Did you ever stop to think about what is real nurturing? How do we properly give and show love to our lovies? How do we give TLC without caretaking, being codependent, or at our expense? How do we give selflessly without losing ourselves? How can we be super abundant and generous? How can we be expansive in our relating?
Most people don’t stop to think about these things, I get it. LOL But, I’m sure you’ve wondered about them when you’ve felt stuck or after a fight with your partner, that there has to be a better way. Yes?
The thing is that we are trying too hard at not being stuck or at not fighting, when that is keeping us focused on just that and therefore creating more of the same… Have you heard the saying, What you resist, persists?
What if we were to let go of trying so hard, and just decided to show up with our most loving, available, and compassionate self? What if we decided that it’s ok that our partner didn’t use their perfect language and vocabulary? What if we decided that it’s ok that our partner is grumpy? What if we decided that it’s ok that our partner forgot to take out the garbage?
What if we decided it’s ok for our partner to be imperfect? For after all they are also on a Journey…
What if we decided that we just need to focus on showing up the best we can muster? Period. And that it’s ok when we are not perfect?
What if we decided to just be nice to our partner? To give without strings attached? To give generously? To give what they desire, not what we want to give? To give in their love language? To invest in delighting them? To invest in creating harmony, joy and laughter?
What if our focus was to learn ourselves, and to be curious about our partner without judgement? To just show up to the same space without expectations that they should be in any particular way?
What if we were to also graciously receive their presence and what they offer? What if we were to just take them in, even in their fumbled attempts at connection? What if we were to suspend all judgement, criticism, expectations, demands, and such?
What if we got out of the way of our partner showing up for us? What if we notice our partner’s attempts at being nice, at connecting, at giving, at caring, at being friendly, at being funny, at being sexy, and at all the things…?
You see, we have a tendency to be funny at giving and receiving… We think we give all this, but do we really? We think our partner doesn’t do squat, but is that true? We seriously have got to remove our biased lens and transcend this way of showing up and perceiving our partner and our relationship…
Stop making a case for your circumstances, for your limitations and for how your partner sucks. What is the point in that? What are you trying to prove? What do you get out of that? I know that when partners stop all that noise, and focus on their side of the equation, that’s when they transform their relationship and their life.
Please stop, if you just had the thought that you’ve been doing all the right things, but your partner hasn’t! You must eradicate this thinking at the root. Just focusing on what your partner has and hasn’t done in and of itself is keeping you stuck!
Focus Instead on Real Nurturing™:
~ Giving Generously – from abundance and expansion, with no strings attached, and from their love language
~ Receiving Graciously – with clean lenses on and with an open mind, with no meaning attached, and from attunement
Hey, I know this is easier said than that, as us getting in our own way is so prevalent. Our stories, scripts, programs and patterns if unaddressed have a sure way of undermining the best of our intentions.
If you struggle with giving and receiving seamlessly in your relationship, I’d start with some reprogramming and self-love first…
Just know that it’s ok that this is challenging, but that slow and steady wins the raise. You’ll get there!
APPLICATION: It is time to get more out of your relationship and your life… The simple way is to stop doing and worrying so much and be and enjoy more…
~ Be with the idea of having Real Nurturing in your relationship… ~ Let go of all the doing, controlling, demanding, expecting, manipulating, and such… ~ Get yourself in a receiving mode… by connecting with your Higher Self… ~ Transcend the lack and the judgement… ~ Choose to be unconditionally nice, giving and loving…
Aligning yourself seamlessly sets you up for Real Nurturing… Give generously, receive graciously…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
~ Create an Epic Love Affair with Your Partner – Addressing the struggle and upleveling your relationship to create your epic love affair
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
It is very easy for us to get sucked into taking care of others, especially our immediate lovies and specially if we are sensitive and caring people… The challenge is that when we caretake, we actually disempower the other. A byproduct that is obviously not our intention.
When we do for others what they can do (or should be able to do) for themselves we are robbing them of the opportunity for self-agency, independence, personal power, growth and so on. You want to nurture, not caretake…
The challenge is that it might not be so easy to differentiate between nurturing and caretaking. Of course, we want to do things for, support and take care of our lovies. So how do we tell the difference.
The difference has to do with the motive behind your actions. You probably have good intentions in both instances, but the motives are different…
The motive has to do with why you are doing the action, your logic. Take a look at your reasoning and see if you are:
Rescuing
Fixing
Doing it to get it done
Not allowing the other to do it
Taking over
Not allowing collaboration
Doing without considering the other
Doing it for you even if it is not yours
Over doing it
Doing it at your expense
You might talk yourself into doing it to make life easier… You might say, Somebody has to do it.
It is easier to just take care of something if the other is not doing it.
It is easier to just take care of something than have to wait for it to get done.
It is easier to just take care of something if you don’t want the other’s input.
It is easier to just take care of something to avoid conflict.
It is easier to just take care of something to help the other along.
It is easier to just take care of something if the other won’t honor your preferences.
And so on…
These are instances of not fully owning ourselves and of owning the other, of manipulating, and of not operating on the up and up… This is operating from our lower-self…
When we don’t fully own ourselves and squander our personal power by not minding our business and minding the other’s business instead, we are not doing anybody any favors- least of all ourselves!
A lot of times a conversation would take care of a lot of these things, but instead of having a possible uncomfortable conversation, expressing our needs, making requests, problem solving together, addressing concerns and the like, we prefer to bypass all that and manipulate behind the scenes…
We don’t have the courage to have a voice and actually take care of ourselves properly… We might believe at some level that we are not worthy of having a reciprocal relationship…
And, when we assume the other’s needs, preferences, abilities, intentions, motives, and such, we don’t allow for the other to have a voice, show up and do for themselves either.
When we over-function, we don’t allow for the other to be there for us- and then we complain we have to do it all…
This caretaking of the other which gets in the way of taking care of ourselves and of them taking care of themselves and being there for us, is the cornerstone of a Codependency pattern
There is nothing nurturing and loving about all this. This is based on fear, ego, illusions, defenses, identity, attachments. This is about habits and addictions. This is about patterns. This is about getting in our own way- this is how we sabotage our relationship and our life…
This is not the formula we want to follow if we are to create our radiant, successful relationship and meaningful life.
The formula we do want to follow has to do with: Taking full ownership of ourselves, with setting effective boundaries, with addressing our scripts, our narrative, our patterns, with appropriately taking care of our needs and intentionally and mindfully relating with our partner, with embracing expansiveness and connecting practices, with showing up from our higher-self…
Nurturing ourselves and our partner is a heart-centered endeavor, whereas caretaking is “nurturing” from ego and it’s codependence…
Let’s be more intentional about how we nurture ourselves and our partner to create the shifts we are looking for the relationship and life we desire…
Watch the video for learning about not confusing caretaking for nurturing… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: It might be that all this time you thought you were being nice by taking care of the bulk of responsibilities and needs in the relationship and for your partner, when in truth it might have been holding your relationship back from its full potential…
~ Take note of how your lifestyle and your relationship flow- who takes care of the responsibilities, who makes sure the other partner is ok, who makes things happen, who takes care of things…
~ Take note how you feel about each of the above, whether you are doing the caretaking or your partner… You might both be… This is still codependent and disempowering even if you are both overfunctioning in your own way…
~ Take note of where you are overfunctioning and underfuntioning…
~ Choose a behavior from each side that you’ll work on addressing and moderating…
~ Discuss your learnings and ahas with your partner, and invite them to explore this for themselves as well
To create your New You, your New Relationship, and your New Life as you keep going in your Journey, the key is to fully own your side of the equation and make the changes that are within your sphere of influence.
Stay focused on transcending your lower-self and embracing your higher-self…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
~ Create an Epic Love Affair with Your Partner – Addressing the struggle and upleveling your relationship to create your epic love affair
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
Being a Mom has been the greatest gift and blessing in my life. This role is at the core of who I am and part of my purpose at the end of the day… I am so proud of the Journey I have walked with our daughter since the moment she was a desire in our minds until this very moment. The pride and love I have for her is immeasurable. But even though this is my greatest pride and joy, it hasn’t come without its challenges. How being a Mom impacts you…
Let me count the ways… As I mapped out the content of this issue, more and more came to mind as to how women are impacted by being Moms really punctuating just how intrinsic this impact is… I have also had the pleasure and honor of hearing many Moms’ experiences, additionally highlighting how pervasive this is as well…
A little disclaimer before I continue
In no way shape or form, do I mean to marginalize the importance and impact of the Dad role through this presentation, which has all its own inherent nuances…
Neither do I claim that everything presented here is applicable in its entirety to parents of non-traditional gender identities and couples of non-traditional sexual orientation…
Additionally, even more traditional couples might not be so traditional in that the domestic responsibilities are shared fairly equally or are outsourced, and/or the traditional roles are reversed…
The best way to consume this content is not to get concerned with all the different definitions and contexts, but rather by which parental role/identity and situation you identify with the most…
Any time that the topic of gender comes up, things get a little tricky. I do my best to use cohesive conceptualization that makes sense no matter the context but will have the more traditional flavor in language and presentation for simplicity’s sake…
In a nutshell, this presentation is geared toward the parent that identifies as woman, female, mother, and motherer (most concepts apply to men/other in the Mom role as well)…
I have thought of presenting this content from different angles:
How being a Mom impacts our time, bandwidth and energy
How being a Mom impacts all areas of our life- home, lifestyle, finances/career, romantic relationship and sexuality, and so on
But I landed on how being a Mom impacts all of the above and more, it impacts us to the core… It impacts how we experience ourselves and our sense of Self, who we are as people…
Being a Mom impacts the essence of who we are… I honestly don’t think there is a greater role that we can ever take on that would be as meaningful and impactful… It is literally all consuming and all encompassing…
I find it fascinating when partners work on their relationship and the impact of this role comes up…
~ The women usually feel completely misunderstood, unsupported, unappreciated, and not valued. They believe their partner has no clue what they are going through and how expensive it is to be a Mom, notwithstanding the beauty and gift of the role and that they wouldn’t trade it for anything… By what their partner says and does, they know their partner just doesn’t get the depth of the impact- that it is of existential magnitude…
~ The partner usually believes that the Mom is creating more work for herself than she has to, and that she is not doing things right like prioritizing, setting boundaries, organizing, time managing, delegating, etc.
They don’t get how come she is so tired, stressed out, overwhelmed, worried, anxious, irritable. They don’t get how she won’t take time for herself and do self-care. They don’t get how come they can’t just forget about the kids for a bit (during sex, on a date, on a trip). They don’t get how intricately woven their wellbeing is to that of their kids….
I have found myself in many conversations with couples:
~ Helping Moms do their role as well and as thoroughly as they’d like while minimizing the expense of themselves…
~ And helping their partners see the impact the role has on the Moms, and therefore everything else in their lives…
The role is absorbing, women don’t just think of the children, they are with the children- they are a We. Mind you this We also usually includes the partner unless the partner is not on the same page. In which case, then mother bear comes out to play and the partner is out the cave (sorry partners!). This is a built-in safety measure to ensure the survival of the species… We haven’t advanced that much yet, so this is pretty much still a part of our makeup…
The Moms are a blob with the children. This is why they usually have a harder time parenting as the children are more defiant with the mothers to differentiate from this blob… The Mothers very identity and essence are tied up with the blob. If any element of the blob is not OK, they are not OK…
~ This is why Moms are consumed with all the caretaking (feeding with their bodies and foregoing their sleep among many other things), at some level they are also taking care of themselves… The children and the partner are experienced as an extension/continuation of themselves…
~ Their taking care of themselves will never look like that of their partner, who would usually be more individually/me focused… And, who experience the children and their partner as a collection of selves…
Why then if taking care of the We is also taking care of ourselves, is it still so expensive to be a Mom? Because as part of the blob our own essence gets diluted and not specifically honored and nurtured. The caretaking of the blob doesn’t directly translate to taking care of ourselves… We feel good doing it and feel it necessary to do, we wouldn’t do anything different.
And, even though at the end of the day we are looking to become one, transcend separateness and ego, we are still after all seeking a full Human Experience that continues to evolve our Self…
We still have our own replenishing, needs and evolution that we need to tend to….
Our personal care and development get lost in translation with our Mom role, unless we do the role intentionally… This is where the pride and joy, and the gift and the blessings come in…
Here is to honoring and celebrating all the Moms- past, present and future, may we care for ourselves as well as we care for our lovies…
Watch the video for learning about the impact of being a Mom… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: Decide that you want to be the Best Mom ever… Which means you don’t neglect or abandon yourself… The Best Mom is not one that does so at her own expense…
~ Claim a chunk of time during the week that is just for you- block it off on your calendar as a recurring event
~ Get support for during that time if you have young children that need tending… If something is getting in the way of this- address that immediately…
~ Make a list of all the things you’d like to do for Self-love– and chuck a few ideas into the first 3 chunks to inspire you and help you make that time as restorative as possible
~ Keep enriching your Self-love practice…
A Mom that gives her all, literally to her children and family, and is spent is not a great inspiration and source of joy to her family… Be the Best Mom and take care of yourself as well!
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
~ Create an Epic Love Affair with Your Partner – Addressing the struggle and upleveling your relationship to create your epic love affair
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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