Soulmate Skills

“Yes, you are indeed in labor, giving birth–and to what you do not know, nor do I–but I will be here to give you whatever help you wish and to hold your dear hand when it gets painful, and encourage you to bear down.  I am here [as with my therapy clients] to help you give birth to yourself.”  Jim wrote that to me only one month into our relationship.  I was in an intense change and growth process.  And that can be painful, as you may know.  It was incredibly comforting to have Jim beside me (psychologically speaking; he was 2000 miles away).  His support and encouragement helped me birth strength and clarity and self-expansion.  And happiness.  Just as Jim was for me, you can be each other’s midwives in your own growth processes.  Just listen, encourage, and stand with the other in their pain, holding them.  It will be a wondrous experience.

We can live only in the experience.  Well, that’s nice.  Or we can deepen our ecstasy by stepping back from ourselves and beholding who we are as a couple.  This is how Jim did it in his June 1989 letter to me:  “I want to tell you how pleased I am at the way we bring up issues and glitches and process them immediately…how well we function together.  We move very fast, darling, and we dig very deep.  As we work through issue after issue, I feel more and more bonded.”  As he wrote those words, and as I read them, our closeness intensified.  When you step back and observe yourselves, you’ll have the opportunity to evaluate how you’re doing, then to tweak any spots that you’d like, then to celebrate what you are creating.  You’ll create bliss.

No one knows this.  It’s a discovery Jim made in his 40 years of work with helping clients and with working on his own stuff.  It’s the secret of what your fear is really about.  It’s about Perfectionism.  Here’s the connection:  Your fear is driven by an Inner Critic should to be perfect.  Afraid of failing?  That’s a should not to fail.  Afraid to strike up a conversation with that person you’re attracted to?  That’s a should not to risk getting rejected.  Afraid of never finding a soulmate?  That’s a should to find a soulmate.  You don’t deserve to be tormented by fear.  We teach our workshop participants and counseling clients how to get free of fear.  It’s to speak a challenging statement to each Inner Critic should contained in your fear:  I have the right to fail.  I have the right risk getting rejected.  I have the right to never find a soulmate.  I’m still a good person.  As you practice challenging your Inner Critic shoulds, you’ll find, as our clients do, your fear diminishing to a manageable twinge.  And ultimately–vanishing.*

*Read page 139 in our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic, for more on getting free of fear.  It’s available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

Do you want more closeness but keep coming up lacking?  You know that longing for a deeper connection?  We wanted that too.  Here’s what you need:  Involvement Skills.  There are 3 main ingredients of involved conversations: 1) You’re truly interested in what your partner says; 2) you take what they say seriously; and 3) you come to grips with it.  Now that will require your being interested in your partner and empathizing with your partner.  The opposite of involvement is silence or monosyllable answers.  To experience involvement, ask Interested Questions and give Fully Responsive Answers.  Read our love letters.  They’re full of involvement.  As you experience your own involved conversations, you’ll feel the thrill of closeness.  That’s high-voltage relating.

Can’t seem to find your soulmate?  Or think you’ve found the one but keep sabotaging the closeness you could have?  Here’s the big block to finding and living out your soulmate love:  Your Reactivity.  That’s the internal structure of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that you’ve developed to deal with emotional pain.  What emotional pain?  The pain caused by your Inner Critic.  It’s been putting you down for years.  Telling you you’re defective and inferior.  Faced with this load of pain, you had to develop a way to get some relief.  So you started constricting yourself:  “Oh, I can’t think that.  I can’t say that.  And I certainly shouldn’t feel that.”  Now, just like a hurt limb that you keep immobile to control the pain, your whole being has become frozen.  Constricted.  There is a way out.  Start identifying and challenging your Inner Critic shoulds.  “I have the right to think or feel anything.  I’m still a good person.”  As you uncramp your Natural Self; as you let it come alive, you’ll be opening yourself to creating your heart’s desire.  And that means your soulmate love.*

*Disarming Your Inner Critic will equip you to become free.  It’s availabe here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

Want to know whether you’re loved or liked?  Feel embarrassed to ask?  It’s just not done, right?  Wrong!  High-Voltage partners do it all the time.  In fact, it’s necessary.  “Do you love me?” or “Do you like me?” are more than requests for information.  They’re requests for the expression  of warm feelings.  If your partner is not interested in expressing such feelings, she or he is not interested in having a high-voltage relationship of intense closeness.  If your partner says “Yes”, here’s the next question to ask, “What do you love about me?”  The love that gets expressed fans the flame of your soulmate connection.  It can warm a heart, a home, a life.

Oh, it’s a temptation:  To twist yourself into a pretzel for your soulmate.  To give up your identity so you won’t displease them.  So they won’t leave.  I’ve felt that too.  Here’s how Jim guided me about this in his March 1989 letter:  “I need you to be free, creative, your own person, mentally powerful, able to challenge me.  I need a full human being.  I care about you so much that I want you as you are, not a pretzelized Kathyoid.  I will not leave you just because you continue to be yourself.  I will go on being charmed and pleased by your otherness.”  There you have the map.  Dare to be yourself.  Your soulmate will behold your otherness.  And will let the wonder of it sink in.

Ah, the impulse to be perfect!  It’s always with us.  So, of course, it will tug at us when we find our soulmate.  Only two months after Jim and I met, he set us on the right path.  I want to share with you what he wrote:  “Let us continue to help each other, with patience and love, with the ability to accept any mistakes either of us might make; remember that any such mistake is always correctable.  We don’t have to do this perfectly; all we have to do is learn as we go.”  You don’t have to be perfect.  Just be a learner.*

*Disarming Your Inner Critic will help you tremendously in overcoming the impulse to be perfect.  It’s available here on our Products page and at Amazon.com.

The Switch:  They begin the relationship being close and loving.  But at some point they’ll feel smothered.  Begin to start arguments over petty things.  Say “I need my space” and “I don’t want to talk about it.”  It’s puzzling to both the Switcher and their partner.  Why does the switch from closeness to distance happen?  Because The Switcher lacks the ability to be assertive on a day-to-day basis.  So in intimate relationships they’ll inevitably end up feeling suffocated and trapped.  To the Switcher, it looks like the cause of those suffocating feelings is his partner or the marriage.  Actually, it’s his Inner Critic–constricting him from saying what he wants and needs in the relationship without having to work up enough anger to justify it.  Bottom line is the Switcher just wants to feel free.  We help Switchers get truly free.  By challening those Inner Critic shoulds to not rock the boat, to not ask for what they want.  Once free from the Inner Critic, our tolerance for closeness increases.  In fact, it’s the only way to enjoy it.*

*See p. 102 of Disarming Your Inner Critic for more on getting free from the Switch pattern.  It’s available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

Do you want to know how to melt a woman?  Here’s the secret:  Speak your powerful approval of her.  Here’s how Jim did it in his March 1989 letter to me:  “My maleness has surveyed (and will survey) your female qualities, feelings, thoughts–and I pronounce them exquisitely good and wholesome.  Just the way you’re supposed to be.  I cast my strong male look of deep satisfaction and approval over all that I see.  You are my choice, among all women; you are the way a woman ought to be.”  Oh, my!  Did I melt!  Try it.  Behold her.  Approve of her.  Tell her.  You can melt your woman.