#6  May 3, 2012 The Emotional Climate Dictates The Relationship’s Capacity

Every relationship has it’s own emotional climate that will dictate your capacity either to relax and make more room to become yourself with this new person or it will stimulate the impulse to work too hard at it and protect yourself.  The climate of the [...]]]>  

 #6  May 3, 2012 The Emotional Climate Dictates The Relationship’s Capacity

Every relationship has it’s own emotional climate that will dictate your capacity either to relax and make more room to become yourself with this new person or it will stimulate the impulse to work too hard at it and protect yourself.  The climate of the relationship determines what it can bear—can the relationship hold all that you are?  When the emotional climate is built on authenticity, then self exposure is not dangerous and getting to know a new potential partner will feel natural, supporting you to let down your guard easily and build a foundation of intimate communication. But if the climate is protective it will be difficult for things to organically unfold between the two of you and it will be hard for you to become more transparent and vulnerable with each other. 

Pay attention to the presence of flow and effort.  Relationships unfold in a healthy way when there is a sense of flow.  Flow is not to be confused with huge physical chemistry, very different.  Flow feels relaxing but chemistry feels exciting and a bit anxious.  When there is a sense of flow, everything seems to work easily, no one feels they have to strain or try to be super patient.  Your level of interest is commensurate.  It just clicks!  Where effort is present it usually means that the climate will be more protected.  If you are wondering what to say or do, or spending a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on in the relationship then it may be requiring too much effort to allow love and intimacy to develop.  A more expansive emotional climate will give you the feeling of having plenty of room in which to be who you are with this person.  This is a great way to feel with another person, and it is essential if you are to have true harmony going forward. 

When I met my first soulmate twenty years ago, the emotional climate was very open and it was relatively easy for us to get to know each other.  Neither of us were recovering from being hurt in our prior relationship and our level of emotional health was good.  Before coming together, each of us had spent a number of years working on our emotional growth in a variety of ways.  However, once my marriage ended and I began a new relationship I was surprised to discover that the emotional climate with this new man was much more protected than I was used to.  I was also surprised that his protective way of being was infectious—it made me much more protective than I was accustomed to being.  We were actually shy with each other when it came to talking about our feelings or sharing things that made us uncomfortable.  We seemed to keep focusing on the positive, which made our time together enjoyable, but it didn’t allow for emotional intimacy to develop.  I am generally very articulate about my emotions—I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  I was crazy about this man and there were many wonderful aspects to our relationship, but we just couldn’t seem to talk easily. 

Several months into the relationship I started to realize something was missing, but it was almost too late.  We tried to improve our communication and made some progress but it never really got off the ground.  When the relationship ended after six months both of us were very sad—we really cared for and enjoyed each other, but we had to admit that something was not quite right, emotional intimacy wasn’t flowing easily between us.  This is the mysterious flow versus effort principle.  It doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with us or with them—it just means we are not a fit together.  It’s a neutral statement. We don’t need to know why it isn’t flowing, but the sooner we can move on from an effort-based relationship, the better.   We just need to follow our intuition to where we are a fit.

One way to start to see how much the relationship can bear is by bringing more of yourself to it.  My tried and true technique for this is to, “share your needs, feelings, and unenlightened stuff and risk losing, angering and frustrating people”.   This simple phrase can help you break free from carefully showing only the nice parts of yourself.  For a relationship to deepen and grow in intimacy we have to be willing to expose what we may perceive as our “less loveable aspects”.  When we share our fears, or neediness, our jealousy and our occasional feelings of unworthiness we actually build a bigger vessel in which to receive love.  We make more room for our self to be in the relationship with another person and meet our needs simultaneously.  A relationship with a robust climate of openness will feel safe and naturally elicit the impulse to let down your guard and be real with this new person.  When we begin to share more of our self in a new relationship, those who with whom you could harmonize will want more of you and this kind of sharing, but those who are more comfortable with protection will fall away.  This is good!  You want the unsuitable suitors to fall away quickly.  You could never have been happy with them anyway.

The first step toward creating a relationship founded in love and authenticity is to close the door to the one you are in that is making you work too hard.  Having recently done this, it is hard, sad and scary and takes some time to move through letting go of something that was pretty good-but would never be really great.  But if you want a great love, you will have to let go of your mediocre love.  The next step is to find a sense of ease and flow in all areas of your current life, this includes bringing a huge sense of self acceptance to areas of your life that are still “in progress”.  I do this by saying to myself,  “As I love and nurture myself, not how I think I should be, but how I am in this moment, I draw my beloved to me”.    As you move into living with a big feeling of self acceptance, flow and possibility, your energy will become irresistible and your beloved soul’s mate will find you with ease.  

© 2012 Margo Davis-Hollander, is an unpublished work protected by copyright law in the United States.  It cannot be reproduced, copied, lent to other people without the written consent of Margo Davis-Hollander.

Soulmate Coach Attracts Her New Soulmate:

Insight Into The Mysterious Process Of Surrendering To  Love

 #4  April 16th 2012  Share your needs, feelings and unenlightened stuff and risk losing, angering and frustrating others.

Good life coaches always have their own coach, mine is Hans Phillips in Santa Cruz, California. When I told him that I just ended the [...]]]>  

Soulmate Coach Attracts Her New Soulmate:

Insight Into The Mysterious Process Of Surrendering To  Love

 #4  April 16^th 2012  Share your needs, feelings and unenlightened stuff and risk losing, angering and frustrating others.

Good life coaches always have their own coach, mine is Hans Phillips in Santa Cruz, California. When I told him that I just ended the six month relationship that started the moment my twenty year marriage done he suggested that I slow everything down right now, including my speech, my movement, my mind and my plans. He instructed me to focus on physical self care and balance in my life. Then he asked if I would consider dating myself for a specified period of time, six months to a year, explaining that some time to transition will greatly improve the quality of my next relationship. He reminded me that there is always grief and loss to process and dating will get in the way of that. To begin a new relationship now would be like having an operation and leaving the hospital too early. Such a vivid metaphor, I was now paying attention! I didn’t like the idea of wandering through life with a bloody head bandage, even if it was only symbolically.

I would tell any of my clients who are ending a significant relationship to take the time now to gather yourself up now so that you enter the world of dating as a whole person. I know for a fact that we always attract someone who approximates the level of emotional health and availability that we possess. I want to begin my new life attracting my soulmate as a well fed lioness, rather than a hungry squirrel!

So I awoke the morning to this phrase in my head, “share your needs, feelings and unenlightened stuff and risk losing, angering, and frustrating others”. I created this slogan twenty two years ago when I realized I had a habit of changing myself to try to get a man I was interested in to like, want, adore and approve of me. One of those try-to-fix-it-with-your –emotionally-unavailable-father patterns. Most women I work with have some version of this, since most fathers of up until very recently have been pretty emotionally undeveloped. This is a cultural phenomenon—not just a personal one. But the good news is that when the focus is on keeping you and you are willing to risk losing them, miracles happen. Not only do you get to enjoy the powerful feeling of being a mature woman in the presence of a man you find attractive, but you usually have the uncanny experience of watching him respond so positively to your authenticity-you get to keep him too. With some of my clients I have to suggest that they sear in their brain “lose them, keep you!” Sometimes we need just a simple phrase to encourage us to set the tone that will serve us better in the beginning of a relationship.

I am a firm believer in laying down a healthy foundation in the beginning because I see how powerfully this determines what comes later. Most people don’t realize that following some of these simple rules can make such a huge difference. You no longer have to feel anxious or needy or obsessive, because you will ask for what you want, clearly made plans, no waiting around for them to call you kind of thing. Many times we get so nutty with these early relationships because we don’t say what works for us early on. It’s kind of like dealing with teenagers, if you set a context by telling them when you’d like them to call you, more than likely they will, but if you don’t specify the time, whose fault is it that you are waiting around until midnight for their call?

Your job is to weed out the unsuitable suitors!
Twenty years ago when I first met my husband he asked me if I was interested in a casual relationship. My response was “No, I am interested in meeting the man I want to marry.” Whoa! A man who was not interested in marriage would have run for the door, which would have saved us both time if our intentions were not aligned. Now I didn’t know that he would be the man I’d eventually marry. But he later told me that if I had given him a more vague response our relationship would have proceeded very differently. We might not have treated each other with the same care and respect that led to our marriage. So don’t be afraid of saying who you are and want you want. Your job is to weed out the unsuitable suitors! Those who have no intention of being anyone’s soulmate will self eliminate. You want this to happen, because the more clarity you get about who does not harmonize with you—you will be closer to attracting what will harmonize. You can’t refine what you want by being alone for years, theorizing about what the kind of partner you want.

Each new dating experience and relationship is an opportunity to practice creating greater amounts of space for yourself to have more of you in a love relationship. Space to have your needs met and space to say what you feel and speak up when you are uncomfortable with what your potential partner is saying or doing. I was good at doing this with my former husband, in part because a climate of intimacy and authenticity existed easily between us. But my recent relationship was different. I hadn’t done this with a new man in a very long time, yet it was awkward for another reason—the climate for intimate sharing did not exist easily with him. We were shy with each other when it came to verbal communication. This puzzled me since we were anything but shy in other domains. It doesn’t really matter why the harmonious climate for sharing the hard stuff was not there—when it’s lacking the relationship will begin to feel “hard” and so will getting our needs met—that will likely be on both sides. When you take the risk to share the hard stuff you’ll find out what this potential relationship can bear. If it can’t stand up to who you really are and what you really need and want you will likely be happier with another. See if you can be grateful for all of these leaning relationships and think of them as mini-workshops giving you the precious training ground you need to fine tune your love compass—the intuitive part of you that will be able to sense harmony when you experience it.

Dating doesn’t have to include game playing and discomfort and anxiety. But you have to set the context of emotional health and comfort if you are ready to value yourself enough to choose peace instead of drama. “Share your needs, feelings and unenlightened stuff and risk losing, angering, and frustrating others”. When you value you, the world values you. But you have to do it first, and you will be amazed at how the world starts to respond.

© 2012 Margo Davis-Hollander, is an unpublished work protected by copyright law in the United States. It cannot be reproduced, copied, lent to other people without the written consent of Margo Davis-Hollander.

#3 April 15th 2012 When you meet your soulmate it all flows with relative ease

“When you finally meet and spend time with your true love, you will know why all of the other loves were just preparation for this one.”

People often ask [...]]]> Soulmate Coach Attracts Her New Soulmate:
Insight Into The Mysterious Process Of Surrendering To Love

#3 April 15th 2012 When you meet your soulmate it all flows with relative ease

“When you finally meet and spend time with your true love, you will know why all of the other loves were just preparation for this one.”

People often ask me, “How will I know it’s my soulmate?” My answer is that the striking lack of drama, wondering how the relationship is going, feeling mystified, slightly off kilter, and trying too hard will be missing. When you are getting to know your soulmate you will feel happy, peaceful and a pervading sense of rightness.

With your soulmate the natural harmony between the two of you will be there every step of the way. Another way of explaining this is to talk about the difference between effort and flow. When you meet and begin to spend time with your beloved you will be struck by the sense of ease that will surround all of your interactions. The way that you meet will be easy and arranging dates will not be a struggle. You will feel a sense of flow with how you get to know each other and how you move through the stages of dating and intimacy.

I remember noticing how different this was in the beginning with my first soulmate, my former husband, in comparison to so many of the men I had been involved with before—there was no drama or huge effort required to understand him. My needs were easily met in ways that were appropriate for each stage of dating because there was a natural progression–we both wanted the same thing. Prior to him, I had grown all too familiar with relationships where communication often felt cryptic, requiring lots of effort to interpret how things were going. Finally clear that I wanted a relationship that would be reciprocal with a partner who had a lot to offer me, I began to focus on receiving and moving through my days with a rich sense of ease and allowing instead of effort. I was deeply steeped in that way of being when I met the man that I would marry. I could not believe how easy it all felt. I kept wondering, “where is the hard part?”.

If this one thing were different we would have a great relationship
It doesn’t matter why the relationship is not coming together easlily, it just isn’t and that is the key thing to pay attention to. Whether it is because of your schedules, a long distance thing, your kids, their job, the fact that they are still gun-shy from a past love that hurt them or a major crisis in their life it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that something is not lining up with synchronicity—that is saying enough about the viability of the relationship. Divine timing is essential in this soulmate thing. Your genuine readiness to have a great love must align with another who is also at that exact moment of readiness. When I say readiness I am also speaking of availability on all levels yours and theirs. Once you are truly ready for a great love and you meet with another who is also truly ready and you share similar values and interests and are compatible it is likely you will have found your soulmate.

We all know the kind of “learning” relationship that requires you to spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what the other person is saying and managing yourself because they are not really meeting you. This can even occur when you are dating a really nice person. Sometimes there is a lag time for us to realize that we are not really getting what we need from our partner because the exchange of energy takes place at the subtle energetic level that is below the words. You just sense it.

But when we are being met fully in a loving relationship there is a sense of calm that gives us lots of good energy for our life. This other kind of “learning” relationship can become incredibly draining quickly without us even realizing it because the effort required to maintain it creeps up on us gradually after the initial attraction period. Looking back at my participation in those kinds of dynamics I realize I was never feeling empowered while with those partners, but that’s because the way our energies met stimulated that—only a harmonious relationship will nourish you. It is not possible to be empowered with that kind of dynamic, even if the other person seems really great. If you aren’t feeling great that is the truth to note.

The emotional pain exists to get us to notice the lack of flow and quickly move on! We have to learn to say to ourselves, “Wait, stop, this is feeling like too much effort. Something is not right here.” We are particularly vulnerable to this kind of pattern if we have never had a truly reciprocal relationship or had parents with whom our needs were not easily met. Eventually the high maintenance relationship starts to steal the vitality that we need to participate in and contribute to our life.

I am humbled to admit that after twenty years with a partner who met me easily in love and emotional availability, when newly single, I stumbled into a fun but puzzling relationship with a lovely man that ended up requiring a lot of effort to figure it out. His initial hesitance should have been a red flag, but because he was very sweet and amorous, I was unable to see the potential for an effortful relationship. It seemed like things would be easy with this new man; our interest felt commensurate, we had a lot in common and seemed to want the same kind of long term relationship in theory, both of us were fairly mature and had similar values in many areas. In the very beginning he was pursuing me appropriately—this is important for a man to do in order to allow him to develop his curiosity and interest in a woman. But after a couple of months he began to perplex me, he seemed to be taking two steps forward and then two back repeatedly. What did this man really want? What did he mean in this conversation or that email? It was too much work to figure out! It took six months to realize that while a close fit, it was not the right fit for either of us. While it is always sad to end a love relationship, after a little while we see it’s good because moving on brings us closer to a partner with whom we will truly fit.

Keep a dating log to outsmart non rational desire
Now my radar now is back in place after twenty years. I will be paying attention to the effort versus flow balance in the next relationship. One way I have done this in the past is to keep, what I call, a nourishment log. This is a small notebook where I list each date, call or email with a potential partner. I record what was nourishing, or in the flow about each interaction in the front of the book and flip to the back to record what was depleting or effortful. The record is to give you some advantage over your desire. The desire hormones are designed to obscure our rational brain, they push us into becoming sexual to make babies for the continuance of the human race. This biological drive has nothing to do with our long term well being—it is biology out for it’s own best interest. But we can intervene in the face of desire by utilizing tools to help us evaluate if a relationship will be nourishing. By taking notes on how you are feeling in response to each new suitor, you can develop a strong inner compass from which to navigate yourself into a harmonious love relationship.

© 2012 Margo Davis-Hollander, is an unpublished work protected by copyright law in the United States. It cannot be reproduced, copied, lent to other people without the written consent of Margo Davis-Hollander.
Soulmate Coach Attracts Her New Soulmate:
Insight Into The Mysterious Process Of Surrendering To Love

There is poetry in knowing that every earthly minute is imbued with rightness—even when it doesn’t seem so.  This happened for me unexpectedly, though I now see how [...]]]> “Oh earth you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Does anyone ever really realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” Thornton Wilder

There is poetry in knowing that every earthly minute is imbued with rightness—even when it doesn’t seem so.  This happened for me unexpectedly, though I now see how I had been stumbling toward it for many years.  A friend and colleague died suddenly in an accident last fall. We had been emailing about getting together for lunch soon, and a week later I learned she was gone. At first it was shocking and very sad.  Yet as weeks passed, I kept thinking of the poignant line in Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s classic play about small town America in the early 20^th century, “Oh earth you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Does anyone ever really realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”  Said by the ghost of Emily, a recently departed young mother, as she witnesses an every day scene from her former mortal existence. Then the play’s stagehand answers her,  “No, saints and poets–maybe they do some.”  Suggesting this kind of realization is not for regular folk.  Somehow the loss of my friend seared this concept into my being—“realize your life every, every moment”, and dare to be one of those saints or poets.

Now, I can’t stop thinking that my deceased friend would give her right arm to have the challenges I face each moment of my earthly existence. Now in the kitchen when my 9 and 13 year old boys, begin to bicker over who gets to sit in a certain seat or when the older ones call the younger one an idiot and the younger lashes out and belts him, — I am grateful!  Before I would have felt angry, resentful,  and murmur to myself, “if only they were different, I could be at peace”.  It is different now, today I recognize this is the substance of family life, the brick and mortar that holds our human foundation together. There cannot be endless days of harmonious interactions.  That is not our human condition, we do not have the ability to control others.  The only thing we are entitled to is the sweetness and bitterness of our own existence, and only our perception of that sweet or bitter existence is what’s pliable.  Each and every moment of this imperfect human life, with all of it’s pushing and pulling, meeting and competing, loving and hating, is the substance of our lives.

What makes a person ready to seize every, every minute in all of it’s raw and awkward rightness? A dark night of the soul seems like the most likely path, because the dark night experience beats our egoic self will into submitting to our maker, making us ready to want freedom over all else. Suffering humbles us. We need to be purged before we are ready for an enduring union with the divine. Otherwise divinity appears too cheap to our grasping minds.  A breakdown in the key areas; health, relationship, money or career will force us to admit we don’t have a clue about how to properly conduct our lives.  Once we have the breakdown, admit we are clueless and powerless, we have a shot at something huge and beautiful that is endless and all enduring. Union with the divine rarely comes to those who have not released their faulty operating systems.  Union with the divine comes to those who are willing to be broken, to die unto their small selves.  Only then will we want freedom because we have nothing else to lose, and only then will we want freedom more than we want to keep controlling everything.

 Realize Your Life Every, Every Minute © 2010 Margo Davis-Hollander, is an unpublished work protected by copyright law in the United States.  It cannot be reproduced, copied, lent to other people without the written consent of Margo Davis-Hollander. To view other articles by Margo Davis-Hollander see her website: soulmateattraction.net.