NO Isn’t A Dirty Word

by Natalie (NML) on April 18, 2012

NO isn't a dirty word

When you’re averse to saying and sticking to NO, you have longstanding negative associations with it and boundaries, which means that when you’re faced with the prospect of having to decline something, it builds into Dynasty levels of drama in your mind.

You imagine them being slammed into the wall by the force of your ‘rejection’. Often, from the moment there’s a hint of NO or conflict, you’re already wounded and unbeknownst to you, have begun adjusting your behaviour to protect yourself or to ward off potential conflict.

You imagine them feeling bad about themselves. This is because you can’t handle hearing NO so you imagine that everyone else can’t either. You make a judgement about you when you hear NO instead of judging the situation.

You imagine people thinking badly of you. You often think badly of people who have said NO even if they had legitimate reasons. You also might associate getting a NO with the assumption that they must think badly of you if they’re saying it – not everything is about you.

You imagine the sky falling in. This is because when you experience NO, this is how you feel.

You worry that if you say NO, that no one else is going to say YES. There can be this assumption that you’re being asked because otherwise no one else can do it. I know it’s nice to think you’re that special, but really, you’d be surprised how many others will say YES to boundary crossing…

You worry that if you say NO, that someone else will say YES, which will then make you wonder if you were wrong for saying NO. Your NO isn’t good enough for you. If someone else would say YES to the same thing, even if it’s the sh*ttest thing you’ve ever been asked to do, you invalidate your boundaries and your judgment.

You worry that you’re being rude even though the other option is being a doormat. This indicates a fundamental problem with having boundaries – you believe that it’s rude to decline something or have limits.

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Perspective Takes The Sting Out Of Rejection: It’s Broken, You’re Not

by Natalie (NML) on April 16, 2012

Perspective - Isn't it time to get a fresh one?

Certainly for your romantic relationships, you can ease some, if not a lot of the sting of rejection by evaluating the ‘perspective’ that you’re using to judge yourself on. Having your own aspirations, desires, and goals is fine, but they’re actually separate to your dating and relationship experiences. When you take rejection hard, you’re making some dangerous assumptions that tie your worth and what you think you’re capable of to unrelated external factors. That and you look at life through a low self-esteem lens.

You have your own agenda as does everyone else and ultimately will find a greater level of happiness with someone who has a similar agenda. In over six and a half years of writing Baggage Reclaim, I am yet to come across one relationship where two people with different agendas worked out and are living harmoniously together.

I know you might want someone to have the same intentions, motives, beliefs and values as you … even if they don’t, but the truth is, it’s a lot easier to form the foundation of a relationship, to get on with enjoying yourself without waiting for ‘the catch’, and to be able to trust and be trusted, with someone who wants similar things out of life as you. It’s not that opposites don’t attract (they certainly do if this blog is anything to go by), but the opposites that attract and progress into mutually fulfilling relationships have different secondary ‘surface’ values, but fundamentally share similar values where it counts. Basically, they’re not that opposite when you get down to the nuts and bolts.

Everything else is like trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse, or squeezing a square peg into a round hole, or trying to drag a horse to water to force it to drink. You catch my drift…

When dates or relationships haven’t worked out, it’s not like they’ve been evaluating whether you should meet your aspirations, desires and goals – they have their own.

To assume otherwise, is to treat it like “This date didn’t work out. I’m obviously not good enough to have a relationship or get married or have children one day or even have a life.” That’s quite a leap – a big one. Of all of the people you’ve ever been involved with, who is really that special that you being involved with them and it not working out means “You are not relationship worthy, end of. This is because I’m not interested / or don’t want the same things as you / or would even like to muck up your life while extracting maximum benefit”?

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When Your Ex Returns AGAIN, It’s An Opportunity To Do Right By You

by Natalie (NML) on April 13, 2012

THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE VERSUS CHANGE

Five years ago, a reader got in touch after her Returning Childhood ‘Sweetheart’ breezed back into her life after nearly 20 years, Future Faked and Fast Forwarded her off her feet, gradually started to blow lukewarm, then cold, and then unceremoniously dumped her for a woman closer to home because he couldn’t handle the long distance…even though she was moving there. Devastated, as she thought this was her second chance after nearly a decade long dating hiatus, she couldn’t comprehend how he could bust her heart into a million pieces all over again. Yet would you believe it, just like Mike Myers in Halloween, this man is back for a third attempt.

Now at this point, there are two paths to choose between: the path of least resistance, or change? So what do you think happened next?

She went down the path of least resistance, re-engaged, and started contemplating a third future with him. He admitted that he has issues (no sh*t Sherlock) but then made no indication of whether he is dealing with them and in fact seems resigned to them. When he got in touch the second time, it was after his divorce and this time, he’s got in touch after his relationship with the woman he left he for has ended. Flattering, not. He doesn’t really have anything to offer, he hasn’t dealt with the issues that broke their relationship, he doesn’t like to be alone, and he’s basically looking for a quick fix from the woman he can always rely on to get a good reception.

I was horrified that she would actually even contemplate putting her hand back in the fire again, not least because this man has had her heart and her hurt for all of her adult life. Where does this end? She’s not alone – I heard from a reader who has been doing this for fifty years.

As I was shoving stuff into the washing machine, I thought of this woman’s mother who passed away recently and made her promise that she’d go and live her life. I then thought of some of the very heart-wrenching comments and emails that I read from so many others in the same situation and then it came to me:

When your ex who broke your heart for whatever reason, comes back into your life, it’s an opportunity, just not for what you think.

As I said to her “He could equally be back to give you an opportunity to make things right with you and knock this whole palaver squarely on the head. It’s a test of your resolve, your emotional backbone, and an opportunity for you to gain closure, not so much on him (although this will be gained), but also on the things that have rumbled around in your head all of these years. You have an opportunity to grab your regrets and knock the wind out of their sails.” This could be you.

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Let The Breakup Bonfire Burn – You Can Control How Much More Pain You Experience Post Breakup

by Natalie (NML) on April 11, 2012

Let the breakup bonfire burn

When you break up with someone, there’s the ‘dreaded’ pain that follows along with white space opening up where you thought you had a shared future. There’s likely a delayed reaction and it may take a day or few, or even a week before it hits you full force that it’s over. In the days, weeks, and possibly months that follow, you have to face the loss and your feelings about it so that you can pave the way to a different and hopefully better relationship. From Day Zero of your breakup, in the seconds, minutes, hours, and then days and weeks that pass, you, by way of your actions and mentality, have an opportunity to limit the amount of pain that you experience.

The limitation doesn’t happen due to you avoiding your feelings or trying to have your ex on some terms rather than no terms; it’s directly influenced by:

1) Whether you accept that the relationship is over and validate the reasons for it..even if you don’t like them.

2) How much you let your life spiral. The more it derails, the more things you have to deal with.

3) How soon you start to nurture you and allow the present to infiltrate your life – The happier you are with other areas of your life has a huge impact. If there’s problems with work, family, or even a current separation, you’re likely to attempt to avoid another problem or loss to deal with, to give yourself an illusion of control.

4) How much you blame and even punish you – if you absorb all of the blame, you are guaranteed an immense amount of pain. Don’t engage in blame – engage in honest responsibility and accountability.

5) How much access you provide to your ex, including type of contact you have and the frequency, sleeping together, ego stroking, lending money or trying to get it back, trying to get back even the most piffling of possessions etc. Less access, less pain.

6) Whether you internalise the breakup and make a judgement about you, which in turn negatively affects your self-esteem. Overcoming a breakup is hugely dependent on your self-esteem – you either need to have it, or you need to use the breakup as an opportunity to start developing it. Chasing someone down will not give you self-esteem – it will break it.

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Can You Instantly Or Very Quickly Get To Know Someone?

by Natalie (NML) on April 9, 2012


I know them even though I don't know them

Judging by the amount of emails and comments I get regarding Future Faking, Fast Forwarding and “It started out so great! Why can’t they go back to how they were in the beginning?” (even though the time between the beginning and the ‘change’ is actually quite short), many people believe that they ‘know’ another person quite quickly and talk and think with a high degree of certainty about what they can expect from them…even if they haven’t truly experienced enough with them to justify the certainty or even claims of ‘knowledge’.

If you’ve ever watched Big Brother, you can see this in action normally within 3-5 days of them entering the house when you always get people declaring scarily intense feelings, or claiming that they’re best mates, or that they know one another deeply, along with hasty promises about what they’re going to do when they get out of the house. After they leave, it quickly fizzles out…

There’s a reason why it’s called ‘getting to know someone’ – it’s because you are gaining knowledge about them through observation, asking questions, and information. Over time. You can’t really claim to ‘know’ someone until you’ve observed them in all sorts of situations and come back with the same consistent information – the more the same information comes back, the more you can trust that what you’ve believed that you know is true.

The question is, how much time do you think you need to get to know someone, to the point where you would think that you know “a lot” about them and would feel justified in feeling that you’d been misled if they ‘changed’? A few hours? Days? Weeks? A few months?

How much time would you have physically spent with them?

Would you be judging it based on actions matching words?

Or would you judge it based on how excited, horny or ‘connected’ you feel?

If their actions and words ‘changed’, would you consider this part of the discovery phase, particularly if this is in the first weeks or early months?

At what point do you feel uncomfortable with reconciling reality with how you thought things were? For some of you, the answer is immediately or at least a very short timeframe, which is going to pose some major problems for you, because it doesn’t leave you any room for discovery and it certainly doesn’t leave you any room to adjust perceptions and assumptions that you’ve made, which sort of defeats the purpose of getting to know them.

In fact you’re not ‘getting to know’ them because you’re working off an idea that when you experience A,B, and C which you consider to be your strong indicators of someone who you’re very attracted to etc, you believe you’re going to experience X,Y,Z, which are whatever you think leads to your vision of a relationship. So if you get flowers, compliments, and a good shag, you might believe that it means that it’s going to lead to a committed relationship, that they’re available, and that they’re already in love with you, which is actually quite a leap.

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