mmmhhh
oh how i would love to write in big capitol letters the word many of you are probably thinking about right now…..
but i wont as this email has nothing to do with that……
But I did just think of a great acronym for what this email is about using those letters.
Courageously
Undertaking
Nights
Together..
there you go…. I did get to slip it in somehow !!! jajajajjaja
Here is what i know, because I speak to people ( mainly men ) about this every single day.
So many people are basically living inside of relationships they really no longer give a fuck about…..
I am not talking about the ones where you are screaming and fighting…. that still has a pulse. has some fire. I mean the ones way past working it out, ..for decades often. Way past the therapist’s couch and the obligatory date night where both people are scrolling on their phones over a candle lit dinner that was hardly touched.
They are done. They have checked out.
Yet….they stay anyway.
The confusing question is why?
THe number one answer given to the British law firm, Slater and Gordon, who in a study asked 2,000 unhappy married people exactly that, was lack of courage. Not love or hope, but courage. As in, I don’t have enough of it to walk out of my own kitchen. The men said they stayed because of what a split would do to the family and the women said money.
Marriages that start with a pretty paper signed when wearing white and feeding families they hardly see food and champagne, end up way too often with spreadsheets created showing all the reasons to stay as roommates with a mortgage
And then when one does leave the deciding moment is often just that… a final moment.
When asked what was the moment?…here is what they said..
One woman’s husband skipped her grandmother’s funeral for work, hoping to be seen sacrificing for a promotion. He did not get the promotion. But her standing alone at her own grandmothers funeral, had her signing for her freedom.
One man slept on the couch for a full year and started having panic attacks, some at night, that he feared were heart attacks. He decided to change something or risk his health.
Another woman who was the driving force behind all their holidays, dinners, outings and connection dates, just stopped for 3 weeks. Nothing was organized at all during that time. The lack of effort or concern by her husband had her deciding nto be concerned anymore.
A man said his wife’s mother stayed for weeks or months and her brother lived with them for over 16 months without contributing. He felt like “a distant third” behind her family.
A woman who had been sharing about the promotion se was going for, for weeks. all her hard work and preparation. When she got it, he was the first she called. After his “Thats great”, he asked what was for dinner that night.
A third man described 18 months in separate bedrooms with a wife who never expressed emotion toward him, then heard his young son mention “mommy’s new friend.” His words: “I thought I might die, right then. That’s when I knew.”
Over on Scary Mommy, women describe the exact second they knew. It’s when he refused counseling, refused date nights, refused even to talk it out. She was ready to do all of it. He was not ready to do any of it. Others said it was the moment she realized she was the wife and the mother, and he was the extra child. One said it was when he told her in public that she does nothing.
The Modest Man’s list of what divorced men say sums it up: “Arguments aren’t the problem; disrespect is.” Men also described feeling mocked or ignored when they shared their struggles, so they stopped opening up, which created the distance.
In all of the reasons I hear on my calls with men and read in the countless accounts I traul through in studies and reddit lists, one thing that is constantly missing, is courage.
The courage to be god damn authentic.
And for many this courage was hardly there in the first place.
I hardly meet people whom are truly authentic in their relationships. People hardly share their true desires. They spend years not really saying exactly what they want to say and so many do nto feel truly safe to fully express themselves. Modulation is served with coffee every single morning, of every single day of every single year.
Authenticity is the thing…………and courage is what it costs to do it.
The word courage comes from the Latin cor, which means heart. Brené Brown points out that its original meaning was to speak your mind by telling all your heart, which is a pretty good definition of authenticity. Being real means showing someone what’s actually going on inside you when you know they might not like it. That risk of rejection, of being too much or not enough, is exactly where courage lives. If there were no risk, you wouldn’t need any.
Yet for so many, expressing their authenticity is not safe. They risk being rejected and and exiled. There is no way of being soothed in such realness. That is why most people perform instead, because it feels somehow safer. When you manage how you come across by saying the agreeable thing and keep the peace, nobody can reject the real you because the real you is not in the room .
The price is that nobody gets to love the real you either. especially yourself.
IN all of these cases above the people in them had stopped being authentic with each other long before they stopped being married. And for many they were never really that authentic in the first place. In most relationships there is no place for saying “I’m not happy,” or “ I am so sick of ….” “I am triggered because…’ “I want you,” or “I need this from you”. It takes more nerve than staying quiet for twenty years, and the quiet is how a marriage ends up dead.
This is why I LOVE the UPLVL system.
It is the only system I have seen and experienced where one can fully share their authenticity without the other taking it personally. It is the only system where there is TRUE FREEDOM in sharing ( with consent of course ) the raw emotional side or the righteous ego of oneself and then be soothed to freedom.
I witness time and time again the moment where my clients, lovers or a friend is sitting in front of me in awe at the ease, the freedom and clarity of what they just experienced. Recently a girlfriend who was rather nervous about a call we needed to have to clear something that had happened between us, just said at the end “ that is it? like we are truly done? i mean that was so clean and clear…and so freeing..!!
and then 5 min later she left a message…”this needs to be taught to teenagers!!! it is so powerful.” ( she has a teenage daughter ).
Lovers…. if you are done modulating yourself inside of your relationship, done with walking around on eggshells and done just living inside of a relationship that just feels….. mediocre, and want more from yourself, your partner and your relationship, book a discovery call with me and lets talk about how UPLVL will get you that fire and safety back.
❤️
M