Honor your Self. What does that mean? In my book, it means getting in touch with our Core, True, Authentic Self, our Soul, and operating from it in all we do.
This means being in connection with our Self, knowing our Self. Most of the time we are in a fog and cacophony of daily minutiae, mired in our ego approach to our relating and our life. We are shut down and completely disconnected from our Self.
Who are you? What is the point of you? Why are you here? What is the purpose of your life? I know these are huge questions, and one has to be ready to tackle them… If this feels too esoteric or out there right now, let it be and instead ponder its more basic form:
How do you want to live your life? How do you want your daily routine to look like? How do you want your surroundings to look like? Who do you want in your life? How do you want your relationships to look like? How do you want to spend your time? How do you want to be of service or give back to the world?
Honoring our Self means owning our Self. We usually have a hard time responsibly, responsively, mindfully and lovingly sharing our position on things and preferences. We instead manipulate, control, coerce, reject, dismiss or underhandedly try to get our way and make others do our bidding.
Operating from our Authentic Self means being open, honest, forthcoming, transparent, accountable, honorable, trustworthy, loyal, Clean. It means sharing our Self, being vulnerable and available.
Honoring our Self means setting up our life for Success. Most people run a haphazard life without intention. They come and go without a plan. They live day-by-day barely managing daily responsibilities and running themselves into the ground without enjoying or actually living their life.
They live putting out fires, having others own their time and resources, and never fully using their Gifts or creating much with their Life. Here our job is to set up proper boundaries, routines, systems, support, beautiful spaces, ways to meet our needs, a guiding vision, and to stay focused on our goals.
Honoring our Self means embracing our Humanity. We overly identify with our mind, ego, achievements, physicality, and possessions. We get stuck in our human experience as opposed to embracing our Humanity… We get stuck by our human limitations and do our life as if we are in a fish tank… We see, think, and operate small. We allow our human body to dictate our abilities, focus, and possibilities.
When in truth we can transcend this by operating from our Soul. Our body and mind are tools to help us carry out our Soul’s Will… We embrace Humanity through understanding, compassion, love, and giving; and by living an intentional and meaningful life.
Honoring our Self means being grateful, abundant, and a beacon of Light. We question why things happen to us. We struggle. We repeat patterns. The pain in your life is a spotlight on a code that you need to crack. This is your lesson. This is your opportunity to learn and grow for in so doing your Gift, that is to be shared with others, manifests.
Be grateful for the opportunities in your life, see the Good in them, as this is where your life’s purpose originates. Figure out what is the lesson you are to be learning, and learn it. Then share this with others. Be a beacon of Light.
Our relationship is fertile ground for Life Lessons… Our partner is our Life Partner. Together we learn, crack codes, grow, decipher and manifest our Gifts. Open your eyes. Place things in perspective. How are you to grow. What are you to learn. Get to it already. Before you know it you’ve created an Awesome Relationship – a MetroRelationship™, an Authentic Relationship, and an Authentic Life…
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship, and Life… Share your thoughts and progress on our blog page!
Happy Honoring!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Pick a way in that you need to start Honoring your Self more.
Explore what this means to you and how it impacts the current status of your relationship and your life.
Identify two actions you would like to implement to start Honoring your Self, and implement them.
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2016 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
You have to be happy with yourself first… You cannot be happy in your relationship if you are not first happy with your Self… If you are not your Authentic Self, your Soul Self, you are just a robot completing daily tasks and missing the whole point of life… This is not Living…
What is the purpose of your Life? Why are you alive, today, right now?
I believe we all have a Purpose and we have unhappy and dissatisfying lives when we are not living our purpose, when we are not living from our Authentic Self, when we are not in alignment with our Soul. We are “embodied energy” living a human experience. Liken it to being on a mission and donning a costume, or uniform. You are the Hero of your Story. What is your Story? What is your Mission? What is the point of You?
We waste so much time and effort going about life with blinders on and focusing on unimportant things. We miss the point completely! We create mediocre lives at best, lives without purpose. We get stuck in our little perspective, drag our partner into it, and battle there. Wow, are we ignorant and blind. This is painful to witness. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
It is our job to WAKE UP to our Life, to open our eyes, to take off the shades. When we start getting in touch with who we REALLY are, how magnificent we are, how important we are, how needed we are and humbly accept our “assignment”, mission, Purpose, then everything changes…
We transcend daily nonsense (Ego) for the beauty (Blessings) in it all, for it is all beautiful… There is a reason for everything… Our job is to translate our experiences into lessons and use them for the greater good… There is something in each of us that is a Gift waiting to be shared.
Take a moment to thread your experiences and find the common denominator. What is the theme in your life? What situations, circumstances, lessons keep creeping up? What is getting louder and louder in your life? What is the message that you are not getting? What is the code you have to crack?
Stop blaming your partner for the quality of your life… Stop waiting for your partner to create the life you want… Own your Self. Be your Authentic Self. Show up in your relationship. Be Understanding and Accepting in your relationship. Be Compassion in your relationship. Be Abundance in your relationship. Be Love in your relationship. No “Buts”…! Stop it and own your Self!
Stop waiting for your partner to do something different. See your partner’s Core. Don’t get hang up on their appearance, on their behavior, and especially not on their defense mechanisms (protective behaviors). Look beyond all this and see the purity of your partner. Witness your partner’s Soul… They have a code to crack as well after all, but that’s on them… Don’t get hand up on the minutiae of your interactions. Be with your partner!
When your Souls team up… now that’s where the Awesomeness is. That’s where your untapped Synergy is. That’s where the Purpose is… Your partner is your Partner! Don’t take them for granted. They are not your enemy, they are your ally. It’s time you recognize this and treat them like Royalty. Humbly embrace your Kingdom and uplift the world. Be the Hero in your Story. The Universe is the limit!
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship. Share your thoughts and progress on our blog page!
Happy Uplifting!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
How do you know if you are on the right track? What’s the best way to go about your Life?
Listen to your Feelings… Not your Ego! Your Feelings… Make your feelings your compass. They are the language of the Soul. That’s your Authentic Self’s built in guiding mechanism… Follow your Heart… At every juncture ask, “What would make me feel Good?”
Honor your Self. Pursue Happiness. Add simple pleasures. Give and Receive TLC freely… Make this part of your daily approach to life and your relationship.
Make Meditation a part of your daily life as well. This is your direct line to your Self, your Soul…
When you start aligning with your Authentic Self, Soul, things begin to make sense…, your life becomes more beautiful… It’s actually this simple…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2016 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Often times partners share their wondering about how exclusivity, monogamy, and fidelity is possible in a longterm relationship. It is usually the male partners who pose this question when their female counterpart is not present.
I appreciate their honesty, risk and willingness to explore this topic and concern.I completely understand their plight. Unfortunately, this is often chucked to “boys will be boys”, “it is unnatural for a man to be monogamous” and the like making men appear archaic. I would like to believe that we are more evolved than this. That society is not caging an animal with marriage that when let loose it will wreak havoc.
No, not “I would like to believe”, I DO believe that. I believe that the primal impulse to conquer and be “king of the jungle” has evolved and moved to the career and money earning potential realm. This is why men who don’t feel comfortable in their level of success, as measured by society’s standards in this regard, are depressed, dissatisfied, “searching” and managing the associated pain by numbing themselves in some way.
Yes, the “successful” ones experience some of this as well because they still don’t feel as the “king of the jungle” at some level… Their primary relationship is not meeting this need… I hear the uproar from women, feminists and social keepers…
But, let these men lose and they are still not happy… The answer lies in the balance between togetherness and separateness not just when it comes to how much time we spend together, but at an identity and energy level. If we are “too close” we lose our selves, our individuality, our uniqueness. This is a traumatic and annihilating loss.
Women have a higher tolerance level for this as historically and culturally they’ve been taught, and even threatened, to be in this role, and because their brain is wired for “weness” to serve an evolutionary purpose.
Men might experience this more as the caged-in syndrome. They are more likely to experience exclusivity as restrictive and believe that the answer might lie in going elsewhere to find and engage the other parts of themselves…
Sexual intimacy as we know it in relationship, is laden with burden and restrictiveness. Women bring in the caretaking and men the protectiveness (restrained aggression). Neither is bringing their primal and adult-evolved selves, whose basic needs are being met, to their interaction. This creates neediness and apathy. This is boring!
What we usually fail to see is that in absence there is longing. In separateness we can embrace and share our splendor, and herein the “king of the jungle” thrives. Here is where men and women get to be themselves without the burden of stereotypes and other prescriptions…
So, how do we set up security, connection and closeness to meet our security needs, and yet allow for space, separateness and individuality to meet our identity and erotic needs? We think (or react…) through our interactions. We think through our lovemaking.
Thinking creates emotional intimacy (when positive…), but with the caveat of impeding erotic intimacy. We do not allow ourselves to feel and be present. We do not fully express ourselves physically. We do not fully engage our embodied soul. We feel empty and dead.
We might fall pray to believing we’d feel more alive by increasing the number of sexual conquests we notch on our belt, but we are bigger than this! It is instead about how we fully express our Selves in our human dimension in every interaction and every moment. It is not about numbers, it is about being…
So, while we continue to invest in meeting our basic needs it behooves us to be with ourselves, in our body and have a full experience of our Selves that we share with our partner. Yes, reality has its limitations and consequences. It is challenging to achieve this level of Being.
In the mean time the use of fantasy, Imagination, in sexuality is a vehicle that allows for the expression of unmet security needs, unburdened loving, and engagement of our embodied soul. As Esther Perel suggests, “sex is somewhere we go, not something we do” and the goal in our relationship is to have intimacy through sex – erotic intimacy.
Our committed relationship, marriage, is then not a cage but a mechanism for self exploration, development and expression. This marrying of meeting our security and identity needs, eroticism, frees us to transcend our human experience, and the perceived limitations of monogamy, allowing us to embrace our latent Spiritual Being…
At the end of the day, fully embracing our humanity and physical body is our pathway to our Spiritual Self… Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment to help you effortlessly start implementing this, make changes and immediately experience the relationship you want. There is no need to be archaic – transcend the limitations and embrace the possibilities!
Happy Transcending!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment Find something romantic to do with your partner, your self and/or a platonic someone else… Engage your body and senses… Give from the heart, use your imagination, get creative, be indulgent – savor the giving, savor the moment, savor the love. Enjoy!
Copyright (c) 2016 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
When we are “too close”, whether we are getting along or not … , we can’t see each other. If we can’t see each other, how can we possibly decide if we like each other and feel attraction?
This concept is confusing to most, when we live in a society where relationships struggle and the ideal is based on fairy tales and believing our partner should be our best friend.
This is wrong. We do not want our partner to be our best friend. This places them in the familial category which makes the relationship incestous. It makes sense that the attraction wanes, or doesn’t exist!
But even when we are not getting along, we might be too close for attraction and desire. We might think we are not feeling sexy feelings because we are fighting or are not seeing eye-to-eye. When in truth, we might not be feeling desire, because our energies and needs are enmeshed. This lack of differentiation is detrimental to relationships. It causes too much angst and erosion.
It’s an actual conundrum for partners as they need to experience separateness and differentiation to activate and maintain attraction, desire and passion (this is different from drama!), but need to experience togetherness and security to tolerate separateness and be able to thrive. This is where couples go wrong. They do funny business to juggle this dichotomy.
Due to this contrary nature, when we are psychically invested in meeting our emotional needs we can’t at the same time meet our erotic needs leaving couples to focus on the primary relational tasks of getting along, fighting well, communicating better, feeling closeness and spending fun times together.
This assists manage crisis, prevent relational trauma, repair damage, heal wounds, grow-up and joyfully and peacefully “stay on the horse.” For most couples this in and of itself is a life journey through which they get to enjoy a satisfying and intentional relationship.
The problem comes in when the enmeshment and psychic needs are so prevalent that even this foundation is challenging to achieve. The next phase of creating and sustaining desire, passion and eroticism is then inconceivable … Couples would benefit from distinguishing between these two stages of relating and not placing the cart before the horse which only creates more confusion, dissatisfaction and hopelessness.
Whether you are trying to establish a strong and secure structure or get to the next phase, fear not for as long as you are investing in this journey you’ll get results and create the life and relationship you want …
Here is to adding perspective and investing productively:
Closeness, togetherness and security (physical – intellectual – validation): Stand on your own two feet and own only yourself … Mind what you are doing and operate from your strengths. Let your partner do the same without judging or criticizing them.
Separateness and differentiation (psychic – emotional – empathy) – not to be misunderstood as being individualistic and ego driven: Explore uniqueness and tolerance … Learn to self manage and regulate, implement a lot of self care, embrace your uniqueness. Embrace our partner’s uniqueness.
Oneness and synergy (energetic – transcendent, visionary, creative – compassion, altruism): Unleash your Authentic Self and Light … Attune to what makes you happy and feel good in everyday life, your feelings are your guiding mechanism, get in touch with your Mission and get to it. Invite your partner to do the same.
Note these are not mutually exclusive and are fluid in nature. It is helpful to see them as a progressive range or stages (a ramp), and not as concrete steps or levels (a set of stairs). Most couples operate from some overlap of the first two stages, so know you are not alone!
Keep working your ramp and your desire and attraction quotient will skyrocket! Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want. Enjoy more attraction, desire and loving today!
Happy Attraction and Loving!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Pick an activity, outing or hobby you’ve been admiring from afar and work with your partner to integrate it into your schedule and routine. Build-in a reconnection ritual for when you get back …
Copyright (c) 2016 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Couples usually end up accepting the lack of desire and passion in their relationship as a fact of life for a longterm relationship. They are not happy or satisfied with this, but their attempts at remedying their lack of (passionate) physical intimacy don’t usually succeed.
The reason for this is partners’ misconceived ideas about sex, intimacy, and each other, unrealistic expectations, body issues, attachment issues, unmet developmental emotional needs, judgement and criticism, and owning of each other instead of themselves. The resulting mindset has a huge impact on their libido and the couple’s sexual life.
In addition to addressing the above, couples can greatly increase their passion by actively monitoring and engaging their mind. “Sex is not something we do, is somewhere we go,” says MFT colleague Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity.
We usually focus on what we are doing. It’s not about technique, the motions, or the positions. It’s about Being deep inside our Selves in our body and our imagination. It’s an expression of our Self. How can we desire or be desired if we don’t exist …, show up?
It is our job to turn our Selves ON. The more confidence we feel, the better the sex. Turn the criticism and other owning buttons off. You don’t have to be perfect and neither does your partner. You don’t have to love everything about each other. You are both OK the way you are. You are both Hot!
Engage that part of you in your mind, and allow it to come out and play with your partner. Watch the video to assist you address the mindset holding you back and for practical steps for immediately creating greater passion:
5 Tips for Greater Passion
1) Lower Expectations
2) Invite, Entice …
3) Set-Up & Prepare
4) Work With Each Other
5) Expand Your Repertoire!
Every month can be a Month of Love. Start enjoying greater passion today. Watch the video to learn about these steps and start applying them now. Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want.
Surprise your Self and your partner with increased desire and passion!
Happy Desiring all Year Around!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Set an alarm to check-in 3x/day: 1) look around you, appreciate something beautiful and add more beauty to your environment, 2) check on how your body feels, what it needs and give this to your Self, and 3) pay attention to your thoughts, accept them, and add a vision of sensuality …
Copyright (c) 2016 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 a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth 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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