.SOMETIMES RAW.

Do you think our relationship works? Right here, right now? Do you think we are good for each other? Right here, right now?

How do you feel in the presence of your partner? Do you feel understood and respected? Do you feel secure? Are you laughing together? Can you be yourself no matter what? Do you feel comfortable and happy? Do you have hope that everything will be better someday? That your partner will change? Coulda, shoulda, woulda never works! It either is, or it is not.

Life is short. I believe we should be happy 98% of the time. I also believe that the deeper sense of a relationship is that both partners are good for and to each other and help in their personal development. A relationship that does not make you happy and rather mostly sad, should end – like right now. It either works or it does not. By taking a closer look at my (married) friends and relationships I have to say that most of the time, it does not work. Keep in mind that if it feels weird in the beginning, it will never work out. I believe a relationship works if you have similarities and the same interests such as humor, intelligence, same values and ideas, life circumstances and goals, personal maturity, sexuality and motives of a functioning relationship. Rule number 1: You cannot change your partner. You get what you see!

I don’t believe that opposites attract; this concept just works pretty well in movies. Both characters have to be compatible, understand each other and create intimacy. A relationship can only work if you find each other interesting when there is mutual respect and understanding. So, if you are lucky and find someone out there whose nature is (very) similar to yours (which is rare) you should go for it and give it a chance. Your souls can dance together in silence. No words needed.

I wrote a letter to someone very special who is in an abusive relationship but does not have the strength (yet) to get out on her own. It is so bad that she is not even allowed to leave the house without him.

Common sense taught me some life lessons that I want to share regarding toxic relationships. Just in case you don’t know when a relationship is toxic, I will give you some insight. A relationship is incompatible when there are constantly riddles and explanations. You like each other but both have completely different interests and desires and zero similar interests. You shouldn’t have to explain yourself or clarify things to your partner all the time. Things should be clear and make sense. No huge surprises.

Most importantly, soul connection is missing. You don’t understand him, he does not understand you. Connection on a deeper level takes time, friends. It usually does not happen at a bar after several drinks. After a while, we are facing reality in our new relationship. The first argument occurs because our partner does not see things the way we do.

If my partner would just see things the way I do, things would be perfect.

If both partners fight this fight, nobody will win. The next stage is that one partner loses respect for the other, and finally the joy and excitement of life. The crazy things is that both partners can still love each other throughout all this mess because love and compatibility are not the same. I believe every bad choice we made in selecting a partner is a good lesson. This way we learn, we start to listen to ourselves, we learn what our soul really needs and wants and what was missing. We learn that it is okay to feel good and that you have to find the courage to end a toxic relationship. Leave, learn and move on. It will be hard in the beginning but the future is bright.

“I don’t know if I am in a toxic relationship!”

Before you start a relationship with someone, you may want to clarify: What they think is important to them in a relationship. How they want/do not want this relationship to be (open, etc.). What do they want to share with you? How much alone-time do they need/do you need? Compromises and which ones? Conflicts and which ones? Traumatic relationship and childhood experiences? Do they love themselves? What causes issues/anger issues? What are the strengths/weaknesses? What does love mean to them? Just in case you don’t know: Whenever your partner hits you, it is not a healthy relationship! I am happiest in a relationship whenever I am understood and feel secure and safe. I want to laugh with my partner and have fun. I don’t want to be afraid of saying/wearing/doing something wrong.

Introducing Ronia Fraser

Are you interested in this topic and want to know more? Are you stuck? Are you in a toxic relationship? Do you need help with all this? Contact my friend Ronia Fraser if you are ready to recover the true you. She won’t help you get out of a toxic relationship but she will guide you to get a different perspective.

Ronia Fraser is an internationally certified and award-nominated Transformational & Recovery Coach, NLP Master Practitioner & Trainer, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Havening Techniques® Practitioner, specialized in Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Coaching (NARC) – based in London, UK, and Los Angeles, USA. More importantly, Ronia Fraser is a survivor of Narcissistic Abuse and draws not only from her professional expertise but from her first-hand personal experience. She offers personalized treatment, tailored to your individual circumstance and requirements, designed to help you stabilize your emotional wellbeing, remove triggers and identify and resolve long-standing unhealthy patterns and conditioning.

Ronia: “A toxic relationship goes much deeper than being incompatible and being on the same page. So does my work. I’m not helping people through their break up just because it didn’t work out and they guy turned out to be useless. It’s a whole different level. Actual toxic relationships consist of intentional manipulation, identity erosion, emotional blackmail, and calculated emotional and psychological abuse. Domestic violence. Financial abuse. Isolation. Gaslighting. Control and fear. Toxic relationships are based on codependency and addiction and lead to mental health issues. I’m not helping people through their break up just because it didn’t work out. I help them survive and put their lives back together”.

How to connect with Ronia Fraser:

Instagram. Website. LinkedIn. Facebook.

Ronia recently published a book “How to Heal from Narcissistic Abuse” and you can get it for free here.

Stay Happy. Stay Healthy.

It has been years since I left my previous job, moved to Canada, decided to study and to raise my son. I wrote a lot about all these transitions that were sometimes rather tough than easy while encouraging others to follow suit. I don’t want to give advice, because I don’t know what I am doing 100%. I simply let you know what worked for me and what I learned from certain situations and hard curveballs life threw at me. All these things I did made total sense to me at the time. I followed my dreams and there is nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes I didn’t think things through all the way and then spent months pondering about why I did it. Was it a calling? Am I easily convincible? Was it the proverbial greener grass? Maybe I was too young? In hindsight, it does not matter. I finally mustered up the courage to do it and felt the wind in my hair and the swoop in my stomach which was my reality – this is where I needed to be. As I now skip through the streets of Vienna, while a bit of fear and thrill radiating off my skin, I felt like the leaping proof of a concept and I want others to feel it, too. Do what feels good. Go for it. I can see now that, beyond feeling fulfilled by my new life, I felt validated for my years of wanting exactly this life. It wasn’t until recently that I started pondering the difference. How would I have felt had it all gone wrong?

Every so often, the details of the last couple of months pass through me like a ghost. The beam of sunlight that settles in my heart when thinking about the good times while missing someone very special. The last hug, the warmth. The meditative train ride back “home” leaving a warm, familiar smell of my childhood home, back with my parents. How could it be that, although everything has changed, my mood is still the same? As the days move on since I left and stretch into the weekend, my perception of it all is still evolving. Why did I leave, really? What exactly did I leave behind? Was leaving brave? Fearful? Did it make sense? Honorable? Arbitrary? Should I have stayed? I may have followed my dreams and happiness, but I left another kind of dream, too. Maybe dreams can be vast and fickle like that. Maybe I can be, too. Maybe my dream back home will continue.

When I arrived in Germany this summer, it occurred to me that, despite uprooting my life in pursuit of more and finding it, too, I am not sure the emotional tenor of my life has changed all that much. These days, hard days and incredible days still punctuated the ones that transpire as expected; eagerness and trepidation still inform my perception of the future. Moments of insanity and insecurity still mix with feelings of self-assuredness. In a psychology magazine, I recently read the term “hedonic treadmill” which is coined by two psychologists in the 70s and refers to “the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.” In short, we adapt, regardless of the circumstances. Some research theorizes that our neurochemical processes actually prevent us from experiencing sustained positive or negative emotions at all. So, you can hide, stay, run, leap, cry, but you will still just be you.

My question then is: If not sustained happiness, what are all of us actually pursuing? Also, what is happiness but this is a different essay. If the details of our lives can drastically change without changing us, how do we identify what we truly want? All this lends new depth to an expression I love: Wherever you go, there you are. You can hide, stay, run, leap, cry, but you will still just be you: stupid jokes, worrying, impatience and all.

We know that our society idolizes the hustle for money, recognition, fame, dreams, wellness, and whatnot but we also have evidence in spades that none of these things in excess solve the happiness equation, right? The ones who seemingly have it all still fuck up, oversleep, cheat, get divorced, use drugs, relapse, are insecure while trying to mask it with expensive clothes and tons of makeup, feel lost, and choose wrong while acting cranky and bitchy. All this is just part of human existence. Many amass wealth and recognition because of capitalist ideas that are sold to them about the value of risking everything and going after what they really want. I don’t regret for one second that I followed my dreams and I have gratitude for the version of me that is not afraid to take a leap. I am also privileged that I had the resources to seek out a sense of fulfillment and purpose and of course the luck to find it all. At the same time, I am increasingly aware that there was plenty about my life before this step that made me feel grateful, too. People I met, the connections I made and of course my family who is always behind me. I know I could have found a sense of fulfillment and purpose in Germany, too. Just another kind. But I know that I will be connected with the people who matter no matter what. So, you want advice about leaving cities, careers, or relationships that don’t feel right? Simply listen to your gut feelings and become more open to the idea that conception can shift without seismic uprooting. That big life changes don’t always change us, and that more than anything else, we will always be ourselves. I think it is worth asking yourself: What makes you happiest as you are now? Because no matter where you go, that will most likely never change. Home is where your heart is anyway.

1. Scene 1: (Married couple: A man and woman on a road trip to New York to take care of important paperwork/documents). It is very early in the morning. Everything seems fine.
2. They laugh. She falls asleep for an hour or two. She wakes up when he pulls over to get coffee. (A little break but he does not seem tired at all).
3. (They arrive in New York. She gets out of the car and walks to the office. He tries to find parking in the area).
4. She receives messages on her phone while walking to the office. She doesn’t know the person who sent the messages but it is disturbing nonetheless. “Your husband is having an affair with my wife”, she reads. She reads it over and over and feels that a huge hole opens in front of her – ready to swallow her up. She falls into this depth. It is dark, cold and painful.
5. “Who is she?”, she asks.
6. “Nothing is wrong”, he says and “this woman is just a colleague; a friend. Nothing more. The colleague needs help dealing with issues and he, of course, gives his advice. It is a war zone, after all. There is a lot of stress. Her husband is a psychopath”.
7. The man denies everything, and she cries out, ” Why didn’t you tell me?” “It means nothing because nothing happened”, he says. (Long silence)
8. They drive back. Ahead of them: an (at least) eight-hour drive (800+km) next to each other (trapped) in the car. (No escape, just silence). She stares out of the window for the first hour. Speechless.
9. (Neither of them is happy but nobody wants to leave. So they continue and call it love. )
10. She digs one more time through her bag to find her phone,
11. to gather information and missing links,
12. to check messages and emails,
13. to arrange everything in a huge pile and looks for her red lipstick (she needs red lipstick to make herself happy)
14. (She applies the lipstick.)
15. She then finally just stares blankly at all this mess her life has become. In one second (with one message) everything changes.
16. Outside: It looks sad, it is fall. November.
17. Back at “home”: She considers going to bed, to forget the whole thing. Maybe it is all just a bad dream?
18. His suggestion of what to do next, not a perfect one, but…. He suggests weird things and says them out loud while peace tries to spread out in her head. She does not want to listen to him anymore.
19. Her complaint, “We cannot live like this. I don’t want to live like this. How do you think this can be even possible….?”
20. (Change of scene. Both sit in the kitchen, brooding angrily. Trust is broken. There is no way back, she thinks. Maybe there would be, but he chooses to go on a Safari instead. “Alone”, to relax because he works in a war zone)
21. She knows what will happen next. Deep inside. At this point, there is no return. She is in charge. He won’t be any longer. Enough is enough.
22. (First change of scene: Months passed and no change but fighting and arguing). [Possibly insert a scene: Two people typing emails, one looking sad, the other one is denying] 😉
23. (Second change of scene: She walks to the car and drives to the lawyer’s office)
24. For her to eventually lean over the counter and
25. to take the stack of papers out of her purse,
26. to retrieve a paper fallen to the ground, to catch the other ones slipping.
27. The length of her explanation, her supplication,
28. and meanwhile (change of scene) he is furious. He does not want the change.
29. (A lawyer starts to work on the application- typing things, taking notes). She leaves the lawyer’s office and walks back to the car.
30. (At this point: heavy snowfall)
31. She glances back, to see the lawyer’s office entrance again. She sees her footprints in the snow while closing her warm winter jacket. She feels good and is proud that she had the strength to take this step.
32. (At home: Holds her marriage certificate in hand and thinks: What is she going to do now? This meaningless piece of paper. It means nothing after all)
33. The emergence of a slight headache. So much stress. Barely any sleep.
34. The emergence of thoughts in her mind, the suppression of it, its reemergence
35. The contemplation: She was too blind to see. It is better this way.
36. In emails, he recites a list, another list, of other things she has done to him in all those years. The punch lines. She does not listen any longer.
37. (Change of scene/Drive to the airport): In the car, she looks out of the window: A hawk flies overhead. Is he following their car? Woods everywhere, low red sky. Sunset. The evening then night)
38. (At the airport: Four blinks from him, seven from her [watery eyes). One last hug. He said, “I am sorry!” (Neither did she feel anything anymore nor did she say anything back but she hugged him goodbye. She walked back to the car without turning back.)
39. (Change of scene: After the drop-off): She wiped away one last tear. Then she sees a little boy next to a woman who both want to cross the street. The woman looks sad but the boy seems happy and jumps up and down. “It is not that bad, mommy,” he said while grabbing her hand.
40. The little boy looks at the woman and smiles.
41. At this point, she knows she will be fine.