeat, happier-feeling, lovely place whenever you remember to do it. This ability to be flexible and move effortlessly from control to surrender, from icky-feeling to happier-feeling, from judgment and labeling to “neutral,” 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. Later in the section on Key #3, you’ll learn why letting go of control in a relationship can help bring you closer to a man, because openness, surrender and flexibility are qualities that are very attractive to a masculine man. Practicing those qualities now with both your Nasty Voice and your fantasy of the ideal relationship will prepare you to sink deeper into a more compelling, relaxed “vibe” as you go through the rest of the Tools in this book.

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Chapter 4

Choose Relationship & Commit To Having It “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” (Confucius)

Part of discovering what it is you really want is choosing a path and then committing to sticking with it. You may have been enticed down a road of rehashing miserable moments from the past and drawn into imagining them, and dreading them, in the future. If you waver back and forth between wanting to be unaccountable and uncommitted and wanting a relationship, then your lack of clarity and commitment will show up in relationships that also waver back and forth between blissful and difficult. Review your answers in chapter 2 about what kind of relationship you really want (Exercise – “Your Ideal Relationship”). Are you willing to commit to the idea of this kind of relationship, no matter what? 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. You’ll have to decide right now if your man is up to the task of giving you what you want. If you’re not married or engaged, then you’re 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 and what you want. If the man you’re with doesn’t share your vision of the perfect relationship, then you may need to reassess whether he’s worth your time.

Is There Really Space In Your Life For Your Ideal Relationship? If you’re single, are you really willing to commit to your ideal relationship? You may say you Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

are, but are you, really? Not wanting to be lonely, or wanting a date for Saturday night isn’t enough to keep a relationship together. If you’re single, you’ll need to ask yourself if there’s 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? I don’t want you to talk yourself into “relationship” or “marriage” just because you think you should want that. I work with many women who discover they love living alone and dating as many men as show up (and often there are a lot of men who show up). I’ve talked and worked with many women who discover they actually want a lover, not a husband. That they don’t want to be “responsible” for anyone else as they grow older. So really look at what you really want and... 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 lifestyle 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? 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, and move toward that even if the man I’m with doesn’t share my vision? Even if it means letting go of a relationship that won’t give me what I want?

Recommitting To The Relationship Or Marriage You Already Have If you’re married or in an exclusive relationship, 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. 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 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.

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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 guilty and icky. But committing to the relationship itself can cut through all the confusion. 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 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. And 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 anything less than that. It will encourage you to open your heart, be vulnerable to love and express yourself authentically. Again, choosing the partner you have stops the confusion.

Recommitting: A Success Story A woman I knew 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. 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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 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 4-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? 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.

Exercise: 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 because: … Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

… 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 things he does and says you don’t like. (The things you used to call “negative,” but now we just frame them as things YOU have feelings about – things you like and don’t like.) 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. 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’re 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. 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 Have The Relationship You Want program for 4 weeks no matter what? You’ll see as you begin trying some of the techniques in this book 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.

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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, 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 these exercises, 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.

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Key 2

Choose Feminine Energy In order to fully attract a masculine-energy man who knows how to love us, we need to know how to embody our feminine energy. In this key, you’ll learn what masculine and feminine energies are, what they look and feel and sound like, why feminine energy is attractive to a masculine energy man, and how to make subtle shifts in words and body language to inhabit your feminine or “girl” energy and attract the man you really want.

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Chapter 5

Masculine & Feminine Energy “Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.” (Houssaye)

Throughout my work, I often bring up the concept of “masculine and feminine energy.” So, what exactly is the difference between masculine and feminine energy, and why is really understanding that difference so incredibly important for your love life? The difference has nothing to do with gender. It doesn’t mean that a woman with masculine energy is “man-ish” or that a man with feminine energy is “effeminate.” It has nothing to do with sexual orientation or sexuality. Masculine energy is simply about action. It’s about doing, thinking, decision making, logistics, analyzing, figuring out, solving, planning, leading and giving. Feminine energy is about feeling, expressing, intuiting, just being, following and receiving. We all have both these energies, and we use them in different moments of our lives. Being in your masculine energy or feminine energy has to do with the way you “engage” with the world, and with a man.

What Energy Do You Radiate To The World Most Of The Time? When I talk about a woman embodying feminine energy, I say it’s about being a “girl.” Again, this has nothing to do with your gender, youth or immaturity. It has to do with the energy you’re radiating out. So much of this “vibe” you’re putting out is in everything you say and do – and so much more of it is just in what you’re FEELING. Are you mostly a feeling, sensual, expressing and experiencing-in-the-moment kind of woman? Instead of focusing on doing, achieving, accomplishing tasks? Most of the time? If so, then you’re very comfortable in your feminine, girl energy. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

If you find yourself making lists and checking them off, giving advice to your date, your boyfriend or husband, friends, co-workers and family all the time – and being gratified from a sense of accomplishment – you’re likely projecting a lot of masculine or “boy energy” into the world. Masculine energy organizes, figures things out, initiates. Masculine energy “wears the pants” in the relationship. Most men operate from this masculine energy, but if a man is in his feminine energy, he’s more creative, likes to talk about his feelings, and likes to experience rather than achieve. If you’re a woman who enjoys the sensual things in life – great music, soft fabrics, perfumes and candles, meandering walks and conversation, and you’re in tune with your feelings and intuition, then you’re very comfortable with your girl energy.

Masculine And Feminine Energy: At Home And At Work We women have been taught that in order to be successful in today’s society, we need to embody most of the qualities that constitute masculine energy. We need to plan, organize, achieve and accomplish. Let’s say I’m the CEO of a major corporation. I’m going to be thinking and planning and discussing and making decisions a lot of the time. All masculine energy “stuff.” So, let’s say running the company isn’t enough for me. What if I want to be in charge of my relationship, too? What if I want to make decisions, set agendas, do the doing, do the thinking, all that in my relationship? Well, what if I happen to be married to a feminine-energy man – he may be very powerful at work; but at home, he’s happy to let me make decisions, he likes to respect me for my decision-making, and he likes being the sensual, creative, feeling, receptive, intuitive partner within our little relationship bubble? Well, we’ll get along just fine. And it’ll be very juicy. And yet, do you think you’d like that model? Where you’re the giver, the doer, the thinker, the decider, and he’s the taker, the feeler? MOST of the time? It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Still, it would work if you wanted to be in a relationship that way. But most women I speak with don’t. But, what if my husband is a masculine-energy man? Then it’s not going to be enough for him to be thinking and planning just in his work. He’s going to want to be respected for his thinking and decision making in the relationship, too. He’s going to want more than just input. He’s going to want to set agendas, start discussions, and he’s going to want a feminine-energy woman to be the sensual, creative, feeling, receptive and intuitive partner in his life. Can I do that? Can I change “hats” from running a huge company to letting my man run our Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

home life? Trusting him – giving myself over to him, at least some of the time? Depends what I want. If I like my men masculine, yeah. I can. But, if I don’t want to give up my “boy” behavior – if I want to both run the company AND run my relationship, too, we’re not going to have a very juicy relationship. My masculine-energy husband probably won’t leave me – but we’re going to be two “boys” butting heads all the time. We’ll always both be in our heads, figuring things out. They’ll be no one to carry the feelings in the relationship – the feminine part of the relationship. There will be no one to offer the sensuality and creativity that true passion and romance requires. If I decide I actually want the whole shebang – running the company and romance too, than yes, I can do it. I can switch hats on a dime. I can learn to be in my boy energy when I’m running the company and running my schedule, and to be in my girl energy when I’m with my man. This way I really get everything.

Why Masculine Men Are Compelled By Feminine Energy A man who’s comfortable in his masculine energy may have a difficult time accessing his emotions. Unlike a woman who can move fluidly between masculine and feminine energies, and knows what she’s feeling (even if she doesn’t know why), a man has a difficult time even knowing what’s going on with him emotionally. That’s why, when a masculine-energy man is around a woman who is comfortable in and expresses her feminine energy, he finds it easier to access his emotions. He goes from being “in his head” to being more “in his heart”. He can finally feel safe to stop all the striving and doing and just be himself, and that’s the first step for him to be able to even consider what it is he’s feeling for YOU. On the other hand, when a masculine man is around a masculine-energy woman, he remains in his head – thinking, analyzing and planning – and he won’t be able to let himself go. He won’t be able to drop down into his feelings. In a sense, it’s simply like this: When he can’t feel your feminine vulnerability and openness around him – he won’t be able to feel his vulnerability and openness for you. He simply won’t be able to believe you trust him enough with your own deep feelings to allow himself to let you to see his. This is where we women often have difficulty connecting with a man. We’re instinctively connecting with his mind and his thinking-striving energy, instead of connecting with his heart and his feeling-being energy. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

This is about being in your body and your heart, instead of in your head. A man can’t connect to us when we’re in our heads. Nothing going on. We have to drop down into our hearts and bodies, and then he’ll drop down into his heart, and bam – we’re connected. A man doesn’t fall in love because it’s logical or makes sense. He doesn’t fall in love with you because you’re wonderful, smart, funny – or anything he can “name.” He falls in love because he “feels it” in his gut, which often makes no sense to him (or anyone) “on paper.” He needs to feel safe to access his own emotions and vulnerability. This is why, if you like being with a masculine-energy man, you need to know how to express your feminine energy. Embodying your feminine energy means treasuring and believing in your feelings, trusting your intuition, surrendering to your sense of what’s right for you. It means experiencing your emotions and allowing others into your emotional life. 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. 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. So what’s it like to just be?

Why You Should Choose To Be The Feminine-Energy Partner This 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. In my model: • Every romantic relationship needs a primarily masculine-energy partner and a primarily feminine-energy partner. One of each – regardless of gender, or who chooses which role. • Either you wear the pants in the relationship, or he does. • You’re free to choose either role – but you can’t have both. • Most women are happiest in a relationship where they are the feminine-energy partner and they allow or inspire their man to be the masculine-energy partner – because this allows the man to drop down into his heart and feel his feelings, which brings about more passion, romance and nurturing. Let me put it another way. 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 feminine-energy Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

partner. Ask yourself: 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 man’s feelings ahead of your own? Do you want to give up romance, feelings, affection and take care of your man? Or do you want to surrender to romance, allowing your man to treasure your feelings, and concerning yourself with fun, your environment, taking time for yourself, allowing your man to be in action, handling things? Take some time to write down what it is you truly want from a relationship.

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Key 3

Give Up Control & Get Partnership Giving up control in a relationship means not trying to manage your partner, and instead allowing him the space he needs to pursue and nurture you. This key teaches you how to stop chasing, managing, controlling and overgiving, so your man has an opportunity to step up and be a true, loving partner to you.

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Chapter 6

Give Up Control “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)

Where women are making a huge mistake today is in choosing to be the feminine-energy partner, but defaulting into the masculine, action-oriented, take-charge style we’ve learned to use out in the world. We do this simply because it’s habit. We’re rewarded for our masculine “doing and achieving” energy out in the world and believe that we need to use that same energy to get what we want in a relationship. But instead it backfires on us. This is why you need to consciously choose feminine energy in a relationship and avoid accidentally defaulting to the masculine energy that’s such a turn off for a masculineenergy man. When you consciously choose to be the feminine-energy partner, you’re making an agreement to primarily carry those feminine energies in the relationship – which means that you’re no longer called upon to nurture your man’s feelings, and he assumes the masculine pleasure of being the “hero” in your relationship and doing the things that make you happy. In return, you agree to treat him with respect. You agree that he will primarily carry the masculine, doing, managing and decision-making energies in the relationship. You agree to carry the feminine feeling, expressing, intuitive, creative energies in the relationship. I’ll be addressing more about how to receive love from the masculine and letting him take the lead in Key #4, and how to express your feminine energy with words and body language in Key #5, but before you can begin to express your feminine energy, you first need to give up trying to control and manage your relationship – or your man. Control is a very masculine-energy trait, and it’s a turn off to a man because a masculine man doesn’t want to be managed, criticized or controlled. It makes him feel that he can’t Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

do anything right, and flies in the face of his desire to want to be your hero and please you. It also keeps him from accessing his feelings and therefore blocks him from connecting with your heart. There are many ways that we women try to control our partner, whether we’re single and “chasing” him without realizing it, or we’re “rowing the boat” trying to get our relationship to go toward the shore of commitment, or we’re already in a committed relationship and “Overfunctioning.” I’ll be explaining each of these in depth later in this section. If you’re in a committed relationship, controlling behavior makes him feel disrespected, unappreciated, and like he’s a child and you’re his mother. It’s not exactly sexy! If you’re a single woman and a dating relationship is just beginning with a man, or he’s teetering on the edge of a real commitment, this kind of masculine energy can look and feel to him like you’re desperate or “chasing” him just when he needs most to be chasing you. We may not even be aware that we’re doing it, or we may think that we’re simply being “helpful” or “pro-active” instead of seeing our behavior for what it really is: An attempt to steer things in the direction we want them to go.

Single And Dating: Control Through “Chasing” Are you habitually reverting to your masculine energy in a relationship by “chasing” him without knowing it? We might think we’re being “friendly” by sending a flirty text or baking him a birthday cake, but unless a man is steadily coming toward you all on his own, these actions are really subtle ways in which we try to control a relationship – and they can end up pushing a man away.

Here are some things to ask yourself that will give you clues: 1. Are you feeling like it’s always up to YOU to make a relationship happen and keep it going? 2. Do all the men you’ve ever loved – or even just “liked” a lot – take “work”? 3. Have men pulled away from the relationship no matter how much work you’ve put in, until you found yourself feeling clingy and needy when you KNOW you’re NOT that way? You may not even be aware of the ways you’re embodying masculine energy in your interactions with men. Most women don’t! You’re probably wondering what embodying a masculine energy “vibe” around a man even LOOKS like. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

These days, after feminism changed the way we looked at our real power in this world, our relationships with men got even more confusing. We started to pursue men the way we pursue work, or our schedules, or errands. We started to make checklists and “get things done.” We started to “think” our way through love instead of FEEL our way through it – and as a result, we’ve all been practically TRAINED in how to NOT connect with a man’s heart!

“But What If He Thinks I’m Not Interested?!” (Or What “Chasing” Looks Like) When we find ourselves falling for a man, it’s normal to start feeling that if we don’t show enough interest in him, he might get the wrong message and drift away. We want to make sure he knows we like him. So we might do things like: 1. Calling him because you heard or read about something interesting, or because you knew there was a great band playing somewhere, or someone told you about some great event that you want to invite him to. 2. Asking him why he hasn’t called you. 3. E-mailing him, texting him, Facebooking him, sending him a cute card, dropping by his house, or in any way attempting to initiate some kind of contact. 4. Asking him how he feels – especially asking him how he feels about you or the relationship. 5. Inviting him to come and join you, or in any way acting like the social director of the relationship. At first glance, these actions might seem completely harmless. In fact, you may feel that he’ll just see you as being friendly and want to get closer to you. Your desire to touch base and get greater clarity into the relationship feels normal to you, and it may usually occur as a good-hearted attempt to stay in touch with a man who has piqued your interest. But it’s important to be cautious when reaching out to a potential romantic interest – especially with repeated messages. Many men perceive check-ins, invitations and questions about the relationship as a kind of pressure – or a woman taking on the role of pursuer. Some men may back off their dating efforts when they sense you’re assuming a role they view as traditionally male. Rest assured that if a man is interested in you, he will normally assume the role of the pursuer. All you have to do is be warm and receptive to him, and he’ll continue to move Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

toward you.

What About Online Dating? If the dating site you’re on lets you “favorite” a man and then allows him to establish a connection with you – go ahead and try it to see if it works for you and if it feels good. But if you find yourself continually, actively searching for men online or initiating contact with them and then feeling disappointed – you’re falling into the realm of masculine energy. And after you’ve had a chance to meet, many men see repeated messages from you as a sign of insecurity – a sign of fear that you’ll lose him. It’s not “pro-active” in the way you may think it is. It’s just masculine energy. When he encounters this kind of masculine vibe from you, he’ll feel smothered, pushed, prodded, herded and pressured in a way that dampens his desire to get closer to you. Specifically, it dampens the attraction for him – even though he likely doesn’t know why and can’t put it into words. He just loses motivation. The premise is the same online and offline: Allow him the space to step forward and come to you. There’s an added bonus here – you’ll get to see how a man really feels about you.

Seriously Dating: Why “Rowing The Boat” Is Another Form Of Control If you’ve been seeing a man for a while and things are going well, you’ll start to want things for your relationship. You may want to become monogamous, move in together, get engaged, get married, or plan something big together. I’m going to suggest a metaphor for how things may be for you right now. In this metaphor, you and your man are in a boat. The boat is the relationship. The shoreline is your fantasy for what you want from the relationship. It’s your goal. Imagine yourself in this rowboat with a man you love, floating in soft, calm water in the middle of a gorgeous lake. Imagine that waiting for you at the shoreline is exactly what you want and yearn for in relationship. Now – and really let your whole body and heart experience this in your imagination – What are you doing? Who’s rowing the boat to shore? Is it you? My whole love life, it’d been me rowing that boat. Always trying to make it happen, always trying, in my sweet, smiling way, to get the love, affection, attention and commitment I wanted from the man in the boat with me. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

It didn’t matter why he was there (maybe it was just for the afternoon!) – I wanted to make him mine. I wanted to make him into the man who’d make me happy. As you’re imagining being in this rowboat, what if, instead of just leaning back in it and enjoying the ride (even if you’re just sitting in the water and seemingly going nowhere), you’re rowing for all you’re worth? This is control. And giving it up is hard. “Rowing The Boat” could look a lot of ways: You making the plans, calling a man, giving him things, arranging things, asking him for things, initiating everything all the time, talking about the relationship and where it’s going. Notice how all of that doing is masculine energy. Notice how much it sounds like “chasing” a man from the last section. We women have got this Rowing The Boat thing down so well by now, we can convince ourselves we’re not “chasing” a man. We can come up with great reasons to do everything we’re doing. And because we’re good women, we really believe we have to do all this rowing. Someone told us, long ago, that if we didn’t Row The Boat – nothing would ever happen for us. If we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t happen. The thing is – what’s a man feeling when the woman he’s with is Rowing The Boat? He may be enjoying the ride, he may like her, like her company, like talking to her – but he doesn’t fall in love with her. When the woman is Rowing the Boat, she’s all in her head, in her boy energy. She’s managing and controlling where the relationship is headed. This doesn’t allow the man the space to know what he’s really feeling or what he wants. It makes him withdraw. It doesn’t even matter how “in love” he says he is with you – controlling, rowing-the-boat energy will only push him further away. A man’s heart simply cannot be engaged when the woman he’s with is rowing. It’s as though she’s got an agenda, she’s doing all the work, she’s in her head – and he just shuts down that romantic, feeling part of himself. And how does Rowing the Boat feel for us? Frustrating, icky, sad. This is how we get angry at a man. It’s as though our anger is in direct proportion to the effort we’re putting out. The more we row, the angrier we get. And then – the man feels all that frustration, disappointment and anger, and he shuts down even more. Not only don’t we capture his love when we row – we actually do damage.

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So, How Do You Let Go And Stop Rowing The Boat? You start in your imagination. You imagine enjoying the scenery, talking with the man, sharing food and conversation and time. You tune in to how it all feels in your heart and body – and you imagine dropping the oars. You stop trying to make plans, stop pushing the relationship forward, stop trying to get him to be or do anything. You let him pick up the oars and start rowing. And, even if he doesn’t pick them up as quickly as you’d like – you never again touch them. You let him make the plans, let him push the relationship forward, let him be whoever he wants to be. You just sit back, follow your feelings, choose your words, set your boundaries, and let yourself be surprised.

In A Committed Relationship Or Married: Overfunctioning As A Form Of Control Overfunctioning is doing too much. In a marriage, partnership, or committed relationship, Overfunctioning looks like 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 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, which is to be the doing, managing and thinking partner in the relationship. By doing everything, we are communicating that we don’t trust him to be the caretaker and provider. We are undercutting what makes him feel strong as a man and good about himself, which is his ability to care for us and make us happy. What happens to our men when we Overfunction? They become lazy and complacent and vaguely resentful and stop trying to make us happy. They sense our distrust in their ability and intention, and feel criticized as a result. 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. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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? We’ve taken on the “doing” of the world – in fact many of us feel as though we are actually holding up our world. We’re accustomed to the idea that being a good wife and partner means we need to take care of everyone and DO everything. We’re accustomed to the idea of “nurturing” a man, and that nurturing is “our job” in the relationship. We become confused. We think being loving to our men means DOING everything, managing it all. 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-by-minute 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. Bt 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.

Doing Some Things, Not All When directed toward men, our Overfunctioning energy is often perceived as mothering. We are taking care of things for them. Our actions seem intrusive. We’re assuming we know what they want. We seem to be judging men and finding them coming up short – otherwise, why would they need taking care of? On the other hand, they love attention. Don’t we all? Understandably, there are some things that do need our attention. Someone needs to get the groceries and pay the bills and plan the vacation and sign the kids up for summer camp. The idea here is that your relationship is a partnership, and certain chores and responsibilities should be negotiated and discussed. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do anything, I’m saying that you shouldn’t do everything. 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.

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I’m asking you to 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? 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 who you are, not for what you’re doing. 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. 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 sub-par 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?

Exercise: Identifying Your Overfunctioning 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. In dating, someone has to make the dinner reservation. Someone has to plan the trip, make the date, figure out what to do on the date, figure out what time the date should start. But somewhere on that list you’ll find a cutoff line – where the world won’t fall apart if you stop doing stuff. It may get a little messy, but it won’t collapse. And when you stop doing stuff – the reality of what really needs to be done and who Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

needs to do it most often becomes crystal clear in a completely easy, different way than we’re used to. And it’s never what we thought. 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 Ask yourself What do I need to say “no” to? ... ... What would I like to say “yes” to? ... ... When you begin saying “no” and stop Overfunctioning, you may get initial grumbling from your man, and from everyone in your household. In time, however, once your man begins to take over some of the accomplishing, doing, managing of the relationship and the logistics of daily life, he’ll feel better because he’ll be doing what makes him feel masculine and appreciated. And you’ll feel less resentful and critical because you’ll feel adored for who you are, not for what you’re doing for everyone. Here’s how to stop Overfunctioning: 1. Continue to express your feelings as they come up. 2. Don’t give in to the Nasty Voice and start explaining or defending yourself. 3. Don’t demand anything from yourself or anyone else. 4. Trust your partner (or the man you want to BECOME your partner) and your family. 5. Appreciate what your partner – or your date – does to pick up the slack. 6. Tolerate imperfection. 7. Practice expecting to be adored, and you will be. Saying no to Overfunctioning will make an amazing difference – not only in the Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. 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. Just keep remembering this: What we’re 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.

Tool: Giving Up Control I want to illustrate giving up control physically in the form of a Tool you can do anywhere and anytime. Practicing this Tool in a physical way will instantly help you discover how you’re relating to a man right now in this moment and experience how that feels to you and to him. Here’s how it goes: 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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 does 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 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. This is feminine energy. A month from now, it will be great to revisit what you’ve written here and add to it all the changes that have happened since you began practicing this Tool on a regular basis, or when you needed it. 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. 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 good-feeling feelings and the bad-feeling feelings about it come up and onto the paper. We clench our fists and try to control so much because we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t. So whatever you think or feel, write it down. When you feel tense, upset or a need to “make something happen” with a man, do this Tool. It will connect you to how awful it really feels to a man when you feel compelled to be in control. It will allow you to choose to be in your feminine energy and let go of control, which will then allow you to relax more and love yourself more and move into your more magnetic feminine energy for your masculine man.

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Chapter 7

Allow Him To Take The Lead “A masculine man can’t fall in love when he receives, only when he gives.” (Dr. Patricia Allen)

I know how frustrating it is to sit back and let a man row the boat and take the lead. We want a man to know we’re interested in him and we want to make it easy for him to ask us out again, so we inadvertently chase him. We want to be nurturing while at the same time move our life and relationship goals forward through action and checklists, so we row the boat. We want to give as much as we want to receive, and sometimes we give too much and we Overfunction BECAUSE we want to receive. But in any relationship, whether you’re just dating or you’ve been married for a long time, when you act like the masculine-energy partner and prod and pursue and give, you don’t give him the chance to show you how he really feels about you. And my experience has shown that the only way to really be sure of where his heart is at is by creating the space he needs to give to you, or to pursue your affections. When you “do” things for a man, or for the relationship, or take charge of things and manage things – you not only don’t give him a chance to pursue you, you don’t give him a chance to “step up.” You don’t give him a chance to DO. You don’t give him a chance to act like a man, be a man, do like a man, and get the respect due a man. You take away from him. In the most extreme case, you’re effectively emasculating him. He just wants to do for you and give to you and love you – and he wants to be appreciated for all of that. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Stepping back and allowing a man to DO this for you is huge. It creates a tremendous feeling of attraction for him, and pumps him up to step up even more.

Attract Him By Letting Him Please You For a man to feel like he wants to get closer to you, he needs to feel good around you. And the way he feels good around you is when he pleases you. As long as you seem happy to see him and tell him how much you enjoy his company, almost any man will feel his attraction and affection for you grow, and keep coming back for more.

Stay in your feminine energy by being receptive and open to his attention. If you’re dating, he sees that you’re a woman who’s secure in herself and doesn’t need to pursue him, and he’ll be encouraged to step up his game so another man doesn’t beat him to the chase. If you’re in a committed relationship, letting him take the lead and continuing to be receptive to him and respecting his thoughts will fuel his passion for you. He’ll adore you and appreciate you, and you’ll be able to relax in the knowledge that you’re a desirable creature he’d be a fool to take for granted. Allowing a man to please us, as opposed to trying to be giving, perfect and “doing” for him is almost a complete turnaround from everything we women have been taught and are so used to doing. And that’s why it works to quickly transform relationships.

Masculine Men Are Not Threatened By Successful Women A big mistake women make is believing that we’re too successful and that our success “threatens” a man. 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. BUT – 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. 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. As the feminine-energy partner, you’re agreeing that you’ll primarily carry the feelings in the relationship, and that he’ll 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’s 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 rather 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. The complimentary energies of the masculine and feminine create romantic and sexual fire and emotional intimacy that allow both of you to feel safe, loved and supported.

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Chapter 8

The Rori Raye Mantra “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.” (Rumi)

Control usually shows up when we fear the unknown, or aren’t sure of where we’re headed in love. It stops us from being truly open and receptive to all the wonderful things that can happen when you let go and take a leap of faith – when you allow yourself to be surprised. I’ve summed up these leaps of faith in a “Mantra.” It’s a poem you can use as a meditation, as a reminder, as a jolt when you’re confused or tightening up with anxiety. 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 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

breath before you speak, respond, and react in the same old ways gives you a moment to find a new, better way to respond, or sometimes, to do nothing. You’ll learn more about how to choose words and express your feminine in Key #5. 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. 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 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 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. The need for control comes from fear – fear that we’ll be hurt. And the way out of fear is to open up, baby-step-by-baby-step, to love.

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Key 4

Receive Love From The Masculine A good man wants, more than anything, to make you happy. But by controlling, managing and criticizing, we women make it difficult for men to give us the love we deserve. Key #4 will show you how to support the team, let go of false beliefs about men, communicate more effectively, resolve anger, and make it easy for a man to adore us unconditionally.

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Chapter 9

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)

Instead of trying to control every aspect of our relationship, we need to take control over something we do control: Our choices! There is power in choice. By not believing we have a choice in any situation in which we find ourselves, we get 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. You can choose the relationship you’re in. You can choose to leave your current relationship and be alone. You can choose to find someone new to love. But if you consider your man, and believe that he is a man who is worthy of your time, energy and love, and you like who he is as a person, than you need to choose relationship and give up control. Choice is completely different from control. 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. 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. And we often do try with all our power, our might, our wits – any way we can – to get our way. Love and relationship is supposed to be about going into the unknown places of our heart, not about controlling every outcome. 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 darkness – not hold each other back.

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We’re supposed to be partners. We’re supposed to be a team. And a relationship is a team of three 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 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.

Getting To Know The Real Man Charlie Brown in the Peanuts cartoons says it best: “A friend is someone who likes you.” So – how much do you LIKE a man – not feel gushy-gushy about him, or sigh when you think of him, but LIKE him? As a person? In fact – what do you even KNOW about him? We often think we know a man by what he does. Or what he “says” he thinks. It isn’t until we’ve lived with him for a while that we discover his fears and curious habits. It often isn’t until the rough times happen that we even discover what he may have been thinking and feeling all along. So, to start your relationship off right, or turn it around if it’s gotten stiff, distant, cold, tired or even angry, it makes sense to get to know a man on a much deeper level as quickly as you can. We think that by asking questions about the things that are important to us in a man, we’re going to find out more about him. But that isn’t so. For example, getting a man to “open up” is the situation I’m most asked about. Usually, when we think of getting a man to open up, we mean to open up about how he feels about US – but we’ll never get that far until we can get him to open up about what he likes for breakfast. The thing is – he may not even KNOW what he likes for breakfast. Or what colors he likes you to wear. But I guarantee you there are things he cares about that he knows just enough about that a great conversation with you will open him up and make him feel amazing.

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Like you’re the woman he’s waited for all his life. Like you’re the woman who “gets” him. Finally.

What Being A Team Member Is About And here’s the most important thing about being a team and how you get a man to open up and be a true life partner for you: If you try to hold onto some sense of control – in the conversation, in your own feminine ability to be vulnerable, in who does what on the date or in the marriage – you’ll shut him down fast. Being a team member means giving up being right. It means giving up being the one who knows what’s going on. It’s giving up being the explainer, or the teacher, or the reasonable one, or the one with the answers. It’s giving up being in charge of anything. This is about creating a team from the get-go: • It’s about asking the right questions, and finding out what you’ve been paying attention to where he’s concerned. • It’s about putting the team ahead of any of your individual concerns. • It’s about discovering what’s most important for the thriving of the team, and focusing both your attentions on that. • It’s about discovering, as a team, who needs the most support, when – and putting both your energies into making that happen. • It’s about working through disagreements, working through disappointments, working through not getting your way, working through resentments and anger and discomfort and getting emotionally triggered. Because when you put your energy into discovering what’s important to the relationship, then you automatically stop controlling, and you begin to pay attention to what’s really needed. You change your “vibe” from needing to have things your way to a vibe of acceptance and support. This new vibe is much more attractive to a man. Working through all of this as a team is what makes chemistry fire up and makes love bloom – in your heart and body and in his.

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Chapter 10

The Truth About Men I felt it shelter to speak to you.” (Emily Dickinson)

Once you’ve surrendered control , and stopped criticizing your man, you’ll want to start appreciating him for his strengths and his good qualities instead. This will begin to turn your relationship around almost overnight. Before you can focus on a man’s good qualities, however, you need to be able to become aware of – and NOT focus on – the judgments and false beliefs you have about men in general. These opinions, thoughts and judgments (you may have called them “negative thoughts” before reading this book) carry a feeling of “ickyness” with them. And they tend to unfairly bring MORE icky-feeling experiences into our lives when we focus our attention on them. In fact, if we’re “feeding” an “icky-feeling” thought, or a simple opinion or judgment about any man – we can be pretty sure that somewhere, deep in that subconscious part of ourselves we “don’t know” – we’re judging ourselves right along with him. If we have an opinion about him – we logically also have an opinion about us. It’s a habit of thinking that most of us have down so well, we don’t even notice we’re doing it. When we expect a man to behave a certain way, he usually lives up to expectations, both good and bad, because that’s how synchronicity works. To start, we should banish the myths about men that cause us to view reality through a false lens: • There’s the myth that all men are cads and all they want is one thing, and they leave once they get it.

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• There’s the myth that men don’t want to be in a committed relationship. • There’s the myth that men are lazy when it comes to love. 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 cannot 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.

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. 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. As I mentioned earlier, 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 than our response to them and how we feel about ourselves in their presence, and then talk ourselves into and out of relationships.

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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. 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 (the feminine), or keep it in the comfortable holding pattern of the head (the masculine). It’s only when we embrace our feminine energy and respect his masculine that we BOTH get what we want: Real, juicy, ecstatic intimacy.

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Chapter 11

Respect The Masculine “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)

You understand the need to relinquish control and you appreciate the fact that most men are in fact strong, decent and capable of deep love. But I’m now asking you to take things one step further and actually respect the masculine energy of your partner. Respecting the masculine will reduce conflict, end drama, create new and authentic communication, ignite his pursuit of you, and ultimately lead to you getting what you want out of the relationship. Despite the benefits, this element of respecting the masculine is 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. A friend who’d called to ask for help with her marriage told me she didn’t want to do this crucial element. 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 again. “I think it’s working,” she said, her voice low. It works that quickly! How do you do this? How do you respect the masculine and therefore create the space for the man to give you love and respect in return? Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

The fastest way to see immediate change in your relationship and respect the masculine partner is to follow four simple rules: The 4 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, suggest, ask the “innocent question” or try to change him. Rule #4: Learn to take “no” for an answer. 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. 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… 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?

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Judge – You always do this, Advise – You really should do that, Warn – You shouldn’t do that, Coax – Oh, come on, do that, Suggest – Let’s 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 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. All of this will happen because while you’re expressing your natural feminine energy, he’s free to express his natural masculine energy, and that means being respected for his thoughts and allowing him to take the lead. That doesn’t mean that you have no say in the relationship. You actually have tremendous power in how you express what you want and don’t want, and I’ll be covering that in Key #5. You’ll learn how to choose your words in a way that puts him less on the defensive and gives you the power to express exactly what you want and don’t want, without making him feel managed, controlled or criticized. Remember that a good man really does want to please you and make you happy. When you can respect what he wants and communicate what you want in a way that he can Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

actually hear, he’ll once again feel compelled to wrap you up in his arms and shower you with affection.

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Chapter 12

Why We Should Appreciate Instead of Criticize “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)

Respecting the masculine sounds like it could work, but what if your man can’t seem to do anything right by you? What then? Are you supposed to tolerate bad behavior just for the sake of “respecting the masculine”? At one point or another, we’ve all sat around complaining about our husbands or boyfriends. 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. I so know men can be frustrating. We’re frustrated because men aren’t built emotionally, ethically, spiritually – any way at all – like we are. They see things differently, they prioritize differently, they interpret differently. They’re about action, and we’re about feeling. And yet, as managers, we feel far superior to most men (and especially to the men in our lives) on so many levels. We KNOW we can do things better than he can (and most often – we can.) So, how am I supposed to stop telling him what he’s doing wrong? What am I supposed to do with my righteous frustration when he doesn’t follow through, do what he says he would do, and when he doesn’t listen or think before he acts? You’re supposed to love him and appreciate him anyway. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

If this isn’t something you think you can do – then perhaps relationship with a man (or even a masculine-energy woman) is not right for you. I’ve had comments and letters from many women who take intense issue with this, call it going backwards and undoing what we gained with feminism, and really – it’s not about anything but love. Love and romance and sex and attraction are all emotional, heart, gut things. No matter what his brain tells a man, his heart and gut and dick win. A man needs to be appreciated for what he does (because, to a man, what he does is who he IS) and he cannot tolerate being thought of as “wrong.” Yeah, he’ll get through some mistakes okay – if we don’t lean on them too much – but if it becomes a chronic situation where he can’t seem to do anything right, that’s pretty much the end of the relationship. He may still love you – but he’ll withdraw from you. You can’t talk him out of it. He knows what he feels. He either feels safe, loved, accepted and appreciated – or he doesn’t. In fact – any man who would be happy with you being “right” all the time and telling him when he’s wrong all the time is a “toxic man” that you wouldn’t want. You’d be completely “icked” out by his “puppy-dog-ness.” If you want to be with a good man – and if you want, especially, to be with a masculineenergy man – you have to give up being right. And you have to learn to think differently about men in general and your man in particular. The first step here is to discover and acknowledge the things we can truly appreciate (no matter how small they are) about a man. Here’s a Tool to help you:

Tool: Turn Around Your Anger And Appreciate Him Many women are stuck with a view of their husbands and boyfriends and dates that won’t allow him to change into Prince Charming. Whenever you hear yourself criticizing and running down a man to yourself or a friend, STOP. Absolutely stop, and replace the judging, labeling, criticizing 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 or date as a person. You may be too angry or disappointed to care. 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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 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. 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 a man actually is. You may be surprised at what you come up with. 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.

Exercise: Finding Appreciation To start, this will help re-awaken your interest in a man (even one you’ve just met), and help you recapture (or simply discover) some affection and admiration for him. What do you like, appreciate, think is cool about men in general? (write it down.) How does it feel to focus on this list, what you do like about men? Do you notice a difference in how you feel inside when you focus on this rather than what you don’t like? Whenever you think of referring to or find yourself picturing your husband or boyfriend or date as – insert disparaging adjective here – STOP. Take yourself back to the good list.

The first step to receiving love from the masculine is to reframe your opinion, or “perspective” of men in general. Now let’s look at your own man: 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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, even 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. 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 this 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? Or picking a good restaurant, or opening the door for you, or not sitting down until you do, or asking you what you want to do…? (Write down your own.) What can you say to acknowledge these small things that feels genuine to you? (Write them down.) If you’ve been with a man awhile, 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? Remember a moment when you felt affectionate and fond. What was he doing? How did it feel? Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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? Practice this tool for at least a week, practicing saying “thank you” and really appreciating all the things that you admire and like about your man. Then notice how his demeanor shifts around you and how he becomes more responsive, listens better, and takes a greater interest in making you happy. Respecting a man’s masculine energy and expressing that respect through appreciation and surrendering control will result in more trust and affection in your relationship. He will begin to appreciate you for your feminine, receiving, feeling, creative energy when you appreciate him for his thinking, doing, analyzing, managing energy. This dance of opposite energies will allow love – and passion – to flow through the relationship freely.

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Chapter 13

Listening To Him Changes Everything “Put love first.” (Mary Manin Morrissey)

Listening to someone and then feeling heard by them is an unbelievable experience – and it’s very rare. Most of us listen in a way that communicates, “It’s all about me.” We wait for the next pause so we can share our response and our own experience. We don’t really listen to what the other person is saying. One great way to receive love and show respect to a man (to anyone, really), is to listen in a way that communicates “It’s all about you.” And in order for a man to actually experience you as listening to him, you have to FEEL like “It’s all about him” in that moment. This will instantly help you relate to a man in a much deeper way. The difference between these two “modes” of listening is all about where you’re putting your attention – what exactly you’re listening to – and so I’m calling these two totally different ways to be with a man “Listening To Him” and “Listening To Myself.” I’ve made this into a Tool – “Listening To Him” – 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.

The Difference Between “Listening To Myself” And “Listening To Him” Most of us are Listening To Myself 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, that we have a pimple on our chin – anything but the person right in front of us. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

When we’re in a conversation with someone, and we’re thinking about how what that person is saying relates to us, we’re in Listening To Myself mode. 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’s nothing wrong with being in Listening To Myself mode – except that it limits our ability to really relate to others. Listening To Him is the complete reverse of Listening to Myself. 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 a man – your man or any man - really focus your attention on Listening To Him. Dial yourself to the Listening To Him channel, and practice just “being there” so other thoughts that pass through your mind do just that: Pass through your mind without sticking. You will change your relationship. And as a result, he will change. The change in him is often instantaneous. All of a sudden he feels heard and safe, and he opens up to you emotionally. If you keep listening – moment by moment, day by day – the change quickly becomes permanent. Years and years of shutting you out can turn around almost overnight.

How And Why This Kind Of “Passive” Listening Works With A Man We’ve all been taught to “participate” in conversations. That’s led to us being unable to listen to anyone talk about anything without our thinking about how it applies to US. If they’re talking about a movie they saw, we want to jump in with our own impression of the movie. If they’re talking about a trip – we want to share ours. If they’re talking about their dog, we barely register it – we’re getting ready to share our experiences about OUR dog. To make it all worse, we’ve been taught to do something called “active listening” – where we “feed back” what the person says to us, to let him know we heard him. This makes it so we’re ALWAYS – 100% of the time listening like an interpreter, with our mind whirring and grinding, churning out our replies, our feedback, our thoughts, our interpretations. It’s exhausting for everyone. Listening To Him is the equivalent of 100 Tools around “being present.” It forces you to “be here now.” It forces you to just – be. And that’s what being a girl is all about – just being.

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As you practice just being there with a man, looking at him, listening, letting pictures of what he’s saying form in your mind as they will, relaxing your whole body as much as you can to allow it to be present instead of on guard – that’s when you connect with him. Connection gets made when you just... let him in. And when you let him in – without DOING anything – you get more information! And, essentially, that’s what connection is all about – letting information flow between you. 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. The man you’re in relationship with will feel understood and “heard” in a way he may not have before, and he’ll begin to share some of his deeper thoughts and feelings with you. He’ll feel that you’re making space for the relationship and supporting the Team, simply because you’re listening deeply to his needs as well as expressing your own. Let’s practice Listening To Him right now.

Exercise: Listening To Him I use this exercise in my live seminars, and it’s incredibly effective at helping bring you and your man (or anyone you communicate with, really) closer together so you both feel heard in a powerful way. Here’s how we do it in the seminar with partners (this is perfect for you and a girlfriend to buddy-up and practice together – and I’ll give the instructions as though you’re listening to a man so you can also use it with him right away): • Turn your chairs toward one another. Decide who goes first – try using your names in alphabetical order (there’s no emotional charge on the alphabet). Raise your hand if you’re going first. • Okay, if your hand’s in the air, you’ll be talking first. Talk at absolute Listening To Myself mode, 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. • If you’re the listener, all you have to do is listen. Get comfortable. Lean back if you can. Relax completely and be “over there” with him. Look at your partner. Look at his face, his eyes. Try to stay focused on his words. Let yourself go as though you no longer exist. Really give yourself over to him completely. You’re in Listening To Him mode, on the Listening To Him channel, which is all about him. Your thoughts are just passing through – you’re over there. If you notice your mind wandering back to – Oh, that happened to me too, or Yeah, I agree – which is on the Listening To Myself channel – shift back to him. When you’re really Listening To Him, you’ll be completely immersed in hearing and Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

taking in what he’s saying – WITHOUT trying to make sense of it in your mind, or interpret it. You’re just hearing and taking in, just “there,” and you’re doing nothing but maybe nodding your head, grunting, smiling, saying “wow,” or “cool,” or whatever comes naturally to your body when you’re paying attention in a relaxed way. • 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 Listening To Myself and Listening To Him when you were doing it? Could you tell the difference when your partner was doing it? Could you feel a difference in the way you were listening and being listened to?

Exercise: Practice Listening To Him On Your Own 1. 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. 2. 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 important about it. Laugh, cry, say whatever comes to mind. Pay little or no attention to your mirror image. 3. 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. 4. 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 the Listening To Myself channel.

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5. 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. 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 date, your boyfriend or your husband, your children, your friends, your relatives, and total strangers. Practice and notice when you go back to Listening To Myself mode. The more you practice, the more you catch yourself on the Listening To Myself channel and switch over, the more natural it will become to Listen To HIM. You’ll be amazed at how a man responds and begins to feel attracted to being around you.

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Key 5

Express The Feminine Your emotions are the most alluring thing about you to nearly any man. They’re your biggest asset when it comes to attracting a man and making him fall for you. Emotions make you irresistible and powerful. In this key, you’ll learn how to identify your emotions, how to put them into words, how to request and negotiate, and how to express yourself in a way that connects with his heart.

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Chapter 14

Getting Your Needs Met “You make me want to be a better man.” (Jack Nicholson, from As Good As It Gets)

Respecting and receiving love from the masculine inspires a man to want to treat you like his queen. Now that you’ve stopped trying to control and manage him, and you’re no longer being critical but instead you’re appreciating him for all his good qualities, a shift occurs. He begins to feel confident about his ability to make you happy, and he wants to be the man who can make your dreams come true. He feels good about your relationship because you’re Supporting the Team. He sees you making the needs of the relationship a priority. You’ve stopped steering the boat and Overfunctioning, and he’s able to step up and be the man that he wants to be for you, deep down. He no longer feels like a child because you’re no longer doing everything for him and telling him what to do. Because you spend a great deal of time in Listening To HIM mode, he feels heard and is wanting to share even more of himself with you. But does he know what you want and need in order to be happy? I’ve already demonstrated how NOT to communicate your needs. After working with the first Key, you’re perhaps no longer anchored in a place of complaint, judgment, negativity and criticism, and you’ve learned how to practice loving yourself completely and letting go of limiting beliefs – about love and about him. In this Key #5, you’ll learn a way to express your needs, dislikes and desires so that he feels compelled to give you everything you want. You’ll learn how to express yourself in a completely feminine-energy way, which is magnetic to a man. Rather than shutting down or becoming defensive, or withdrawing, a man will feel curious about you and want to get closer. He’ll want to know what it is you’re feeling and he’ll want to make sure that he can do what it takes to be your hero. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

This is the power of expressing the feminine. It connects with his heart in a way that is natural, authentic and without pretense or drama. You simply get in touch with what you’re feeling and what you need, you express it in a way that compels him instead of pushing him away, and he’ll move mountains to honor and love you. This is the Key that brings it all home and gets you the relationship you’ve always wanted – full of adoration, affection, honesty, authenticity and respect. But first, you have to know what it is you’re feeling and know what it is you want – in order to express yourself to him.

How To Know What You Really Feel The feminine is all about feelings. Expressing the feminine is about expressing feelings in order to get your needs met. It’s not about doing, or controlling, or managing. It’s simply about expressing how you feel at any given time and compelling a man to treat you well because you’ve communicated what you want and what you don’t want, in a feminine feeling-based way. The first step to expressing feelings is to know what it is 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. We think we feel one way, but the reality is that we’re masking what we really feel. We think we’re angry, but the real feeling is one of disappointment. We think we feel insulted, but if we stop to admit it to ourselves we’re really very sad. Annoyance may be annoyance, or it may be that we’re feeling anxious about an outcome. He’s late for a date again and we lash out with sarcasm or tell ourselves we’ve “had it” with his flippant treatment of us. We think we’re angry, but if we dig deeper we find that we’re really scared – scared of being rejected, of being unloved and of being alone. This distraction from the truth of what we’re experiencing and what we need is something we’re working and practicing to stop by staying in touch with our real feelings. Not only do we need to learn to discover and unearth our real feelings, we need to learn to express them in ways our husbands and boyfriends can hear.

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Tool: Finding The Feelings We’re going to start small. Let’s try this simple 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. 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 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. My body feels cold. My chest feels in knots.” Did you locate a feeling or a sensation? Keep practicing this at different times when you’re feeling different emotions.

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Chapter 15

Expressing Your Feelings “Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.” (Marshall Rosenberg, author of Non-Violent Communication)

Most of us are just fine stuffing down our feelings. Until we can’t be silent anymore and finally try to give voice to the feelings. What we’re feeling comes out all haywire. We try to express ourselves and say how we feel, but instead we accuse, complain, whine and create drama. Our husbands, boyfriends and dates are unprepared to deal with our lashing out. They feel criticized, belittled, and helpless. Instead of wanting to address our needs, they get defensive and 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 would solve our frustration and discontent. In effect, we’re telling them to do something. We’re again managing and controlling. And they can’t hear that. We believe this is helpful information for them. We believe we’re expressing ourselves, but we’re 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’s becoming flooded with emotion. He’s 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’re 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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.

Synchronicity Between Feelings And Body Language 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. You can’t fake how you’re feeling on the inside by the way you’re holding your body language. That FEELS fake to a man, and it puts him on edge. Your shoulders are tense and your lips are pursed, but you’re telling him that “you’re fine” and you feel relaxed. When your shoulders are tense and you tell him that you’re feeling angry, that makes sense to him and his curiosity is piqued. Instead of pulling away, he asks to know more: Why are you angry? It may have nothing to do with him, but if you shrug off your feeling and your body betrays what’s really going on inside you, he won’t know that. He’ll take it personally, and it will completely mess up the vibe between you. 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 inauthentic, 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 bodylanguage – so there’s no doubt where you’re coming from. It’s also 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 upset and your man shutting down and withdrawing – over and over again – it’s a sign that you’re not expressing your feelings, or you’re not doing it in a way he can hear. If you express yourself in a productive way, which you’ll learn about in the next section, you’ll experience a complete turnaround in how he responds to you.

Making It About You, Not Him One of the common mistakes that most of us women make when beginning this process of expressing our feelings is that instead of putting words to the basic feeling, we take whatever is happening and make it about the man. We make a judgment call about something he did or didn’t do. The words are meant as an attack instead of an expression of our feelings.

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For example, you may say, “I can’t stand it when you show up late. What are you thinking? It’s like you don’t care!” Even if you’re infuriated and enraged with something he did, talk only about you – your feelings and sensations. You may want to say instead, “I’ve been sitting here alone for an hour. I am feeling enraged right now. And I feel humiliated.” This is the same situation, and the same basic feelings are behind what transpired, but in the first example you’re making it about him and criticizing him, and in the second you’re only expressing what you’re feeling without referring to him or his behavior at all. It’s all about YOU – what you’re feeling and experiencing. In this way, you’ve stopped all forms of control and criticism, and instead you’re embodying the feelings you’re experiencing and expressing them. This is accessing and using your feminine energy instead of the thinking, judging and managing qualities of masculine energy. By not criticizing or making it about him, you’re allowing him to hear you. When you express yourself in a blaming and critical way, you put him on the defensive by making him wrong – so he withdraws, shuts you out, and often acts as if he hasn’t heard a word you said. 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.

Tool: Feeling Messages Now I’m going to ask you to begin expressing your feelings in Feeling Messages. Try 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. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Getting What You Need A big mistake we women make is in answering the question What do you want? with something along the lines of I wish he 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 and do something is controlling energy. It’s masculine energy. You learned in previous Keys how this kind of energy has a destructive impact on your relationship because it’s an absolute turn-off to a man. Instead of telling a man how you want him to behave or what you want him to do or stop doing, you want to share instead what you want or don’t for yourself. If you want affection, say I want affection, not I want you to be more affectionate. One is about your needs and the other is telling him what you want him to do. When you state your needs simply, you give him the chance to step up and fulfill your needs. Remember, he wants to please you. It makes him feel good about himself. He just doesn’t want to be managed into it. He wants to have the choice and space to figure it out for himself. Express your needs simply: 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 makes me feel empowered, and yet is completely about me. There’s no confrontation, no bad feelings, no attacking. I’m not saying You’re terrible with money, you don’t help around the house, you don’t do the dishes, you’re away too much, you’re just interested in sex. I’m just saying “no.” Do you see the difference?

The Importance Of 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. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. Learning to say “no” is one of the clearest messages of self-esteem and self-love a woman can express. It’s 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 you are.

Tool: Saying What You Don’t Want 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 pretty soon you’ve built a new habit. And your selfesteem 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. 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... ...

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... I don’t want... ... ... Now we’re going to learn how to put the skills of discovering your feelings, expressing them and saying “no,” to specific ways of communicating your needs and getting them met.

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Chapter 16

Getting Your Needs Met Through Negotiation “It is better to break one’s heart than to do nothing with it.” (Margaret Kennedy)

How can feelings be used to bring you closer to a man and get you what you want? Through the art of negotiation. Negotiation in this context is not about conducting a business meeting where two parties come to the table with conflicting agendas. The way I define negotiation is simply communicating to a man what you feel, what you want and don’t want, and allowing him to make the decision about what to do about it. Negotiating in this context puts the impetus for a solution on him. It does not require you to come up with the solutions and alternatives for him. It makes the space for him to do the planning, thinking and doing in response to your feelings and desires. 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 to do so 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. As soon as your partner starts getting that you are not going to try to bully or manipulate him, he’ll 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. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

Let’s look at the elements of a negotiation for a woman who chooses to be the feminineenergy 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. I would love to speak with you about something. Is now a good time? Men have a difficult time multi-tasking. If you catch them at a time when they’re focused on work or another project, it may be counterproductive to try getting him to “switch gears” and listen to you. He needs to finish what he’s doing and be able to focus on you completely. 2. Start with a feeling Take a breath and express your feelings and your “want” or “don’t want.” This will put him less on the defensive and compel him to want to listen to you. Remember this is an expression of feeling – which is totally different from an accusation, or a statement of how disappointed you are in him. 3. Ask him what he thinks “Thinking” is masculine energy, and it is what masculine-energy men love doing naturally. They’re problem solvers and thinkers, and being able to tell you what he thinks makes him feel empowered. It gives him the chance to be your hero, because now he can do what he’s good at in order to please you. He isn’t feeling defensive or criticized, because you’re simply telling him how you’re feeling and asking him for his opinion on how to make things better. Here’s 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’ll catch on, he’ll step up to the plate by being pro-active and interested in fulfilling your needs. He’ll feel like a “real man” because he’ll have the chance to meet your needs using his masculine, thinking, doing energy, which will boost his selfesteem. And he’ll adore you for it! 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. Be prepared by committing to communicating as simply and authentically 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. 4. Listening To Him You’ve asked him what he thinks. He answers. Listen to him in Listening To Him mode. 5. 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 want it to be, you’ll open yourself up to some wonderful surprises. 6. 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 date 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.

What If He’s Making Decisions Without Considering Your Feelings? If your man is not consulting and considering your feelings before making decisions, you must negotiate this! This can happen whether you’re just dating or if you’re married. An example may be that he assumes you are available and interested in attending a party or social function to which he’s received an invitation. He doesn’t consult you first before responding for both of you. You feel put upon and disregarded. It’s not that you don’t want to go, it’s that you want your time and needs to be considered before he makes decisions that concern you. You want to tell him how you feel and negotiate the situation so that he honors your feelings. 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 Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

don’t want to be left out. What do you think we should do?” Negotiations are at the heart of your relationship. It’s what “good communication” is all about, and much of the time a tiny little addition to your communication skill set can make a huge difference. Now it’s time to practice what you’ve just learned about negotiation.

Exercise: Negotiating Conflict Imagine a common conflict between you and a man. Imagine how it might play out using these negotiation tools. Write down the conversation. If you’re not happy how the imagined conversation goes, try a different approach with the I feel, I want, I don’t want… what do you think? script. Practicing the negotiation steps, even if just on paper, will help you keep a cool head and communicate your feelings clearly when sticky situations come up with your man in real life.

Knowing what to say to a man and when – and practicing speaking the truth to him without frills or explanations – can spark romance where you thought it was gone, turn on love where you thought you’d lost it, and fire up a beginning relationship. Talking to a man may not seem like the “sexiest thing” – and it actually can be that. Talking can create a sense of safety in a man that excites him to open himself up to you in emotional places he’s kept shut down his whole life. Knowing how to express your feelings and needs in this way can make the difference between arguing together and laughing together. In the next chapter, we’ll learn more about scripting, and how it can create a pathway for anger – so it becomes a force for good in your relationship instead of a destroyer of it.

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Chapter 17

How To Choose Words Speak from your heart to his heart instead of from your mind to his mind. (Rori Raye)

Learning how to express your feelings in a way a man can hear and respond to means replacing certain habitual words and phrases with ones that put the emphasis on your needs, not his shortcomings. So far, you’ve learned how to access what you’re really feeling, and you’ve come to understand that communicating in a way that tries to control a man’s behavior is not an effective way of getting what you want. You now know the power that comes with expressing feelings, negotiating your needs, and giving a man the opportunity to step up and be the man he really wants to be for you. You may not know all the ways you’re still engaging in what I call Control Speak with a man. Control Speak is based on words and phrases that are actually ways of manipulating, controlling or making suggestions to a man about what he should do. Control Speak is masculine energy! The chart in this chapter will help you change the words you use when you talk to men, and it will help you change the thoughts you think. Re-read it often and practice 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. 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: Releasing the energy of pent-up emotions will allow you to feel more relaxed, more in tune with yourself, your body and your spirit.

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Translating Your Thoughts Into Words Control Speak

Surrender Speak

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?

“

What are you feeling?

“

What do you mean?

“

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

“

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?

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?

Why didn’t you call me?

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.

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

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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 18

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)

Now 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 committed and close, that we run in the other direction. We feel compelled to control everything in the relationship. 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.

Exercise: Surrendering In Practice Here are some powerful questions for you to think about and write about:

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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? ... ... 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.

Tool: The Sensual Meditation 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. Take your breath into each part of your body that you notice – your neck, shoulders, stomach, thighs. 6. Imagine that the air around you, and the sun or moon outside your window, are touching you, literally.

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7. Allow your body to make contact with them. 8. 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. 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:

Tool: 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. • 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. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. When you have sex with your husband or boyfriend, or lover for now, 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.

Tool: The Portable Sensual Meditation Now I want you to take this sensual meditation out into the world – as a moment-bymoment, day-by-day “practice.” It works like this – you: 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. Take this portable version of the Sensual Meditation 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 multi-task. Anywhere you can take a moment to breathe and focus on what’s right in front of you: 1. Put your hand on the table, or chair, or shopping basket, or whatever is in front of you. 2. Feel the surface of it. Run your hand along it. Take a deep breath and then let the air out. 3. Now just allow yourself to feel the piece of furniture or the object – wood, plastic, Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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. 4. Now hold the other arm gently out to the side, away from your body just a bit. Let it hang in the air. 5. 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. 6. Take a breath and allow the air to touch your face. 7. Close your eyes for a second and allow the air, and the sound of people’s voices to touch you. That’s it. 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!

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Chapter 19

Putting It All Together “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)

Deciding 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. 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 things to consider along the way: 1. The relationship comes before the restaurant, the movie, the route you take, whether or not it’s fun or pleasant or what you want, 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,) Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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’s surrendering your defenses and just being. 6. Just being is allowing connection with the person in whose presence you are being. 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 being able to say “no.” It’s expressing what you do not want – about the way you’re treated and spoken to and the way your life is – even if you have to say it over and over again. 10. Boundaries – or expressing “no” and what you don’t want – are about the relationship: How you are treated, how you are spoken to, how your life is. It’s not about the garbage or the household chores, or the movie, or even about sex. The garbage, the mess, the schedule, the logistics, whether or not you’ll have sex on a date – these are chores and details and choices 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. I don’t feel ready to have sex yet. I don’t want to be just a “friend.” Or even, as you learn more about Circular Dating – I don’t want to be a “girlfriend…” Saying I don’t want about a preference is another way of expressing and sharing a feeling – it’s not about your core boundaries. Those core boundaries are essentially you believing that you trust yourself, that you trust yourself to take good care of yourself in the presence of a man, and that you’ll be okay no matter what. It’s you treating yourself so well and lovingly that any treatment less than that from anyone else doesn’t feel right to you. It’s you standing up for treating yourself beautifully.

11. If he does not take your feelings into account, you can 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. 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.

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 needs 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.

13. This negotiation, even though it centers on solving a problem, must be about the relationship. It’s about restoring, creating and enhancing harmony, connection, and romance. Only superficially is it about the garbage, the smoke detector, the mess, the Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

schedules, the phone calls, the money. 14. Whether you’re single or married, expressing your feelings, negotiating, setting boundaries and choosing your words is a way to bring your man closer and allow him to feel safe to share his feelings with you. When a man feels safe with you, he’ll feel more attracted to you and be drawn to you. If you’re dating, you’ll begin to notice a difference in how he interacts with you. He’ll want to know more about you and he’ll really listen when you express what you like, don’t like and want. He’ll go out of his way to make sure you feel loved. He’ll surprise you. If you’re married, you’ll notice that your husband will begin to open up more to you and be compelled to spend time with you. His affection and adoration for you will grow. He’ll step up and be pro-active to meet your needs and desires, simply because he wants to. And he’ll feel great doing it! For a woman who wants to be the receptive, feminine-energy partner, all these Tools are about authenticity, vulnerability and the expression of feeling. It’s never about blame, responsibility, agenda or outcome. It’s about getting the relationship you want by putting the relationship first, and submitting to the sublime dance of masculine and feminine energies.

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Chapter 20

I Believe In You We all say we’d give anything for love, and yet when it comes to real intimacy, really showing ourselves in all our vulnerable glory and truly trusting ourselves enough to cast our lot in with a man when we can never predict what the future holds – we all instinctively want to shy away. We want it both ways – to be adored but still have control. To have a life partner who’s a real and good human being, and yet manage him. To be loved, cherished, understood, heard and cared for, and yet tell him how to do it.We can’t have it both ways. And in this book, you’ve learned what only very few women know: How to give up control over a man in order to feel and experience real love with him, AND... how to turn that same desire for control into a mastery of our own powerful selves. Into a working knowledge of our own habits and patterns and inner voices so that we can feel incredibly strong, desirable, powerful, useful and magnificent enough to surrender to love. And I know you can do this. I have total faith in you – and I have complete faith in these Tools. I know they work because I’ve seen my own life, and the lives of so many of my clients, turn around quickly. What’s in this book for you is almost a new language. A language of your heart – feelings and sensations. This new language is meant to replace the old one – the one where you yell at yourself and accept the judgments and pronouncements and instructions of your Nasty Voice. The one where you see a man as the enemy, to be watched with suspicion and not trusted to do the simplest thing without your approval and instructions – almost as though your own Nasty Voice has somehow translated into your own voice when you talk to or think about him. This new language will help you connect with a good man almost instantly, and revive Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

a fading connection just as fast. If you practice these Tools – I mean really practice them – you’ll see a difference in your love life within days. AND you’ll feel SO good you may be shocked. Most of all – I know you can do this because I believe in you. I know you found me and this book for a reason. And I know that if you practice these Tools, you’ll see them work magic in your life. You may not feel the truth of what I’m about to say right now – but, as you practice the Tools, you will: You are a magnet for love just because you’re a woman. You already ARE what he wants. You already ARE a magnificent life partner for a great man – one who’ll suddenly show up, or the man you’re with right now. What this book and the Tools in it will do for you is to finally bring down the blocks to love that you and I and all of us have been holding up our whole lives. And once they’re down – love will come pouring in. Things will change. You will change, and he will change, and everything you thought a relationship was supposed to be will change. Please feel free to visit my website at www.HavetheRelationshipYouWant.com and take a look at all the in-depth Tools and programs I offer to help you bring him closer and turn your love life around. Please let me know how this all works for you – and keep me up to date on everything you’re doing.

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My Story

“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)

I’m a trained coach, I was once a crisis counselor, and I have a wonderful private practice as a relationship coach for women. All of my clients use my Tools, and so do I – every day – and yet, my biggest credential is my personal story. My whole life, up until about 6 months before I met my husband, I was the queen of taking crumbs. The queen of hanging in and hanging on to men who didn’t love me. I was the queen of working hard, too. I worked hard at flirting, and I was very successful – so successful that I’d get the guy for the night, think I was lucky, and then never see him again. It was like, well, he didn’t want to turn me down, I was cute – but he certainly wasn’t inspired to be with me. Or I’d be in a “relationship” for more than a year, only to find out he’d always felt we were “friends.” I could rope ‘em in, but I couldn’t keep ‘em. So, do you – like I did – sometimes feel like you’re beating your head against a wall? Like if you could just figure him out – what he’s thinking, what he means when he says something, what he feels, if you could get him to open up and TELL you what he feels – he’d just KNOW you’re perfect for each other, he’d shape up, he’d grab you up. But it doesn’t happen. It’s really easy for me or any relationship expert to say, “Well, if he’s not doing the job, get rid of him. Say “next.” But when you’re involved, when your heart’s invested, and when your hormones are all attached to him – you don’t want to do that. You want to do EVERYTHING you can possibly do – everything you read in a magazine, everything anyone says that might work. You just don’t want to give up on a man who feels good to you – even if he actually feels BAD most of the time. I know this. I’ve done talk therapy, psychoanalysis, hypnosis, bodywork, written many books, plays and film scripts and even more journals, and tried all sorts of therapeutic techniques. Everything opened up my heart or my mind a little bit more. I became addicted to the “aha” moments of therapy. But nothing seemed to change in my relationships. My first marriage to a man I adored had Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

disintegrated, leaving my self-esteem somewhere below floor level. I was working my way through dead-end relationships and 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. Getting the great relationship I wanted and then keeping it great was like learning a foreign language. I needed a “how to.” I found the instructions in magazine articles, in books, and from men themselves. I experimented. I took what I learned 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. What I was actually doing – before I even knew what it was or put a name to it – was Circular Dating. I didn’t call it that until more than two decades later when I began coaching women to use all the Tools I’d been creating my own life. Circular Dating is what I call “free therapy.” It’s not about “dating” (although it can include actual dating) – it’s about using my Tools in every interaction with a man (and with women and children, too) out in the world. It’s essentially practicing my Tools “out in the field” instead of just working alone. I used Circular Dating this way: I dated men, often several at a time, and “used” my time with them to learn more about myself, how relationships work or don’t work for men, what I needed from a man, what kind of man could really make me happy – and, most important – how to express myself as a “girl.” How to express my feelings in words a man could hear and love. Circular Dating is not about the goal of finding your Mr. Right. I know this sounds weird, and deeply counter-intuitive – but the more you focus on the goal of finding love, the less likely you are to attract it! It’s not because of some rule, or “law” about how things work when you want something – it’s because goal-setting itself comes from our heads, and not our hearts. And the moment a man senses your “agenda,” he’s less attracted to you. Instead, Circular Dating is about YOU. It’s about practicing the Tools in this book, and discovering how incredibly attractive you are to all men just by focusing on doing the Tools, and not on their outcome. Focusing on the practice gets you the results. Focusing on the results gets you what you’ve always gotten – heartache and disappointment.. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

How Circular Daring Completely Changed My Vibe I started out needy and desperate, and no matter how much I tried to pretend I wasn’t – any man could see I was. And he felt nothing for me. Essentially, if I wasn’t going to show him who I really was inside, then he sure wasn’t going to open up to me, either! But when I stopped making any man the center of my life – and instead focused on making me the center of my life – I automatically became the center of every man who came into my life. In my program Targeting Mr. Right, I show you why and how Circular Dating works to get your emotional needs met by men and how it works to get you the great relationship you want with your one man. You can read more about Targeting Mr. Right and my other programs at the end of this book. When I stopped chasing men – and stopped chasing my desire to have a good man and a forever relationship with him – it seemed like all the good men around found me. I Circular Dated, learned a lot about myself and about men, and actually had a great time doing it... ...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 wasn’t my type, I thought he was too nice. I didn’t get that intense thrill from being with him that I felt with other men – the men who never “worked out.” 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 or 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 once thought I wanted who’d offered me so little – and I finally got it. I wanted to get married and have children, and there he was – right in the nick of time: My perfect-for-me man. He seemed “ready.” Ready to get married and have children with me – and that made me want to marry him and have children with him even more. His “readiness” was a huge part of what made me fall for him. I knew he was in love with me, and the time seemed about as right as a time could get. We got along, we had fun, I started thinking about weddings and how he’d propose to me – and I actually expected him Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

to propose on New Year’s Eve. Only he didn’t.

When The Unthinkable Happened New Year’s Eve came, I got dressed up, and instead of the brilliant, movie-like proposal when the silver ball dropped in Times Square, I got the “speech” about how he “wasn’t ready.” He said he “needed more time” – that if I really and truly cared about him, I’d give him the time he needed. I was stunned. It felt like a brick hit me and the floor dropped out from under me at the same time. I almost immediately felt myself falling into an intense state of panic and desperation, and, yes – fury. Here I’d gotten myself into not just an emotional bind, but a physical one. If we broke up, my whole life would have to change. He wasn’t only my boyfriend – he was now also my roommate. There was no way I could afford to stay in my apartment without him, and even the thought of getting yet another roommate felt awful on top of the pain of thinking our relationship was over. I remember feeling almost violently angry, and then feeling terrified of ruining everything. “What if all he needs is a bit more time?” I asked myself. “Do I want to ruin it by getting upset?” He’d worked so hard to get me – I was just confused, bewildered, angry and tired.

A Series Of Breakthroughs I realized that instead of “firing him up” about committing to me, I’d actually taken away my now-husband’s desire to “claim” me forever – and I’d done this over and over and over, day in and day out, by constantly “thinking” about how I could get him to commit to me and then by “working” to get him to commit to me. So I shifted gears. I focused on getting my sense of power back, instead of trying to get him. I focused on remembering everything I did and didn’t do and did and didn’t say, and everything I felt in the very beginning of our relationship when he was totally chasing me and couldn’t get enough of me. I remembered what that felt like – how it felt for me to be pursued and not feel so invested in what was going to happen down the line. How I almost didn’t care whether he was in my life at all. How I just sort of trusted that he wanted to be with me, and allowed that to feel good. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

And instead of working so hard at the relationship and thinking about it so much, I worked hard to feel good about myself. I focused on how things were going and how I felt about the rest of my life, on things that had nothing to do with him. I focused on talking to him and feeling around him the way I had at the beginning.

And Then The Light Bulb Went Off I finally really “got” that it didn’t work with him if I just “pretended” not to care. The truth was – I really DID care! He could see and feel straight through my pretending. And that just made me look even needier than before. I somehow needed to truly not be invested in what happened to our relationship. And not because I didn’t care about him and for him – and not because I didn’t care about being married to him. I had to not care so much about what happened to the relationship because I knew I’d be all right no matter what. I had to believe that if I stuck to my own plan for my life, I’d have the relationship I wanted. Even if it wasn’t with him. I began to Circular Date again – but this time, I actually “dated” only myself. (I still used my developing Circular Dating concept to interact with men, flirt with them, talk to them, and learn more about how I was being when I was relating to a man – even if it was just for a few moments in the grocery store.) The most dramatic move I made was going away for the weekend alone. I got a small hotel room in Santa Barbara, packed up, drove (my knees and heart shaking) and headed directly to where I knew there’d be friendly people – and most important – friendly men. I went straight to the folk-dancing place an old boyfriend had once taken me to, and I had FUN! I danced, I hung out, I talked and flirted until late with a great-looking man who played Flamenco guitar. I did nothing but make friends with him – no kissing or anything. I went back to the depressingly empty hotel room on my own, and then I met him and his friends for breakfast the next morning. And when I got home – I felt changed. It was just a short weekend, but it made a HUGE difference in me. I felt myself for the first time in a long time. I felt like a person, a woman, instead of someone waiting around for my man to make up his mind about me.

And That’s When Everything Turned Around The “energy” between us changed completely. In my own mind I became a prize he needed to pursue in order to “win,” rather than something he was already guaranteed to have for the rest of his life. And almost instantly, he started feeling that same thing again – that I was Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

the prize he wanted. I focused on making myself happy instead of trying to make him happy – or trying to get him to make me happy. I knew that the road to commitment wasn’t about a series of events, or a “timeline” that guaranteed an outcome of Happy Ever After – just as long as we followed a certain recipe of “what needs to happen and when.” His Relationship Timeline Part of what helped me change things so quickly was realizing one simple thing: My nowhusband’s “Relationship Timeline” was completely different from mine. Just as ALL men’s Relationship Timelines are completely different from ours! By Relationship Timeline, I mean what happens in what order in the progress of the relationship – and what all those “events” actually MEAN. In other words, we women define important “events” completely differently than a man does. We give them completely different meanings. We think meeting his friends and family means something. We think dating for six months means something. We think his “talking about the future” means something. We think the passage of time means something. We even think his saying “I love you” means something. And that’s just not how men work. A man either thinks he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, or he doesn’t. Everything else is just “dating.” Even “boyfriend/girlfriend” doesn’t mean anything, because, well, what man wouldn’t want you for a girlfriend? I know that’s shocking. But the truth is, even if you’ve been with a man for a whole year – unless you have a ring on your finger (and even then...), or whatever else you consider a final commitment that pleases you: A trip around the world, buying a home together – he’s just “dating” you. In his mind, you are “for now” – unless you’re for “forever.” And there’s just no way to know if he sees you as “forever” until he takes ACTIONS that mean forever. So, how did I get to my Happy Ever After with the Relationship Timeline my man was on?

The Bridge To Real Commitment I call the way to what we want – Happy Every After – “Bridging.” I had thought – mistakenly – that he was walking along the same path I was, at the same speed. Instead, he was stalling. And he wasn’t doing it to hurt me. In fact, trying to figure Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

out why he was stalling was a big part of what was holding the relationship back from fully blossoming. I finally realized what I needed to do and not do. Imagining a “Bridge to my Happy Ever After,” I realized that instead of letting him pull me off my Bridge and then sitting, idling and stuck, with him in some “pit” of frustration and despair somewhere below my bridge – I needed to keep walking down it. No matter what. I needed to keep my eyes and my heart on my dreams and let this particular man be wherever he was on my bridge. I had to keep moving, emotionally and logistically and mentally and psychologically and imaginatively and creatively down my bridge – toward my Happy Ever After ahead of me – and simply allow him to either get back on that bridge and LEAD me to my Happy Ever After, or not. And either way – I had to know I’d be okay and that things would work out the way they were supposed to. That, if he didn’t want what I wanted, it would no longer work for me to try to push his square peg into the round hole I wanted him in. I had to stop wanting a “puppet” man who would do what I wanted, and learn to be with a real man, with his own wants, needs, fears and... timeline. In my Commitment Blueprint program, I show you how creating a Bridge from dating to a commitment involves bridging a series of shared moments that trigger a man’s desire to “sew you up” and make you his forever. And then, even though I’d stopped trying to make anything happen in the relationship, even though I’d actually stopped caring whether or not something would happen – everything changed. Fast. Here I was, more attractive to him when I was radiating a “whatever” vibe than I ever was trying to make him happy. Less than two weeks later, on my birthday, he proposed to me. We’d met on my 38th birthday, he asked me to marry him on my 39th birthday, we were married four months later, and our daughter was born right after my 40th birthday. And then the nightmare started all over again.

Back To The Start Line 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 learned how to attract my man, but I had no idea what to do with him when he was Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

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 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. But not one single woman I knew was any more happily married than I was. Again I read, I experimented. I researched. I tried everything I found, everything I already knew. Then, finally, it all became clear to me.

Creating Real Change 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. So I experimented with a few ideas. 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. 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. We were having fun again. 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 a month. I just built on that, and developed my own Tools, and 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 amazing marriage has created a place for us both to grow into the best people we can be, fully supported, fully respected, fully cherished, fully loved. Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

And now I look at my lovely husband, smiles on both of our faces, our daughter dancing around our loveseat like a woodland fairy in some pastoral scene, and I feel grateful all the way to my toes. “If I’d known then what I know now…” runs through my head. And I know that if I could do it, you really can, too. So, If I could help you know now what I learned over many years and heartaches, what would I tell you?

Love Doesn’t Take Hard Work It’s a myth that you have to “work” on a relationship. I believe we’re on this earth to learn and grow and become the best, most fulfilled, happiest people we can be. And that in a relationship, when we have to share our insides with someone, when he gets to see the parts of ourselves we want to hide from everyone else, when this deep “seeing” happens on a day to day basis – that’s when we learn and grow the fastest. Every minute you’re with your man – or the man you’re about to meet – who you are and where you are will be reflected back to you. In relationship, we see each other at our best and at our worst and so we automatically become more ourselves. When we’re with someone, we’re constantly getting emotionally triggered by them. We’re confronting our fears with them, opening up our deep wells of guilt, shame and rage with them, and learning to trust ourselves with them. The whole unit of two people in a relationship is like rainwater, like food, like shelter for each of us – it’s like we help develop each other. We help expand each other. It’s a very beautiful concept. And yet – how often do we get in a relationship like that? Hardly ever. Because almost all of us have been taught to do the opposite of what a great relationship looks like. We’ve been taught to hide ourselves. To keep the “ugly” parts of ourselves hidden, to always have a smile on our face. Or, if we grew up in certain ways, we might always have drama hanging over us like a costume, or a frown and a cloud raining over us, or a judge’s robe on our shoulders all the time. We all have our own way of hiding our true selves. And we’ve also been taught to appear cool and poised and confident and sexy – and after awhile, when we don’t feel like that, we can’t get up the energy to pretend anymore, and so we back away from ourselves even more. The result of this is that we’re attracted to men who can’t be in relationships that support our personal growth. Because we’ve spent our lives worrying about letting anyone see those parts of ourselves, Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

we do everything we can, in an underground, subconscious way, to keep it all hidden. And we attract men who want to help us keep things as they are. Who want us to keep ourselves hidden so that they can continue to hide themselves, too. But what happens is this – if no one shows who they are, nothing happens. Nothing happens in the relationship. It may seem like a lot of passion and drama and coming and going and pain and waiting and great times, but nothing’s really happening underneath. So you end up with a choice of: 1. A man who has “issues” – who has “stuff” he wants to hide so bad he’ll make sure you hide all your stuff, too. The man who wants to make sure YOU hang on to all your bad habits – the ones YOU don’t like about yourself – so he can hang onto his bad habits. Or... 2. A man who wants a real relationship – where he can expand himself and be himself (the kind of man you want) – who’ll stay disconnected from you and end up withdrawing if you don’t show up as who you truly are. If you don’t let your vulnerability hang out and show – nothing will happen. In a situation like this, you’ll just pass each other like ships in the night, or it just will end. A man who can do relationship deserves respect. And somehow we tend to disrespect a man for being able to do relationship. We have a hard time, at rock bottom, believing that a really great man would want to hook up with us for life. It’s the way we were brought up, what we’ve heard our whole lives, and the voices in our head are screaming at us that failure in love is all we know how to do. And it isn’t true. We’re built to bond together with another human being. At least that’s what I believe. And I know that you have all the hope in the world. I know you can do this – because if I did, you can. And so much faster and easier. I hope my journey of trial and error can save you time and pain. Read the book again, be sure to do all the exercises, and watch in amazement as things turn around for you. I wish you love, and I know you’ll have it.

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About Rori Raye

As 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-decades-long 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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My Advice Programs

My programs are full of advice, tips, Tools, and techniques you’ll want to refer to again and again – whether you’re single and looking for your Mr. Right or you’re in a relationship and want to experience more connection and passion together. You can read about all of them and try them out risk free on my website at www.havetherelationshipyouwant.com.

Video Programs: Watch Online Or Download MODERN SIREN You CAN be the kind of woman who effortlessly makes a man feel hypnotically attracted and deeply connected… Learn the secret to being so irresistible, he’ll risk everything to be with you. Includes signature Tools you can start using right away.

LOVE SCRIPTS FOR RELATIONSHIPS This program will teach you how to transform your relationship with your words, by learning the words a man needs to hear – and HOW he needs to hear them – so that he feels like you’re the kind of woman he needs to respect, adore, and make happy… and you’ll feel safe and secure in his love.

LOVE SCRIPTS FOR DATING You’ll learn, step by step, the very words to say to a man in any situation, that will make him fall for you and inspire his total devotion – from a first date all the way to commitment, so you can have the relationship you’ve always wanted.

TARGETING MR RIGHT Learn how to be the prize a man wants to pursue – even if you’ve been with him for years. Targeting Mr. Right will help you feel powerful in love and raise your self-esteem so you’ll actually believe how irresistibly attractive you truly are.

COMMITMENT BLUEPRINT Getting a man to commit doesn’t require ultimatums or playing games. Instead, you’ll Delivered to Cerasela Petrescu (Order V8F55E)

learn how to NATURALLY inspire a man’s undying devotion so he sees you as the only woman he can’t live without.

TOXIC MEN Stay or go? This program shows you how to transform your difficult man into a genuine good guy and finally have the kind of loving, respectful relationship you’ve always wanted... or discover if he can never give you the relationship you want so you can open your heart to a good man who can.

Audio Programs: Listen Anywhere RECONNECT YOUR RELATIONSHIP If you’re struggling to keep your relationship from falling apart, then “Reconnect Your Relationship” is for you. Learn how to turn your troubled relationship around – no matter how bad it seems now – and inspire him to be your perfect partner.

HEART CONNECTION TOOLKIT Even if your self-esteem is at rock bottom, and you’re feeling hopeless about ever having the relationship of your dreams, this program has “the plan” that will teach you how to quickly feel confident and BELIEVE it can happen for you – because IT WILL.

Full Access To My Entire Catalog MY COMPLETE COLLECTION You can try all of my love advice programs for a fraction of the cost with “My Complete Collection” - You’ll learn everything you need to know about Love & Relationships: Attraction, Commitment, Communication, Intimacy, Dating and so much more.

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