I was eavesdropping at my local diner—my favorite laboratory for human behavior. At the next table, a couple in their mid-forties was chatting about a movie they’d just seen. As the waiter zoomed by without stopping, the man became visibly agitated. I heard him tell his partner that it was the third time the waiter had “ignored” him and that if he were “a star,” if he were “somebody who people had heard of,” if he were somebody people “respected,” then they would already be enjoying their burgers. When the server finally did arrive, sweat bubbling above his lip, I heard this man aggressively asserting that the young man should be less obvious about whom he deems important enough to serve.

My dining neighbor was just a normal person doing what normal people do, creating a story and crafting meaning. But the particular meaning he made and we all make—the specific story we tell ourselves—this is our personal narrative, and more than anything else, what determines our reality.

The story we tell ourselves about ourselves answers two important questions in every situation we encounter: what’s happening and why it’s happening. In this example, what was happening to the man sitting next to me was that he was being ignored, snubbed, and treated disrespectfully. Why it was happening, in his story, was because he wasn’t important or famous; he was just an irrelevant, invisible, nobody. The narratives in our head are continually connecting the dots of our life, making links and forming cause and effect relationships between facts, situations, and events that we carefully select and design. This happened because of that for every aspect of our experience—whether related or not.

In this case, the insanely busy and overwhelmed waiter was passing him by, purposefully not taking his order, because he wasn’t publicly known or someone who mattered in the grand scheme. His story succeeded at making sense of what was happening and inventing a reason for it, but through an incredibly specific and narrow lens. He chose (or crafted) one of a thousand different explanations for the wait-time on taking his order and related to that one explanation as if it were the truth, sulking with his companion and erupting at the waiter in anger.

In accepting his self-designed narrative as fact, he validated a version of himself, a self-experience that was clearly frustrating, upsetting, and painful. He designed a reality that supported and strengthened a pre-existing storyline. His mind, like a heat-seeking missile, went searching for evidence that he could use, either on its own without alteration, or in this case, with his self-made bridges and personalized flavoring, to confirm his already written self-narrative.

The result of our story-making habit and basic nature is that we lock ourselves into being someone who can’t grow or change and into a life that can’t grow or change. We assume that the movie playing in our head is what’s actually happening outside the private cinema of our own mind, and that our explanation for why it’s happening is the accurate explanation. We take it as given that the intentions we’ve invented for everyone else in the world (and why they’re doing what they’re doing to us) are in fact their true intentions. And finally, we don’t question that the universe is behaving the way it’s behaving because of what we’ve determined the universe thinks of us. All of it is true, which then means that it must always be true, because we effectively make it the only thing that can be true.

The problem is, we all do this in one form or another, from the cradle to the grave, and few of us are even aware that we’re doing it. The most important thing, how we’re writing the story of our life, in the micro moments, in each situation, is what defines how we feel, see ourselves and experience our life. That said, we’re constantly limiting ourselves to a kind of Groundhog Day life, the same thing over and over again, day after day. We feel stuck because we’re keeping ourselves stuck with our stories. So many people say they want to change, and even more people say they want their lives to change. But neither can happen as long as we’re using the same writer to craft the story—of who we are and the possibilities that exist for our life. Nothing can change if the script and meaning are already written and we’re just filling in the details to make it all work—again.

We tell ourselves that our story makes sense and is justified, we have that story because it’s not a story; it’s reality—what always happens to us, and we have the track record to back it up. But we don’t see that we’re the ones making that reality a reality in the way that we’re writing the story. We are right because we make ourselves right. It is indeed what happens to us because we are the authors of what happens to us.

What allows you to break free from your stories (and resulting stuckness) is to become aware of yourself weaving your narratives, to notice when you’re telling yourself and everyone else the story of what’s happening to you and why. Freedom happens when you can see the leaps you’re making, and what you’re adding to reality. The way out of a life that doesn’t change, a you who always feels the same way and has the same kinds of things happen to her, is to become aware of where you’re inventing the narrative, constructing meaning, building bridges, and connecting self-selected dots between stand-alone events. Ask yourself, where am I making assumptions, and adding to the bones of reality where it doesn’t actually exist? Again and again, notice when you’re making self-constructed interpretations and generating meaning, writing the story of the situation through your own corrupted lens, accepting (and reacting) to your personal narrative as if it were the Truth. Notice and stop—pull the lens back; step out of the cinema of your mind. Return to the present moment, drop into your senses and the bare bones of what’s actually happening, without any spin and with nothing added. Simply put… let the thing be the thing.

The post Does Your Life Feel Like Groundhog Day? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Do you ever feel like no matter what you do or say, how you behave, or the choices you make, the results are the same? No matter how hard you try, you can’t move the dial forward: can’t experience new things, new people, and new opportunities—can’t change your life. Does it feel like you’re stuck in the same loop you’ve always been in?

If that feels true for you, it may be time to shift your attention—away from your circumstances and from trying to change outcomes, and toward something more fundamental: the stories you’re telling yourself—about your life, your possibilities, and yourself.

Ask yourself, what are the background narratives running in your head that you’re accepting as true? What is the reality your mind is constructing that you’re accepting as what is?

A Few Examples

My friend Francesca was furious. She’d been invited to be a bridesmaid at her friend’s destination wedding in the Bahamas. In the story she told me, the bride had only asked her to be a bridesmaid because she assumed that Francesca would never get married herself. And, because she couldn’t possibly have other plans and therefore could just slip off for a four-day trip to the Bahamas at the drop of a hat—with only nine months’ notice! In my friend’s narrative, the invitation to be a bridesmaid in the Bahamas was insulting; the bride obviously thought she was pathetic and was just “throwing her a bone.”

Just this morning, I was late to meet a colleague because I unexpectedly had to take my daughter to the doctor. My colleague made a comment about not being able to rely on anyone and always having to take care of herself. When I asked her what she meant, she brought up the fact that I’d been late despite our having twice confirmed the time.

I had been late, that part was true, but she’d also never asked why or inquired about what happened on my end. And ironically, she’d told me many times that I was someone she could count on, and how much she appreciated that aspect of our relationship. In the nine minutes she’d been waiting for me to arrive that day, she’d written a comprehensive story that used my tardiness as an endorsement for her preexisting storyline.

Anne (not her real name) hated being single; she was desperate to find a lasting relationship. A woman in her early 30s, she’d been in two important relationships in her life, both with men she wanted to marry. In the first, the man broke up with her after two years of dating, and then immediately paired up with her closest friend. Later, he told her that he’d only dated her to “get to her friend.” In the second relationship, something similar happened; that boyfriend also ended up with one of her friends, whom he also married.

On the outside, Anne presented as confident and outgoing. She described herself as flirty and fun—“the life of the party.” But her inner storyteller had her cast in a different role, namely the woman men “got their ya-yas out with,” but not the one they ultimately chose. What men really wanted was a more demure and mysterious woman, a woman with the magic fairy dust she didn’t have. The story hiding behind her claims of being fun and sexy was that no matter how fun and sexy she was, she would never be the one men picked for a wife or as the mother of their children. And that was because, as her story explained, she was too big of a presence, too loud, too opinionated, too…something.

As a result, Anne ended up acting in ways that were out of sync with how she actually felt. In social situations, she became that big presence—loud, brash, and wild. Fun at all costs. But even as she was performing this part she’d self-scripted, she was also resenting the men for whom she was performing it. Having already decided they didn’t really want her and would eventually choose someone else, she would go so far as to suggest quieter women to her boyfriends, women who were what she insisted they really wanted. Her self-sabotaging campaign, in the end, succeeded at convincing her partners to break up with her, which then re-created the same painful rejection she’d already decided would happen. And so she would be single and alone, once again, alone with her story—proven to her own satisfaction—and despair. She was not the woman men chose, and she had the track record to prove it.

Stories Creating Our Reality

The difficulty with our personal narratives is not just that they exist but that we don’t see them or recognize the fundamental role they’re playing in our lives. We don’t see that the story we’re injecting into reality is creating our reality, and that the reality we’re accepting as truth is of our own making. We don’t consider that the stories playing in our head are just that—stories playing in our head. We lose perspective, disappear into the story, and become its main character.

We bring our stories with us everywhere. They dictate how we fill in the gaps in our life, make meaning, and determine potential outcomes. Our stories are layered into the way we think, feel, interact, and make choices. Ultimately, we see what our story is willing to show us and then behave as if what it’s telling us were true. The story becomes our life, and our life becomes the story. If our stories were a backpack, we would drop it. But we don’t see the backpack, and we don’t see our stories—that’s the problem.

Breaking Free From the Unhealthy Cycle

What allows you to break free from these unhealthy cycles, to step out of your stories, is first to realize that you’re telling yourself stories, to recognize that what feels like truth may actually be a constructed narrative. Before anything new can happen, you have to be able to notice what you’re adding to and doing with reality, the overlay you’re placing on top of it.

But to get there, you have to ask yourself hard questions:

What assumptions did I bring into this situation?

Where did I make the leap from what actually happened to what I’ve decided is the meaning behind it?

Where have I constructed a bridge from fact to fiction?

Where did I shift from the bones of reality to my story?

And finally, how is my story shaping what happens next—locking me into an outcome I’ve already written, and situation that, ultimately, I don’t want.

More to come…and in my upcoming book, Narratives: Let Go of the Stories That Keep You Stuck (November)

The post What’s the Story You’re Telling Yourself About Yourself? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

I’ve written a lot about the habit of “shoulding” on ourselves, constantly telling ourselves all the things we should do, improve, become, know, achieve, the better version of ourselves we should be. And specifically, the self-aggression of shoulding on ourselves, and the damage it does to our quality of life and ability to enjoy the present moment.

Today, however, I want to investigate another self-aggressive activity we engage in, a close cousin of shoulding. It’s what I call “nexting.” Nexting is the habit of continually poking and prodding ourselves to know what’s next in our life, what we need to do, decide, attend to, accomplish, and create—next. In a nutshell, what else needs to happen. Nexting is the opposite of being in the present moment; it’s forcing ourselves to turn our attention away from what’s here right now.

I was recently speaking with a friend whose youngest child is about to leave for college. She was obsessing over what she could do next to fill her empty nest; should she get a puppy, take up gardening, learn to sail? Later, I had a conversation with a colleague who’d just finished his most recent novel. He literally handed in the final draft the day before. His mind had already begun frantically searching for the topic of his next book. He was frustrated that he didn’t know what was next, assuming it must be writer’s block. Truth be told, I do the same: The instant I finish a project, I start searching for my next idea.

We are conditioned to believe that we must keep moving forward in life, on to the next thing, and then the next, from the cradle to the grave. According to our grand cultural narrative, moving forward, otherwise known as “progress,” is the goal of a good life. It means we’re doing life right.

As women, we’re taught that we have to start reinventing ourselves the instant our last child leaves for college, or the day we miss our first period. And that’s not enough; after that initial reinvention, we have to reinvent the reinvention. We even have a next for after we die, the afterlife, another place to have to get to. The nexts just keep on coming—they never end.

While there’s a lot to be said for moving forward and progressing in life, personally, professionally, and spiritually, what we don’t know how to do is be where we are. We’re really not good at being in the present moment. And, we’re particularly not skilled at sitting in the unknown spaces, those moments when what’s next is not yet clear, when we don’t know what we want to do, explore, or pursue next. At the core, we don’t know how to not know.

Not knowing what’s next makes us anxious; it feels like we’re nowhere, doing nothing. And so our mind rushes to fill the empty space, offering a thousand plans, problems, obsessions, ideas, and whatever else it can come up with for us to do and attend to in the meantime. The mind finds something with which to busy itself, a metaphoric bone to chew on. Once again, it’s not a problem that we want to make use of free time or be productive, but the anxiety that comes along with it, the urgency with which we feel compelled to get on to what’s next, is troubling.

When we’re constantly nexting on ourselves, we’re missing out on the profound opportunity to get to know what it’s like in the unknown and not yet formed space, the in-between, still unclear space. We rush to lock it down and make it something we know. But becoming is a something—its own process. It might be one that’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar, that we’re not accustomed to sitting in, but it’s a place of its own.

Nexting on ourselves, like shoulding on ourselves, can become a form of self-aggression. We use “what’s next?” against ourselves, insisting that we should always know what we want to do next, where we’re headed, and who we want to become. While we may calm the anxiety that comes from having to hang out in the corridor before the next door opens, we create a different kind of anxiety and discontent, the kind that comes from fielding the unending demands to know what we don’t know and, essentially, stop being in the place we actually are.

If you suspect that you may be a habitual next-er, try this: Start paying attention to the voice inside you that asks you to decide or demands that you know what you don’t know yet. Start listening for the voice that tells you it’s not OK to be where you are, that the present moment is not enough, and not a place to land. Notice how often you hear some version of “what’s next?” inside your mind, or feel pressure to make a plan, have an experience, or be somewhere other than where you are. When you hear that voice, say to yourself (silently or aloud) “no next.” Then bring your attention back to what’s happening in this present moment—tune into your body, feel the sensations, drop into your now. Use your own attention to turn the transitional space, what feels like a non-space, into its own place—a destination, not just a launching pad. Ask yourself, “What’s it like right here if there’s nowhere else to get to—no next, just this.”

Play with these questions; see if becoming can become its own destination. Imagine the transitions in life, the corridors between rooms, as an opportunity to be curious about what’s percolating in you and what wants to come next. Relax and resist the urge to fill in the spaces so as to quell your own anxiety. Practice living in the questions rather than figuring out the answers. Not knowing is a place, and once you give yourself permission to be there, you may find that it’s one you can inhabit and even enjoy. The next time you start nexting on yourself, use it as an invitation—not to abandon the present moment, but to lean into it, and be curious about what it’s like to be right where you are. What you discover may surprise and even delight you.

The post Stop Demanding That You Know What’s Next appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In this post, rather than speak about both-and as it applies to your relationships with other people, I want to address how it plays out in your relationship with yourself.

As human beings, our feelings are complicated, fluid, and usually inconsistent. We feel both positively and negatively, about almost everything and everyone we encounter. You might feel profound love and gratitude for your parent and also feel angry that they weren’t able to encourage you in the ways that you needed. You might feel a friend is selfish, and also adore their sense of humor. You might cherish your child more than anything on earth, and also resent him for always demanding your attention. You might feel enormous respect for your partner, and simultaneously despise him, want to stay married and also desperately wish he would leave you alone. It’s normal to feel all of these things—all at once.

While coexisting and contradictory truths are the normal state of affairs for human beings, still, we’re taught to believe that if we feel one way about someone or something, we can’t also, simultaneously, feel something totally different. If you experience two opposing or differing emotions, one must invalidate the other. When contrasting feelings or thoughts exist, one side is necessarily false, and therefore, not how you really feel. Negative or ambivalent feelings wipe out all positive feelings. And so, to allow yourself to feel, make space for, or just acknowledge your difficult feelings and negative thoughts, the parts of something that are hard immediately make you feel bad—and guilty. If you allow yourself to feel a part of the relationship that’s painful and doesn’t work for you, the parts that are satisfying must not be true. Feeling the whole story, the miracle and catastrophe that’s part of every relationship, then means you’re ungrateful, because you’re effectively denying everything positive and saying that nothing good exists. To acknowledge any bad is to say that it’s all bad.

The Impact on Decision-Making

We often believe that there can only be one kind of feeling state about something at a time. As a result, we constantly have to choose between our feelings, to pick a side, and vehemently disown and disallow all feelings and thoughts that are not aligned with that side, this one way of feeling we’ve determined is acceptable.

Our misunderstanding of the both-and coexisting and contradictory nature of life also deeply impacts our ability to make decisions. In almost every choice we make, we get something and we lose something. Every choice in life comes with little deaths. If we take a particular path, we give up what might have come from taking a different path. Each decision we make gives us the opportunity to grow in certain ways and not in other ways. Whichever path we choose, we will encounter difficulty. The question is not which decision will bring only positive results but which will offer challenges that interest us. There is no perfect path in anything, no decision or choice that’s free from the reality of coexisting and contradictory truths. There is no reality that is absent of the both-and nature of life.

Still, we hold off making decisions and remain paralyzed waiting for choices to be 100 percent clear and consistent, perfect in their single-experience-ness. We wait, in vain, for there to be no difficulties involved in a particular decision, assuming that the right decision will come only when all downsides associated with that path have been annihilated. Then, without any inconsistency, it will be the right decision. Unfortunately, that never happens.

We must make choices with the awareness of what we’re gaining—and what we’re giving up. We opt for a certain path not just because it’s the one that will most likely deliver the results we desire but because its hard parts are bearable and can expand us in ways that we’re interested in expanding. We can stop demanding that the right decision be one that has only positive experiences and feelings attached to it. With everything in life, the right choice is one that includes things we like and things we don’t, gains and losses. All of life exists in both-and.

The post Our Feelings Contradict Each Other, and That’s OK appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The experience people long for more than any other in their relationships is a simple one, but nonetheless, one that doesn’t happen often. People long to be heard. But heard in a very particular way—without judgment, correction, or interpretation, and without being told to change. Ultimately, to be heard correctly, without anything being done to or added onto their experience.

More than anything, people want to be seen and known, to be given the space to share what they’re living—without being told what to do about it, what’s wrong with it, why it’s invalid and not the right experience to be having, why they’re to blame for that experience, and essentially how to make it go away. They long for a space where their experience can feel welcome and safe, where they can determine their own truth, and define, for themselves, what they feel, want, and need.

At the core, we all long to have our truth related to as a destination, a place to land and be received, as it is, rather than a place from which to launch a campaign of alteration. We want our truth to be known and offered the dignity and space to be.

When couples fight, they don’t usually hear each other. They don’t allow each other to express their real experience, not without trying to do something with or to it, even if that’s to try and make it better. Most people simply don’t know how to listen in the way we humans long to be listened to. At the end of the day, sadly, we often don’t give the ones we love the most what they really need.

When people listen to their partner, it’s through the filter of what it means and says about them (the person listening). They evaluate, judge, and respond to the other person’s experience through the lens of whether they agree with and share the same experience as the other person. In short, how does my truth compare with their truth? Does their truth make me feel good about myself, confirm my own self-esteem, and shore up my own identity? Does it validate my experience and the story I tell myself about myself?

In this way, while not malicious, the listening and attention we offer each other, at the core, is self-centered and protective; it’s about our own survival. The other’s experience is viewed in relation to and in comparison with our own. The other’s truth must validate our own, so that our truth can stand, be right—and matter.

Most couples operate on a system of “but-s.” “But” is the word we use to separate and join differing experiences. If our partner’s feelings are unwanted by us or difficult to tolerate, if they contrast with our own, then one of us has to be proven wrong. What the other is living must be faulty, inappropriate, pathological, or the wrong thing to be living. Contradictory realities cannot coexist and be equally valid and deserving of respect, curiosity, or empathy.

The other’s truth must not just be wrong, however, but proven wrong beyond a reasonable doubt. It must be disallowed, or put another way, annihilated. It goes like this: my experience is this, but your experience is that, which means that your experience, if I really hear it, and treat it like it matters, will make my own experience irrelevant and invalid (which will make me irrelevant and invalid). If I don’t prove your truth to be wrong, then I won’t be entitled to feel what I feel, to be attended to, and ultimately, to have my reality heard and known.

The problem we bump into, however, is that reality resolves in contradiction. It’s always both and. Experience is relative, not fixed, not one thing that’s either right or wrong. There’s no keeper of the real truth. What’s true for one person is rarely true for another. We don’t need to share the same experience with our partner or anyone else in order for both experiences to be true—for the person who is experiencing it. Another person’s truth can be utterly different from ours and also be true and valid, as true and valid as our own. Our experience is what we perceive, see, feel, and essentially live. It’s valid because it’s our experience.

What makes for a truly healthy relationship is an attitude of both and not either or. The other person’s experience—and—our experience, no matter how close or opposing their content. Both deserve a place at the table. A table, when it comes to love, that’s bigger than right and wrong, and wide enough to hold all contents.

It’s strange, we imagine that we’re all living in one world, one reality, one truth, one experience, and one what is. But in fact, there are 8.2 billion realities in this one world, as many realities as there are people. We’re all living inside our own private cinema inside our own private mind. What makes couples work and allows for true listening is when we connect different experiences with an “and,” not a “but.” Our experience—and—their experience, both true, and all welcome in a space of curiosity and kindness.

A trustworthy kind of listening is possible and can, in fact, be learned. It happens when we stop demanding that our partner be someone who agrees with and shares our experience, when we stop listening to the other through the filter of “me” and what protects our own rightness. In true intimacy, we realize that our rightness doesn’t depend on anything or anyone else. The rightness of our experience stands on the fact that it’s our experience. With that clarity, we then want to know our partner’s actual truth, not just the truth that feels good for us. This knowing creates a trustworthy and unshakable intimacy. Rather than any particular truth, we find refuge and love in the truth itself.

The post I Don’t Want to Be Fixed, I Just Want to Be Heard appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The unspeakable, un-shareable truth was this: Kate loved her child, but she didn’t like her very much. She was entirely devoted to her, would do anything for her, but she didn’t actually enjoy being with her.

When she confessed her feelings to her best friend, her friend immediately explained to Kate why everything she was “complaining” about, that she didn’t like, was age-appropriate behavior for a teenager. She told Kate that her feelings were not about her daughter at all, but about the parts of herself she didn’t like, and that she needed to get over it and stop blaming her child for her own issues. She asked Kate if she’d ever been “willing” to give her daughter a chance to be likable. She also reminded Kate (as if she didn’t think about it every day) how painful it must be for her daughter to intuit that her own mother didn’t like her. But all roads led back to the same place: Kate’s feelings were her fault and they meant that something was fundamentally wrong with her, and that she was a bad mother. It most certainly was not OK to feel the way she felt.

When Kate tried to share her experience with her husband (the girl’s father), he became agitated and angry. He defended their daughter and reminded Kate, as her friend had, that everything she didn’t enjoy was typical teenage behavior. He reiterated the sentiment too, that Kate’s feelings were Kate’s problem, which probably stemmed from her own childhood and the parenting she received. He instantly put on his judge and jury cap and made the giant leap from Kate’s ambivalent feelings to the accusation that she was thinking about abandoning their daughter. In a matter of minutes, Kate’s complicated confession had turned her into a coldhearted person who would leave his daughter (for whom, he made clear, he would never have similar feelings).

Kate discovered that there was no safe space to be heard about this particular experience, no place where her ambivalence could be received without harsh judgment and rejection. It seemed that regardless of whom she talked to, her feelings were held against her and used to blame, shame, and pathologize her. It was simply forbidden for a woman to love her child but not like her child’s personality.

Societal Expectations and Maternal Identity

The truth was, Kate’s feelings collided with one of the fiercest taboos women carry. They challenged what may be the strongest belief we hold: a good mother is supposed to feel endless love, enjoyment, gratitude, and the unending desire to spend time with her children. She’s expected to adore her children as people, no matter what, and be naturally and entirely fulfilled by caregiving. Any deviation from this ideal is deemed as a moral failure. Ultimately, maternal love should eliminate her own subjectivity. These beliefs, shared by both women and men, are hard-wired into our system from the beginning.

Regardless of how prevalent it is, women are ashamed to say they don’t always like their kids or want to spend time with them. Motherhood has been idealized to leave no room for contradictory feelings or ambivalence. But the hidden truth is that ambivalence in motherhood is remarkably commonplace, and may even be the norm. Still, when a woman feels boredom, resentment, aversion, or even just not liking her child at times, she often experiences that feeling, not as a normal human reaction, but as evidence that she is defective, guilty, and even dangerous.

Over my decades as a therapist, I’ve heard countless mothers talk about contradictory, difficult, and complicated feelings toward their kids. These feelings in motherhood are normal, part of the process of mothering. In order to shift the idealized, all-or-nothing, un-meetable expectations about what mothers should feel, women need to first release the judgments they perpetrate on themselves, and against each other. Before anything systemic can evolve, women need to stop shaming and blaming themselves for what are entirely natural feelings that ebb and flow, and that can also change. With permission to feel all her feelings, even about her kids, a woman gets to be a real human being, not just a cartoon cutout of an idealized mother who can’t exist without a host of harsh taboos to keep her in line.

It’s rare for women to find a space safe enough to talk about their relationship with their children, if it doesn’t look and sound a certain way. But when we can become that safe space for ourselves; when there can be space for everything, the whole truth, a space not contingent on the contents of what it holds, then we discover a safety that’s irrevocable and infinite. A safe space that includes everything and excludes nothing, that can hold the whole miracle and catastrophe that we are. We find ourselves as our real safe harbor and true home, a place where all of us is always welcome.

The post A Secret That Some Mothers Will Never Tell appeared first on Nancy Colier.

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.

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