Soulmate Skills

We’re going to give it to you straight.  If you want a high-voltage soulmate relationship, you have to flatly refuse to live by toxic values.  These may suprise you:  1) Relationship Perfectionism–it causes defensiveness; 2) Reactive Pride–it makes you touchy and quick to take offense; 3) Thinking it’s OK to Act Out Negativity–anger, secretiveness, harsh criticism–it will wreck your relationship; 4) Living in Your Little Boy or Little Girl–you’ll feel like a victim with no power and see your partner as the powerful parent.  If you’ve gotten into any of these, we want to set you free.  You have a choice.  Values are chosen.  What you choose is what you get.  Instead of these toxic values, choose love, psychological flexibility, forthcomingness, and working on your stuff.  You’ll be laying the foundation for an optimal high-voltage relationship.

“I live like a spy in enemy territory–Don’t give anything away, because they might get you. I give partial responses.  Jim asks for more, and I grudgingly give it.”  I found this in a journal entry I wrote a number of years ago.  It was a pattern I’d gotten into.  Play it close to the vest.  Jim asked me, “Tell me more.  Don’t just give me a short answer.  Don’t be silent for long stretches.  Don’t shut down.  Don’t shut me out.”  As I analyzed my stuff, I realized I had an Inner Critic should* to be a perfect wife, with no pathology.  I held back on revealing myself in order to obey this should.  Perhaps you can relate to this.  If you, too, live your relationship like a spy, revealing little to your partner, you can change.  It takes an attitude shift.  Ask yourself, “Do I want to be so self-protective and wreck my relationship?  Or do I want to have the right to make mistakes and correct them?”  There’s nothing wrong with that.  It happens all the time.  Join me.  Come out of the cold.

*Read Disarming Your Inner Critic, James Elliott with Kathryn Elliott, for more on getting free.  Available here on our Products page and at Amazon.com.

“I feel like a little child, trusting and good.  Innocent and loving.  Facing you.”  Jim wrote this to me two months after we met.  It reminds me that love requires a return to innocence.  When we love, we drop our defenses.  We open our hearts.  Like little children, we have no facade of coolness or toughness.  We open our arms.  Our faces go soft.  Our love freely flows.  For high-voltage soulmate love, this childlike loving is mutual.  So, soulmates, today, return to innocence.

Venus.  The goddess of love.  She’s by our bed.  She’s the archetype of free-flowing love.  We like that.  In a high-voltage soulmate relationship, you’re tapping that archetype to create as close a connection as possible.  In fact, you actually source those archetypes to each other.  By that we mean, your thoughts and emotions, words and actions express the sort of profound energies associated with the gods.  When I look at Jim, I see Zeus–the king of Greek gods and husband of Hera.  Zeus comes to mind because Jim holds that nobility, power, and wisdom I think of when I think of Zeus.  We want to introduce this idea to you.  See each other’s greatness.  Tap your own archetypal energies.  It’s a heady experience.  Soon you’ll be living on Mount Olympus.

“A penny for your thoughts.”  Boy, do we make this one complicated.  Some people reply, “Why do you ask?”  Others say, “Nothing.”  Still others say, “Why do you always have to ask me that?”  It’s really quite simple.  When your partner asks you, “What are you thinking?” just be guided by your values.  If you love connection and closeness; in other words a high-voltage relationship, your response will be, “I was thinking this…”  Then you’ll give the details.  Jim spoke it so well, when he told me his qualities in an early letter to me.  “I will always answer if my woman (you) asks, ‘What are you thinking about?’”  So, soulmate questers, add this one to your criteria list.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had this problem.  It’s about standing with the ecstasy of someone expressing love to me.  In 1989, Jim wrote me that he wanted us to work together, presenting workshops.  I put our feelings into this letter:  “You were so fearful to say it, and I was so beside myself to hear you offer it, that we both just touched it and ran, like two excited children touching some fascinating beautiful piece of crystal, then streaking off.”  As more and more opportunities for experiencing the ecstasy of Jim’s expressions of love for me, my tolerance for the intensity of it grew.  I’ve learned to catch myself when I deflect love or touch it and run.  Still when I see that I’ve missed the opportunity to enjoy expressed love, I’ve learned to say, “Would you say that again so I can let it in?”  Today, I pass this idea on to you.  Savor the love that’s coming your way.

“I don’t want my partner to tell me what he doesn’t like about me or my behavior.  I just want to be loved.”  What’s the matter with that?  Well, it will lead to a chain of events:  “I can’t tell her what I’m not liking that she does.”  That leads to not talking.  Which leads to distance.  Net result:  The closeness you so long for is lost.  And it was a matter of attrition.  Add to that net loss one more thing:  The unique opportunity for your own psychological growth is lost too.  One warning:  Don’t think we’re recommending that you accept negativity such as anger, judgmentalism or sarcasm.  We’re not.  When your partner tells you what he doesn’t like, he must say it lovingly.  Here’s how Jim did it in his 1989 letter to me (I had sent him a Valentine cassette with my favorite music):  “While I was listenening to the first two numbers, I was transported by ecstasy;  Kathy’s music!  Her gift to me of herself!  But then the vocal stuff I found a bit jangly, and I thought, Oh my god, I can never tell her that!  I just won’t say anything.  No, I can’t do that; I’ve got to tell her.”  And he did.  And so I learned what he liked and didn’t like.  I knew him better.  We were closer in a new way:  Not by virtue of liking exactly the same things, but because we were more transparent with each other.  I knew him.  He knew me.

You have Inner Critic shoulds that keep whole chunks of your personality submerged.  Locked away.  If they try to emerge, the feelings of defectiveness lead you to push them back down into your subconscious mind.  And that takes a toll on closeness in your relationships.  Because if the condemned parts of yourself were to be exposed and others see it, your Inner Critic would lead you to feel the pain of humiliation.  And there’s the connection:  I have to stay distant from you; can’t let you know all of me.  If you did see all of me, especially those hidden parts, you would surely reject me.  This is why Anthetic Inner Critic work is so crucial to high-voltage soulmate relationships.  As you get free from your Inner Critic; as you no longer accept its condemning messages, you move toward welcoming all parts of yourself.  And so you open yourself to letting others see you too.  Now you can connect the dots:  Self-Acceptance…Closeness.

“Does Mariage Make Us Happy?”  That was the question posed on the cover of the October 2010 APA Monitor on Psychology.  The answer:  “It’s not marriage that makes you happy.  It’s happy marriage that makes you happy.”  So spoke Harvard researcher Dr. Daniel Gilbert.  He added, “The single best predictor of human happiness is the quality of social relationships.”  Our work in Anthetic Relationship Therapy has produced a model to guide you in producing a happy relationship:  The High-Voltage Relationship model.  Its goal:  optimality.  Optimal relating involves a two-pronged approach:  skills for psychological growth of each partner and skills for deep expressive love.  We want you to be happy.  We’re here to show you how.

He:  “What’s the matter?”  She:  “Nothing’s the matter!”  He:  “Something’s wrong; I can tell.”  She:  “For God’s sake, stop bugging me.”  Slam!  Exit!  This dialogue is the stuff of the Standard Relationship Model.  It consists of not being honest.  Not revealing what you’re feeling.  Definitely not being forthcoming.  Its intention is to prevent arguments and fights.  The trouble with a standard relationship is that it reaps a harvest of distance.  Multiply that one distancing conversation times five or ten years, and you’ve got a divorce.  Or, if still together, a life of quiet desperation.  We want to offer an alternative:  The High-Voltage Relationship Model.  It’s our original concept.  It consists of a skills-based way of relating guided by honesty, forthcomingness, and processing judgmentalism.  It reaps a harvest of closeness.  And love.