Soropa Blog

Valentine’s Day has been described as tacky,
smarmy, rude,
damaging, evil. Even those who’re in love on
Valentine’s Day don’t seem to
like it all that much, except maybe for the goodies.
I’m in love, and I don’t like it all that much. After
eighteen
years of marriage, I still don’t know what to get my
husband, if I should get something for my
husband. And I dislike shopping. I dislike choosing.
I’m not known for my wonderful gifts.

The problem is, what Valentine’s Day delivers most
is pressure. Either pressure to find someone to have
Valentine’s Day with, or pressure to be romantic with
the man you have - as if there weren’t better things
to do.

So I pretend. I pretend this is fun. And then I realize
anything is fun if you think it is, and anything is
yucky if you’re crabby about it, and I just feel like
being crabby about this. So I can imagine how many
men might feel. And then I realize I’m wrong. I’m just
dead wrong about the whole thing.

As I said last issue, men like giving girls presents.
They do. And my problem is I’m uncomfortable being
on the receiving end. I worry about what to give
back just because I’m weirded out by a whole day
devoted to the idea of giving to me!

So, let’s pretend something else. Let’s pretend we’re
in love with
everything. With ourselves, with our mates, our
dates, the man across the movie theater lobby. Does
it feel good, or does it feel like a lie?

If you answered It’s a lie - there’s no man in my
life at all! Rori, you’re mad. Or My husband
barely stops working long enough to even notice I’m
in the room, except for Valentine’s Day, because he
has to, you’re not alone. The hardest job in any
of our lives is believing that what we see is not
necessarily what there is.

I don’t have love, what do I do about it? is
why I hold classes, why we get together to talk.
My man is standing in his slippers in the living
room, or there’s that cute man buying frozen
pizzas, but I don’t have love because he’ll never give
it to me. Or I won’t really want it from him.
Except
for Valentine’s Day. Maybe. I won’t get loved. I want
to believe, but I can’t. I don’t.

I’m all about undoing this. Undoing what we believe is
real is our first challenge on the way to
getting love. Since we never can really know what is
going to happen in the next moment, is the
statement I won’t get love true? How would
you
know whether or not it’s true? What if it isn’t true?
What if you are going to
get love, and pretty fast, too? If in the blink of an
eye we suddenly realize we do have it, or we will
have it, the first thought may be Whoa - what a
lot of time I just wasted
assuming I’m not going to get love. I just wasted
about five days assuming that because that fellow I
had that great time with last week hasn’t called me
back, or because my husband seems intent on
pretending I’m not exactly, really here, I won’t get
love. If it’s a lie, then it’s exhausting to hold up
that
lie.

How do we turn this around? How do we all of a
sudden see love, believe in love, get love, if we don’t
believe it’s there for us? As a
famous sporting equipment provider says - Just do it.

The kind of depression, anxiety, blues, mopyness,
melancholy, rage that comes and goes (not the kind
that comes to live with us day and night - please, I
encourage anyone living with the blues to see one
of the alternative practitioners I’ve featured here)
comes from our deep core beliefs about
ourselves, from experiences so far in our history we
can’t remember, and from our day to day
practice.
Imagine trying to undo years of practicing pain by
practicing faith. If we were able to stop
practicing
pain on a daily basis, and yet it took a day to undo
every day we’ve practiced pain, we’d be spending
our lives slowly undoing our lives. That seems so
dreadfully long. It seems like a lot of work.

Like dieting - if I can’t get into that dress
tomorrow, I might as well have the hot fudge
sundae and forget about the dress - undoing
pain seems like an all-or-nothing job. It seems so
daunting, love seems so far away, we stop just a
few steps into the journey and resist continuing on
until we re-convince ourselves it’s just not ever
going to be really there. I attract men
who are
unavailable, I attract older men, I just can’t seem to
meet men, there aren’t any decent men, all the good
men are taken, he’s just set in his ways, he’s just
clueless, he’ll never change is way easier to say
to ourselves than whoops - I’m headed down the
wrong road here, better change course.

You’re going to have to trust me here - changing
course is easier than going on with the lie.

Don’t make it hard. Don’t analyze and process, even
if it’s your personality style. Just stop yourself
wherever you are down the road, sit quiet for a
minute, then turn around. Swivel. Put your back to
the road that’s marked No Love. You’ll just have to
have faith, even though you can’t see it, that there’s
plenty of love to be had. And even if you don’t know
where the road marked Plenty of Love is, even if you
have no idea where to turn first, just turn your back
to the lie of No Love and step forward.

In an instant you will feel better. Imagine
ahead of
you is the place marked Love. Imagine that place
starts where you’re standing. You can have love if
you want love. And even if you’re not certain at this
moment that you really do want love, if you like, I’ll
want it for you. I’ll hold your place in the place
marked Love.

It’s like believing in Tinkerbell. Like believing in fairies.
Even with all evidence to the contrary, with images
of grief, disaster, stupidity and pain thrown into our
faces minute by minute, think about the everyday
images of love, peace, harmony, friendship that we’re
not even looking at, glorious images of beautiful
moments that might be right in front of our faces.
We can be as much a part of love as we are a part
of pain.

In her packed Los Angeles workshops, relationship coach, author and speaker Rori Gwynne teaches women the completely original, simple-to-do and stunningly effective techniques for communication, confidence, and connecting with men that she used to turn her own now-glorious eighteen-year marriage around. Visit Rori at http://www.CoachRori.com to get the Free Coach Rori Mantra and Translations for Connecting with Men, to sign up for the free, powerful CoachRori e-zine, and to see how Rori can help you Have the Relationship You Want.