Why We Wait to Feel Desperate?
When I met Shana, an attractive woman in her 30s, she was dating a new guy every few months. She was feeling desperate and frustrated that everywhere she looked her friends were pairing up, but for some reason it just wasn’t clicking for her. When Shana went to parties, she’d either not feel a connection with anyone, or she’d see a cute guy but talk herself out of flirting with him. She’d go to synagogue kiddushes and have plenty of pleasant conversations with people who were nice and well-meaning – yet somehow she just couldn’t seem able to strike up a conversation with the cute guys that she really wanted to meet, or get people to follow up on dating suggestions.
When I talk to people about considering relationship coaching when things aren’t moving for them, they often look at me like I have three heads. I’ve received comments ranging from “You have GOT to be kidding me, normal people go for relationship coaching?” Or, “I would have to feel desperate to do that.”
Sadly, I run into many of those same people years later and they’re often at the point of feeling desperate and beyond hope. Sometimes they do get married but feel they’ve made a mistake or that they were ill-equipped to withstand the challenges of a successful long term relationship.
It makes little sense why we wait to feel desperate, or like we’ve hit rock bottom, before figuring out how to get something we really want. If we want to be thin most of us try and eat healthy and exercise. We go to the dentist to prevent cavities rather than wait ‘til our teeth are ready to fall out. We meditate and do yoga to reduce anxiety and stress, we take lessons to learn how to drive, rather than wait until we get into an accident (fortunately the law doesn’t allow for that). And for those of us with strong career aspirations we work with a business coach to get our careers moving in the right direction.
If we were to wait for our teeth to rot, our careers to fall apart or our heart to pack up before taking action to improve our lives we would most likely be so far down in the dumps at that point that it would take too much effort to then make a change.
Many of the married couples I’ve worked with have said to me they wish they’d taken the time to understand themselves better before even starting to date, because it may have either influenced their choice differently, or they would have entered the relationship with a different set of expectations and they may have behaved in such a way that would have vastly improved the healthfulness and success of the marriage going in.
It’s heartwarming to know that there’s so much research now about what ingredients make a successful relationship, and that we have the power to make good relationship choices right from the very start. It no longer makes sense to wait until a marriage gets shipwrecked before learning how to make it strong and steady.
When I worked with Shana, we identified that hopefulness was not her strong suit and she allowed me to help her uncover some of the reasons why she didn’t feel entitled to talk to the guys she was attracted to. By pushing through her fears and overcoming old baggage that was weighing her down with negative thoughts she was able to shift her approach and finally meet someone she really liked in real life.
5 Tips to inspire you to take a proactive stance to dating, so you don’t feel desperate
Focus on the features you love about yourself and accentuate them.
Clarify the things you love about your relationships with others
Be brutally honest with yourself…then change the things you don’t like, or that aren’t working for you.
Acknowledge the parts of your life you do feel happy about and celebrate them.
Know that you don’t need to do a complete overhaul, but rather just fix the specific areas where you may be getting stuck.
If you may occasionally be feeling desperate, check out this link to hear my interview with Zoe, a single woman living in Jerusalem about how she deals with feeling desperate.
http://jewishcoffeehouse.com/real-relationships-using-sadness-as-a-tool/
How to Get Matchmakers to do the Best Job for You?
The more clear you are about what you need from a relationship, the better able you’ll be to express this to a matchmaker who will then be in a better position to set you up.
Hidden Shame of the Harvey Weinstein Scandal
Men report they feel emasculated and no longer able to flirt and show affection towards women. Women feel less safe about creating relationships with men…We need to create a shift in our thinking and do a reality check in order to heal from this scandal.
Top 5 Ways to Upgrade Your Relationship
When we upgrade our devices we expect a newer better functioning system that works with similar parameters. Upgrading our relationship is no different. We needn’t throw away what we have to get the upgrade we require. By acknowledging new realizations and awareness about what we need from a relationship, we don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start from scratch. We can just reboot, and incorporate the changes by acknowledging what we need from ourselves and gingerly yet directly, communicate what we need from our partner.
What is it That Stops People From Committing and Keeps So Many Single? (podcast)
In this podcast taken from a series of radio interviews, Micki Lavin-Pell discusses some of the reasons she believe are causing so many people to feel unable to connect to other people in long term relationships. Factors such as the change in the meaning of community, fear of making connections, difficult parental relationships and much more.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast. Please subscribe to the Micki Lavin-Pell blog where you can read more powerful articles and hear more podcasts on healthy relationships.
Micki is also available for her renowned one on one counseling sessions via Skype. More information here:
Book Review for Hold Me Tight, by Dr. Sue Johnson
When most couples first get married, they believe that their job is done. The hard part is behind them. They have met the love of their life and now they can happily breathe a sigh of relief in knowing that they have found the ONE.
Of course, the bubble usually pops at some point, usually after the marriage. Couples realize new things about their partners that they never noticed before. Raw spots get triggered. Often painful and lonely moments creep in. Feelings of hurt and abandonment arise as our dream partner says or does the wrong thing, hits a raw nerve, behaves less than perfectly.
In Sue Johnson’s seminal book, Hold Me Tight, she describes these painful moments as she vividly describes couples who were just about ready to throw in the towel thinking they must have married the WRONG ONE! She vividly illustrates how our early childhood attachment wounds (a theory developed by 1950’s psychologist John Bowlby) remain with us as we choose partners in hopes of healing those wounds. Yet instead despite all of our best efforts, we reach for partners who trigger those same wounds, for the simple reason that we are attracted to that which we know.
http://amzn.to/2tI6hb1
Hold Me Tight is an attempt to offer couples a window into a better understanding about how our connection with our partners can sometimes go awry. She also explains how our demon dialogues – those pesky conversations we replay time and again with the love of our life – can be transformed to Hold Me Tight moments.
In this book, Sue Johnson uses seven primary examples of where most couples will go wrong. She eloquently demonstrates how rewriting these pain inducing conversations, by hearing one another’s deepest fears and seeing our partner in a new light using the attachment goggles, can help bring couples together as they gain a better understanding and appreciation for the other’s wounds.
Hold Me Tight and the theory that underpins the book, “Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy” (EFT), represents a groundbreaking approach to couples therapy. EFT has 20 years of research to back it up. While most schools of couples therapy yields results as low as 35%, EFT touts results as high as 75%.
The EFT approach is so groundbreaking that creators of other well-known programs including John Gottman (the Gottman Method) and Harville Hendrix (Imago Therapy) support the use of this technique for first line treatment in order to heal the couple’s wounds.
Click here to purchase a copy of the book.
Top Tips to Ensure Relationship Differences Don’t Tear You Apart!
My husband and I got engaged over July 4th weekend 17 years ago. As we were living in New York at the time, the date was chosen more out of convenience, as we had a long holiday/vacation weekend.
While English is our mother tongue, he being British and me being American we occasionally found that we used to butt heads when it came to cultural comforts. For him, watching the cricket is sacrosanct. It’s tantamount to attending Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur…You just don’t miss it!!!
Obviously for me, watching cricket wasn’t even nearly on my radar. I occasionally watched baseball and my family enjoys it here and there, but it’s not massively high on our list of priorities. This is something that varies from family to family as well.
Reconcilable Differences, by Dr. Jim A. Talley
The major differences between Brits and American’s I’ve discovered over the years is in our use of language. For example Brits use the loo instead of the bathroom. Getting pissed in the UK means your massively wasted, whereas in America it means you’re furious. Biscuits in the UK are cookies in the US. If something gets nicked from a Brit, it’s been stolen. If something is nicked to an American it means an object needs a touch up. There are some obvious pronunciation differences: Tomato, has a hard A sound to an American, and a soft A to a Brit.
The greatest difference my husband and I encountered when we first got together was our attention to politeness. Sadly to say, we Yanks just don’t give a toss (to coin an English term) when it comes to manners half as much as our English counterparts (obviously this varies from family to family as well). This was something that drove my husband crazy when we first got together. He’s all about walking house guests to the door when they’re about to leave. He makes sure to say the word please, even when it seems superfluous, and thanks people profusely, even when they piss him off (American usage).
The one that used to drive me the most insane early on in our marriage was his constantly apologizing for things that he did even if it didn’t bother me or seem to warrant an apology. As in “I’m sorry to say, but I disagree with your opinion about x,y,z…” In my head I’d be screaming, “Stop f#$%ing apologizing all the bloody (to coin a British phrase) time.”
Yep, lots of couple’s encounter differences between them. You don’t have to be from different cultures to be challenged by your differences…Even couples from the same town, who share the same religious ideology and have similar education levels will find they have differences about how things should be that can piss (American usage here) the hell out of each other.
Things like attention to cleanliness. I remember a while back working with a couple who had different ideas about levels of cleanliness. The husband was very particular about always capping the toothpaste and making sure you couldn’t find a speck of dust. She was also clean and tidy, in fact this was something she loved about him. She just didn’t take it to his level.
Her attention to detail was slightly less, and caused great friction between them.
After working together a short while, we discovered that the real issue for him was the way he was raised. Being the son of poor immigrants he was taught to value everything, not to take anything for granted. He took this level of meaning very seriously and applied it to everything…For him waste was second to committing a horrible sin. She also was raised to care about her things and not squander, just not to the same degree.
By understanding where each was coming from and the attachment to objects that each was encouraged to have, they were better able to appreciate and understand where each was coming from. He was able to calm down a bit and she was able to appreciate things slightly more.
Here is a tip list that may help you if you find that you and your bf/gf or partner have differences that feel hard to reconcile:
- Understand how this issue is triggering you?
- Work through where you learned to feel so strongly about that issue.
- Share feelings that come up for you in relation to your difference.
- Respond to your partner with empathy when they are the ones sharing their feelings
- If you find it too difficult to feel empathetic, find out why (is it because you so strongly disagree?)
- Try to find a happy medium between your different ideas. If it doesn’t exist, take turns doing things different ways, until you choose one way or the other or create a new way altogether.
Know that lots of couples have differences between them. Far too many get scared off by their feelings and think they have to run away or attack their partner. When strong feelings come up for you about your differences it doesn’t mean you made a mistake. It’s normal for all couples to have differences…but you do need to tend to them, lest they fester and cause even more gaps between you.
For more information about how to deal with your differences, check out my video on dealing with differences between men and women: http://snip.ly/zzdsb
The Torah of Commitment to your Relationship!
The more we take a leap of faith and believe in ourselves, the better able we will be to commit to someone else.
How to Make Sure You Aren’t Settling 4 Love?
Are you concerned about settling for love and making the biggest mistake of your life? Read this article to find out what questions to focus on when searching for love?
Is Jealousy Stealing your Chance for Love?
For some of us, jealousy and pain rear its ugly green eyes when we see someone we know jump with joy as they get engaged. We want to feel happy for other people’s joy, but sometimes it sits on our own insecurities. It heightens our fears about not achieving what others have. It makes us wonder whether we can have that too.
Jealousy is the kind of pain I very much relate too. Who hasn’t?
Shirley, a client, admitted to me that jealousy is all too real for her as she’s been dating for nearly 10+years. She’s on every Jewish dating site known to man. She’s not picky when it comes to going on dates (she described the level to which she’s willing to be open to someone new) and she attends lots of events. She’s out there doing it all!
“So why isn’t it happening for me?” she says. How much do I have to do already to make it happen?
Shirley’s experience with jealousy is far from unique. It’s a painful story I come across regularly…
The thing that’s particularly bothering Shirley, even more than dealing with jealousy and all that she is doing to partner up, is the fact that everyone else seems to find a partner so easily.
What REALLY goes through Shirley’s mind when she sees yet another friend get ENGAGED?
What Shirley’s really saying is, “I’m so scared I’ll be alone forever.”
Some of us go into panic mode as jealousy shoots through us when we see yet another friend get engaged.
For those of us trying to find love for sooooo long, when we see someone we know get engaged we feel further from rather than closer to finding love.
This is actually counter-intuitive and not helpful thinking. If there’s another guy off the market, then that’s one less guy you have to worry about dating, right?
Shirley, like many others, mistakenly feels that if someone else has him than he must be a good catch.
But if he was really meant for her, what stopped her from seeing him as a viable option before.
The real questions are:
- What’s stopping us from being able to see a good potential partner in all their glory while they’re single and available?
Some of us say we want to marry a nice person, but when that nice person actually comes along, we have doubts. We don’t believe they can really be that great, or we focus on their faults. We do this as a way of protecting ourselves from being with someone who may not be good for us. But in reality it only stops us from seeing possibilities.
We’ve been hurt before and we get scared that the good person will suddenly go bad. Like the others who came before them. So we test them to see how much crap they can take
The one’s with gumption, and self-worth disappear (and rightfully so) to find greener pastures.
Those who don’t value themselves and who are used to being used, taken advantage of or worse being abused, remain. Eventually we see them as weak, lose respect and leave.
Some of us, deep down, really don’t believe that we deserve to be treated that well. or
We tell ourselves the good one will get on our nerves over time. Rather than be able to feel rest assured that being treated well is a good thing, and notice and appreciate this is what we want. And gosh darn it, we deserve it!
- Why do some men (or women) only look good once they’re on someone else’s arm?
Some of us always believe the grass is always greener on someone else’s lawn. Or other people’s toys are better than our own.
For some reason we can’t allow ourselves to believe that when we see a good thing and get it, it’s actually good for us.
There’s something in our make-up that just won’t allow ourselves to be satisfied with Good Enough. So we wait for perfection, which of course never comes (because it doesn’t exist)!
Frustration and tension builds as we continue on our own.
The trick is to allow ourselves to be open to possibilities without compromising our values, or going against our own better judgement.
In this case Shirley believed there are a finite number of possibilities. The belief there are only a certain number of available men, and that she’s met them all, was locking her into a negative holding pattern.
Through relationship counselling Shirley soon discovered that what lay beneath these feelings was a lack of belief she was entitled to good things. She also needed to know there’s more than enough to go around.
Even though there might be a slight skew in numbers of available men and women in the world, things are constantly changing. People are constantly coming in and out of relationships. Some people take more time to mature than others. Change in the world is constant. And this means that possibilities for love are countless and endless.
The more we allow ourselves to feel worthy and alive, the more connected we feel to our inner selves. This then enables us to feel more confident that when we see someone else’s joy we can participate in it more fully. We can know that just as others can feel joy we can too!
Does jealousy or envy sometimes get in your way of love? I hear you loud and clear…Drop me a line and let me know about it…[email protected].