“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often...
It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self love deficit. ~ Eartha Kitt Anyone who tried being in a relationship with someone who was lacking in self love knows how hard it is to constantly validate and affirm where they themselves keep belittling and denigrating themselves. And eventually the moment...
“I am learning to love the sound of my feet walking away from things that are not meant for me.” When relationships shift or end I have learned to be vigilant as I keep my ego on a short leash to assure it doesn’t play out the narratives of break ups and suffering it has been conditioned to believe. I do not allow it to denigrate the other to...
Men. It is imperative that we respect a woman’s “No”. Bow to it. Really really hear it. And if her “No” brings us pain and discomfort, it is imperative that we own that pain, take full responsibility for it. That we give ourselves full permission to feel disappointed, rejected, sad, afraid, abandoned. That we own these uncomfortable feelings, and do not ‘take them out’ on her in our search...
“Self-loathing is a poison so many of us drink. We cocoon in its phlegm and lose ourselves. And then we starting looking to other people to nourish our souls; to feed us attention, validation, completion, love. And when the dose is insufficient, we put others down – to their faces, in our heads -because sucking energy out of people for a whiff of fast food superiority is juicy, fatty...
“Good relationships trigger the hell out of us without trashing the relationship; great relationships trigger the hell out of us while deepening the relationship. And the best relationships use whatever happens, however difficult or disheartening, not only to deepen the relationship but also to awaken us beyond it. What does not work in a relationship (assuming that neither partner is abusing the other) is what can make it truly...
Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see. ~ Leslie Jamison Empathy is a fundamentally important element of relationship skills and indispensable for holding space. Though it is often defined as imagining what something would...
Lately I am experiencing people’s fragility and reactivity around the use of appropriate labels that are self chosen by another or a group of people. This mean ego move is not unknown to me, I have been doing this and might be in the danger of doing so when triggered, out of ignorance and lack of sensitivity. I understand the discomfort with labels some might feel with a view...
