Posts Tagged ‘relationship problems’

The need for being taken care of

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

The need to be taken care of is deeply felt by every human being.  It spans everything from our survival needs as children to our need to be seen and acknowledged to our need to have someone else assume responsibility for things so that we can relax.

baby-wanting-care Unfortunately, when we need it most as children, this need is usually not fully met.  So as adults we have our normal needs of interdependence, acknowledgement, being seen and so on, plus a sense of unmet childhood needs which carry over into adulthood.

 After 20 years of supporting singles and couples in thir relationships I can tell you this is what causes most relationship problems: disguised versions of “You are not taking care of me”.  Relationships turn into a reflection of early childhood patterns with parents.  The parent is projected onto one’s current partner along with a sense of not being taken care of.

 

The most important thing we can do to resolve this situation is to feel and understand the need directly.  It is a fundamental human need that takes many forms throughout life.

 

We can do things to get this need met, and, of course, that is helpful, but what is of critical importance to our personal growth is that we get familiar with this need.  That we feel it directly with compassion and understanding… first for ourselves and then others.

 

Somehow when we experience this need ourselves calmly and directly it soothes and calms us, as well as opens us to receiving from others.

 

When unmet need is felt through fully with understanding it begins to shift to desire… then to love, where it switches to more of a giving force… then to stillness, where we transcend even our need.

Tags: ,
Posted in Personal Growth, Romantic Blueprint | Comments Off

Your relationship life now

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Well, there’s your relationship life now, as it actually is… And there is your relationship life in your head, all the thoughts you have about your relationship life and all the patterns and activities you have from those thoughts.

 

Let’s look at your relationship life as it actually is.  

 

happy-couple Before you think anything, what is there? Before you think anything, what is present? Nothing that you thought in your head is actually there the way you thought it.  If you can get out of the relationship life as you think it is in your head, everything is somehow unified and together and there’s no opinion about anything. Things just are as they are, but there is a very distinct experience to it.

 

Your relationship life occurs very differently here, than in your head.  Fundamentally, there is no sense of a problem.

 

Now, what human beings ordinarily think up in regards to their relationship is from their past, as we distinguished last week. Mostly it’s given by our early parental and sibling relationships. This gives a limited ability in relationship, and can cause many relationship problems. The natural skills of relationship, such as the love, connection, paying attention, seeing what the other person wants, and so on, are largely blocked. To be more exact, these are not so much skills as natural capacities of reality that one has when one is present.

 

There are two ways of developing these relationship skills. One way is to develop and practice them; the second is to be fully present and let them arrive. The first is somewhat willful and keeps the identity pattern intact, but it can be helpful. By being present, they will come naturally.

Tags: , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Personal Growth, Romantic Blueprint | 3 Comments »

The Pace of Change

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Have you ever been frustrated by the rate at which you, yourself, change? Perhaps you’ve wanted yourself to be some way and it just isn’t happening according to your timetable. Or maybe the person you are married to, or in relationship with, isn’t changing at the speed you’d like.

 

Often we know things about ourselves that would be great to change, and yet it can happen very slowly. Sometimes it happens very quickly, but that is rare.

pace-of-change There are two things you must take into account:      

 

1) It took a long time to get this way and you are a very, very, very complex system, most of which is functioning outside of your conscious awareness.

2) The very effort to change reinforces the sense of ‘I’, as in “I want to change”.  This “I” is your ego and it is what is causes most suffering in the first place.  So it is like saying “I don’t want to be I”.  (This is a big topic fleshed out in other blogs and live teachings).

 

Real change happens when you see through this “I” and have patience with the complexity and momentum of yourself and your life.   It is the opposite of “taking heaven by storm” (i.e. you can’t force yourself to change).

 

Personal growth from this perspective is immediate in the sense of you are no longer that ‘ego I’ trying to change.  It is also gradual in that all the momentum and complexity of patterns, beliefs and so on, which make up a human being, will take time to unwind. Knowing this about yourself is invaluable, and knowing this about your partner can solve many relationship problems.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Personal Growth | 14 Comments »

Three ways to deal with upset in relationship

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Relating with another person will occasionally involve upset, and this is a perfectly normal part of any relationship. But what’s the best way to handle yourself in these situations, to minimize the pain and damage that can be caused without causing more relationship problems? Here are three ways I’ve found of dealing with upset as it comes up.

Relationship problems involving upset The first is to know that if someone says something sharp to you, it is normal to feel hurt. Rather than striving for imperviousness in this kind of situation, have compassion and space for you to have the experience.

The second is to minimize “going to work” on the experience. It’s very easy to take the experience and use it to justify yourself, or defend yourself, or avoid intimacy or vulnerability. This is of course hard to do, and the key here is the first step I mentioned: have compassion for what you’re feeling, feel what you’re feeling fully, and the need to act on it or process it or use it will slowly drift away.

 

The third is, don’t take it personally. When somebody attacks you or says something offensive, it really has little to nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the other person. This will help with the two steps above, and will help in understanding and having compassion for the other person, which will make it a lot easier for both of you to move beyond the sharp interaction.

 

This will help to clear your mind in the moment, and from a clear mind there are any number of options which can forward the situation, rather than reinforce the negative and defensive feelings which prompted the upset in the first place.

Tags: , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 3 Comments »

What a woman wants

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Mostly attention.   Doesn’t matter whether it is Lady Gaga or your mom. 

 

Lack of attention toward a woman is a relationship killer straight off, and the source of many relationship problems.  Even for people who stay “in relationship,” if there isn’t the attention on what she wants, there isn’t much of a relationship.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a new relationship, the couple is married, or you’re just dating.

 

Of course, the list goes on.  But if that first one is present the rest tend to follow: love, approval, great sex, baubles…  

 

Sometimes people hear me talk about this at a Live Event or at The Pleasure Course and assume that I mean some kind of subservient catering from the guy.  That’s the last thing women want.  Women like to be “at effect” (as opposed to “cause”) so they like guys that are willing to be strong, to be “cause”.

 what women want, a compass for your love life

 

They would just prefer it if his attention was on her, feeling and understanding what she wants.

 

This was a recurring theme in the December 3rd Pleasure Course, which we’ll be completing at the December 8th Live Event: How long are you going to wait for the romance you have always wanted!”

Tags: ,
Posted in Man-Woman Dynamics, Relationship | 2 Comments »

Your relationship personality type?

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

We had an amazing live event last Wednesday where 50 people discovered their relationship personality type and it’s assets and liabilities.  It was a blast!

 

What’s yours?

 

Basically there are 3 or 5 types depending on how you slice it up.  This is based on nearly twenty years of giving relationship advice and supporting people in their love lives and I can tell  

you, although we are all unique, there are definitely general orientations that people fall into. These orientations depend on your preferred ways of responding to pain and difficulty when dealing with relationship problems.  As you know, we each have a relationship blueprint, a set of information we use to navigate relationships buried deep in our unconscious.  That blueprint instructs us to deal the pains of intimacy by avoiding them, challenging the other or surrendering.  These are the three basic types: the Avoider, the Softy and the Meany. The multiple personality types for romantic relationship

 

There are two other types which are really versions of the prior types but they show up often enough that we consider them types of their own.  One is the troublemaker, basically a Meany who is also an avoider.  It’s the rebel or black sheep type, on their own stirring things up.  And lastly, the Clueless, who comes in two varieties: the naïve and the arrogant.  Both don’t know much about relationship (i.e. they’re clueless, but the arrogant type thinks they know a ton.)

 

From these brief descriptions you probably have a sense for your primary type.  We all use all three (or 5 if you like) types, so having a combination is OK, but make sure you know your primary type.  It’s really helpful in relationship to know it. 

 

Then you can correct course!  Meanys should be nice!  Avoiders do well to show up; Softys benefit by asserting themselves; Troublemakers do well supporting something or someone; and the Clueless should learn!

 

Click here to forward this blog post to a friend!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Personal Growth, Relationship, Romantic Blueprint | 2 Comments »

When to take a relationship to the next level

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Relationships have a natural path through stages.  In the Pleasure Course we focus on those stages in detail, but for now let’s just use their titles: the new and exciting stage, the best friends and lovers stage and the eternal date stage.

 

a woman with a marraige problem: should she say yes, or no, or maybe? People run into difficulty because they may be more comfortable at one stage and not another, or they may have skills in one stage and not another.  We have found this difficulty to be the case for most people.  You may have a tendency to try to rush ahead, say to the eternal date (a committed relationship), or a tendency to stay behind, say eternally dating (and never getting serious). The most common scenario that we have found over the last 17 years of teaching people to have successful romantic relationships is that of a woman wanting to rush ahead in the relationship, prematurely pushing toward commitment, and a man wanting to keep it in the dating stage, often way beyond when moving forward would create more depth and quality of romance.  This was the scenario that Alicia and I had to move through.

  

This is only the most common scenario. The roles can be reversed, the middle stage of relationship can come into play, and so on.  The possible permutations are infinite.  The point is that our individual relationship blueprints (our personal psychologies) can distort a natural progression through the stages at the appropriate time for maximum pleasure and romance.

 

How do you know when to take a relationship to the next level?  You have to get out of your head and simply be present to the relationship.  There will be a feeling, a sense that you can tap into, as to whether the relationship is due to upgrade.  If you aren’t inhibiting it, it will happen naturally.  If you are rushing it, and you get out of your head and simply be present to the relationship, there will be a natural tendency to slow down.

 

This is one of the beauties of life.  Things flow naturally if we get out the way.  That is a tall order, I must admit.  It really is a spiritual process that we have covered and will cover in other topics.  But, for now, know that you have to be present to the relationship not your relationship blueprint.  Have your attention on the relationship, not on yourself!

 

Life also provides hints! Your friends (who have good relationships) are pushing you in one direction or the other.  Or, you’ve been dating this person for a really long time, say years… probably time to cut bait or move forward.  Or, you just started dating a few weeks ago and you are trying to push it forward… probably good to slow down. 

 

You get the idea!

 

Click here to forward this blog post to a friend!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 1 Comment »

Why you avoid being intimate

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

People resist intimacy primarily because they are hurt and afraid.  To whatever degree you find yourself pulling away from your partner, resisting having one or buffering yourself from really being close with someone is the degree to which you are caught in a cycle of hurt and fear followed by all of the strange ways of being that we use as responses to that hurt and fear.

 

A heart locked up, resisting intimacy and vulnurability The hurt and fear, along with all the overlaid responses are what we call your relationship blueprint.  Hurt and fear underlie the relationship blueprint and are the source of many relationship problems.  They are the underbelly of the blueprint.  The blueprint is used to protect ourselves.   As children we felt hurt, quickly followed by fear.  Makes sense, right?  Then we quickly put together a system to handle that.  

 

The hurt comes from a variety of experiences: different versions of being abused or not being seen and acknowledged.  Basically, we are raised in a less than ideal environment.  This is inevitable, to some degree, because the environment can never be ideal.

 

The problem is that the blueprint, the distancing ourselves from others, ends up creating more hurt and fear.  We end up in the vicious circle caused by responding to our hurt and fear in ways that cause more hurt and fear, damaging our relationships and love life.

 

The most common relationship blueprint orientations, in response to the hurt and fear, are: attacking, avoiding, acquiescing and ignoring.

 

We’ll explore these relationship blueprint orientations in future topics.  For now, the most important point is to feel through the blueprint to it’s underbelly of hurt and fear.  This is where healing can happen.

Tags: , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 27 Comments »

What are your sexual blind spots?

Friday, September 10th, 2010

In the 27 combined years Alicia and I have been working with people and transforming their relationship and sex lives, one of the things that we’ve noticed is that everyone has particular patterns that they aren’t aware of. There are blind spots as to things that we all do and ways of being that we all bring into our sex lives, and they can be the source of many relationship problems.

 

They may be obvious from the outside, for example if somebody were videoing us, but from the inside we may not even know that we are doing that. For example, somebody could be very timid, in bed they don’t move very much, or they’re very tentative in their touch. But to themselves, they probably don’t feel or know that they’re being timid. To them, that is just how it is, it’s just normal. Just like we might walk a particular way, it might even be a funny way, but for us we’re just walking. A couple having relationship problems due to sexual blind spots

 

That is what a blind spot is. A blind spot is a blind spot because you don’t see what is actually going on or how you’re being. There is a lack of perspective. Look for yourselves right now. What might be a blind spot for you? It could be any way of being, or a habit, or a tendency, or a behavior. It could be being silent, it could be being withdrawn, it could be being aggressive. Some of the best relationship advice I could give in this area is to ask somebody else’s opinion, especially a current or past lover! It’s a really fun conversation. It can open up a lot of things, and can help build a very healthy relationship and love life. 

Tags: , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 5 Comments »

How to rewrite your romantic fate, part 2

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Once you’ve uncovered you’re romantic blueprint (see part 1 of this topic), the second step is creating a new blueprint. This can be a very fun process. Start picking things from your blueprint that you’d like to change, and then practice acting out of the new way of being. Over time you can re-write your entire blueprint: how you’re interacting with the opposite sex, how you feel about flirting, a first date, boyfriend/girlfriend, commitment, , how you deal with relationship problems, your ability to be vulnerable or sweep a person off their feet, etc. And this can be an on-going process. Blueprints can be negative in two ways: They can be made of negative material, and they can be stagnant. The beauty of re-writing your blueprint is that you can do it all the time, informing your new blueprint with spirit rather than a fixed point of view.

 

Now that you’ve uncovered your blueprint and created a new one, step three is to motivate yourself. This involves bringing your heart and feeling into the new blueprint. If these aren’t there, the new blueprint is just going to be a good idea that falls by the wayside. There are two parts to motivating yourself. The first is to investigate it: Does this matter? How important is this to me? If you engage in this inquiry and bring your heart into it (not just your head), you’ll feel that your romantic fate is a really big deal. The Rewriting your romantic fate

key is to invest feeling into your new blueprint. Talking about your blueprint with people who are important in your life, or creating a collage, are two great ways of engaging with the new blueprint with your heart. The second part to motivating yourself is to take on your new blueprint in small chunks. Taking on a new blueprint can be overwhelming, and addressing small pieces of it at a time (e.g. setting a goal of going on an extra date every week, rather than going straight for a committed relationship with Mr. Right) is key.

 

Finally the fourth step is adapting your environment. Your environment is probably structured in such a way as to support your old blueprint. Identifying these structures, and altering them such that they support your new blueprint is key in having your new blueprint take hold. For example, if your new blueprint involves more sensual time with your partner, adding sensual items to your bedroom like candles, flowers, incense, and sexy décor can be a way of supporting this.

 

Re-writing your romantic fate is a large undertaking. With these steps, it can really happen, and the rewards are well worth it!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Personal Growth, Romantic Blueprint | 2 Comments »

How to rewrite your romantic fate, part 1

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

We all have a romantic fate. If you look into your future, you’ve probably got a sense of how your romance is going to go. It may be great, it may not be so great, and it may be somewhere in the middle. That is your romantic fate.

Rewriting your romantic fate Where does this fate come from? It comes from something I call your “romantic blueprint.” This is the template, or set of principles or beliefs, that you’re using to guide yourself in your romance and love life. The problems with most people’s blueprint are first that it was designed between the ages of 0 and 15, and second it usually lives in a blind spot and operates unconsciously. In your love life, you may have noticed yourself acting out a repetitive pattern that leads to relationship problems. Despite seeing this pattern, you find yourself compelled to continue acting that way, and getting the same

results. The reason that this is going on is because the romantic blue print is guiding this action, and this blueprint is in a blind spot.

 

So, what are the steps to rewriting your romantic blueprint, and hence your romantic fate?

 

The first, and most important step, is to uncover your romantic blueprint. A great way to do this is sit down with a piece of paper and write out the patterns in your relationship history, your beliefs about relationship, what your relationship future looks like, etc. Getting it out concretely on paper is important (conversations about it can be very useful but miss the physical element).

 

I remember, before I got in relationship with Alicia, I noticed that my relationships had progressed only to a certain point. I was OK at dating, I was pretty good at boyfriend/girlfriend, but committed just wasn’t really happening for me. So one day I wrote down all the girlfriends I had had in my life (about 10 at that point) and then, because it was there in front of me, it hit me like a bolt of lightning…in my mind I created something wrong with each and every one of them. Part of my blueprint was a belief that there is something wrong with my romantic partner. (See the post titled Getting over my relationship hang-ups for more detail on this.)

 

Part 2 of this entry will tell you what to do with your blueprint once you’ve uncovered it!

Tags: , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Personal Growth, Relationship, Romantic Blueprint | 4 Comments »

How to be romantic amidst a busy life

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Nowadays, we’re all very busy. Sometimes romance gets squeezed out of our schedules and disappears in the face of all the other stuff there is to do. So here are a three great ways to jazz up a romance amidst a busy life:

 

How to have a healthy relationship even if you're busy 1. Prioritize. If having a healthy relationship and a life full of good strong love is important to you, cut the less important stuff out. And, the essential piece here is, make it real by putting romance into your calendar. We may think we don’t need to be reminded to be romantic or make time for sex, but the reality is, we all need to be reminded to do the fun and pleasurable stuff.

 

2. Take regular vacations with a focus on romance. This doesn’t mean spending a lot of time or money. Alicia and I go on vacation at least once a month, often to a place just minutes outside of San Francisco for the weekend. A couple of days a month devoted fully to romance (leave your cell phones, laptops, and kids home!) can do wonders for your love life.

 

3. Maintain chemistry. There are many ways to add romance to a relationship that don’t take up a lot of time, or even need you to be in the same place as your partner. Having flowers delivered, leaving a note behind before you leave for work, sending a sexy text on your lunch break, are all examples of easy things to do that can create and maintain chemistry and polarity between a couple, especially in the middle of a busy work day or week.

Tags: ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 1 Comment »

How to get more sex

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Alicia and I get asked thousands of questions about sex every year. The sex question people ask us the most is “How do I have more sex?” The question is usually not asked that straightforwardly, but that usually is the question that is actually being asked.

 

The answer to this question is very different from a woman’s point of view than from a man’s point of view. From a woman’s point of view, the key is turn-on. Women have a very natural ability to be turned-on, sensual, and attractive. Learning how to access, cultivate, and use the female libido is key. There are many reasons a woman might avoid being turned-on: it can be risky, it’s vulnerable, and it’s certainly sensational, but the truth of the matter is turn-on really is the way to get more sex.  

 

The best way to go about developing your turn on  as  a  woman  is  by  acknowledging  and

 A turned-on woman wondering how to have more sex

feeling it in your body. You can play with the clothing you wear, practice DOing yourself, read books, etc. The key is really being intentional about approving of whatever level of turn-on you have, because at any given moment there really is some level of turn-on going on in your body.

 

From a man’s point of view, there are two keys: being fun, and finding out what she wants. If he’s being fun and finding out what she wants, it will gradually go towards what human beings are wired up biologically to want, which is really ecstatic sexual pleasure and romantic love. Being fun really means being light, being playful, flirting. It’s really having the focus on having a good time. There’s a certain amount of this that is being in charge, being strong, being fun in the masculine way that women are really drawn to and that will turn her on, and that’s balanced by finding out what she wants, by his attention being on her. To sum it up, he’s in charge of giving her what she wants.

 

In my own life growing up I was a bit of a wreck (for a variety of reasons that we will explore at a later point!) and I think women actually liked that because there was a lot of motion, a lot of action. I think that was fun for them. And in terms of paying attention and finding out what they wanted, I’m just blessed that I got some hints!

 

You many notice that these three skills are the skills of the “new and exciting” stage of romantic relationship. This is why a new relationship typically has so much juice and energy and sex. When people enter the middle game of relationship or marriage, they often leave these skills behind, and the sexual pleasure and frequency diminish.

 

Diminishing sex and sexual pleasure is one of the most common relationship problems we encounter. The way to get more sex is go right back to what you were doing on your first date: be turned-on, fun, and find out what she wants.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Having better sex, Sex | 6 Comments »

Getting over my relationship hang-ups

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

About 10 years ago, before I met Alicia, I remember having an intuitive hunch about myself. The hunch was that something was off. What gave me that hunch was that I had been in relationship with some incredible women, but none of the relationships had lasted. I realized that it had something to do with me, that it was a relationship problem, or hang-up, of mine.

 

Before this hunch I really thought the relationships ended because they weren’t right for some reason. I thought there was something wrong with each of the relationships, and even each of those women. When I actually listed the qualities of each woman, I saw that I had been so critical of each of them that I somehow found something that made her the wrong person, and justified to myself not being involved, and in some cases even being superior. I realized this hang-up was really costing me in my relationships and my love life. Erwan Davon and Alicia Davon throwing the Launching Erwan Davon Teachings Cocktail Party!

 

I also saw that this hang-up was defensive in nature. The women in my past really had been incredible. They were gorgeous, funny, lit-up, and I had been blocking them from coming into my life. I saw that this defensiveness was covering up an underlying sense of being unlovable. Underneath it all, I really feared that each of those women were unavailable for loving me. This complex thought pattern was really dominating my relationships and love life. It was part of my relationship blueprint which was not working for me.

 

Identifying this part of my blueprint, and the consequences (the lack of relationship), left me with a bit of a sick feeling. As I felt into this feeling, through a meditation practice we teach in the Pleasure Course called “corework,” I began to notice a deep sense of vulnerability. As I felt this vulnerability more and more fully, the sick feeling of worry began to lift. It felt like a weight rising off of my chest and shoulders. In that moment of feeling, I could see my future opening up. A quality of enjoyment and pleasure started to come into my experience.

 

It was this process of fully feeling through the emotions behind my hang-up, moment by moment, that really put me in a place to love and commit in my current relationship with Alicia. It is relationship advice that I would recommend to anyone with a relationship or sexual hangup.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Personal Growth, Romantic Blueprint | 53 Comments »

How to have a successful healthy relationship: Three essential ingredients

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

What makes the difference in any relationship is that each whole person is there and available for the relating. There are three aspects to this, and enhancing any one will really help any relationship succeed. This relationship advice really applies to any relationship, whether the first date, a brand new relationship, or a marriage.

 

The first essential ingredient is approval. This means being emotionally available to the other person. When we are emotionally available, we are loving. I mean something wider here than simply saying nice things, I really mean the loving, warm, caring that emanates towards the other when we are emotionally available to that person. For some, expressing emotions readily is easy. For others, it brings up a feeling of vulnerability and being unsafe. A healthy relationship symbolized by a heart is composed of three ingredients, fitting together like puzzle pieces

 

These feelings are generally rooted in a deep hurt experienced during childhood. When this hurt is felt, we emotionally bind up and harden because we don’t want to be hurt again. Noticing this hurt is the first step toward healing it, which allows us to become more emotionally open and vulnerable with another.

 

The second essential ingredient is turn-on or chemistry. For romantic love to be successful, there has to be the enjoyment, really the exploitation, of that sex energy. Unfortunately this energy can get dampened, by schedules or cultural norms or other beliefs. And fortunately, it can actually be turned back on. This starts with deliberate attention on the turn-on in the relationship, then learning the skills necessary to cultivate it (seduction, structure, flirting, and maximizing sexual pleasure, etc).

 

The third essential ingredient is “realness.” By this I mean, honesty, I mean being real with the person now, being present with the other person moment by moment. This is really can be the most challenging aspect of relationship, and there really is no easy way to do it. All we can do is be real NOW, no matter what the circumstances.

 

A nice aspect of all of this is that couples can support each other in the different areas, especially if one is strong where the other is weak. For example, someone strong in approval can approvingly request and help the other be more approving! Or if one is weak in realness, the stronger partner can point out when a situation isn’t feeling very real to them.

 

And finally, knowing that simply being more approving, turned-on, and real will improve a relationship is a relief! Whether looking for dating advice, wanting to improve a good relationship, or thinking about marriage counseling, this knowledge takes much of the mystery out of relationship problems!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in How to relationship, Relationship | 3 Comments »

Six steps to handle the intense emotions that arise in relationship

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Relationship is the most common place intense emotions come up. The emotions are usually very sensitive, and can be the source of many relationship problems. Here is the best way I’ve found to handle them, broken into six steps:

 

An angry woman, an example of an intense emotion one can learn how to deal with in relationship The first way to handle intense emotions is to create space for that emotion. Basically this means, don’t ignore the emotion. There is a tendency to turn away from and avoid the intensity of feeling that comes up for us when we relate to another person. Now, this also doesn’t mean address it immediately and irresponsibly with the other person as soon as it comes up. Really it means simply allow the experience you are having. Don’t run away, don’t obsess, just let the emotion be. 

  

 The second thing to do is admit what you’re feeling. This doesn’t mean you need to do anything about the emotion, rather it simply means face that you are feeling that way, acknowledge that you are experiencing this emotion. 

 

The third thing to do is to express the emotion constructively and artistically. For example, if you feel angry and do a collage about your anger, it allows you to get your hands around the emotion, to see it and taste it. By simply doing something with your emotion that is not avoidant, the experience will start to lift and open.

 

The fourth thing to do is Corework. This is a type of mediation we teach in the Pleasure Course in which one goes to the core of what one is feeling, one confronts one’s experience. Opening with a spiritual practice liberates negative emotions, sooths and calms excited emotions, and enhances positive and turned on emotions. Just as the third step deals with the emotion artistically, this step deals with it spiritually.

 

These first four steps have been getting into the emotion, really feeling it. Now one is ready for the fifth step: communicate. This step is fifth because one really wants to spend a lot of time being with one’s emotion, feeling it thoroughly, THEN you want to communicate. When we instantly rush to communicate what we’re feeling usually we end up dumping or projecting, and we end up dealing with the trigger of the emotion rather than dealing with the emotion at its root. Embracing and feeling the emotion thoroughly before communicating really makes communication possible.

 

Finally the emotion can be released. This step actually isn’t something you do actively, it is something that happens naturally if the above steps are taken. If one feels the emotion fully, then shares and communicates, the feeling will release.

 

To bottom line it, the best relationship advice I have is: do not shy away from the intensity of emotion. Intense emotions will always come up, whether on your first date, in a new relationship or you have the most established and healthy relationship. Go into them, embrace them. Even though this is the opposite of what we usually think to do, you’ll find your experience lift and open.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Being Happy, How to relationship, Personal Growth, Relationship | 4 Comments »