Diving into an article on sex, you might expect advice on love notes slipped into pockets, date nights in new locations, or, maybe, wearing a trench coat with nothing underneath—all good ideas and certainly ways to build sexiness in a relationship. But I want to address a different aspect of sexual desire, one that on first blush may not sound that sexy, but, in fact, delivers far more bang for its buck than all the trench coats you can drop to the floor.

The most important sex organ in the body, for women, is not below the waist, but rather above the shoulders. That powerful sex organ is the mind. The mind tells the rest of the body I am available for sex, or conversely, I am not available. The mind is the gatekeeper for physical intimacy. That said, if a woman feels emotionally connected to her partner, she is a thousand times (not an evidence-based statistic) more likely to want to have sex with that partner.

We tend to think of foreplay as something that happens in the bedroom, just before sex, as a kind of warmup exercise to prepare the mind and body for what’s to come, like stretching before a run. But foreplay is actually something that happens all day, from the breakfast table to the final toothbrushing. In fact, the least important part of foreplay may be what happens in the bedroom.

Men often view foreplay as a physical activity they do for their partner right before intercourse, to get her aroused mentally and physically and to lubricate the process. This is certainly a part of foreplay, but just a small part. The problem so many women describe is that their male partners don’t make the link (at least not with the clarity women do) between the way they listen to their partner, the quality of their attention throughout the day, and her interest in having sex later that night. For many men, the way they attend to their partner emotionally in the 16 hours leading up to intercourse is completely separate from the sexual event itself. The day is one thing and the night is another—with no thread line between the two. How they engaged with their partner that day has little connection with their partner’s willingness, desire, and availability to engage in intimacy when the time comes.

Feeling an Emotional Connection

The problem is that the strongest aphrodisiac for many women is connection—feeling emotionally connected to their partner. What so many women describe as the ultimate turn on is being listened to. Women tell me again and again that intimacy is most likely to happen when they feel heard, seen, and understood by their partner, when they can share their truth without being told what to do about it. Whether she’s in the mood often comes down to whether her partner was willing to listen and be with her with his full attention, if only for a few moments in the day. The ultimate aphrodisiac may be to simply land in her company and stop trying to get somewhere else.

So, too, women report a greater desire and willingness to have sex when their partner expresses interest in them, when they’re asked substantive questions, not just about the logistics of their life, but about how they are in the midst of those logistics. Women describe the aphrodisiac effect of a partner who’s able to listen with an open mind and heart, without a solution, correction, or answer; without judgment or defensiveness; and without assuming to know her experience.

Small Communications, Touches, and Glances

At the same time, the opportunity for foreplay exists in the seemingly throw-away comments that happen in everyday life: “The birds are singing, so spring must be coming.” “Wow, look at the light coming through the window.” “This coffee you made is perfect.” While these comments technically don’t require a response, in fact, they do need to be acknowledged, if only to confirm that they’ve been received and they matter. These small communications may look irrelevant, but they are important in a relational sense. They are, in fact, “bids” for connection (as the relationship expert John Gottman calls them), micro attempts to connect and create intimacy. When left unattended, unresponded to, or ignored, they break the connection and often leave a woman feeling invisible and irrelevant, and even resentful. When acknowledged, however, these small acknowledgments, particularly when offered with kindness, go a long way in making a woman feel like her thoughts matter. And, ultimately, like she matters. That said, when considering the amount of effort they require, the return on the investment is substantial.

Foreplay is also layered into the small touches and glances that occur in a day, when a hand is placed at the small of the back, or a glance is held for an extra beat. These deeply intimate gestures carry a lot of bang for their buck. They create closeness and, over the course of a day, add up to and create a climate of connection.

Men often report that their wives don’t want to have sex with them, at least not enough. Depending on their story, my advice is frequently the same:

• Listen when your partner speaks.
• When you’re with her, be with her, present and not distracted.
• Remember what she says. Ask follow-up questions.
• Ask her questions about herself, not just the contents of her life.
• Try to simply understand her experience—not solve, explain, improve, or do anything with it. (Listen to her without yourself in the way.)
• Show her that you hear her by responding or acknowledging her words.
• Offer small touches and glances throughout the day.

If you’re in a relationship with a woman and want to have more sex with her, don’t worry so much about upping your technique or sexual game. Instead, focus on how you can pay better attention, listen more attentively, know her more deeply, and be more present with her. Approach the small moments and conversations in a day as your real foreplay, and the most powerful lubricant for a juicy evening.

The post What Puts A Woman in the Mood appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In my previous post, I discussed what I call “the f*ck it fifties,” a time in a woman’s life when what we need and where we want to put our attention simply changes. Sometimes it happens when our domestic nest empties out, when our usual roles, responsibilities, and identity shift, and our daily structure is lost. But sometimes this internal transformation has no identifiable cause. It’s that time in the life cycle, a rite of passage, when what interests and nourishes us, and brings meaning and purpose, transforms. It’s an in-between chapter in life, when we look the same on the outside, and we’re still surrounded by the same people and activities as we always were, but we are not that person anymore, the one who designed and wanted that life, and for whom it felt so critically important and authentic. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that old life; it just doesn’t seem to belong to us any longer. Who we are has changed and moved on.

As women, we blame ourselves for this natural shift in priorities. We create a narrative that the fact that our interests have changed means that we were faking our old life all along. If we derive less meaning from what used to matter, then what used to matter couldn’t have been real. We’re conditioned to believe that who we are is either this or that, a fixed and knowable thing, rather than what it is—an ever-changing unknowable process that’s constantly transforming and often surprising us. In order to make sense of this midlife transformation, we tell ourselves that our old life must have been inauthentic; we are impostors and never actually cared about those people and roles we played in the past. Our mind does what it does best—it steps in and creates a logical thread-line between the past and present versions of ourselves. In devaluing our earlier life, we resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises in realizing that we were indeed that person who wholeheartedly wanted that previous life… and now we’re not. Now we’re someone who wants and needs something else (even if we don’t know what it is yet).

Simultaneously, women blame themselves for not being able to enjoy and feel satisfied with their previous tasks and roles, to make the things that used to matter still feel important. We judge ourselves for no longer feeling compelled to take care of everyone else’s needs or assume responsibility for everyone else’s happiness.

Women berate themselves for what we perceive as our choice to stop wanting the same things throughout our life cycle. We assume that this internal reorganization that happens naturally in our life journey is a failure—further evidence of our not-enough-ness and the signal that we need to, yet again, try harder. In the story we write in our head, we should be able to change our priorities back to what they used to be, and if we can’t, then we’re broken, which is good news because we can get back to the business of fixing ourselves—our favorite task. Fixing ourselves then might keep us busy for another decade, trying to be that old version of ourselves and blaming ourselves for not being her. As a result, we miss out on what is in fact an incredible opportunity for growth and change, a gift included in our incarnation, our own natural metamorphosis that, like the caterpillar’s, can allow us to take flight.

Given that this midlife transformation directly impacts what we want and need and where we choose to put our attention, it seems obvious that it would also have to affect our relationship. Specifically, that our relationship would need to evolve and change—to keep up with our own changing nature. And yet, we reject this evolution when it comes to our relationship. The fact that we want to spend our time in different ways, and often more time alone, to listen to different struggles and ask different questions, to experience ourselves in different ways, is viewed as something wrong—wrong with us or wrong with the relationship. A failure. But our marriage, like ourselves, is also an alive process and not a fixed entity. It also needs to evolve and grow. If it doesn’t, it dies, or we die in the static-ness. When we see this natural evolution in our partnership as a good thing, and something that’s based in reality rather than fantasy or fiction, then we have the opportunity to make use of it. It means that we can grow our relationship into something that’s continually fresh and truly aligned with who we are, throughout the many stages of our life.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that we should feel exactly the same about our partner and that the relationship should function in exactly the same ways as it always did over our entire lifetime. As a society, we idealize relationships and marriages that last—“till death do us part.” We all clap like trained seals when a couple shares that they’re going on their 40th or 50th year together. And indeed, a long relationship is an accomplishment and admirable in its own way. As anyone who’s ever been in a relationship for more than an evening knows, any length of time spent “together” indicates strength, commitment, and often patience and wisdom as well. But length of time is only one model or gauge for a successful relationship.

When we undergo this midlife shift, it’s normal to feel differently toward our partner. Some relationships survive it, and some don’t. Some relationships are forever, and some are not. Neither is a success or failure. A relationship that naturally evolves out of itself is its own success, even if it’s not what we want to happen. And, one that changes and transforms according to each partner’s changing needs is also a success. What is certain, however, is that the only way to give ourselves a chance for a real and lasting relationship, over time, is to honestly consider who we’ve become and are becoming, what we want now, and what feeds and stretches us and helps us keep growing on our life journey. If we want an authentic relationship, we need to bring our partnership into reality and out of some magical version of what it should be.

The post A Successful Relationship Doesn’t Always Mean Forever appeared first on Nancy Colier.

We change as we age. Not just physically, but who we are changes—what feels important, meaningful, and interesting, what we want and need, all evolve along the life journey. For many women, there’s a time in life when domesticity is what we want, and our role in the family is who we are. There’s also a time for many women when it’s as if the page turns and we’ve moved out of that chapter.

This process of becoming and re-becoming who we are is exciting, but it can also be disorienting. We wake up, and it’s as if the person we once were no longer lives in our body. Making it even stranger is the fact that it happens without our realizing it. We find ourselves in a conversation about something that used to be important to us and realize that it just isn’t anymore. And, we find that it’s harder to stay in the conversation or pretend. What provided meaning no longer does. The roles we used to play are, suddenly (or so it seems), not where we want to put our energy.

A moment arrives (often in a woman’s fifties) when taking care of everyone else’s needs, being who everybody needs us to be, doesn’t hold the same punch, reward, or necessity it once did. In women’s groups, this particular decade is often referred to as the “f*ck-it fifties,” which aptly conveys the sentiment of this shift.

I experienced this moment inside myself when I discovered that I didn’t feel the need (or desire) to make dinner for my family anymore. Or, for that matter, to be the social director and plan a thousand fabulous activities and trips for every weekend.

I’d known for years, intellectually, that these tasks were constructions of society and that I’d been conditioned to believe I needed to do all that. I understood that it wasn’t my responsibility to take care of everyone else’s needs around the clock, nor was it my fault if anyone was ever disappointed. Nevertheless, I genuinely enjoyed being that mom, and still do in moments. No matter what created it, it was what I wanted, and I felt compelled to fulfill these tasks and play my role in the family.

My shift didn’t happen in my head. It was a bodily-felt transformation in how I wanted to spend my time, and what brought me satisfaction and meaning. The change wasn’t in what I knew, but in what I wanted. I had stopped wanting or needing to do all those things and be that person for everyone else. My own desire to fulfill that role had vanished.

Tinges of guilt still appeared, but it was really more of a sadness for my daughters that they’d lost that mom I used to be: the super-mom they probably preferred. It wasn’t the kind of guilt that kept me jumping through hoops, but rather an acceptance that time had moved on, and we were all going to be affected. Like it or not, I simply wasn’t the good domestic soldier I’d been, who also loved being that. But I couldn’t play the same part I’d always played for my family; that was the truth. Letting go of that version of myself, putting down the fry pan, wasn’t a struggle; it just happened. The new reality.

At times, I wondered who that woman had been who dutifully performed all those tasks with such vitality and sense of duty—the woman who’d derived so much meaning and purpose from my tasks and roles. Where had she disappeared to? Had she gone fishing or simply become someone else?

It seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed this transformation. My daughter recently bought me a mug with a quote on it that suggested she also had noticed the new “mom” living in her house, the woman who looked like her old mom, but didn’t behave like her. On the coffee mug she gifted me, in hot pink script was this: “You’re mistaking me for someone who gives a sh*t.”

It’s an odd and unsettling feeling to be in the same situations that used to matter so much, but to feel utterly different—as if your life on the outside is the same and everyone you know thinks you’re the same person, but you are definitely not the same. You’ve been deposited in someone’s life who used to be you. One friend described listening to another mom go on and on about the different options she was considering for her child’s summer. While wanting my friend to weigh in with equal urgency, as she always had, my friend found herself having, in her words, an “out-of-body” experience. She had become “utterly bored” by the topic; it simply didn’t interest her or feel important.

Change is a natural part of the life cycle. Our priorities shift—sometimes very dramatically, seemingly on a dime, without any prior warning. We don’t recognize who we are because the ways we defined ourselves no longer feel relevant. There’s no representative from the universe who asks permission to remove the old version of ourselves and replace it with a new one.

The reality is that our “self,” this solid entity we think is fixed and knowable, is in fact constantly emerging and evolving—becoming a new version of itself. Who we fundamentally are is a process, not a destination. The problem is that we fight this fundamental truth and try to keep ourselves in one place, as one person—a self we know and understand. But often, we outgrow that self, whether we want to or not.

Transformation is often uncomfortable; it’s also an adaptive and evolutionarily-wise process. It keeps us growing and changing. It makes life and our identity an adventure. And, it allows us to keep discovering ourselves in new incarnations.

The problem is that women blame and criticize themselves for this natural process. As a result, we ignore the profound opportunity it presents. We feel guilty for a transformation that, while it may temporarily let other people down, is not ours to control.

This sudden shift can happen not just in domestic life, but in our significant relationships as well, a change that can be equally unsettling, and also equally helpful—and powerful. (I won’t mention the coffee mug my husband gave me!)

The post The F-It Fifties: When the Person You Used to Be Is Gone appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In the previous article in this series, I suggested that women aren’t afraid of conflict itself, but what conflict has historically cost them—connection, approval, and safety. So too, I proposed “a way through.” That is, a way to speak your truth, even when it’s unwanted, that allows you to honor our understandable fear, and also consider your actual reality. It doesn’t mean ignoring the potential consequences, but at the same time, not letting the fear dictate your behavior, with no alternatives other than silence or inauthenticity.

In other words, how to heal the dread associated with being displeasing and disapproved of that stems from your conditioning, generational history and experience. And furthermore, a way through that helps you discern the actual reality you face—the real not imagined threats to your safety, and whether you can survive them. And finally, a path with real-life strategies that take both your fear and the reality of the situation into consideration and practice. So that you can be more truthful and also feel safe.

But in order to find true safety, the sort that’s powerful enough to overcome even deeply-ingrained fears that live in the wires of our nervous system, what’s needed is more than mindful communication strategies. In fact, we need to redefine our whole notion of safety, what it means, what it requires, and how to create it. We need to cultivate a new and different version of safety, one that we can trust in all kinds of inclement emotional weather, a version that’s fundamentally in our control.

What you’ve always thought was necessary to survive, and what you’ve always believed protected you from harm, in fact, need to change and evolve. In order to free your voice and find the courage to speak it out loud, to trust that you can be fully known, and move from paralysis to action, a seed-change in the meaning of safety is called for.

As it stands, our definition of safety is external; it’s reliant on the outcome of our honesty. In short, I can be truthful if you can handle it (and still like me after knowing my truth). I can be honest if the relationship can stay smooth and peaceful with my honest experience on the table. In our current version, safety is something others provide for us; safety is given or taken away. But safety when it comes from the outside is fragile, transient, and not in our control. We’re constantly in danger of losing it. We’re constantly on shaky ground.

What’s needed, ultimately, is a shift from external ground to internal ground. True safety is not dependent on whether our truth creates discomfort, rupture, or uncertainty in the relationship. Safety is about how we are with discomfort, or anything else difficult. True safety is the ability to stay present and connected to ourselves even when the relationship feels shaky, and even when the other person is defensive, angry, dysregulated, withdrawn or anything else that used to destroy us.

Safety is not agreement. It’s not harmony or smoothness. It’s not about the other person staying regulated, comfortable or kind when they know our truth. It’s not about the other person always liking what they hear from us. True safety, the kind that we can genuinely trust, is something entirely different. Safety when it’s built on internal ground is knowing that we won’t abandon ourselves no matter how the other person reacts or the relationship wobbles or shakes. We are safe because we always have ourselves; we’re always home; we’re always present and will remain present in whatever comes, and will always stay on our own side.

Real safety is not about being bolder or stronger or more positive or confident. It’s not about convincing ourselves that all will be well and go smoothly. It’s about trusting that even if it doesn’t go well and even if it’s not smooth and we’re not well-received, that we can be with it, stay connected—with ourselves, even when the relational connection feels threatened. What makes us feel genuinely strong and secure is knowing that we can handle whatever comes and that we’re not going away, and will not disappear.

Safety isn’t the promise that nothing will go wrong. It’s knowing we can stay present if and when it does.

Ultimately, as women, we need to change our model of safety from something external that others gift us with to a state of being that’s internal—a capacity within ourselves. From something fragile that relies on other people’s reactions to the capacity to be honest with ourselves and trust our own inner presence. The truth is, when we can trust our own un-shakable presence, we can survive discomfort and everything else. It’s at this stage that conflict stops feeling like annihilation.

Once we’ve established this trust in our capacity to be with whatever comes, and shifted our notion of safety from external to internal, the boots-on-the-ground practice begins. Because we trust ourselves, however, does not mean that we speak our truth willy-nilly. It does not mean that we don’t consider the real consequences that can come from honesty. It doesn’t mean that we don’t use wise discernment in choosing how we express our truth. In Part 6, I will address the process of speaking both truthfully and wisely, in a way that, most importantly, takes good care of you.

The post The Key to Unshakable Safety When Speaking the Truth appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In the last article, I discussed the deep-seated fears associated with telling the truth and why disruption and potential loss of connection in a relationship can feel like death. And furthermore, why these fears are so deep in our wiring; why our nervous system goes on high alert at the idea of sharing an unwanted truth, often when the threat we feel doesn’t match the reality of the situation. At the root of our unwillingness to tell the truth is our strongest and most primal drive—the drive to survive. Put simply, we want to stay alive, and so we learn to alter our truth to make other people happy, which then makes other people want to be around us and love us. If other people stay, we’re safe—we will survive.

Source: La Famiglia/Shutterstock

But there is a way through this fear—to tell the truth with your fear present, and not deny or force the fear away or shut down your truth altogether. There is a way through that allows you to be more honest and less afraid of conflict and potential disapproval. There is a way through that includes the courage to be disliked. With compassion for your own nervous system and the deeply-wired terror that comes with the potential loss of connection, there is a way to live more honestly. It’s possible to be more forthcoming even with unwanted truths, and to feel less threatened by disruption and the prospect of being disappointing or displeasing.

Ultimately, we can redefine safety such that it comes not only from stability in a relationship, but also from staying safe externally, and from building a safe ground internally. Safety, internally, comes from knowing and acknowledging our own truth—with clarity and most importantly, kindness. When we’re clear and grounded in our truth, no matter how or to whom we share it, we find a safe refuge. True safety is not about our relationship with anyone else, it’s about our relationship with ourselves; it’s about the capacity to love ourselves and stay present with whatever experience arises. Safety, at the core, is about our own unbreakable presence—not anyone else’s.

So, where do we begin and how do we launch this third stage in the “truthing” process, where we move from fear into this new way of being in relationship that feels more satisfying and fundamentally trustworthy?

First, we need to get clear inside ourselves; what is our experience—what’s the reality that we’re afraid to share. Say, for example, someone does something that hurts us, but we don’t share it because of the possible repercussions, the defensiveness or accusations that it will trigger, we first need to name and feel the hurt that their behavior creates for us, and to understand the need that is not being met—for ourselves. We need to get clear on what we want to feel that we’re not feeling now.

Step one is always to connect with our own truth, our actual experience—what we feel and think that we don’t share. To understand and acknowledge the truth, this internal reality (with kindness), and to name the experience we ultimately long for. This knowing and acknowledging process happens before we utter a single word.

Once we’re clear inside ourselves and have acknowledged our own truth, to ourselves; once we know what our non-negotiables are, what we can and cannot live with as a truth, we’re ready to reality-test.

As it stands now, we tend to relate to all potential disruptions in connection as equally ominous and threatening. Regardless of whether our experience is one that may create slight defensiveness in another person, or one that could lead to a serious rupture and risk home and family, our nervous system reacts to it with the same code-red response. All unwanted truths seem to carry the same weight and potential to threaten our survival; once the system is tripped off, it’s an on or off switch with no dial for degree and no consideration of reality.

That said, before we speak any truth, we want to be clear on the realistic consequences. Because the body goes straight to emergency mode and shuts down any further consideration of telling the truth, we need to slow the process down and bring some discernment to the situation. We can ask ourselves, what is the real threat here if I say this? While deep down I may be afraid that if this other person knows I feel this way, they will abandon me and I will be left alone to die, and while I understand that this fear is deeply wired into me, still, what is true in reality? Have I ever lived through a conversation like this before? Realistically, what might happen if I share this truth?

In the next part of this series, I’ll offer some real-world strategies for speaking your truth—strategies that allow you to feel strong, present, and real—and also safe. I’ll discuss what needs to be considered and how you can take back the reins so that it’s not just your nervous system making decisions. Ultimately, you will shift from survival mode, which means being pleasing-at-all-cost, to a wise and discerning, self-compassionate way of being in relationship, one that includes more truth, and a more real and whole version of you.

The post How to Be More Honest and Less Afraid of the Truth appeared first on Nancy Colier.

This post is part five in a series.

In the last article, I introduced stage two of “truthing,” the process of learning to speak your truth out loud. In this stage, your mind often “knows” that you’ll be okay if you’re honest and express an unwanted truth, but your body doesn’t actually believe it.

No matter what your mind (or anyone else) tells you, in stage two, there is still deep fear, dread, and even grief at the prospect of being honest, a dread that doesn’t budge no matter how much information it receives. There’s also a characteristic pattern of self-recrimination—an ongoing narrative of self-criticism for abandoning oneself and not being empowered or brave enough to push through and be fully “authentic.” 

So, what creates this fear and the gap between the actual threat that speaking up for yourself poses and the experience that your body is living? From where does this deep distrust of sharing an unlikable truth stem? Essentially, how did disapproval become synonymous with death?

The core belief/chain of thought is this: If I tell the truth, I won’t be liked. If I’m not liked, people will go away. If people go away, my needs won’t be met. If my needs aren’t met, I won’t survive.

To understand this better, we can start at the beginning of a girl’s life. From the time we’re born, we’re taught to be pleasing and agreeable. We’re included and loved for being who other people want us to be—taking care of other people’s needs. If we share an unlikable truth, however, it means that we won’t be who they need us to be; we won’t make them happy, and therefore we won’t be loved. The problem is that we need other people to love and value us so they take care of us, so we get our needs met. Relationships make us safe. Anything that disturbs the security of connection—an unwanted truth, conflict, or a negative experience—threatens our fundamental security.  It is not an exaggeration to say that the prospect of someone important not liking us, or being displeased with us, even temporarily, stirs up a kind of primal terror.

It’s also important to recognize that throughout history, a woman did in fact need approval to survive, specifically from a partner who would support her financially. The demands of pregnancy and child-rearing, and the limited educational and professional possibilities, made it impossible for women to survive unless someone “chose” them. That was real.  We just recently achieved the opportunity and freedom to support ourselves and exist independently from a partner’s support. 

While this situation of dependency and powerlessness, and the need to be taken care of by another, may no longer be true, our nervous system still carries a kind of generational fear. Our bodies have not caught up with our new reality just yet. We still fear for our basic survival should our partner’s love be withdrawn.

Furthermore, women are naturally more relationally wired than men. We’re profoundly attuned to the emotional weather in our relationships, and I don’t believe that’s just about conditioning. Our nervous system is designed to be sensitive to harmony and connection in our relationships. We’re always attending, at some level, to the state of the bond. That said, we feel dysregulated by conflict and disruption in relationships, or even their potential, no matter how minor. We’re not “right,” fully calm and well, until and unless the relationship is “right” and the connection is solid.  Inner peace, for many women, relies on relational peace.

At the same time, because women have traditionally been in charge of taking care of the family, the emotional well-being and stability of the family is also something to which we’re highly sensitive. Keeping the family environment harmonious is something that falls in our purview and we feel responsible for maintaining; our children’s experience is our responsibility. We worry deeply about the consequences that disruption and relational conflict might cause, not just for ourselves but for our children. All this to say, the emotional climate of the home is a large factor in our internal climate.

Simultaneously, the family is a big part of a woman’s identity; the role she plays and how she takes care of her family are intertwined with her purpose, life meaning, and who she fundamentally is. Her role in the family is what makes her matter. So too, the family determines the basic rhythm and movement of life. Without the family, who she is and what her life is aboutfeels shaky and unclear. And so an existential terror emerges: without the family, do I matter—and do I even exist?

There is also the reality of societal belonging and the potential repercussions that come with the loss of a relationship or the family unit. We live in a culture that favors those in relationships; for a woman, having a partner and/or a family comes with membership to an important “club.” Doors open. Many women feel like they have more options and invitations, like they belong and are included, when they’re in a relationship. Despite our society’s psychological growth and widening boundaries of inclusion, when a woman loses what we still consider the “normal” structure of life, she stands to lose the rewards of “normalcy” and with it, her place in the social order. She no longer belongs, and so once again, her survival, like an animal that needs to stay with the herd, is threatened.

There are numerous other aspects that make the idea of speaking an unlikable truth feel frightening. At the root, however, the fear is almost always coming from our drive to survive. If we’re not pleasing, we’re not safe; if we’re not safe, we will die. It’s primal. That said, get off your case—there are good reasons for your fear, and for choosing, sometimes, to keep some of your truths to yourself. The alarm bells in your nervous system are ringing and need to be heard and acknowledged.

Going forward, I’ll lead you into stage three of the “truthing” process. In the next stage, you can move through the fear, but in a way that not only honors the fear but also respects reality. It will be about speaking the truth in the real world.  Stay tuned…

The post Why Speaking the Truth Feels Like a Threat to Your Survival appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Deb also suffered with another aspect of stage two in the “truthing” process. Namely, self-criticism. Deb was frustrated and disappointed in herself because she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her husband the truth about how she felt. She accused herself of being a coward and a “fake-feminist.” While she talked a big game, at the end of the day, she “just wanted comfort” and wasn’t willing to walk the walk of an empowered woman. She didn’t have the strength to tell the truth and confront the fallout, not if it meant giving up the security that her relationship (terrible as it was) and the family structure provided.

In her mind, her inability to be fully truthful was pathetic. An empowered woman would be willing to be “authentic” no matter what. The fact that she wasn’t willing to shake up her world and confront the conflict meant that she was as controlled and weak as all the women who had come before her. Women’s liberation be damned.

The fact that she was operating from fear, not strength, and was driven by safety and familiarity, not growth and change, the fact that she was paralyzed by some irrational unknowns, was utterly unacceptable and shameful for Deb, as it is for so many women. Deb was profoundly unhappy in her relationship and also terrified of losing it. Both were true. It was an excruciating bind.

I see this situation frequently: the despair, fear, and self-criticism women experience in stage two of “truthing.” Simultaneously, they subject themselves to self-judgment on account of being unwilling to speak their full truth. Women consider their authentic need for peace, harmony, and grounding, their fear of the repercussions that might come from speaking an unlikable truth, as somehow less authentic and less acceptable than the truths they choose not to share. They view the choice to honor stability over full disclosure as a form of self-abandonment, proof that they’re weak, not fully liberated, and not willing to truly “take care” of themselves. For women, “taking care” of themselves seems to include only the parts of their truth they deem worthy and legitimate, the parts they like, but not the whole of their truth, and not the reality of who they are.

But, in fact, all of these—your silence, unhappiness, fear, wish to be free, and drive for stability—are part of your truth, and as such, all are valid and need to be respected and honored.

My intention, ultimately, is to free you from the shame that surrounds the process of speaking (and not speaking) your truth, and to encourage you to stop blaming yourself for whatever choices you make and for how you choose to take care of yourself for now. Furthermore, to clarify why your fears are not just about maintaining comfort or routine, but rather deeply wired into your nervous system and, in fact, linked to your very survival. I want to clarify where these fears of telling the truth stem from, what they’re really about, and why they’re so powerful when it comes to determining your behavior.

Essentially, I want to explore why these primal fears that live in the body and often don’t make sense to the mind still determine your choices. Simultaneously, my intention is to reframe the notion of “authenticity” so that you can no longer use it as a weapon against yourself, and to offer you more self-compassionate options for what it means to “take care” of yourself and “be on your own side.” Stay tuned…

The post Being Honest in Your Relationship Can Feel Too Risky to Dare appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Deb was smart, professionally successful, and the mom of two children, 13 and 6. She was a highly respected professor and wrote books on feminism. Deb was also married to a man whom she didn’t like and who scared her; she felt afraid and unable to speak the truth in her own home. For the past five years, her husband had been angry and unkind towards her. She walked on eggshells, kept the peace, and pretended all was well. Trying, as she put it, to “keep his demons from waking.” Despite her emotional and intellectual intelligence, Deb had been unable to make the situation better. Still, her husband’s defensiveness and emotional manipulation made it impossible to address the issues or her suffering. This strong, self-sufficient, smart, and attractive woman felt trapped and stuck. She didn’t know how she could stay, but she didn’t know if she could bear to leave. While Deb desperately wanted to be free of his control and emotional abuse, she didn’t feel capable of telling the truth and confronting the consequences. Even if, on paper, she didn’t have much to lose, and even if she was desperately unhappy, still, she was too afraid to risk losing the relationship and the “ground” it offered. And also, too afraid that she couldn’t endure the process of leaving.

There are three stages to what I call the “truthing” process. In the first stage, women start to discover who they are, independent from the roles they play for other people. They wake up to their truth and uncover their own wants and needs. During this stage, women become aware of how deeply they’ve abandoned themselves and sought connection, harmony, and stability above all else. They recognize how much of their life has been driven by “shoulds” and controlled by guilt; women realize that they’re disconnected from their own truth.

In Touch with the Truth

When I first met Deb, she had moved through stage one of the “truthing” process and was uncomfortably situated in the painful, second stage. This is the stage when women are in touch with their truth, internally, clear on how they feel, but too afraid to speak it out loud, to bring it to the people who matter. Too afraid of the consequences of being honest—conflict, anger, punishment, aggression, withholding, silence, abandonment, rejection, loss of financial security, family structure, children’s well-being, societal inclusion, or all of the above. In stage two of “truthing,” women are paralyzed by what they imagine will be the fallout from authenticity.

As women, we believe and have been conditioned to believe that telling our truth will lead to the loss of connection with those we love and need. The chain: If our truth is unlikable, we will be unlikable. If we are unlikable, people will go away. If people go away, our needs won’t be met—we will end up unsafe and alone. We won’t survive. At the most primal level, disapproval equals death.

Often, even when a woman knows in her head that she would be okay if everything were to fall apart in her relationship, that she could and would be able to take care of herself, her body often hasn’t caught up with her head. Her nervous system still experiences the prospect of speaking her truth as terrifying and profoundly threatening. This terror is not rational, and not usually tied to a particular consequence that might result (although sometimes it is). But the fear I’m describing is primal, deep in our biological wiring, a fear that lives in the body and doesn’t always make “sense” to the mind. Voicing our truth, if it will be difficult for a partner (or anyone else) to hear, generates feelings of dread, despair, and even grief, as if our very existence is on the line. An unwanted truth is an unwanted self and the loss of connection, which means the end of us.

Deb didn’t respect or enjoy being with her husband, and had not been happy in the marriage for years. Her husband was angry, anxious, and scary to be around most of the time. Just his presence made Deb feel dysregulated and emotionally in danger. But his defensiveness and reactivity made it too risky to be honest with him. And so she stayed and silenced her truth. She was in a marriage that felt deeply dishonest and emotionally unsafe, but it felt even more unsafe to be truthful.

Often, the losses a woman fears don’t match her actual reality.

Deb was the breadwinner in the family; she paid for the children and all household expenses. Independently wealthy, she earned a large income and would always be financially safe. This was not the case for her husband, who relied on her help to get by, which was part of his anger towards her. At the same time, Deb had a strong circle of friends and community. Her husband, on the other hand, was isolated, without friends or family.

The reality was that Deb had financial resources and an emotional support system that she could rely on if the relationship were to go away. It was her husband who had everything to lose, not her. But despite knowing this and despite the immense suffering and constant anxiety she was living with (and had been living with for a long time), this empowered, self-sufficient, and independent woman felt paralyzed—unable to speak her truth.

Feeling stuck in the chasm between what your mind knows and your body experiences is the mark of stage two in this “truthing” process. In the post entries that follow, I’ll dive into this chasm and explain more about what creates it. Also, I’ll discuss how to move through the fear and into the third stage of “truthing.” To create an integrated and authentic life in which you feel safe in both body and mind, with solid internal ground on which you can stand and face whatever external conditions arise. A life in which safety is not just based on your relationship with others, but on an internal state and relationship with yourself.

The post Telling the Truth: Will You Survive It? Part 3 appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In the last post, I promised to expose the cultural narratives that keep you silent, afraid, disempowered, and unknown, and also clarify what’s actually true. I’ll start by saying this: the stories you’ve been told about speaking your truth are utterly untrue.

When you see through the myths, you can rewrite the narratives.

Myth #1: My Way or the Highway

The message in this faulty myth is that authenticity means you don’t care about what anyone else thinks or feels; you’re someone who does things your way, no matter how it affects anyone else. Speaking your truth makes you a self-centered, insensitive, emotional bully. The fear of being perceived as this kind of person then keeps you silent and afraid to speak up for yourself.

But expressing how you feel and what you want has nothing to do with being insensitive to other people or lacking empathy. It doesn’t mean you stop caring about the other person’s experience or how your truth impacts them. In reality, it’s the opposite. When your truth can be heard and known, you feel more present and seen in the relationship, more connected. As a result, you feel more empathy for other people’s experiences. You’re open to adjustments and compromises because your needs are also being considered and included. Expressing yourself is not an aggression against someone else, as it’s been framed through this cultural narrative. It’s actually an act of intimacy and a gift to the other person—and to yourself.

Speaking your truth is a starting place that offers you a seat at the table so you’re not just an invisible peace-keeping need-filler. The idea is not that only your needs matter, but that your needs also matter as much as anyone else’s needs. It’s always both and not either or.

Myth #2: Truth Is All or Nothing

Emotional honesty must arrive in a fully complete and raw form—all at once. The message is that anything less than the whole truth is a failing on your part. Once again, this is false. Your truth does not need to be shared in one go, in a say everything, consequences-be-damned style. It’s your right to control what, when, and how much you share, to express your truth selectively, sensitively, and strategically, in your own sequence and at your own pace. You can be mindful in your delivery and make adjustments along the way, depending on how your truth is landing, always paying close attention to when enough has been shared for the moment.

You can start with small pieces of your experience, bounded, curated truths—parts of the whole. You can use non-threatening, buffered I statements and describe your reality more broadly, as in “something in me is changing and I want to slowly start sharing more of myself.”

Telling your truth does not make you suddenly impulsive, unaware, and unrealistic. You’re fully present when you’re sharing, and it’s a process you control. It’s critical to communicate skillfully, particularly when you think it might be difficult for the other person to hear. What’s most important is that you express your truth in ways that take care of and protect you.

Myth #3: Truth Should Be Shared Regardless of Safety

In this false cultural myth, speaking your truth is unrelated to the person you’re sharing it with or the potential repercussions to your safety— psychological, emotional, or physical. To be fully authentic, you have to say everything you feel; any adjustments to protect yourself are evidence of your cowardice and “inauthenticity.”

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this: there’s no shame in protecting yourself. Safety always trumps “authenticity.” Telling your truth must consider your reality. The price you will pay in terms of retaliation, punishment, abandonment, anger, conflict, financial stability, family structure, or anything else is a major factor in deciding how and if you share your truth. Power dynamics are a real thing. This is not fear talking, it’s wise discernment.

What’s non-negotiable, however, regardless of how you present your truth to others, is to honor your experience inside yourself—to yourself. Most importantly, that you clarify and own your truth internally, and not deny, shame, criticize, or ignore it. With that internal ground in place, you’re on your own team and can act from a place of strength.

Furthermore, if you determine that speaking your truth could endanger your freedom or safety, then ask yourself what you can do to give yourself more options for stability. That might mean building skills and credentials, creating other sources of income, or cultivating an emotional support system outside the relationship so that you feel more secure and have greater options for independence. What steps can you take to make yourself less vulnerable to repercussions that might arise from your honesty?

Speaking your truth doesn’t happen in an idealistic bubble. Honesty always includes your reality and should expand your freedom, not endanger it. Authenticity should never entail sacrificing safety. Discernment is not self-abandonment—it is self-protection, self-loyalty, and self-compassion. You can move towards the truth in a way that protects you.

Myth #4: You Will End Up Alone

The message of this myth is that if you’re honest, you will be abandoned; no one will be willing to put up with the “real” you. Like an animal left behind by the herd, speaking your truth will leave you alone to die. Neither the relationship nor you will survive your truth.

This fundamental cultural narrative is also abjectly false and profoundly damaging to your freedom and empowerment. But because it’s believed so wholeheartedly, and the prospect of existential aloneness is so frightening, you don’t risk speaking your truth in a relationship. You don’t trust that the relationship will survive your honesty, and thus that you will survive it.

In reality, if your truth is unwelcome or dangerous in your relationship, no matter how skillfully you roll it out, then you may need to change the kinds of people you’re in a relationship with. You may need to start choosing partners who give you the space to be honest, and maybe even who want to know your truth—because they want to know you.

The next time you find yourself staying silent when you want to share, or saying too much and suffering the consequences, ask yourself, what cultural myth are you believing and obeying? Question it. Challenge it. Is it possible to be more forthcoming or more strategic and skillful in your communication, to give yourself a true place and voice in the relationship? Is there a way to be more fully known while still protecting your safety and well-being? You can use wisdom and discernment when speaking your truth, and if nothing feels possible, then a deeper seed-change may be necessary.

The post Telling Your Truth Should Set You Free, Not Endanger You, Part 2 appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Speaking the truth—your truth—for many women can feel like an unwise and even dangerous choice. If you’ve grown up in this culture, you’ve likely been conditioned by strong narratives, storylines that have taught you how to think about authenticity in your relationships and saying what you actually feel, want, and need—not just the watered-down, sweetened version of your experience. From the time you’re born, you’ve been marinating in powerful beliefs about what will happen to you if you’re honest, what telling the truth will lead to in your life, and also, what it will imply about the kind of person you are.

Often without realizing it, you’ve bought into these cultural narratives and as a result, have learned to deny and abandon your truth, stay silent, and focus on making your truth work for the greatest peace in your relationships. The myths you’ve learned about the truth-telling process have kept you inauthentic and, often, feeling unknown, unheard, and unfulfilled in even your most intimate relationships.

When it comes to the specific myths you may have accepted as truth, the four that follow are prime perpetrators in keeping people quiet, inauthentic, and ultimately less than who they are. And therefore, they are the four that most need to be illuminated, challenged, and changed.

Myth #1: You Are a ‘My Way or the Highway’ Person

The first myth about speaking your truth out loud (to other people) is this: if you dare to tell your truth, it will mean that you’re a “my way or the highway” person. In a nutshell, that you don’t care about what anyone else thinks, feels, or needs—you are “Teflon” to everyone else’s experience. The cautionary tale you’re told from the time you’re born is that if you’re honest about your experience, then you become someone who does things your way no matter what—an emotional bully who’s OK with hurting and alienating people, and who has no interest in how your truth impacts other people. And furthermore, that you’re just fine without relationships—if that’s the cost.

Seen through the lens of this faulty narrative, your truth is a confrontation, an aggression, something you do to another person—as opposed to something you give to yourself, the other person, and to the relationship itself. Your truth is an ending as opposed to a beginning, a “this is my truth so deal with it” event as opposed to a “this is how it is for me, and how is it for you?” conversation.

Myth #2: Truth Is a One-Shot Deal—Anything Less Is a Failing

The second false narrative you’re likely taught is that the truth is an all-or-nothing event, something that has to be delivered in one all-inclusive go. Your honesty must arrive fully complete and can’t be titrated, adjusted, rolled out over time, and strategically managed. At the same time, you’re taught that anything less than the whole truth, told in its fullest form, is a failing on your part. Presenting your feelings, wants, and needs slowly, cautiously, strategically—in parts and maybe never in their complete self-known form, is seen as a form of lying or withholding. It’s seen as something less than and not really the truth.

Myth #3: Truth Should Be Shared Regardless of the Consequences to Your Safety and Well-Being

In this false cultural myth, telling your truth in relationship, this “vomiting up” of everything you ever felt or needed, happens in a relational vacuum, disconnected from whom you’re sharing it with and unrelated to the potential consequences that might come from it. In order to be a truthful person, to not be inauthentic and a fraud, you have to say everything you feel in its entirety no matter the consequences to your own well-being, happiness, and safety—whether psychological, emotional, or physical.

Punishment, conflict, emotional retaliation, withdrawal, abandonment, financial repercussion, loss of home, ground, and opportunity, destabilization of family—all of these potential realities are supposed to be irrelevant if you are going to be an authentic person. If you factor in your actual reality in deciding how, when, and if you tell the whole truth or any part of it, then you’re, by default, being dishonest or worse, a coward. Your loyalty must be to the truth above all else, but not to yourself.

Myth #4: If You Tell the Truth, You Will End Up Alone

Rounding out the most common myths that many people have been spoon-fed about speaking your truth is the one that’s hardest to shake, most fundamental, and deeply ingrained. The story is this: being honest about how you feel and what you need will leave you rejected and abandoned. Being real means being alone. As one woman put it, “If I’m honest, I’ll end up dying alone in a house full of cats.” The cultural narrative teaches you that being real and being related are incompatible realities.

This narrative is false and worse than false, it’s often responsible for keeping you silent and invisible, inauthentic, disempowered, self-critical, and ultimately, committed to being pleasing. This myth is responsible for keeping you locked in the gilded cage of likability, terrified of bringing yourself more wholly into your own life. You’ve learned to believe that showing up as who you really are will render you isolated, abandoned, and existentially alone.

Women, by nature, are typically relationally oriented and connected creatures. The prospect of living (and dying) alone is often seen as a fate worse than anything, and certainly worse than inauthenticity or self-abandonment. That said, you unknowingly abandon yourself in an effort to take care of yourself.

So, I want to take these myths apart, one by one—challenge them and shed light on their inherent mendacity and hypocrisy, to clarify what’s actually true. Because the story you’ve been told about speaking your truth is positively not true. Stay tuned… more to come in Part 2.

The post 4 Myths About Speaking Your Truth That Aren’t True appeared first on Nancy Colier.