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LOVE SAFETY
NET
Transcript
of September 28, 2009, program
“Don't Crowd Out Love”
STEVE: Hi everyone.
Welcome to the Love Safety Net.
KIM: I’m Kim.
STEVE: And I’m Steve. And
this week’s show is titled, “Don’t Crowd Out Love”.
KIM: Yes. In this week’s
show, we will discuss how you can make space in your life for
all those things you are wanting to be able to appear.
STEVE: That’s just like our
11-year-old daughter and her clothes cupboard.
KIM: (laughing) That’s a
good example, Steve.
STEVE: It’s overflowing
with clothes, isn’t it?
KIM: Yeah, you can’t even
close the doors.
STEVE: It’s ridiculous. And
we’ve had this discussion with her many times and a bit seems to
be sinking in, but her clothes are just outrageous. They are
falling out. She’s got stuff from years ago that she doesn’t
want to let go of, things she is hoping she will fit into one
day, but who knows.
KIM: Or things she is
hoping to fit in again one day, but she has grown out of them.
STEVE: There seems to be
quite a lot of emotional attachment to a lot of her clothes,
which is making it more difficult. But she just simply doesn’t
have any room for more clothes, does she? I mean literally, she
doesn’t have any more room in her cupboard.
KIM: In the past it has
worked when we have had a talk with her and explained that if
she lets go of some of the old clothes, then her clothes
cupboard looks like it’s got a bit of space in it and I feel
more inclined to go shopping with her. Because I will look in
it and I will say, ‘Wow, you do need some new clothes.’
STEVE: And you have always
followed through on that, so that’s a nice thing for you to do
as a mum.
KIM: Oh, I love going
shopping with her.
STEVE: But she does need to
do it, but the thing is she has been reticent to throw out
clothes on so many occasions and we have had to have—not
arguments—but we have had to stand a bit firm with her.
KIM: I know some people who
are like that with their friends and with their housemates.
STEVE: I think I know who you
are talking about, Kim. It’s a good friend of yours.
KIM: (laughing) Well, you
know, you sort of have to have room in your life for the friends
you want, don’t you? If you have too many crummy friends they
are just hanging around and will take you for a ride.
STEVE: That’s true.
KIM: And that’s basically
what leads to not having any nice friends.
STEVE: Yeah, the stinky
friend scares away the nice friends that might be able to come
into your life. And this friend of yours sure does have some
stinky friends.
KIM: (laughing)
STEVE: Well, you know, I
mean not in a literal sense.
KIM: Yeah, but there needs
to be room, especially when it comes to housemates. If you have
a house full of people you are sharing with it makes it very
difficult to find love.
STEVE: That’s right,
because there is literally not enough space. Now your
friend—should we call him Bob?
KIM: Yes.
STEVE: Okay, in Bob’s house
it really scared me when I went to visit with you. He literally
had no room for us to come and visit. He had two sofa lounges
with spots for two people on each. And that was for him,
housemate #1, housemate #2, and housemate #3—all guys. And the
house really had no woman’s touch at all, so it was very blokey
and smelly.
KIM: Well, I think that’s
common for single guys, Steve. I even wrote about that in
Honey for the Bees. I really give the advice for single
guys that making a decision to move out and get a place on your
own and make a nice space in your life for the relationship that
you want to come in. That’s really important and I think it’s
especially true for guys because their nature is not really very
keen for them to find a nice girl, are they Steve? Usually.
STEVE: And there are all
kinds of unconscious power struggles that happen in that
situation. (laughing)
KIM: (laughing) Or
conscious.
STEVE: Yes, or conscious.
KIM: Well it’s like you
and your mates when we met. They didn’t want to lose you.
STEVE: That’s right. And
there were issues there with where the friendship was going to
go.
KIM: I think with guys they
are a little more determined than a girl. Like with a girl, her
girlfriends will know if she’s going on a date, they need to
stay out of it. But with a guy, if they know he’s out on a date
they will say, ‘Come on, we’ll catch up with you later’. Or,
‘You’re still going to come down after and come out with us
here’. From what I have seen, guys can be pretty hard to set
boundaries with and be pretty hard to say no to.
STEVE: Yeah, I think guys’
friends will often see that as an opportunity for a practical
joke as well. Or a drive-by mooning or something.
KIM: (laughing) Oh, dear.
STEVE: Well, you know, it’s
true. And you know, you’ve got to make a little space.
KIM: You have to make a
little space in your life if you want a nice girl.
Okay, well we are going to
talk a lot about this in next week’s show and we will have a lot
of examples of how this happens in all sorts of ways when we
don’t leave the space for what we want to have appear. But
first, I just want to talk a little bit, Steve. We don’t
usually talk about this much on the radio shows, but I’d like to
talk a little bit about what I have been up on the business side
with our products and why I have been off the scene a little
bit. I haven’t been on Facebook and I haven’t been on the blog
for ages. There are some lovely people writing to each other on
the blog writing to each other and giving each other good
advice, so I do keep an eye on what happens there. We try as
best we can to keep a safe space, because I know there are a lot
of very—well I can’t think of another word to use other than
nasty people online.
STEVE: That’s true.
KIM: Particularly when we
get into sort of support forums, and whatever. There can be
some really very nasty people out there, so we have tried to
keep a bit of a space for that. But I haven’t had much time for
any of that. A friend has been helping me out on Facebook,
keeping up with a few people. Kerry has been great. But what I
have been up to—one of the things I have been up to—is I have
been remastering all of our main audio products, which includes
Understanding Love, Codependence to Self Esteem,
and—what are the other ones? Leave Anxiety Behind.
STEVE: And the NPD audio—Maturing
Beyond the Narcissistic Stage in Human Development.
KIM: Mmm. Which you were
actually listening to yesterday when I had it finished. You
seemed to like it.
STEVE: It was wonderful.
It really reinforced a whole bunch of stuff that is positive for
guys like me, definitely.
KIM: It’s good to hear that
you enjoyed it. Because this has really been an organic work in
process, our web site and the products we have developed. And
we have obviously learned more and we have matured from doing
this and it certainly has been a fantastic thing I have taken
on.
STEVE: We have learned a lot
too from our listeners and our readers. So much great
information and suggestions.
KIM: And I think it’s been
a really great example of stacking the cards in our favor,
deciding to put out time into something that is going to give us
a lot of benefit—and also for our relationship as well. Unlike
jobs you had in the past and jobs I had in the past, often would
distract from and sometimes come between us.
STEVE: Yeah, it would
really make it hard for us to connect.
KIM: So we really have
enjoyed this whole process. And our process has been that some
of our products when they first come out they haven’t been as
polished as we would like them to be now. Everyone seemed very
forgiving of that thankfully. Thank you. We have people write
in and let us know when they pick up mistakes when they read,
and we actually do really appreciate that. But it really has
come time for me to go back—and I have been rechecking and
remastering everything—all of the products. And there is more
to come that I will let you know about as they unfold. The
first one is that all of our four main audios have been
remastered. They sound amazing and a lot of the
background noise has been cleaned up and they have been
reedited. Anyway, I think they are great and I’m glad you think
so too.
STEVE: They do. They are a
much higher quality than what they were. But we went through
and we remastered all of them for a reason, Kim. And that is
because we’ve got a brand new service that is available now.
KIM: Oh yeah. Are we going
to talk about that today?
STEVE: Well it’s on the way
too. We can give a little sneak preview.
KIM: Well, I’ll tell them
about that next week.
STEVE: We’re very close.
KIM: The exciting news that
I’ve got for this week is that everybody that bought those audio
products in the past will be being sent the updates for free
this week. Thanks for hanging in and being on this journey that
we have embarked on. And all the time we are attempting to
improve the standard and the quality of our work. And bringing
a psychologist in on our team, and we will be doing new products
with her in the next 4-6 months. So we are always working on
that standard. And even if it hasn’t always been exactly where
it should have in the past when we got going, at least we got
going and we got out there and we did it. And we do thank
everyone for their patience with that and for sticking with us
and helping us become as successful as we have become. So to
thank everyone in the next two or three days if you’ve got any
of those audio products, you will be sent an update.
STEVE: Just drop us a line
at the help desk, though, because we won’t be able to find you—
KIM: No, no, we can find
everyone.
STEVE: Can we?
KIM: Yeah, yeah. Don’t
tell them to do that—you’ll be too busy.
STEVE: Okay.
KIM: We can find
everyone. If after a week you haven’t gotten anything from us,
then you might drop a line to the help desk.
STEVE: Okay, I trust you on
that one, because that’s not how I would be able to do it.
KIM: We have systems in
place. I won’t go too in depth here.
STEVE: I should pay more
attention.
KIM: (laughing) You
should, Steve. Instead of running away and going to the
football like you did on the weekend.
STEVE: It wasn’t just the
football, it was the Super Bowl of Australian football. But
that is another radio show.
KIM: Yeah, and I have had
enough talk of football this week.
STEVE: Indeed.
KIM: Okay, so onto our
show…. Back to this week’s show. Now, there are a number of
ways we can crowd out love, Steve, and I would like to get into
detail with each one of those in this show, because I think each
of them really needs to be looked at in depth because there are
so many ways we can do that. One is blame. One is resentment.
Another one is bad habits. And another one is just sheer
desperation.
STEVE: Okay (laughing),
well we have seen a lot of that in the past, haven’t we?
KIM: Mmm.
STEVE: And it is—it’s a way
of getting in the way of where we want to go. Which is a
natural extension of last week’s show, isn’t it? So we are
going to talk of a bit more of that in a moment. But should I
talk Siddhartha first, Kim?
KIM: Yes. I’d love it if
you could talk about Siddhartha.
STEVE: Siddhartha is
a wonderful book written in the 20th century by a
wonderful German author called Herman Hesse. Many of you have
read it, and I have actually read it twice. It is a really nice
book to read twice. I am one of those people who have read it
and I highly recommend you read it again, just because of the
amazing timelessness and beauty of the message. But the message
in that that was interesting—one of the really central
themes—was that young Siddhartha who was a young boy who was
from the village from a religious family didn’t have any skills
to take to the city. But when somebody asked him what his
skills were, he named three, but two of them were the ability to
go hungry and the ability to wait.
KIM: Those kind of sound
like bum skills, really.
STEVE: Yeah, a lot of
people laughed at him. I think Kamala actually laughed at him
and said, ‘Well, who would want that?’ And the story unfolds
that it was actually an amazing set of skills that he had. It
was extremely relevant to his success from there. He had a
really good beginning. He came from a religious family where he
was taught that was a good thing to do—the ability to fast, the
ability to wait and the ability to meditate were all taught to
him as skills and he knew them as skills.
KIM: Meditate, that was
the third one. I kept wondering what was the third one, I
forgot.
STEVE: Well, it’s sort of
similar to waiting, wasn’t it. But there was a distinction in
that story because that was when he was first asking permission
from his father to leave the village and he had to wait all
night until his father came back to him and said, ‘Well, I can’t
really stop you, can I?’ And it was that amazing skill to wait
that he had to watch the moon travel across the sky into the
hours, but he just stood there waiting and was able to do it.
He had that ability to self-sooth at that time. He was really
angry with his father. But I’m talking too much about the story
and I’m giving away too much now.
KIM: Oh, I don’t think so.
STEVE: That’s okay, but they
were the skills he had.
KIM: I didn’t actually
remember that those in the story.
STEVE: You need to read it
twice, don’t you.
KIM: Yeah, I need to read
it again.
I think this is really very
much at the heart of what we are talking about in this show, is
just the ability to wait. Because if you don’t wait and you
don’t know how to wait, then you are just going to run around
and bring a whole bunch of stuff into your life that isn’t what
you really want.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: And you are going to
end up settling for second-best, when really those things
weren’t what you were looking for and weren’t what you wanting.
It’s like the ability to fast. Is it better to just fill up on
junk food if good food isn’t available, or are you better to
just be able to wait.
STEVE: And leave room.
KIM: Yes, because you know
going hungry isn’t bad for us, it’s actually quite good for us
to go hungry sometimes. And it’s certainly a lot better for us
than to think there is nothing else, so I’ve got to eat this.
STEVE: Or “I won’t be able
to eat for three hours, so I will just grab a burger”. I am
guilty of doing that too.
KIM: I must be getting a
lot better about my diet, because I didn’t notice about three
weeks ago I ate some junk that I wouldn’t have normally
eaten—just corn chips of all things. But you were so good
afterward, Steve, you just said you don’t normally eat that
stuff, Kim. It’s not good for you. It’s fried and it’s got all
that oil and stuff in it and I really haven’t eaten fried food
for so long, it really made me very, very sick and I wish I had
waited.
STEVE: That’s right. You
didn’t leave room. But that was a very simple and very innocent
decision you made to have a few corn chips. I mean, sure, why
not?
KIM: You can’t ever just
have a few corn chips, though. That’s the problem.
(laughing)
STEVE: (laughing) That’s
right.
KIM: I have three and then
I want to just stuff the whole bag in my mouth. I’m sure they
put something evil in them that makes you want to eat so many of
them.
STEVE: Deliciously evil.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: Absolutely. But
even though it was really a simple mistake you made, it really
made you think about the kind of larger things, and what we are
doing here with our work as well, because very absentmindedly we
are able to just fill our lives with junk, fill our faces with
junk food, fill up our time with menial things that don’t relay
matter.
KIM: And all those junk
shops and dollar shops buying the things we really don’t want
and really don’t need and really is just rubbish.
STEVE: Exactly.
KIM: When really we should
be at home cleaning out our cupboards and making space in our
life for the things we really want to have come in.
STEVE: So can we just get
back to Bob now. We literally really found this story—and this
is very important—because Bob literally had no space for a guest
to come over to his house. And it wasn’t just that he didn’t
have room for a guest to come over. What that meant is that his
life had all the sudden become full with managing these people
in his life—the housemates. Bob owns his house, and he had
three housemates that helped him pay the rent, but the fact was
that his house was full and all the sudden his time and his life
was full just managing these other guys in his house. And it
wasn’t just that he didn’t have room for a guest to come over
and sit and make them a cup of tea, he literally didn’t have
time for that either. He had his business from home and he did
have a small room where he had a chance for clients to come
over, but it was not set up for that. I mean, I would feel
uncomfortable being his customer in that space he had, only
because the rest of the house was so full.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: So it really got the
point where it wasn’t just that he had no room for guests, it
wasn’t just the fact that he had no room for new items to come
into the house or no room for a new sofa. His whole life had
just been soaked up by this. And he hadn’t necessarily done
anything wrong.
KIM: No.
STEVE: He was just doing
what he felt was the right thing to do. He wanted some
certainty with getting his mortgage paid.
KIM: But on a psychological
level, I think sometimes we just decide that these decisions
have to be made because it’s a financial thing it has to be
made. We don’t look at other options. We are not looking at
the unconscious drivers that are setting things up in that
particular way. I don’t know if I want to use you as an example
for too much longer, Steve.
STEVE: Oh, that’s all
right.
KIM: But there are a lot
of people who do this in all sorts of different ways. Let’s get
into them one by one, shall we, Steve.
Blame. I mean this is an
enormous way where on a psychological level where we don’t leave
room for other things in our life because we give all our power
away by blaming other people, blaming circumstances, blaming the
situation on what is happening, rather than having the courage
to accept the fact that we do have power to change our own
situation and our own circumstance.
STEVE: That’s right. And
that’s really easy to happen in a love relationship, isn’t it.
We would do it daily in smaller ways and in larger ways.
KIM: And we will blame
things that we are not proud of in ourselves onto other people.
You know, I wouldn’t be drinking so much if it wasn’t for how
badly he is treating me.
STEVE: That’s a common
one.
KIM: In psychology, this is
called projection. But projection isn’t always really very
simple. It’s not just you saying okay, I’m projecting all my
problems onto somebody else. But you can be projecting your
situation onto somebody else so you avoid facing your worst
fear.
STEVE: That’s right. You
are taking the whole energy of the problem and placing it
somewhere else so you don’t have to deal with it. You’re
disempowering yourself.
KIM: So someone that is
surrounding themselves with a bunch of people who are actually
using them and are not their friends, deep down inside the fact
that they might not want to be facing is the fact that they feel
unlovable. Or that they feel unworthy. So they will organize
their life in such a way where it seems completely necessary to
have all these people around them who aren’t people who really
care about them. And it will just feel like it’s completely
necessary where really if they didn’t have this feeling of
unworthiness and they didn’t have this feeling of being
unlovable underneath all that, they would organize their life in
a different way.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: And they wouldn’t be
frightened of moving out, having a place of their own, or just
saying okay I’m going to spend some time by myself for a while.
I am going to organize my life in such a way where I have space
to meet people and for things to come in. I’m going to join
some clubs or do some activities and I’m going to go on my own.
I’m not necessarily going to drag that person that I always drag
along with me, who I am not really that enamored with or I
really don’t enjoy their company that much, it’s just who I drag
along.
STEVE: Yeah, for whatever
reason.
KIM: You are having the
courage to do that on your own.
So maybe I’ve gotten off the
subject a little bit of blame here, but the blame is so
important because blame will take up all the space in your
life. If you are busy blaming other people for your
circumstances or your situation. If you are blaming your
parents because of the way they raised you. If you are blaming
your partner how they treat you. If you are blaming your job,
maybe you need to just sit down and find the courage to face
your own fears and really go deep inside yourself and say is
this really the problem or is there actually something deeper
than this that I am frightened to face, but I need to face that
would give me the courage to leave that job, or would give me
the courage to set better boundaries in that relationship, or
would give me the courage to just take responsibility for my own
happiness and take responsibility for setting my own goals—and
take my power back. Bring your power back from that situation
of blaming.
And then blame obviously leads
into resentment, which Sarah says is the most toxic of all
beliefs we can have out there.
STEVE: I think resentment
is a little different from blame because resentment still has a
lot of energy in it. It’s still very dynamic. You sort of have
to keep the auxillary fire going all the time to keep the
resentment fed, don’t you? Blame is, “it was their fault and
I’m done and dusted with it because it’s not my problem”. Where
resentment is when you have that attachment still going with
the problem or the person you consider the problem.
KIM: Blame I think is an
intellectual thing, maybe, and resentment is the actual acting
out of it. It is the variable.
STEVE: Oh, resentment leads
to blame.
KIM: No, blame leads to
resentment.
STEVE: Oh, okay.
KIM: Blame is where you
intellectualize it and you understand it. You go, ‘I’m not
doing this because of him’.
STEVE: Okay.
KIM: ‘If it wasn’t for
him I would be doing this and this and this and I would be…’
STEVE: Okay, so that’s like
the theoretical.
KIM: Yeah that’s the
theoretical that is going around in your mind about it. And
then there is how that affects your mood and your behavior and
your own discord every day.
STEVE: And how much your
teeth grind together.
KIM: (laughing) Yes. And
how much of a challenge it might be for you. We get this one
all the time of people not realizing how resentful they were
until they start reading through our material and we say to them
you have to greet your partner warmly every time you see them.
And they go, ‘oh’ and that is really, really difficult
and really hard because there is just so much built up
resentment inside themselves.
STEVE: That is good you
mention that, Kim, because it is layer upon layer kind of
building, isn’t it? Especially in a love relationship, isn’t
it, Kim? I mean, that was us. We had 10 or 12 years of layer
upon layer of resentment building where it wasn’t natural to
greet each other warmly. We had become enemies in many senses
of the word.
KIM: Oh, absolutely. I was
awful at it. I was absolutely terrible at it. That was one of
the things that were the hardest for me to learn. I would come
home when you had been looking after the kids and the house
would all be a mess and before I said hello to anyone I would
just walk in the door and I would be telling you all off for the
house being a mess. I would be upset with everyone before I
even said hello. And I know you just used to hate that.
STEVE: Yeah, because we had a
story to share with you about what had happened and why there
was good reason for the mess in the house. (laughing)
KIM: (laughing) I don’t know
about that.
STEVE: There could have been
lots of hours of laughter beforehand.
But I was the same with you. I
would do exactly the same and worse with you. We are not just
trying to give the impression that Kim was the problem here.
KIM: It takes two to tango,
Steve.
STEVE: You can say that
again.
KIM: But I really do think
this is another thing you need to look at in your heart and
ponder. If you have gotten to the point in the relationship
with someone where you can’t greet them warmly or you can’t say
their name as if you like them or in a tone of voice as if you
are glad to see them, what space in your life is there for
anything better to happen? What space is there for anything to
improve? And I know this can be incredibly difficult especially
if your partner is exploiting you or if your partner is lying to
you, or cheating on you or doing all the dreadful things that
partners do, that could become a real challenge. That is where
our program is in different areas, because you’ve got to be able
to work on a couple different areas at once.
STEVE: Being able to say
your partner’s name warmly is just one of the steps that you
need to learn to do well, because it will dissolve those layers
of resentment we are talking about. It is just one of many
steps you need to take.
KIM: Yeah. But on the other
hand, you are learning to set boundaries better and you are
learning to limit their abusive behavior and you are learning to
stand up for yourself in really solid, no nonsense kind of way
leaves more space for you to actually be able to bring the
warmth back. Unfortunately I think what happens—and I know what
I was doing, Steve—was I was using my moods and I was using my
resentment to punish you to try and change your behavior. And I
think that is really common. I think that is about the most
common relationship mistake that we see. And it doesn’t work.
All it does is makes you somebody that is very unpleasant to be
around. You become someone your partner wants to avoid more and
more, and it becomes easier and easier for them to make excuses
about why they are lying to you, why they are avoiding you, and
why they are being so—
STEVE: And justify why they
are being so callous and cold-hearted.
KIM: Exactly. It feeds
into their game entirely. So you need to come at this from two
levels where on one side you are actually setting some very
strong and concrete boundaries and you are learning to actually
stand up for yourself and that is not so much what this show is
about. We have done some other shows on that and it might be
time we do another show on that, Steve. But I am just in this
show trying to highlight how resentment can get in the way.
Because if you are harboring resentment toward someone, where is
it going to go? How is it going to help anyone from there?
STEVE: Resentment doesn’t
leave any new space for anything new. The resentment will soak
up the atmosphere of your house. Atmosphere within the house is
a very important consideration you need to have. And resentment
and blame are very much a couple of problems that will leave no
room for anything else. And you need to make room for good
stuff. We are not saying it’s easy. We’re not saying it’s 1,
2, 3 and it’s fixed. But this is really about understanding the
game plan you need to start thinking about.
KIM: I think another thing
that is important here (and I mention it in the write-up for
this show) is about how powerful subtlety is. I think when it
comes to love, often the more subtle things are the more
powerful they are.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: That’s not about
leaving subtle hints about what you want from your partner for
your birthday, because that never works with men. (laughing)
You have to tell them—clearly!
STEVE: (laughing)
KIM: And you need to tell
them what shop to buy it from.
STEVE: And you also often
need to tell them what the date is that you need the present by.
KIM: Yeah, and remind them
when your birthday is and what day of the week it is and how you
expect to be treated. Because being clear about what you want
is very attractive. Being able to do that where we are not
whining, but we are just being very confident about ourselves.
We are just saying this is what will impress me.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
And there is a touch of vulnerability in that too. You need to
be able to say this is what I need, because this is me and you
are exposing yourself a bit. And it’s very hard to expose
yourself like that and show your vulnerability when you are
being so resentful.
KIM: Oh, you mean you
can’t. Now you could go, ‘If you want to be a really big
man for my birthday….’
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: Flattery will get you
everywhere. Absolutely. And there is nothing wrong with that.
You need to make an effort to show your partner that you like
them and you want to be interesting and you see your
relationship from their point of view, not just from your own
point of view. And with women in particular I think they will
often make the big mistakes, Steve. They will have trouble with
the subtle things. They will have trouble saying their
partner’s name in a nice tone of voice, or even just smiling at
them. But then they will want to have some very serious talks
about the relationship and they will think that talking about
relationship matters and this is what is going to improve
things. They think they are going to convince their partner to
treat them better or to treat them nicely. And as logical and
whatever that may sound, it just doesn’t work. It never
works.
STEVE: That’s right. And
it’s hard to get a conversation going within the same context
with anyone, let alone the person you are in love with
and you’ve had some trouble or some crisis you have been trying
to resolve. And to try and find similar kind of context is
really difficult, even that serious talk you thought through
really well and you think you ticked off all the boxes of the
things you want to bring up and get off your chest. And you may
do that really well, but if there is not the context of
attachment and the timing isn’t right.
KIM: If the love isn’t
flowing already.
STEVE: Yes, if the love isn’t
flowing already.
KIM: Then that emotional
stuff is not going to work for a man, it’s just not. And I
imagine it can be the other way too. I can only speak from where
I am at. And I am guilty of that all the time. I mean, I feel
an idiot when I think about how I used to behave and I don’t
know what I could possibly have been expecting. This is
where—and I hope you can give me a bit of validation here,
Steve—but isn’t it true that it’s the more subtle things that
are the most powerful. If you want to change the way that your
partner feels toward you, just a little smile in the right way
out of the corner of your eye. Just that soft, gentle way you
say their name, and that soft, nice tone in your voice. That
playful gesture you make that is slightly teasing him a little
or batting your eyelids a little or just the little subtle
things with men. And men are just floored by that stuff.
STEVE: You are making me
really nervous because you just know exactly how to win a man’s
heart. You could win any man’s heart by doing those things,
Kim. I’ll have to keep my eye on you.
KIM: You’re making me blush.
(laughing)
STEVE: But it’s so true. Now
I’m going to validate you. It’s absolutely true. Men like to
be able to do stuff and this is what we are talking
about—leaving room if you can do it subtly like you say, Kim.
Just small and subtle. But with enough energy that it’s
directed well Leaving room for the man to come and give you
that hug. I know there are a couple people who have written us
where the man just wants to come for sex.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: But he doesn’t know
how to hug or give the right hug at the right time or do the
little things she is looking for. But we don’t know. We don’t
have a crystal ball and we don’t know what’s going on in those
situations. But if there is not room for him to do that,
he can’t do it. Now he maybe is not going to pick up on the
subtle hint. We are not making promises here, but you have to
make that room.
KIM: But if you change the
way a guy feels, he is more likely to. You can sit down and you
can talk to him for hours on end about how he should not be
wanting to go to the pub and he should be spending time with you
and why didn’t you call me and I was waiting for two days for
your text, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he’s just going to
sit there—and I’m not lying here am I Steve?—it’s going to be in
one ear and out the other and his eyes are going to be glazed,
and what your are saying is just going to make him not want to
be around you even more.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: He is just going to be
thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can’t wait to get out
of here.
STEVE: That’s true. Men are
shallow creatures, aren’t we?
KIM: No, I just think we
haven’t learned these things, and people—anyway.
STEVE: Well, there’s not that
connection. And we are trying to make room for a healthy
connection.
KIM: Well I look back at when
I was doing that and I feel really stupid. I was just looking
at things from my perspective and I wasn’t seeing things from
your perspective. Where, if you give someone a nice smile. And
I love it when you say my name in a nice tone of voice and you
give me a little smile. And then everything changes. So this
is what I am saying that the subtle things are more powerful
because those things in the same guy can have the guy thinking,
‘I don’t want to go out with my mates. I want to be with you.
You make me feel really good and I want to be here.’ And if he
makes that decision if feelings change and he makes that
decision that he wants to be with you instead of off doing all
those other things that have been distracting him, if you are
still harboring resentment, it’s going to be in the way and you
are not going to have space for that to happen.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: You know, you’ve got to
let the feelings change and make room to say hey, that’s okay.
And I think again I will get back to the only way you can do
that with confidence is if you know you are better at setting
your own boundaries and you are better at standing up for
yourself. And if there is trouble again or if they do cross
your boundaries.
STEVE: That’s right. There
is a logical process here. Now should we jump onto the next
topic here, Kim, before we run out of time. Bad habits and
desperation.
KIM: Yeah, bad habits and
desperation. These habits I think are a bit more
self-explanatory. I mean, again we are always going on with the
addictions, but it’s just such an important thing to say you
can’t run away from it. If you are filling up all of your spare
time with your addiction to sport or you are filling up all your
spare time with your addiction to alcohol or all you know how to
do is sit there and smoke when you are by yourself. All these
things really are crowding out what you want to have happen in
your life. And maybe spending a night without alcohol or
cigarettes, or sport or TV makes things really difficult and
then you go, ‘Wow, what would I do?’ But this is the challenge
to start to get to know yourself better. Start doing the things
that go toward what you want to have happen.
STEVE: And maybe you don’t
know what it is you want to have happen. You know, we get
problems on this whole topic we are talking about. When you
don’t leave room for things in your life, you don’t know
what might be around the corner. You don’t know if you can
break free of your addictions or the certain rut you are in. If
you do manage to break through somehow and you don’t know what’s
ahead of you that can be a problem for a lot of people. But I
would like to remind everybody that kind of uncertainty
is one of the best reasons you should try and take on some of
the changes we are suggesting here, because uncertainty is
everything in life. It’s the only thing certain, as they say.
We sort of are stooged into the idea that we need certainty in
our lives. On many practical levels, there can be a good
argument that we need certainty. But really when we get down to
it everything we want in our life—you know, we want a good life,
we want peace and we want good relationships with the people
around us, good food, clean water, a nice civilization and
society around us and community around us. We get all those
things through hard work and through temperance, as we talked
about last week and through moderation. There is a lot of
great values that we employ to get there. But really the end
destination is unknown. The only thing certain is uncertainty
and the other thing that is certain is death. So I mean we have
a timeless kind of future in front of us.
KIM: At best, all of our
plans are only attempts at prophesy.
STEVE: Exactly. (laughing)
That’s right.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And we shouldn’t be
too attached to what it is we are really looking for. Allow
yourself a little more uncertainty in your life, and you will
probably be a lot happier.
KIM: Well, it’s a very fast
track to maturing emotionally. Being able to accept uncertainty
with grace.
STEVE: That’s right. And any
new love relationship—which many people have asked me the point
where I stopped being narcissistic, which is really a tough
question I get all the time. The biggest point I remember was
when I started to trust you. I made a decision that I could now
trust Kim. I have a dozen reasons all based on resentment,
blame, bad habits, and desperation but I shouldn’t blame her. I
am just going to decide to trust. And there was a lot of
uncertainty in that. Well, maybe my idea for how our
relationship is going to go isn’t what is going to happen.
KIM: And I remember that
time, and I was really quite astounded because you actually
began to trust me even more than I trusted myself. And that was
really odd. That was really, really—I remember that because you
really had hated everything I was doing with the business
before. You so did not believe in me. You had been awful,
saying that I was just wasting money. I really should accept I
was just nobody. I mean, you said some awful things to me over
the years. And then all the sudden you just decided—no you
believed in this—and it was just going to happen. And I
remember, without going into details, we went into a horrendous
setback with my business. It was before I set up the web site
and the eBooks—but I went through a horrendous setback with my
business, absolutely horrendous setback and I was absolutely
terrified. And that was before we made the decision—after that
we made the decision where in our eBooks it talks about how our
relationship had improved and we decided to build a web site and
we decided to take this risk, because I had lost a really major
client.
STEVE: We had never sold an
eBook before.
KIM: We had never sold and
eBook and at that point we had staff we had to lay off. We had
to move out of an office. It was just awful. We had to
downsize what we were doing. And it was just after we had had
any success. I had picked up a big client and things had been
really looking up for us.
STEVE: Yeah, really
promising.
KIM: And I will never forget
that. Because that’s when sometimes people say to me now how
you’re not really better and you only like it because I am
making money, and some of the nasty things that people throw at
us sometime. Besides the fact that I know that because I am
with you and we work together and we are so close now, but I
wish they had just seen that time because I was absolutely
terrified. I was really, really at my wits end. And you were
just fine. You were just amazing. And you were so
straightforward. You were like, you’ve got to do this and this
is what is going to happen. You just had seen something in me
and you just decided no I’m going to trust Kim.
STEVE: Well, I had a choice.
I could have stuck a boot in if I wanted to.
KIM: Easily.
STEVE: I could have kicked
you when you were down very easily.
KIM: And in the past you
would have fully done it.
STEVE: Yes, I would have done
that in the past.
KIM: And I was just amazed.
I was even getting a bit stuck into myself. But you were
actually amazing at that point.
STEVE: Thank you.
KIM: Yeah. It’s good you
brought that up.
So the last one on our list is
separation and I think that kind of hopefully is a little bit
obvious. But you know if you are calling someone too often, if
you are always jealous when they are seeing somebody else, if
you are feeling like you absolutely are desperate for a
relationship, how are you ever going to get the relationship you
really want?
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: If you are just willing
to go out with the first scum bum that comes along, that nice
guy or that nice woman that’s out there waiting for just you
isn’t ever going to get a chance because you are always going to
be taken.
STEVE: That’s right. Now is
a good time to reiterate Siddhartha. Learn to fast,
meditate, and learn to wait.
KIM: That’s right. This is
not to say to ignore jealousy. That is just really quickly,
Steve. I have also re-proofed my eBook and thank you to
everyone who sent in stuff about the eBook Emotional
Stupidity because we are just about ready to launch that.
Everyone who has bought it already will get an updated version
of that also. But I talk about that in emotional stupidity of
not ignoring jealousy. I’m not saying to ignore it, but you
don’t have to always be directing that on your partner. If you
are feeling jealous and you are feeling desperate, it’s because
you are lacking the skills you need to attach to other people in
healthy ways. It’s because you have relationship skills that
need work, that you may be needing to do a bit more than
brushing up on. And these things will make a difference. It’s
easy to just blame and say no it’s just him and all men are just
bad and all men are bad. I know, I’ve been there, I’ve been
through it. I went through how many bad relationships—I don’t
even want to count. I said all of that stuff and I believed all
of that stuff, but it wasn’t true. There were all kinds of
things I needed to do differently.
STEVE: That’s right. Well,
we are going to have to wrap up, Kim. As always, it’s lots of
fun doing a radio show with you.
KIM: Thank you.
STEVE: Thanks everyone for
tuning in and the whole team. We look forward to talking to you
next week.
STEVE AND KIM: (together) Bye!
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