The Emotionally Available Partner Read online

  The Emotionally

  Available Partner

  The Emotionally

  Available Partner

  A Journey to True Love

  Marian Lindner

  The Emotionally Available Partner

  A journey to True Love

  All Rights Reserved c2004 by Marian Lindner

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author.

  ISBN: 0-595-32224-7

  To my husband Charles.

  Thank you for being my emotionally available partner.

  Your support of this project means so much to me.

  I love you for all that you are.

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a debt of gratitude to HP for helping me to face myself, to heal, and for writing this book with me. I also want to deeply thank Carol Emery Normandi and Lauralee Roark for their amazing work on eating disorders that changed my life, and for their support of this project. Beyond Hunger: End Your Obsession with Food and Weight inspired this book and many of the original ideas are from Carol and Lauralee. Thank you to my wonderful husband Charles. I am so happy this work led me to you. You are more amazing than I could have ever imagined. A big thank you also goes out to Hillary Flye for her amazing, generous, and profound work with me. And also, to all the wonderful women who informed this book: Diane Conway with her wonderful book The Fairy Godmother’s Guide to Dating and Mating, Marilyn Geist, Tami, Meg Lopez-Cepero, Lydia Yinger, Rosemary, and Anne. Thank you all so much! And for all the men who helped on my journey: Dave, Ray, Eric, Jerry, Jim, John, Mike M., thank you for all your kindness. Thanks also to my dear parents, Eleanor and Roland. The support of all my friends and family on this journey, and all the wonderful people I interacted with to get the practice I needed to do the research for this book, has worked a miracle in me. I am grateful to you all.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Phase I: Understanding Ourselves

  1 Why We Choose the Unavailable Type

  2 Compassionate Self-Observation

  3 Being Our Own Best Friend

  4 Magic Tools That Build Confidence

  Phase II: Understanding Other People

  5 Dating Is a Great Opportunity!

  6 Emotionally Available or Not?

  Phase III: Emotional Maturity

  7 Rejection, Grief, and Other Challenges

  8 Relying On Our Feelings

  9 Letting Go of Control

  Phase IV: Power and Freedom

  10 Love and Spirituality

  11 Celebrating Our Journey

  12 The Joy of Commitment

  Conclusion

  Bibliography

  Index

  Preface

  Connecting in intimate partnerships without shutting down emotionally has always challenged me. In 2001 when a difficult relationship ended painfully, I clearly saw how my pattern of choosing unavailable partners had left me stuck in self-hatred. Unable to let in a loving person, I realized that I needed to change. I could no longer simply point the finger and label my “ex” the problem. Profoundly sad at my inability to maintain a healthy relationship, to marry, and to start a family, I had to face the fact that I was contributing to the challenges in my relationships. And I know that I am in good company. Many women today can’t commit and achieve cultural “success,” feel demoralized, and live lives that revolve around other people: controlling them, avoiding them, fearing them, or blaming them.

  At that time, I decided once and for all to work through my own fears of partnership. To heal, I set out to vigorously re-conceptualize my ideas about relationships. It has been quite a journey. I began by trusting all of my behaviors and observing myself non-judgmentally. I got help from a professional therapist who has been happily married for over twenty years. I talked to women who were involved in partnerships I admired. Because I had previously recovered from a very serious eating disorder, I also applied anti-diet principles to the relationship issues I was facing. I substituted obsessions with people, partnerships, and sex for the compulsive eating behaviors those self-help books addressed.

  I now believe that whenever we form relationships with unavailable people, or become relationship anorexics in order to push away available people, our own partnership issues have popped up. I learned that our relationship fears are not manifesting to destroy any hope we have of maintaining a good relationship, though. These issues are only attempting to return us to the natural partner inside that already knows how to love. We are not involved in unfulfilling relationships because we are flawed; we only need to remember our essential nature. We can’t be anything else but a loving partner. That is why our challenges with intimacy have been so painful for us. Each challenge we experience is actually a call from our deepest power. It urgently sends the same message from inside over and over: that each of us is loveable and good enough for a wonderful relationship right now.

  I learned that the solution to my problem is inside of me, not in someone else. With this book, I have not written a rulebook on how to capture a partner or keep them, provided guidelines on controlling our behavior around potential partners, or supplied a prescription for marriage. This book functions as a guidebook for reclaiming the natural partner inside of us. Although I lead workshops on emotional availability throughout California, I am not a licensed therapist. These are my personal ideas, what have worked for me, and what I continue to strive to embody. Please use your own guidance as you read this book. This is only one path to healing and it does not have to be the path for every woman. This book is based on my own experience, so please take what you like and leave the rest. I also want to point out that since I wrote the book from my perspective, it is geared toward women; however, men can also benefit from the messages. I have found that these principles transcend all barriers—including gender.

  From doing this work and incorporating the wisdom of the many brave women who have walked before me, I know that it is possible to live without fleeing from intimacy. Now, after a few years of practicing the ideas in this book I am in touch with the natural partner inside of me, am happily married to a wonderful, available man, interact with him lovingly, look behind the obsession to see what is truly going on when I get emotionally shaky, and no longer need to use people for a romantic “fix” when I am upset or uncomfortable. My hope is to plant a seed that there is a solution for women, and that sharing what I have learned will help you heal faster. Any woman who struggles with fears of intimacy and partnership will discover daily support and companionship in The Emotionally Available Partner: A Journey to True Love.

  This book contains 365 inspirational messages that are organized day by day into phases and chapters. The book may be started at the beginning; however, some women will find more benefit by searching out specific topics. Feel free to begin wherever you like. Whatever way this guidebook is utilized, the process works. By healing, our work will move out from our romantic partnerships to all of our relationships, and will help in the movement to empower women. Please join me today to celebrate ourselves and others as we let in the love of an emotionally available partner.

  -Marian Lindner

  Phase I

  ♥♥♥♥

  Understanding

  Ourselves

  ∙1∙

  Why We Choose the

  Unavailable Type

  In this chapter, you will uncover the reasons that you have chosen unavailable partners. You will learn about patterns established in your early childhood, behaviors that yo
u developed to deal with your feelings, how cultural pressures influence you, and that your relationship issues are not your enemy. Enjoy the process of self-discovery. You are on your way to true love!

  Day 1

  Ego

  I let go of my ego.

  Ego is equal to “edging God out.” It is the extreme force of will. Most of us are terrified of letting go of our egos. We feel that without hoarding things and people to ourselves, we will be swept away in the world. We worry that we will end up with nothing. Basically our egos create categories because it feels safer to be special, the smartest, the best, or the prettiest. If we know where we fit in these categories, we think we can predict outcomes. We think that we are safe. When we view the world through the eyes of our ego, however, there is no love or spontaneity. There is no Higher Power. A category is not reality.

  Now as we heal, we see that to be connected to the whole, to the universe, to a Higher Power, and to each other, is true safety. We really are all interconnected, women and men. We are not just subjects looking at other people as objects. A partner is not a trophy. Now we know that putting ourselves in a box and defining others with reference to ourselves is a signal that we are off balance. We see that conceiving of ourselves as separate puts pressure on us. Today let’s make a choice to heal our partnership issues and release our egos.

  Today I let go of my ego and let real love in.

  Day 2

  Basic Rights

  Letting myself be with whoever I want, as I want, is a basic right.

  Who took our basic love rights away? Often we can vividly remember times we were told not to feel as we did, told how to act like a lady, and told how to manipulate others to get what we wanted. We were told these untruths sometimes by very well-meaning people who believed they were teaching us essential skills for relating.

  Healing, however, means that we give ourselves the permission to be with whom we want, as we want, when we want to be with them. Obviously we need a person’s permission, yet to the extent that it is possible healing our partnership issues means that we take back our rights. Every human being deserves the chance to be authentic in making love choices. This process reinstates our rights. Just for today, we release societal and parental influences. Now we know our rights.

  Today I have the basic right to let myself love.

  Day 3

  Self-Hatred

  I abstain from all self-hatred today.

  Self-hatred can stop us in our tracks. Self-hatred tells us we are wrong, bad, hopeless, and not enough. The self-hatred cycle is powerful and ancient within many of us; however, if we examine the self-hatred cycle clearly, we see that it is actually a great distraction from our feelings. Whenever we get upset at ourselves and start to flagellate ourselves, we feel that we are doing something constructive. We feel that we aren’t powerless over the situation. We feel that we will just shape-up in the future so this will never be an issue again.

  Then we are so focused on how bad we feel after we’ve beaten ourselves into a pulp that whatever feeling or situation started the self-hatred ball rolling will be on the back burner. Today we recognize self-hatred for what it really is―a great distraction from what is going on within us. Then we let go of self-hatred.

  Today when I notice myself in self-hatred, I look behind it to see what feelings are surfacing in me.

  Day 4

  Obsession

  I look behind obsession.

  The detour into obsessing on another person has been a wonderful catch-all for many of us throughout our lives. When we hit adolescence, our lives usually became more complicated on many levels. We were developing womanly body characteristics and receiving more attention from people. Our parents may also have had complex relationships to our growth. School, family, and peer issues may have surfaced at this time, too.

  Many of us learned early that focusing on other people and dreams of partnership would distract us from feelings we didn’t know how to handle in any other way. Of course, we were probably just very curious about potential partners; however, when obsession began to dominate our lives we lost our balance.

  Now whenever we are consistently thinking about a particular person or worried about marriage or partnership, we can be reasonably sure that we are experiencing a feeling we don’t know how to cope with. Obsession is a great signal that something is going on within us. It signals that we are experiencing an emotion we don’t know how to process. Today we heal by delving into our feelings to see what our preoccupations are telling us.

  Today I look at my feelings whenever I slide into obsession.

  Day 5

  Abuse

  I stop the cycle of abuse.

  “Stop beating yourself up. See that it hurts whole world.”―Hillary Flye

  Emotional unavailability is abuse; it is emotional abuse. If we beat ourselves up, it makes sense that we will attract someone who abuses us, whether by criticizing us verbally, hurting us physically, or being unavailable. We deserve to know that many people wouldn’t even consider yelling when they are angry. Many people wouldn’t even consider abusing us or neglecting us. The people in our lives are simply symbols of the way we treat ourselves.

  In order to heal our partnership issues, we become the partner that we need and want. That means that we are available to ourselves, abstain from self-hatred, and refrain from self-abuse of any kind. If we are experiencing any type of abuse from our partner, we now know that it is not necessary. Bravely searching out the abuser inside of us who is mirrored in our partner helps us to be more loving in our relationship with ourselves, with our partner, and with our world. Today we firmly reject all abusive or neglectful behavior.

  Today I do not endure any abuse. I abstain from abusing myself.

  Day 6

  Detachment

  I detach from the drama.

  Our society focuses on drama. When our fears of partnership pop up, we love drama because then the focus is directed outward. Because many of us grew up around conflict, we may consider drama exciting. Now we see that drama is exhausting.

  Love is not a soap opera. Today we detach from all relationship drama because it saps our energy and restricts us from being loving. Although we may have had to cope with drama in the past, and may even feel that we are quite good at it, we know this is the time to let go of conflict. Living without drama seems boring at first and can be very disconcerting for us; however, now we know that inviting calm and serenity into our relationships allows us to enjoy our partner.

  In this moment, I know that I do not need to bring drama into my relationship for excitement.

  Day 7

  Manifesting

  I manifest my talents.

  Part of choosing an emotionally available partner is letting our light shine so that others have the chance to do so too. Reclaiming our talents and manifesting our inner dreams is central to healing. It helps not only us, but a generation of women who can learn from us what we have to teach and share. A big part of why our issues with partnership hang on so strongly is that our soul needs to reclaim our precious inner desires. We may have internalized society’s ambivalence about women, believing the message that women are less than, and need to be taken care of by someone else. Now instead of hiding our own light, we express who we really are in all our magnificence.

  In the past we may have feared that shining would turn off a potential partner. We feared they would feel threatened. Today, however, we know that we no longer have to worry about others. People are very good at taking care of themselves. Now we choose individuals who love to take care of themselves. Empowered people are out there. Today let’s treat others, and the world, to our shining light.

  I see that my partnership issues are friends who will hang on until I begin to manifest my dreams. For the next 24 hours I let my light shine.

  Day 8

  Wounds

  I look at my original wounds.

  “We only have two relationships in our lives: our relationshi
p with our mother and our relationship with our father.”―Anonymous

  Whenever we get triggered emotionally in a romantic relationship, it is usually a wonderful indication that some old source of pain in us has risen to the surface. Being triggered does not mean that we are not experiencing pain as the result of someone’s actions, though sometimes this is true. People’s actions can hurt us; however, if we detach for a while and look closely at the issue, we often see that we are experiencing an overly strong reaction to our partner.

  In this case, it is helpful to move deeper into ourselves and see what our pain relates to. If we were wounded in our family of origin, we may be recreating the struggle with our partner. Or we may have chosen someone like one or both of our parents. Whatever the case, our partnership issues are persistently knocking at our door. Our challenges are trying to get us to unravel our own personal family pain. Today let’s make friends with our partnership issues. Now we go deeper into ourselves to uncover, and work out, the original wounding.

  Today I notice when I experience old pain that is triggered by my current relationship.

  Day 9

  Reasons

  I understand the reason I was in abusive or neglectful relationships.