Receiving…It should be a natural thing for us gals. After all, it's one of our feminine traits. In fact, it's one of our most powerful traits. It's what activates our desires. It's our ability to attract and then take in the abundance, love, and riches that we want so badly.
Those tell-tale signs that your relationship is taking a turn for the worse, that for some reason you haven't seemed to notice? We like to call these "red flags," and apparently we're pretty good at ignoring them when we don't want to admit to the reality of things: that the guy we’re dating is a complete douche and it's time to give him the boot.
It's the relationship advice we wish our mothers had shared with us when we were younger. Funny and engaging yet brutally honest, The Little Black Book of Big Red Flags shares the dating warning signs you should be aware of -- or you'll be sorry later.
What is Emotional Dependency? Lydia consulted with me because her relationship with her husband, Andrew, was falling apart. Andrew had moved out, stating that he could no longer tolerate Lydia's neediness and constant pull on him to make her feel loved and secure. Now that they were separated, Lydia's emotional dependency was getting even worse. She was deeply addicted to Andrew making her feel better, if only through a brief text message.
You wake up in the morning and immediately it starts to talk. What time is it, what do I have to do today, what did I do yesterday, why didn’t he call, do I have to go to the wedding next month alone, etc., etc. The chattering mind kicks up and starts trying to solve all the problems it seems to think you have in your life. From small details like what you should wear that day to how to solve that big “single” problem you are having.
Ridding Yourself of Shame from Your Past It’s only human to make mistakes, and we all have done things of which we’re not proud. Although time can blur the memory and alleviate the pain of stressful incidents from our past, often it’s not a simple task to overcome the guilt that stems from actions in our past. This could be something as relatively innocuous as telling a small lie or as profound and life-changing as cheating on someone in a romantic relationship.
With the best intentions, self-help gurus want their audience to be empowered and feel like they can make changes to improve their life. Since I was given the book, “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay at twenty-three years old, I have been on a path of becoming a better me and to find happiness in the world. Eventually too much inner reflection can come to a point of inner bullying. The part of you that wants to heal transforms into an abuser, frustrated that you will never get it all together.
When I was single I used to spend a lot of time in the self-help relationships section of the bookstore. After years of searching, every book started to look the same and the advice was just a regurgitation of some other dating expert’s theories I have heard a million times in the past. My mind numb from all the reading and workshops that promised to change my love life, I was starting to suffer from self-help love fatigue.
Forget the old adage that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The truth is that the way to a woman's heart is through her palate. There is no more powerful barometer of a man's potential as a boyfriend and in the bedroom than in how he seduces a woman's taste buds.
Have you ever found yourself drawn to men who are completely wrong for you over and over again? You know, the type that is so pitifully self-destructive that you end up feeling maternal and savior-like, or the type that just thinks of himself and never you, or the type who never talks about his feelings but leaves you with the possibility that maybe one day he will? Dr. Lillian Glass calls these men toxic, and almost fifteen years after writing her hit book Toxic People, Dr. Glass is back with a follow-up specifically about those men in your life that you can't seem to get enough of—no matter how hard you try to steer clear.
Self-improvement and I are old pals. At age 11, I decided to fix my thighs (aerobics); at 19, to fix my soul (daily mass). In my 30s, I vowed to fix my mothering (support group, too many books). I've spent considerable hours of my life delving into self-actualization, mindful growth, claiming my authenticity, expanding my horizons, seeking enlightenment, making positive affirmations, eating and being in some zone, and twelve-stepping to some new place that was always just another plateau. I took classes, joined support groups, journaled for peak performance. Then I realized that if I didn't stop the manic frenzy of trying to better myself, at age 95 I'd likely still never know the secret. Lately, I began to ask myself why was I behaving as if only the new, improved person I would someday be, mattered more than the me I was, the me I am, now? What was I showing my kids about judging oneself too harshly, about dissatisfaction as a default mindset? And did I really want my husband to think I wasn't pretty terrific as is? I decided to knock it off.
