|
Click on the Topic you are interested in:
• Self-esteem • Trust Issues • Fear • Labyrinth
• Dating • Online Dating • Sex • Marriage• Love Tips/Quotes
Click on the title of the article you would like to read:
• Are you Emotionally Available?
• Tips for Contacting an Old Flame
Are You Emotionally Available?
One of the complaints I often hear is “He (or she) is not emotionally available,” but what does this really mean and how do you know if it is how you are described behind your back?
Emotional unavailability means that for whatever reason, you are choosing to honor protection of your heart, instead of love. Understandable, and sometimes even wise for a period of strength building and rejuvenation. However, if you've made yourself unavailable to love and be loved for an extended length of time, take a look at whether your “defense mechanism”-designed to protect you- is now working against you.
“Emotional availability” means that you are ready, willing and able to love. This may sound simple, but it requires a willingness to take a risk, the willingness to open your heart to another, knowing full well that one way or another your heart will experience loss. There is no escaping it-just like life can not escape death, love can not escape pain. You will eventually lose or leave your beloved-whether by choice, circumstance or death. There is no “happy ending.” This reveals the reality that the choice to love is a courageous act!
To be “emotionally available” simply means that you are courageous enough to enjoy the benefits of loving, regardless of the potentiality of loss. It means that you are one who knows that it is indeed, “better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.”
Let's look at courage for a minute. Courage is not the absence of fear-to do something you are not afraid to do requires no courage at all! Courage is to move forward in the face of fear.
Since being afraid isn't “cool” and it isn't what we generally want to present to others, a lack of “emotional availability” shows up, instead, as an indifference or withholding. It is like taking someone on a tour of your home but keeping the door closed and locked on your favorite room. You'll let them into the kitchen, living room and even the bedroom, but not in your most treasured room in the house. The “heart of your home” is off limits leaving the other to feel as if they never really know you completely or feeling left out of an important part of your life. In order to be fully emotionally available you have to be willing to invite the other in and allow them to explore the whole you…and you have to be willing to explore all of them, too. This is intimacy-“in-to-me-see.”
Steps for enhancing your emotional availability:
1) Decide: The first step is to set the intention of being available to love. If you don't want to expand your capacity to love and be loved, the steps won't work. Expansion of the heart begins with the decision to make it so.
2) Trust: Trust yourself enough to know that no matter what life dishes out to you, you can handle it! Promise yourself that-no matter what-you will not abandon yourself. This means that regardless of whether you are in a relationship or not you will take, or continue to take, active steps toward strengthening yourself-doing the things you love to do, staying connected to family and friends, learning new things, expressing your creativity, honoring your spirit, and taking care of yourself physically. You need to agree (with yourself) that you will seek professional assistance if you are unable to do so yourself. Note: when you master this step, you have greatly diminished the need to trust others over whom you no control.
3) Take Reasonable Risks. Use your head and your heart together to assess when it is wise to move forward into love and when it would be wise to pull back. Surviving reasonably taken risks is what grows our confidence and capability. If you aren't sure whether you should move forward, pay attention to how you feel. Embarrassment over your decisions is an indicator that you aren't comfortable with what you are doing. If so, look at the situation like a “strategic planner” and see if there are steps you can take to make the risk safer or better thought out, or if it is something you'd be wiser not to do at all.
4) Learn From Your Mistakes: The real “moral of the story” is never “Never love or trust again.” If that is what you “learned” then you missed the real lesson and thus may have to endure the experience again until you get it right. The lesson may be to “pay more attention,” or “to tell the truth faster,” or “not to take happily-ever-after for granted,” or “to honor yourself enough not to allow mistreatment,” or “to choose more wisely who to trust,” or even “to be more trustworthy yourself.” You will know if it is the “real lesson” if it points you toward love and trust, not away from it.
Tips for Contacting an Old Flame
(Note: While it isn't grammatically correct, periodically I will be using “they” or “them” instead of he/she, him/her as it is much less cumbersome.)
There are wonderful stories about people who looked up an old flame from their school days to discover that he/she was recently divorced or widowed and overjoyed to rekindle the fire. There is, however, the distinct possibility that the person you seek out is married and securely in the midst of family life. While most everyone loves to hear that someone from their past is thinking about them, not everyone is ready to renew the friendship beyond a “Hello, nice to hear from you!” Here are some steps that can assist you in breaking the ice without disturbing the status quo:
1) Let go of expectations.
Aim to rekindle the friendship...not the love affair...and see what the situation is currently. It is easy to fill in the gap that lapsed years have created with a fantasy image of the other person. Before you build a relationship-or super hero- in your mind, check in on reality.
2) Be respectful of the other person's current situation.
Write and say “Hello! Remember me?” and begin a dialog BEFORE you blurt out the fact that you had a huge crush on him/her in high school and haven't ever forgotten them. If indeed they are involved with someone else, just let them know you saw their name in Classmates.com and wanted to say “hi,” and keep your childhood crush to yourself. Then let them take the lead on whether they want to meet again. Regardless of whether they are “happily” or “unhappily” married, for your own sake as well as all involved, be respectful of the fact that they are married.
3) If you or your old friend is married, involve the spouse/s in the new friendship.
Keep in mind that if you haven't seen someone for five, ten or fifty years, while they may be an old friend, it will be a new friendship. If you or your old flame is married, and if you decide to meet each other again, involve your spouse(s). If your intentions are not pure enough for you to become friends with their spouse or they with yours, your intentions are not pure enough to rekindle the friendship.
4) To get reacquainted, ask-and answer-questions.
Not sure what to say? Questions are a great way to spark up a conversation and to get reacquinted. A gentle way of starting is to share of yourself first and then ask a question. Sharing a little about yourself will open the doors and make the interaction more of a conversation than an interview. Say, for instance, “I'm a computer analyst. What about you?” rather than “What do you do for a living?”
Remember, people change over the course of time. Don't make assumptions that they are still the same person you used to know. Behave as if you are meeting a familiar stranger. Let your natural curiosity serve you. Want some help? “Intellectual Foreplay: Questions for Lovers and Lovers-to-Be” has hundreds of questions that are appropriate to getting reacquainted with an old friend.
5) Don't take “rejection” personally.
When contacting someone out of the blue, you never know what is going on in their life at that time. Don't take it personally if they aren't interested in getting reacquainted. There are multitudes of reasons that have nothing to do with you that may cause someone not to write back or to be uninterested in rekindling a friendship or romance. Not the least of which is mail lost in cyberspace. Don't push the river. Be assertive, but not pushy. Simply make the invitation and see what happens.
6) Move into the present rapidly.
When talking with someone from the past, it is easy to get caught up in reliving the past. Once you've reminisced about the days of old, move rapidly into the present to build a current friendship or relationship. Make this a wonderful process of discovery based in the here and now.
For more in depth information on any of these topics, see Eve's books.
For dating: "Intellectual Foreplay: Questions for Lovers and Lovers-to-Be" and "Virtual Foreplay: Making Your Online Relationship a Real-Life Success." For marriage or relationship success: "How to Love Your Marriage: Making Your Closest Relationship Work." For spirituality and personal growth: "Way of the Winding Path: A Map for the Labyrinth of Life" and "Rings of Truth."
|
