Notes From a Relationship Coach
​(Big ideas in a small email)

“Once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

–Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit​

Someone read me this children’s book when I was a wee lad, and I’m guessing there was no way to truly appreciate its wisdom at the time. But I’m glad the seed was planted.

Four decades later, I’m still figuring out how to be real.

It’s not that being authentic is inherently difficult, but fear often says being oneself is not good enough, shameful, harmful, disappointing, bad, wrong, unacceptable, too much, or any number of awful things. I believe this is why people perform.

And a performance might get you likes but it’ll never get you love.

I posted on social media daily for like four years straight and still felt like I was being denied access to a cool kids club I didn’t even wanna belong to. In 2023, I was like, “Eww, why am I even doing this?” and pivoted to a newsletter (which feels more clean, safe, effective, and authentic to me).

Not my intention to social-media-shame anyone… certainly nothing wrong with creativity, performance, entertainment, and sharing on a larger scale than ever before humanly possible. That’s all quite nifty.

But whether you perform for the internet or someone you really want to like you in real life, that connection may require constant feeding and reinforcing of an identity that is not YOU. Which might not be problematic if it wasn’t so unsustainable.

Roles and performances inevitably buckle; shame waits patiently to usher you into a new one; and the cycle continues.

Your relationships (and your partners) aren’t the problem – it’s the roles you unconsciously play in relationships that drag them to the ground.

And if you can’t see the role, you’re probably IN the role… and you might need to get a professional in there to help clear that up. Because, as my buddy Carl Jung says,

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

I wish that for all of us (myself included),

P.S. The Fix Your Picker Workbook is a helpful tool for identifying your roles and patterns in relationships. Great place to start if you’re looking for some guidance.

*This email contains Amazon affiliate links to the books mentioned.

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