The Single Most Destructive Cause of Relationship Stress: Resisting Feelings
For years I couldn’t feel my feelings, and my intimate relationships suffered awfully as a result.
For years I couldn’t feel my feelings, and my intimate relationships suffered awfully as a result.
Not long ago, I just knew my relationship with my fiancé was over.
We men are Angry. Furious. Enraged. Which has nothing to do with Republicans, or Democrats, or the unfair accusations our intimate makes in her (his) moments of upset. No. We’re angry because our fathers left us alone to find our own way.
“Find someone who loves you as you are” is a wise ideal to lean towards, but make no mistake: You don’t get to stay the same person when you decide to build a life with another human being.
About 3 years ago, I began losing my way. Even as I was finally finding it. It was summer 2015, and my blog was exploding. Three million people would visit my website in just 3 days while I finished writing my 2nd book in a mountain cabin …
For nearly 3 decades, choosing me as your boyfriend was like strapping yourself into a faulty emotional roller coaster whose wheels would scream and spark before jumping the tracks, offing us both towards an awful demise.
Throughout my 20s and 30s, I often stayed in relationships I was deeply divided about staying in. My mouth would make promises my bones knew I couldn’t keep. Which made life awful for any woman who ever tried to love me.
When a man (or woman) says “I don’t want drama,” he is essentially saying, “I am terrified of feeling out of control, and I cannot be with anyone who feels feelings or acts in ways that are beyond my current capacity to feel or simply outside my tiny stress-free comfort zone.”
No man can truly be King until he is willing to take responsibility not just for himself, but for the entire world around him. Until then, he might get rich, but all he’ll have is money.
I recently led a 2-day private coaching intensive for a well-intentioned couple who had ignorantly, innocently, conspired together for years to create a tragic mess of love.