Relationships are a place you go to give and not get. We can’t experience the full juice of life without being in relationships because that’s where we go to really give our who we truly are and wholeheartedly receive the same from the other person. On today’s show, life coach and acupuncturist Jim Rohr talks with Amy Killingsworth about being inviting love in and looking for relationships by loving yourself first. Remember, you have exactly what you need already. You just need to tap in and connect and become attuned to yourself so you can be on your way to building healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
Jim Rohr, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I’m super happy to be here.
I’m excited to have you. One of my favorite things about having this show is getting to talk to people that are brilliant in their approach to life. You’re one of those people and I can’t wait to share your unique insights and perspective with my audience. Jim is a coach and acupuncturist. He also has a podcast called Pleasure Points. What’s your podcast about Jim?
It boils down to mindfulness. We’re exploring. The thing that drives me is encouraging and cultivating presence. Similar to you, I wanted a podcast because I wanted to be in a room with amazing people and I had some stories that I wanted to share. What I’ve noticed is that in the process of doing it, the themes are always coming back to, “Are you paying attention to your life? How are you showing up? What’s the impact you’re having on the people around you? Are you paying attention?”
Are you living by design? Are you living by default? Are you letting life happen to you? Are you directing it? I love that. One of the things that you do, which I’m super excited to talk about because it’s a huge grief for women, is you do dating coaching. You help women learn to love themselves so that they can find the love of their life.
You can appreciate it as a coach as well. My background was originally in acupuncture and the majority of acupuncture clients are female. College-educated women, 25 to 55, are the consumers of alternative medicine. I found myself in the treatment room with these women and what I found in talking to them that is different from talking to men was that so much of their physical health seems to be tied into their relationship health. If they were in a relationship that doesn’t go well, symptoms would arise. If they were dating and that was in this nebulous area, then they might have more symptoms. If they were single and they wanted to be in a relationship, that was causing strife. The way I like to practice was I would see one person for the entire hour and it gives us a lot of time to sit there and talk. I found myself doing a lot of coaching at that time because the needles could be great to take away a headache or help treat the IBS for a little while. Ultimately, we have to get them more skills to navigate relationships in a good way in order for their health to be sustained.
I love that you’re not coaching from the standpoint of, “Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that.” There’s always that aspect of coaching. When you’re giving advice or directives, that’s what a lot of the dating coaches I’ve seen are like. “Here’s when you call. Here’s when you don’t call. Here’s what you wear. Here’s what you don’t wear.” It’s almost like a performance, but to what end? You might be able to land a guy but where is that going to get you? What is the goal with partnerships and relationships? Can you speak to that?
What you described makes my stomach turn. All of those things like, “Wait for three hours.”
It’s game-playing and it’s manipulative.
When I want to transition into having a more formal coaching business and practice and set up, I first called it attracting an extraordinary relationship, which I thought was great in the beginning. We’re attracting and we’re calling in this love. I found the conversation veering in that direction of like, “How often do you text?”
It’s like, “Give me a formula or a spell. Two eyes of a newt and a chicken foot.”
So much of women's physical health is tied into their relationship health. Click To TweetIt stops the worst.
“A sprinkle of sexy and a little bit of sass.”
My wife, Jenn, heard me talk ad nauseam about how frustrating that stuff is. I rebranded to call my program, Inviting in Love, and that’s more on point for me. We’re talking about Inviting in Love for yourself first and foremost because we’re going to be attracting a reflection of us. Whether we’re trying to find someone to fill a void or to re-enact the same patterns that we’re used to or a little bit of both of that.
Stir up childhood trauma unconsciously.
All that stuff. It comes down to we have to reconnect with that self-love first and combine some of that modern coaching stuff with the background in traditional Chinese medicine and energetics. A lot of my approach is much body-based because our body and our physiology hold so much and we can recruit our physiology in order to change how we see and move through the world. The problem with some of these things like waiting, “How long do you text?” They’re not paying attention to their energy. For your audience, one of the simple things that I tell my clients is if you are on dating apps, get yourself into a good state before you log in. Don’t just log in a totally unconscious habitual pattern because you’re on the train or whatever. Get yourself into a good state, put on some good music, dance around and put on your essential oils. Get connected to that feeling in your heart of love, worth and of deserving. Get in touch with that. How you interact with the app is going to be different.
This is an Amy-ism but I say it all the time. In fact, I’ve done episodes on it. The energy in which you create will determine the creation. That’s true of a piece of art or a relationship or anything. Anything that you create or develop will be determined by the energy that you’re in when you do it and take action because we don’t attract what we want. We attract what we are. The inner game is the only place. Would you agree that if we have our inner game solid, then the outer game takes care of itself?
One of the things that this conversation can lead is this false impression that women need to be healed in order to be lovable. This is something that I’ve found and I talk a lot in my Facebook group and my podcast. You don’t have to be 100%. There’s no such thing as being 100%. We’re all works in progress.
The relationship is where we heal. That’s the crucible.
The example I gave is if somebody is like, “I’m going to work on loving myself,” and they cultivate this amazing love but they haven’t left their house. That’s enlightenment in the cave. You can have enlightenment in the cave but at some point, you’ve got to return to the village if you want a relationship.
When my kids are out of the house, they’re in their dad’s house or activities or whatever, I am so zen. I am spiritual. Nothing’s going to mess with my vibe. When my kids walk in the house, you see what’s going on. That’s such a grace and mercy because you get to see it and it’s there. Just because it isn’t being agitated to the surface, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there in your energetic signature, being broadcast to everyone and everything, and touching everything in your life because it’s there. The full stop of what Rise to Reign is, is to have it agitated up to the surface where you can feel it. You can release it and you can heal it. If it’s stuck under there and you never experience it, then it stays stuck, but you’re still broadcasting that signal into the field and that’s what you’re attracting.
In a relationship, whether it’s a parent-child relationship or relationship with your parents or most often a romantic relationship, that’s where the real heavy stuff gets brought to the surface. The unworthiness or lack of love and self-acceptance gets agitated to the surface. You have a hashtag that cracks me up and that I love. It’s called #DontBeAwful. My take on that is I’m laughing because I’m a women’s coach also and men too, but mostly women. Getting in a relationship or trying even to get into a relationship does bring some truly appalling things to the surface. Can you talk about #DontBeAwful and how to navigate that? Not stuffing it down and putting on a false persona but how do we not be awful as women in relationships or looking for one? It’s an important conversation.
Are you familiar with attachment styles?
Yes.
The attachment styles are great. For people who may not know, the way that we relate to our loved ones and our intimate relationships can be characterized in three main different categories. The first one is anxious. Most of my clients are going to fall into this category because they’re anxious. They know they’re anxious, they don’t like it and they want it fixed. This is somebody who’s constantly looking for reassurance. This is someone who’s blowing up the phone with ten text messages in five minutes and is jealous and insecure. Insecurity is something that runs throughout their day and they may be totally fine in every other aspect of their work. That’s the way it is. For most of my clients, they’re totally cool. They’re crushing it in life.
When it comes to dating, especially if they meet someone that they like, I’ve talked to these powerful CEOs and VPs and they’re checking the Bumble app to see if this guy responded. Meanwhile, they’re managing multimillion-dollar accounts and it’s taken over. It hijacked their mood and their day, and they have a hard time being present. That’s someone who’s anxious. The opposite end of that is avoid. Somebody who’s avoidant is somebody who’s freaked out when it comes to intimacy and any vulnerability. At some point, they run away. The middle one is going to be secure. This is the gold standard. Someone who’s secure is going to be somebody who can roll with the punches and ride the waves. They’re healthy. Everything about them and the way they relate is healthy.
Somebody who’s anxious tends to be attracted to somebody who’s avoidant. We could say that it’s because they’re trying to get the attention or get someone to stay, who was in their life before was pulled away. We could psychoanalyze it. Keeping it simple here, someone who’s anxious tends to be attracted to someone who’s avoidant because there’s a lot of chemistry, but it’s a fake chemistry because what’s being triggered isn’t true love. It’s their attachment style. On some level, their energy is like, “This guy is going to toy with my emotions and he’s going to pull away. I can’t get enough of it.” When people are like, “I need chemistry. I have to find chemistry.” When my clients go on a first date, I’m like, “Are there any red flags?” They’re like, “Nope.” It’s like, “How did you feel?” They’re like, “He’s a nice guy. He’s decent looking.” I’m like, “Go on a second date. Perfect.”
After the first date and someone is like, “The stars were aligned and it was amazing.” This person has a long history of dating unavailable men then we get concerned. The #DontBeAwful is if somebody tends to be anxious, what they’ll do is they’ll have what’s called an act of protest. They’ll withhold affection, squeeze too hard and smother the person because they want this reassurance. They start playing games where they’re posting Instagram Stories to see if this person’s looking at it. If the guy doesn’t look at it, then they get all up in arms about it. They’re trying to set up traps everywhere. What they’re doing is they’re trying to test like, “Am I safe here?” Instead of saying, “When you don’t text me in the morning, I find myself being anxious and I like to hear from you in the morning.” It’s how someone insecure might handle it. Instead, they start picking fights about other things. I joke like, “Don’t be awful,” because if we can start there, chances are you’ll be alright.
It’s not a fake #DontBeAwful like, “Here’s a prescription for how you need to act.” It all comes down to self-awareness and becoming conscious because we all have patterns and triggers. From my perspective, the way that we #DontBeAwful is by becoming aware of our patterns and living in the truth. Saying the actual thing that’s going on inside of you and asking for what you need. Being okay with whichever answer you get because the tendency when you have an anxious attachment style is there’s one right answer. I’m taking my question to you and from my perspective, we all have this question and it’s, “Am I good enough? Am I lovable?” When I’m taking my question to my relationship, I’m not there to give. I’m there to get. That energy of needing somebody to answer your question and fill you up is off-putting for anybody but especially for men.
I love that you give the perspective of a man because women coaching women has so much value. It’s important to get a man’s perspective because women will give advice to their girlfriends and it is so wrong. They’re nowhere near in the realm of what needs to be said. It’s helpful to have men that are conscious and want to see women healed, in conscious relationships and truly fulfilled. Not just having an outcome of getting a date or getting a second date or blaming a man but who are truly fulfilled and growing in their relationship. Thank you for the work that you do.
The second thing that I wanted to cover is from the Rise to Reign perspective. We have feminine archetypes and they apply to men as well. This is human. The spiritual awakening or self-awareness. For the feminine standpoint, we have the prisoner who’s anxious and characterized by fear and feels like a total victim of their life. They can’t have any effect on their life. They are at effects, not at cause. There’s this slave girl. This is like the archetypical martyr. They’re the true victim like, “I did everything for you.” These are the martyrs. The slave girl is characterized by covert contracts. “I’m going to do this and then you’re going to do this but I’m not going to tell you that that’s what I’m expecting. I just expect.” It’s a booby trap. “When you don’t do it, I’m going to punish you but I’m not going to tell you why I’m going to punish you.” It’s crazy-making.Â
The three pillars of Rise to Reign are to activate your life’s purpose, discover your most authentic self and rock your relationships. These are the three areas and I love that you mentioned in acupuncture that relationships are what determine our quality of life. The presence is not lack of relationships or key determinant of a lack of quality of life. There’s a lot of suffering there. The three manifestations of the ego are the prisoner characterized by fear, the slave girl characterized by victimhood and then there’s the princess. These are all characterizations of the lower self or the ego, the shadow self if you prefer in psychological terms.
The princess is where most of feminism and female empowerment go. It’s still a manifestation of a lower nature. It is a false power. It’s like the girl boss or the feminist or it’s almost like, “I don’t need a man,” or it’s like 50/50, “I don’t need you.” They’re all characterized by fear but this is a manifestation of maybe the avoidant attachment style but also the anxious attachment style, which swings hard to the right of like, “Fine, I’m scared of this. I don’t need it.” They do but they’re not telling the truth. They get in a relationship with a man and they tend to play the masculine like, “I don’t need you. I’ll take care of myself. If I have anything left over, I’ll maybe give something to you.” Depending on which of those energies you’re in, you will attract a certain type of man or a man who’s in a certain energy to bring what energy you’re in as we’ve alluded to.
There's no such thing as being 100%. Everyone is a work in progress. Click To TweetI want you to speak to that but then I want to give the full context here. The higher self, the most authentic self is the queen and this is the secure attachment style. This is the woman who knows that she’s valuable and lovable and she holds that standard. There’s still an element of like, “I’ll be okay if you don’t love me but I do want to be in a conscious relationship to share that, exchange that, and magnify the experience of life.” I know I’m totally putting you on the spot but I know how bright you are, so I’m not worried about it. From your perspective, who are those four people going to attract? This is a helpful diagnostic to go like, “This is showing up in my relationship,” and take it back to responsibility and be like, “Where am I at?” The prisoner, slave girl, princess, and queen are going to attract what four types of men or if you prefer aspects of a relationship?
It’s hard to know without knowing all the ins and outs of the archetypes but typically, that lower vibration tends to attract guys that are going to use them. That ultimately is going to be attuned to what they want or what they think they need because somebody who’s secure is not going to put up with that.
They have a standard and they hold the standard.
They like someone who’s secure and they might be okay for a little bit to be like, “I’m going to extend some courtesy here.” Maybe you’re coming out of a bad relationship. “Let’s see how this goes.” Ultimately, if you can’t get your stuff together, they’re not going to hang around because one of the hallmarks of a secure relationship or someone who’s secure is they know that they can create a great relationship with a number of people.
They know and they’re not tempted to settle out of fear like, “I may not ever get this again. Something better might not come along so I’m going to settle here.”
If a woman in that lower vibration is holding this thing like, “I’m the best thing you’re ever going to get.” This guy is like, “No, that’s not true at all. I can make this great with a lot of different people.” The martyr thing gets so tiring and there are men that do that stuff too for sure. This isn’t just a female thing. Typically, any of those anxious things, you’ve got to look out for the avoidance stuff.
I want to clarify what you’re saying. When you’re in fear, you’re going to attract somebody who is avoidant.
It’s most likely. In the dating world, in particular, we have to remember that 70% or so of single people in the dating pool are avoidant. One of the hallmarks of an avoidant personality is that they’re not comfortable with intimacy. These people are not locked up in relationships for the long-term. If they have been in a long-term relationship, they’re going to get out of it quickly. They’re going to be back in the dating pool.
As a single woman, that feels hopeless. I know this is not what you meant but it sounds like you’re saying that anybody who is good at being in relationships is in one.
Not always but yes, the majority. This is a bit of a truth bomb here. If you’re single, you’re frustrated, and you keep attracting people that are unavailable, part of it is to look inside first. That’s the thing that we can control but part of it also can be a bit of a numbers game where if you are scattershot, most of the people that you interact with are going to be on some level possibly avoidant. The secure people tend not to be available for long so they come on the market and then they’re gone quick. There are anxious people who love being in relationships but if the relationship ends, they can take 6 months or 1 year to feel like they’re “ready to be back out there again.”
There are all sorts of reasons why people become available.
I’m not sure if I answered the direct response to the archetypes.
You did. I know exactly where the female brains are going to go when you say that. It’s like, “All the good men are taken.” The preset position that you come from will determine your energy and your actions. I wanted to clarify that that’s something to be aware of but it’s not a deal-breaker. It’s something to take and use for wisdom and discernment and pay attention to, which it always comes back to but it’s not hopeless. There are good men out there and you just need to know what you’re looking for. I love that you said that it isn’t the chemistry. It’s not the whiz-bang fireworks and that’s usually indicative of a trauma bond or a pattern repeating itself. That’s another thing to pay attention to. One thing that you said that I want to come back to and it keeps pinging back on me is in your acupuncture practice. Women would come in with physical symptoms because they were unhappy in relationships or because they were in a place of longing or maybe desperation for a partnership. Can you tell us a little bit of what some of those might be?
The beauty of acupuncture, at least the way that I was taught and practiced, is that you want to get to the root cause. If you think about an illness like a tree, a lot of times the headache, TMJ, anxiety are branches of the tree and we want to get to the root cause. We get to ask a lot of questions. In the process of asking questions, you can start to piece it together. It would be a rare instance. Someone has to be going through a breakup in order for them to see clearly like, “I’m in the middle of a breakup and I haven’t pooped in a week,” or something like that.
Having trouble letting go.
It wasn’t always that direct but in the process of getting to know people and then also seeing how their energy would change when they did get into a great relationship and they felt good, seen, heard and they were communicating well. Their energy and the pulse would change, and their tongue might look different. The tongue is a big thing in Chinese medicine. All these health markers would also improve as their relationships improve. What we would see some of the big ones, headache is a big thing, especially in New York where I used to practice. People would have a lot of TMJ. They’d be teeth clenching and grinding at night, which can create these headaches.
If you’re waking up with a headache, chances are something’s happening to you when you’re sleeping that you’re going just going to tie it on your teeth because it’s rare to wake up with a headache, unless you drink too much. Usually, if people are waking up with these chronic, dull, achy and annoying headaches, they’re probably clenching and grinding which we do when we’re stressed. Irritable bowel is another big one whether it’s constipation or loose stools. You could see some larger hormonal balance but that’s often complicated and it’s not necessarily going to be so easy to distill down as to a relationship thing. Back pain is a big one, especially low back pain. Oftentimes, it has a lot to do with money issues and security. The low back is the foundation of your spine so it’s not a big leap to wonder when your low back hurts if there’s something that’s unsettling in your relationships as well.
Everybody should get into the habit when they’re having a physical symptom of going, “What’s going on inside? What’s going on in my subtle emotional body? What’s going on in my spirit?” I love that you mentioned teeth clenching and grinding and things that go on in sleep. A lot of times, that’s a great window into the subconscious and what’s going on when we’re not even aware in our conscious mind of what is happening. Our bodies are always speaking to us.
If I had to sum up my approach and the thing that I like to say over and over again, and it speaks again to your archetypes. What we know in relationships and good in relationships is the partners are attuned to each other. They’re taking the time and they can feel what the other person is feeling. If they can’t, they’re taking the time to check in with their partner.
I see a critical distinction because when you have attunement you can feel the lack of attunement and that’s a subtle distinction. It doesn’t mean you’re in attunement all the time but you can feel it when the gap widens, the distance happens and have the skills to intentionally consciously close the gap back together. I know this so intimately from parenting. This is a good example. I feel that women get this in parenting but can’t necessarily make the leap because of all of the trauma, energy, expectation and all the energy around dating, but it’s a good diagnostic or heuristic to look at to understand what this is like.
When something is off in our relationship, it’s usually when behavior shows up. I haven’t been present with them, I’ve been busy working, I’m stressed about something else and they start acting up. It’s up to me to go, “What is going on here? Where did we lose connection?” I go back and repair that and the behavior issues go away. It’s so crazy. You don’t have to ever deal with behavior issues with kids. You know that. You’re a dad. They definitely need teaching and guidance. If you deal with the level of cause, you’re not addressing the root issue, which is something has broken somewhere or something has disconnected somewhere. We can feel that as moms and move toward them and connect our hearts back together in that sense of attunement. I honestly have never thought about it in a romantic sense so I love that you brought that out because it’s the same.
It’s the most important thing. If your audience are wondering, “What is it that I look for?” If they’ve been stuck in this pattern of feeling anxious. They can have a hard time even seeing someone who is secure. They don’t even know what to look for because they’re so used to chasing chemistry. One of the things to look for is, is this person attuned to me or are they making an effort to be attuned to me? Are they asking how I’m feeling? Are they checking in with me? Are there strides to have that emotional connection? In order to manifest that connection or to be comfortable even with that intimacy, we have to be attuned to ourselves. What I’m hearing about these lower archetypes, which I totally love and Jenn did your Rise to Reign and she came back. That was the thing that blew her mind. She was like, “I love it.” The thing with all those things is they’re acting from a place where they aren’t necessarily even attune to themselves. Does the martyr know that she’s setting a trap?
Look inside first; that's the thing that you can control. Click To TweetShe’s just trying to get her needs met. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking in relationships and in life. They’re hurting. We’re all trying to find our way home as Ram Dass said. We’re all here to walk each other home is the way that he said it, but it applies because we’re all trying to get our needs met. We’re all trying to find our way back home to ourselves and back home to love. I love that you changed your whole program back to Inviting in Love because when we have that desperate sense of needing a partner, longing and pining over a relationship. It’s because we want that connection with ourselves. Women resist this. I’m sure you’re aware of this, Jim. You’re intuitive but women resist this like it’s the plague. They’re so convinced that having a partner, being married, whatever it is, is going to solve all of their problems. I’m like, “No, you have exactly what you need already. It’s just that you have to tap in and connect and become attuned to yourself.”
I’m making a broad statement here. It doesn’t apply universally but as women, we’re so good at attuning to other people and paying attention to other people’s needs and nurturing and meeting those needs. We get lost in doing it for ourselves and self-attunement has to come first. You know if somebody isn’t attuned to you. You feel the distress in it. It doesn’t feel normal or it doesn’t feel like you’re home. When we talk about raising your standard, the first thing is to be connected and to connect back with yourself, be attuned to yourself and hold somebody else. You can’t hold somebody to a standard that you’re not providing for yourself and you teach people how to treat you. When you have a standard, when you’re are showing up for yourself and connecting with yourself, you will naturally know whether that’s happening in a relationship or not. Would you agree with that?
For sure. The challenging part with that is if you’re an empath. The beauty of someone who deals with anxiety is usually their instincts or their sense of what’s happening is accurate. The dysfunction is, let’s say that a guy is not responding or whatever and they’re like, “We’ve lost attunement.” The fallacy there is they start making it about themselves and they start going to this place of, “I screwed up. Maybe I texted too much. I shouldn’t have worn this. I probably said this thing on the date. I noticed that they changed.” They launch into these stories. Part of is to come back and to be able to self soothe. Trust the attunement that’s happening or the connection but ultimately, you’ve got to self soothe first and let things breathe a little bit.
Pressure kills everything it touches.
One of the things I remind my clients all the time is someone that you’re connecting with or if you’ve had 1, 2 or 3 dates, they are not at all in any way responsible for your emotional state. I believe that it’s healthy to be in a relationship where you don’t expect that person at all to be responsible. We look at, what’s the mood that I’m contributing? That’s the question I asked myself all the time. Am I contributing a good mood here? Was I being awful? Am I bringing a good mood? I can bring a great mood and Jenn might still be in a bad mood. She’s rarely in a bad mood. There’s only so much that I can do and it’s not my responsibility to do everything for your emotional well-being. The thing with the queen archetype as I would imagine is she’s attuned to herself. She knows what she deserves and she’s also willing to give things time and give her people an opportunity to step up. If they do great and if they don’t, she’s not going to go to sleep at night wondering what she did wrong.
One of the hallmark sayings in Amy-ism is, “Dependency breeds manipulation.” One of the main hallmarks of the queen is radical responsibility for everything, especially what’s going on inside of me. I’m a huge advocate of interdependency. I believe that we need each other and I’m not saying to live in isolation, that’s the princess. The Queen is interdependent. She will depend on people and people will depend on her. It’s symbiotic in that way, but dependency or codependency if you prefer breeds manipulation.
When I am dependent on you for happiness, for my good energy, for my excitement about life or if I have to have you do something or not do something for me to be okay, I’m in trouble. Because of that, it breeds manipulation. I have to have you be a certain way so that I can be okay so I’m going to manipulate you. I’m going to be strategic. I’m going to post an Instagram story. I’m going to do all the awful things to get you to be a certain way and respond a certain way because I’m dependent on you for my mood, happiness, financial well-being or whatever it is. It breeds manipulation so the key for the queen is always to come home to responsibility and remember who you are, who is divine perfection and who has everything she already needs in every moment and she’s perfectly taken care of.
The prisoner and the slave girl are fierce women. The princess is her man’s woman and the queen is God’s woman. The only place she’s truly dependent is on the divine and knows that in any situation. Let’s get real, people cheat, they die and you can’t have your faith in humans, you can’t. You have to have your faith in something that can’t be shaken. That’s the only thing that ever is. It’s the divine. When you’re solid in that, you can show up secure in your business, relationship and every other aspect. What about soulmates? What about twin flames? Is there one perfect fantasy person for everybody?
There are plenty of fantasy people out there for us.
How about fairytale?
I don’t like to believe in that stuff. I don’t think that it’s helpful. It breeds that codependency and troublesome attachments. It gets weird.
If you lose that one, you’re screwed. It’s dependency.
If I’m on a call with someone and we’re helping them get clarity, if I see and hear a bunch of conversations about twin flames, I will not work with them. I’ll give them some other resources. I have a friend of mine or a colleague who does a lot of work with twin flames and she’s a great coach for that but that’s not my kind of person. It gets to be this weird and meshed entanglement with these things. The hallmark of somebody who is secure is someone who can create a great relationship with a number of people. To be able to have that and to know that’s the case. With that being said, can you have connections with people where you feel the earth stops and you’re in a bubble and it’s amazing? Do I sit here and think that Jenn and I are soulmates? I haven’t even thought about it. I don’t entertain that question but do I love what we’re building together? Absolutely. Do I feel like we’ve done this before? For sure. I’m also not going to pigeonhole that into she is the one and only forever and ever. It gets weird. I don’t see it. It’s this abdication of power. People are surrendering some power because it seems romantic but it’s the opposite.
Every woman breathe and sigh of relief because there’s so much fear and anxiety in looking and sifting through 7.2 billion people or past that if you want to characterize it for the one person that you’re supposed to be with and you have to hold on. I always say that a powerful relationship is one that you don’t have to be in, but you choose to be in. You choose every day to show up 100% for that relationship. If you have to be with someone for financial reasons, emotional reasons or whatever that is giving your power away. That’s not a powerful position. I love that you took the fear and anxiety out of that.
Some people chase that and they want that. That’s a sign of their attachment issues.
It’s regression. You mentioned the powerful CEO women who are coddlers in their intimate relationships. I see that all the time with doctors, attorneys and these professional powerhouse women who are in relationships, either in relationships and they turn into absolute coddlers. They think that if they don’t get into a relationship, nothing else matters or nothing else is good. That’s regression. It’s a childhood fantasy of having a savior and having somebody else come from the outside and fix something that is wrong, out of balance or out of alignment in yourself.
Coming from my perspective, you can certainly truth bomb me if I’m out of integrity in this, but I’m so happy with my life. I love my business and my kids. If I meet someone and have a great relationship, awesome. I’m here for it. I’m open to it. If not, okay. It’s not going to make me or break me in the long run. I want that and I’m not saying that I don’t, but I don’t have all of my hopes and dreams rested on that. I feel that life happens in seasons and there are seasons to be connected to yourself. There are seasons to go through and be single and do your work. There are seasons to couple up and there are seasons to partner.
Those can be many years or short or whatever. There’s no attachment to the length of time. The key is to be present in the season that you’re in. Even though you don’t give too much credence to the twin flame and the soulmate conversation, I do believe there’s a divine blueprint and there’s a divine plan. There is a person and a selection for you in that divine plan. The key to getting there is being totally at peace and enjoy right now in the present moment of where you are. Being okay and happy on the way to where you’re going.
For me, it’s all about being in the moment. What is interesting is when people are like, “I’m going to be single for the next year. I’m taking the next year off from dating.” Why would you even say that? What’s the point? All we know is we have this moment right now. The ceiling could cave in on me right now and it’s gone. If we allow ourselves to be present and letting go of identifying and naming a season or a time or even the archetypes, it’s great to identify.
I’m going to be 45 and it’s like 45 or sometimes 30. That’s why I got married and had kids. My main driver was I was in my twenties. This was a different mindset or a different Amy. I was like, “I’m in my late twenties,” and that’s who I was with. There wasn’t a lot of conscious choice for the partnership. It was just, “It’s time now to move my life to the next phase.” That is so dangerous. Ask me how I know it. It doesn’t have a good result for anybody. Being present and showing up for what is happening right now. A feminine quality is being open to the flow of life.
That’s something that is hard. In the Pleasure Points podcast, I’ve been talking a lot about it. It’s a challenging conversation. How do you talk about presence without sounding clichĂ©?
It’s all the big and earth-shattering truths are so simple and they’re all out there. We’ve heard it so much and sometimes you want to tune it out like, “Meditate, be present.” “Give me the whiz-bang insight.” It’s like, “That’s it. It’s all there is.”
As much as we want to receive love, we're just built to give love. Click To TweetIt’s Alan Watts who has this quote that says something like, “You’re under no obligation to be who you are now tomorrow.” There’s that conversation when it comes to love, “Am I ready for love or relationships or whatever?” Maybe now you don’t feel going on the apps or putting yourself out there and tomorrow you might wake up and be filled with this love in your heart. You’re like, “I’m so excited to magnify the love that I have with another person.”
You can trust the desire, the intuition, the leadings and the promptings of your heart. Tony Robbins says, “If you get in your head, you’re dead.” You’re not going to a good place. I know that’s where the anxious attachment comes from. It’s the reasoning. It’s my age, my this or my that. It’s the human mind reasoning and you have access to a higher level of information. You have access to everybody and a higher reality. The key to tapping into that is coming present going within, becoming self-aware, doing your work, showing up, and releasing your trauma. I love that you said, “You’re in no obligation to be who you were yesterday.” If you were awful yesterday, you don’t have to wallow in grief and self-flagellation. You cannot be awful today. Yesterday is gone. Maybe that guy is gone.
We didn’t talk in-depth about the avoidance. Speaking about the head and the heart, they can be afraid to go into the heart. The only thing that I would say when I hear people say, “I don’t need a partner.” I’m like, “That’s great, then don’t need a partner.” Let’s just make sure that you’re still coming from an abundance mindset when it comes to there is an abundance of people out there that I could choose to be in a great relationship with. If you’re having that affirmation and you’re like, “I’m choosing right now not to put myself out there.” That’s different than being, “I don’t need a man,” or whatever. I can’t tell you how many breakthrough calls I’ve done where I get off the phone, I look at Jenn and I’m like, “Some of these women don’t want a partner, they want a handyman.” What I hear about is they want someone to take out the trash, change the lightbulbs, help out around the house, chauffeur and pick up the kids.
There are apps for that too. It’s TaskRabbit.
I’m like, “Where’s the heart? Where’s that thing of I want to be touched, I want to be held or I want to hold somebody else?” At the end of the day, as much as we want to receive the love, we’re built to give love but it’s got to be no strings attached. It does have to truly be a gift. If you’re leveraging and you’re saying, “I gave you all this and what did you give me?” That’s not a gift.
Tony Robbins said, “Relationships are places you go to give and not to get.” That is a critical distinction. Sometimes you might be in a place where I don’t have anything to give right now other than to grieve, do my work or whatever I’m doing. I call that that cocoon and that’s okay. There’s a season for that but we can’t experience the full juice of life without being in relationships, all kinds of relationships where we go to give who we truly are and whole-heartedly receive the same from another person.
To that, what can we give ourselves? Can I give myself a good mood right now? Can I give myself the opportunity to change state, rest and meditate? When we have that attunement with ourselves and that’s why I love the oils. You could treat every time you put the essential oils on yourself as a gift to yourself and your heartfelt gratitude. Thank goodness for the plant and the thing. It can become a ritual that is the foundation of inviting in a tremendous partnership because you’ve taken the time to tune yourself. You recognize that sometimes you have the energy to run and sometimes you need to take a nap. When we have that compassion and treatment for ourselves, then if a guy doesn’t text you in the morning or he’s twenty minutes late, it isn’t the end of the world. You recognize that sometimes your energy wasn’t perfect either.
You can have that grace for other people when you’re having grace for yourself. That is part and parcel of don’t be awful. Don’t be awful to yourself first and you won’t be awful to other people. Don’t make yourself miserable and you won’t make other people miserable. Jim, this has been so amazing. I want you to know I’m so grateful and thankful for your time, wisdom and expertise. I know it’s going to be incredibly life-giving to my audience. I would love to know so they can know how to connect with you further. I know that there are women reading and they’re like, “I need help with this.” What can you do to help them?
Thank you so much for having me on. If you want to hear more and check it all out, you can go to InvitingInLove.com There’s a masterclass there where I get into the five different shifts and strategies to get into to help transform your love life. There’s also a class on there if you are not sure if you should stay or go. We even talk about if you’re in a relationship and you’re not sure whether to stay or go. When you come on my podcast, we can talk about that, as we’ve both been divorced. There’s a masterclass on that too and I also have a free Facebook group, by the same name, Inviting in Love. There are 1,500 women there and you can join there. There’s a lot of great conversation that goes on. The podcast is the Pleasure Points podcast.
Everybody, get connected with Jim. He’s full of wisdom in so many things to help move your life forward. Thank you, Jim, and I know that we’ll be in touch soon.
Thank you so much.
James Rohr, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist, coach, podcaster and author. He helps people to overcome their blocks so they can live a life full of love.
You can learn more about his work on the Pleasure Points podcast, his book, Unlearning Stress, or his coaching website at invitinginlove.com. He’s also @jameserohr on instagram.
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