Hi everyone, hope you had a Merry Christmas! 😀 2014 is coming to an end, and like with every year end, I post a year-end review to round up my year and encourage you guys to do the same. This year’s review is coming early as I’ll be kicking off a new challenge (Live a Healthier Life Challenge!!) on new year’s eve, but more on that later.

My Year-End Reviews from 2008–2013

First off, my past reviews since PE started. Can’t believe that it has been six years! 😀

• End of 2008: Reflection, and Moving Onward to 2009 
• 2009 Reflections: 2 Biggest Things I Learned, 15 Key Highlights and A Big Thank You To You
• My Review of 2010 (Big Thank You and Onward to 2011!)
• My Review of 2011 (and Moving On To 2012!)
• My 2012 in Review  A Year of New Milestones, Creation of My Self-Identity, and New Beginnings
• My 2013 in Review, and Happy New Year 2014!! 🙂

My 2014 in Review: Sabbatical Year

Despite my work-related goals for 2014, this year turned out to be a sabbatical year. Namely because most of my time went into first my wedding, then house moving, then easing into my new life with Ken as a married couple, then adapting to life with two cats, and then unexpectedly falling sick for the whole of December.

Let’s start with my wedding. 🙂 After months of meticulous planning, I’m proud to share thatI got married on May 25 this year with my soulmate Ken Soh in an exclusive ceremony in Shangri-La. 🙂 The wedding was perfect and every bit our dream wedding (really, that we’re marrying each other already makes any setup our dream wedding), though there were hiccups that made me discover new things about people in general (which I’m sure every wedding couple goes through).

I’ve yet to share my wedding pictures though, and I’m so sorry! I wanted to do this right after the wedding, but our studio took a while to revert with the footage that by the time they did, the momentum was lost and I had my hands full with other things. I still want to share this very special day of my life with you guys though, so I hope you’ll be patient enough to wait till Jan-Feb where I’ll be publishing a wedding series. Stay tuned! 🙂 (Update: My wedding pictures are now up! Read: The Day I Got Married (series))

Next — Ken and I finally got our own home! 🙂 It’s a resale flat and we moved in in July, after which we spent a good three months turning it into our ideal home. Ken did all the hard labor (painting, drilling) while I managed the fine touches (furniture sourcing, color-coordination, and creating a homely home). We’re living here now and loving every bit of it. 🙂 (Check out tour of my new workroom: My Workroom Tour + Create Your Inspirational Workspace! [Video])

Last but not least, if you’ve been following me on Facebook… we got two cats!!! =D We actually didn’t adopt them — they found us by suddenly appearing in our home one day. (Or rather, one of them did — we found the second one a few days later while looking for the first one, and subsequently realized they are brothers!) One thing led to the next and soon, both of them became our pets. 🙂 Here’s a picture of our little boys:

The funny thing is that I’ve always mentioned an interest in having a pet/kitten since my early 20s, and I guess this wish manifested itself! 🙂

Key Reflection Point for 2014: Distractions

So while I’ve been busy patting the foundations of my personal life in place, I haven’t gotten much accomplished in my work goals. By “work,” I really mean the Q2 I’ve planned to do this year like creating more videos and content, because I’ve been doing the usual of coaching, conducting courses, writing articles (though not as frequently as I want), and managing the daily ins-and-outs of my business. (And then there was the first quarter of 2014 when I was busy writing my book.)

And it wasn’t that I didn’t have the time (I always think of us having the same amount of time as Einstein or Oprah) but that I had been facing too many distractions.

What do I mean? When I started my blog/business in 2008, my vision was clear: to reach out to everyone in the world and lift them up to their highest potential. This vision remains the same today and it has been clear to me every day for the past six years.

But there’s a difference between then and today: while I could singly focus on my passion in the past (after quitting my job, cutting out naysayers, etc.), today I face a huge wave of distractions daily. These distractions have made it difficult, if not impossible sometimes, to focus on my Q2 the way I used to before. They include

• Unsolicited emails from people and businesses for X and Y request (most common ones being to join some new ad network, to place some link in my articles in exchange for money (no thank you), to sign up for some spammy-looking SEO service, to publish so-and-so’s article/infographic, to review so-and-so’s app/book, to promote some new business’ service, and so on)
• Unsolicited emails from having my public business email (unethically) added to mailing lists without my consent
• Troll comments on my blog, YouTube channel, or Facebook
• Non-troll but unconstructive (and negative) comments on my blog, YouTube channel, or Facebook, usually a reflection of the person’s consciousness
• Real-life trolls who appear nice but turn out to be trolls later
• People/businesses with shady practices who operate in my industry or an adjacent one
• Constant business collaboration requests, most of which are incompatible
• Constant requests competing for my help, time, and/or advice, which wouldn’t be an issue if not for the sheer volume of them (basically every single person who reads PE or have been in contact with me before)

In the beginning, I dealt with these distractions pretty well by having tighter guidelines on my contact page, having a FAQs page, limiting my communication channels (switching from a Facebook profile to a FB page for one), having a system of email filters, saying no often, having tight spam filters in my comments form, and so on. While distractions would still “leak” here and there, I could quickly clear things up by being efficient.

However, over the years, more and more distractions began to “leak.” Every time they did, I would try to mitigate the leaks. But then, more would come. And more. And more. And more. To the point where I became so busy dealing with these distractions on a daily basis that I no longer had  mind space for my high-level work.

More importantly, it reached a point where I became afraid to grow my blog further, because I felt the more I cared and the more I grew PE, the more comments / requests / “noise” I would receive, and the less time I would have for anything in my life, including myself and my needs.

Have you heard of Dunbar’s number? It’s a number that reflects the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (these are relationships in which an individual knows each person and how each person relates to every other person). Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. Numbers larger than this “generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group.”

As I think back, I realize my problem is that I have exceeded this number since long ago. If you think about it, the very essence of my work involves connecting with others and uniting the world as one. With every person I connect with (be it a reader, a client, a workshop/course participant, etc.), I will always make an effort to build a deep personal connection with him/her and help the person where I can, in my capacity. If you consider the number of coaching clients I’ve had before (that’s several hundred), workshop participants (easily in the thousands range), and readers (gosh, where do I begin?), that easily adds up to at least 10,000. And I haven’t even added my own family members, close friends, friends, ex-colleagues, PE forum community, and people I’ve met and built a close relationship with during my travels, which easily add up to 400–500.

So then, I began to experience a system overload in terms of my relationships. This probably started about 2012, and began to build up over the years. Suddenly, I began to have requests flying in left right and center (be it requests for help, requests for collaboration, requests for my time, etc.), all of which I felt I needed to address with certain detail in other not to let the other person down. Suddenly, I felt like I needed to care about every single person whom I’ve crossed paths with (say a past client, a past workshop participant, a reader, or acquaintance), or I’ll be neglecting my mission. Suddenly, I felt like I needed to care about anything and everything in the world, or I’d not be living true to myself and my values.

The result is that it nearly drove me to insanity. And also caused me to neglect the biggest relationship of it all: my relationship with PE, i.e., my relationship with you guys.

And this is a problem. A big problem.

For you guys are the reason why I started all this, why I started this platform: to help everyone grow and to achieve our highest potential. And while I’ll still endeavor to be there for anyone who seeks my help, I’ve realized that amidst it all, I must never neglect this utmost precious relationship between me and you guys. Because if PE ceased to exist, then how were we to continue to grow together and support each other in life?

Now as I continue to reach out to more people, more distractions will probably follow. But that’s okay. The difference now is that I now know these distractions aren’t the key. Even if I am to get 100 or 1000 distractions next week, they should never take up the bulk of my time or mind space — building PE and creating high-value content for you should.

The second important realization I’ve come to is that having these distractions isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While I used to think of the distractions as exhausting, I now realize that they are simply a natural consequence (an easter egg as I mentioned in my incubation period post) from making some headway in my path. As opposed to resisting the “distractions,” I should embrace them and recognize them as part of the journey.

This brings me to my key realizations for 2014 (with regards to PE):

1. I can never please everyone. Start with myself and my mission, and work my way from there.
2. Always do my best in everything, but never neglect my core in the process.
3. The distractions I’m facing are just a natural consequence of growth and success in my path. Do not resist them; rather, accept them as part of my reality. Realize they are really positive indicators, not negative ones.
4. My core is and should always be to build new content and to share my best insights on growth with the world, because it’s the heart and soul of what PE is about.

My Goals Moving Forward

This brings me to my goals for next year. 😀 While I’ve multiple PE goals, I’d say they all ladder up to this one big goal: to create new content not unlike my initial years. I plan to be creating content in two main forms: articles and videos.

If you guys have been following my past annual reviews, I started living a life of intuition since 2012. Meaning no specific goals, just living by intuition and intention. And while this has really helped me to live in the now and be more conscious to the world out there, ultimately I have realized that living a life of maximum fulfillment and results is about both embracing our intuition AND setting hard goals based on our highest vision. That’s because while being in tune with our intuition helps us to stay connected with our higher thinking and remain in our highest consciousness, it’s our goals that help us to channel our energy into creating concrete results.

I’ve already worked out a project guidebook for myself in terms of my blog development and video channel development (it’s something I used to do in my early years but stopped after I started to live only by intuition). I’m pretty excited at how next year is going to be, so stay connected with PE for the developments. 🙂

In the meantime, I’m proud to announce my first initiative of 2015 which will be a 14-Day Healthy Living Challenge for Jan 2015!! Healthy Living Challenge is a challenge I started in 2011 with much success, conducted again in 2012, but didn’t do so for 2013 and 2014 as I had other things going on then.

Now, holiday season is one where most of our diets and exercise regimes fall off track, so if living healthier is in line with your personal goals, you need to be a part of this. Get the details and sign up free here: 14-Day Healthy Living Challenge, Starting Jan 1!

How About You: Have You Done Your Year-End Review?

A year-end review is great to reflect on how your year went, identify lessons for the future, and set new goals for the new year. If you haven’t done yours, I encourage you to do so. How did your 2014 go? What are your key lessons for the year? What are your goals for 2015?

Check out these posts as you do your year-end review and set your resolutions:

• Why I Do Year End Reviews (And 6 Questions for Your Review)
• 58 Resolutions For Anytime in the Year

https://personalexcellence.co/blog/2014-review/

A few days ago I came across this insightful graphic which I thought to share with you guys. 🙂 It’s on 5 questions to ask yourself before speaking:

I thought these 5 questions serve as a great self-reminder to always share the most positive and inspiring comments with others. While it’s not possible to adhere to these 5 criteria all the time (especially if we’ve never given second thought to our words before), constantly asking ourselves these 5 questions will make it second nature over time. 🙂

Here are examples of how to apply each criteria in our daily life:

1. Is it true? Make only comments that are true — true to what you feel, true to your beliefs, and true to what you know about the world. When everyone communicates in truth, it allows us to forge connections in openness and trust.
2. Is it helpful? Always give the most helpful comments, especially when someone is asking for your opinion/advice. That’s because the person may heed what you say, and giving someone badly thought-out or random advice would lead the person on a wild goose chase, in turn wasting their time. “Helpful” here includes helping the person feel better, helping them gain clarity, helping them take action, and/or helping them reach a decision.
3. Is it inspiring? There are 2 ways to trigger people into action — first by force (fear), second by power (love). The first is done through manipulation, coercion, negative triggers, and/or punishment. The second is done by inspiring people to their true potential and power. The inspirational way is the most powerful way as that’s when you help others discover their true power from within. Being “inspiring” doesn’t have to come from making big statements or promises — all you have to do is speak from your heart and speak with the intent to uplift others and the rest will take care of itself. 🙂
4. Is it necessary? What is necessary is subjective. For me, necessary means something that I feel the person must hear, that will add value to the person’s life, and that will further the conversation. (It doesn’t include gossip, overt focus on formalities (rather than the connection), or tactless remarks.) When you focus on the necessary, conversations become more meaningful; people also appreciate what you have to say because they know there’s a reason behind everything you say.
5. Is it kind? As we live in a digital age where everyone is quick to make knee-jerk reactions and criticize vs. appreciate, being kind is more important than ever. With every comment you make, online or off, strive to be kind. Don’t speak with the intent to hurt or wound; but rather, speak with the intent to connect and love. 🙂 <3

So before you speak the next time… remember, think! 🙂 As it may be a handful applying all 5 values at one go, I recommend applying them one day at a time. Apply each of the 5 values for the first 5 days of the week, then apply all 5 together on the 6th day. On the 7th day, review how you’ve done. The next week, rinse and repeat. In a matter of time, it’ll be second nature for you to “think” before you speak. 🙂

When all else fails, just remember — be kind. 🙂 That usually takes care of the rest. 🙂

Read:

• How to Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips
• How to Make Small Talk in 5 Easy Ways (Examples Included)
• 10 Rules of a Great Conversationalist
• How Do I Stop Myself From Being Sarcastic?

Have you ever thought if looks are important in a marriage decision? Do you wonder how highly you should prize looks as you consider your ideal traits in a life partner? Reader Rachel recently sent in this question and I thought to respond to this via a blog post instead.

Marriage is a very personal decision. Some prefer partners who are very good looking, while some don’t. Some like their partners to be fuller with “meat,” while some prefer their partners skinny. Add to the fact that what constitutes beauty is a very subjective thing, it then becomes impossible to give this question a definite answer.

But if you ask me for my opinion, IMO looks, in the grander scheme of things, should be a secondary criteria. That’s because looks are temporary, while our mind and soul, these are forever.

My Experience

By now most of you would know how I met my husband Ken; if not, you can read my soulmate series where I detail our journey from how we met to how I knew he is my one.

So the first time I ever met him in school, I thought he was very good looking. I later found out that he was scouted to be in a campus manhunt contest and even won third. Tall, well-built, and handsome, he was like a “dream come true” kind of guy for me, though I was never looking for someone who was good looking. As a self-inferior girl then, I also didn’t think much of myself and my looks to think that I could ever have a “chance” with someone with such good looks.

When we reacquainted 9 years later, he still looked good, albeit a bit aged as he had been smoking and drinking so much in the years prior. He has since reversed the damages, looks-wise, after quitting smoking and drinking. Then, when it came to assessing our compatibility in other areas, he turned out to be my perfect match, so it became a no brainer that he is the one for me.

Hair Loss Problem

Now the thing is Ken suffers from, or used to suffer from, severe hair loss. (I didn’t talk about this before because I didn’t think it was my thing to say, but I’ve checked with him and he says to write whatever I want.) Basically he used to suffer from premature male-pattern hair loss, a condition where men and women lose hair at their temples and/or the top of their scalps. The cause is unknown, though in Ken’s case it’s likely due to genetics — though funnily his dad is in his 60s and still has tons of hair.

Now I don’t know how you perceive hair loss, but in Singapore and at least from my experiences growing up, hair loss is very much seen as grossly unattractive, embarrassing, and even a shameful thing. In fact if you look at the older male celebrities in Singapore compared to the ones in Hollywood, you’ll find male celebrities have much higher hair lines in Hollywood (Leonardo Dicaprio, Nicholas Cage, Jude Law, Bill Murray) than here. Here in Singapore, every male celebrity has lots of hair even at the age of 50, and their thick hair is obviously from artificial treatment vs. being naturally abundant.

Add to the fact that there are many hair loss treatment companies in Singapore that spend tons of money blasting their ads in shopping malls, TV, and roadshows and creating shame/negativity around hair loss, it perpetuates the idea that hair loss is very serious and unacceptable, that it is shameful to lose hair, and if you are losing hair you need to fix this problem ASAP — even at the cost of huge sums of money. IMO the social stigma from having a receding hairline here is about 5-10X vs. all other places I’ve been in (except for Hong Kong which I find is a very looks-focused country too).

So for Ken, the problem wasn’t just that he was losing hair, but that he was losing it at such a young age. Male-pattern hair loss hits 70% of men and 40% of women at some point in their lives, but in his case it started in his mid 20’s and got really bad in his late 20’s. By the time he was 30, he had lost about 60% of his hair, which is, well, a lot. Over half his hair was gone. Not only was his hairline much higher — it had a distinct “M” shape — his hair throughout his scalp was also quite thin.

Losing so much of his hair so quickly was naturally a saddening experience for him. This wasn’t natural hair loss over decades, but rapid hair loss in a few years. Not only did it make him look less attractive by the Singapore society’s standard, it also made him look much older, like a man in his late 40s, rather than 29-30 which was his real age then.

While he tried to take his hair loss into stride initially, he eventually saw a doctor who prescribed him medicine. This medicine seemed to work well as his hair started to grow back, and by the time we reacquainted (he was 31 while I was 28), Ken looked the same as his past self when I first met him in school, albeit older.

What If Ken Was Balding When I Met Him?

Now the thing is, what if his hair never grew back? What if he only had 40% of his hair when we reacquainted? Would I have liked him? Would I have considered him romantically? Would I have married him, to quote Rachel’s question?

First off, this is quite a strange question to consider given that Ken is my husband and we’ve been married for several years now. I see Ken as a core part of my life just like PE is a core part of who I am, and it doesn’t matter even if he has one strand of hair left, no hair left, or if he had a totally different face — I’d still marry him.

But if I am to imagine that I didn’t know any of this stuff, that I am my 28-year-old single self now again with no awareness of what we’ve been through, and that Ken and I are just meeting for the first time again after years, then I’d say I’d be shocked initially.

• Firstly, I already knew him back when he had lots of hair and all, so to see him balding and looking so different after just a few years would be quite surprising.
• Secondly, when you meet a date prospect for the first time, you’d probably expect him/her to at least look his/her age, sans good looks or smart dressing. I already knew that looks weren’t all that important to me in a partner at that time, but I did subconsciously expect that my dates would at least look their age — plus-minus a few years. Since Ken would look more like he was 45 rather than his real age of 31 with so much hair loss, it was something I’d have to “normalize” first.

However, beyond that, I don’t think it would have changed the outcome of our relationship. Why do I say that?

Firstly, the reason why I married Ken or got together with him isn’t because of his looks. It’s because of his kindness, openness, reliability, and honesty. I remember being very impressed by him early on when we chatted (this was after we reacquainted but before we met) as he was so selfless and giving. That he turned out to be very intelligent and conscious which was a dream come true for me, so when it came down to whether to marry him, it was clear that he is the man for me. Perhaps his looks might have facilitated our connection at the beginning on a small level, as having someone who looks attractive to you would naturally pique your interest in a romantic way, but without all his other traits, our friendship would never have advanced to anywhere near relationship status.

Now the second and more important thing I want to say is something that I teach in Soulmate Journey, my course on finding love. During Soulmate Journey, I ask my participants to think about the kind of partner they’d like to have when they’re 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and even a 100. So imagine yourself at these individual ages. What qualities would you look for at each age? And what are the common qualities that you would look for in a partner across all ages?

While there are traits that may seem important at particular phases of our life — for example, looks would probably rank higher when we’re 20 or 30 — chances are there are traits that continually appear throughout each age group, such as empathy, reliability, caringness, and so on. These are the traits that are the real qualities to look out for in a life partner, vs. the qualities that matter to you now only. That’s because the latter group is transient, but the former reflects your real needs in a partner.

So when I thought about this question, I realized the most important things to me in a partner whether I’m 30, 40, 50, 70, or even a 100 are someone who is (1) kind and (2) committed to his growth. These are qualities that matter most to me and that I strive to uphold, and hence qualities I’d like my life partner to have too.

Ken met this in every way possible, and after we got together, the way he would always be there for me, be patient and supportive toward everything I say/do, and be caring, reliable, open, and trustworthy about just everything in general made it clear that this is the man I see myself with for life. That he’s good looking and all that were not even vague factors of consideration — marriage is a life-long thing, and all physical looks will fade away with time, just as celebrities come and go when their looks fade. There will be a day when both Ken and I will be old and wrinkly, but who he is as a person? This is who I’ll live with forever.

Now say if Ken were really ugly (as defined by society) or he were balding seriously when we met. Perhaps I might be hesitant to date him at first, out of fear of how others would perceive me. I was 28 then and others would generally expect that I would date someone who looked my age. Add to the fact the public nature of my profile, I think that many people were already quite scrutinizing on who I’d date / end up with, and whether that guy would be attractive (since that’s the most visual part of a person).

However, as we interacted more as friends, I would inevitably feel more drawn to him because of the strength of his soul, his intelligence, and all his other great traits — kindness, compassion, generosity, authenticity, etc. I would gradually be warmed by his heart and kindness, which was what touched me about him at first. I’d start to see how attractive he is as a person, with or without hair, with or without conventional good looks. I’d start to realize that he is actually very attractive the way he is and admire his physical features and look for what they are. I’d also start to realize that my fears were really more vanity-driven fears, borne from living in a material world like Singapore.

And I’m sure I’d start to fall in love with him anyway, like how I did in real life.

Physical Attraction

To set the record straight, I’m not negating the role of physical attraction in a relationship. It’s important to be physically attracted to your partner. It’s important that you find your partner attractive as he/she is. If not, there may be issues later on not wanting to be physically intimate with your partner after marriage, being physically repulsed by him/her as you see him/her day after day, and so on.

However, I’ve found that initial physical attraction is usually the result of conditioning since young. For example, perhaps you were taught to perceive X look as beautiful or handsome, and hence you gravitate to guys/girls who look that way growing up. Perhaps you were taught to perceive Y look as attractive, and therefore you gravitate to guys/girls with Y look.

Yet, physical attraction isn’t something set in stone. From my experience, I’ve found that physical attraction (or non-attraction) toward someone can change over time, and it’s usually molded by the person’s character, heart, and soul. I have in various instances found very attractive men repulsive looking after discovering a very ugly trait about them, such as them being very materialistic, judgmental, or fake. I had (in the past) also met guys whom I felt were totally unattractive but later on grew to like them and actually find them very good looking — more so than conventionally attractive guys. Of course, those connections didn’t work out and I’m glad they didn’t because I’d never have found my true soulmate otherwise.

To You

Now I understand some of you may have a preference for a certain type or look and you won’t find someone attractive unless he/she falls under this type or look. That’s perfectly understandable.

All I ask is that you be more open-minded in how you perceive someone’s looks. Beauty comes in all forms, shapes, sizes, and colors, and the reason why we would perceive someone as attractive or not right away is because of how we’ve been conditioned to see beauty as. However, if we would be more open in how we perceive beauty, I’m sure we’ll start seeing beauty in all kinds of looks: tall or short, muscular or “scrawny,” sharp chin or round chin, double eyelids or mono eyelids, tall nose or round nose, sharp face or round face.

If you currently know someone who has a nice personality but you don’t find him/her attractive, don’t cross out this connection yet. Here’s what I recommend:

1. Get to know him/her better, as a person, a friend. All great romantic connections tend to start off as friendships. As opposed to judging this person by his/her looks at the onset, I suggest you look at him/her as just a friend you’re trying to get to know more first. This way, you can focus more on the connection as opposed to focusing on his/her looks. Spend some time to chat with him/her. Hang out as friends. Get to know him/her better.
2. Invite him/her to group outings. If you feel awkward going out solo with the person too often, invite him/her to group outings where both of you can meet other people while hang out together at the same time. This will allow you to see other aspects of him/her too as he/she interacts with other people.
3. Explore areas of commonality. Do you have any common interests? Explore them. If you have any new goals, activities you want to explore, share with him/her and invite him/her along too. You want to build on your commonalities together and see if there is potential for this connection to go further.
4. Broaden your definition of beauty. As I mentioned, true beauty comes in all forms, shapes, sizes, and colors. If you really don’t find this person attractive in any way, then try and see the person for who he/she is and how he/she looks, without mentally benchmarking him/her to certain images of beauty. There is beauty in every physical feature and look. We just need to learn to see that. Read this article: The Beauty of Self
5. Assess your connection over time. After some time together, assess your connection. Do you see potential for this to develop, be it as a friendship or romantic relationship?

   If yes, then continue to nurture it and see where it goes. There’s no need to put a timeline such as, “I’m going to cut this person away if I don’t feel attracted to him/her in 3 months.” Even if you don’t feel attracted or romantically interested in this person, keep him/her as a friend. (Unless you’re not even interested to have him/her as a friend — then let him/her go.) Many great relationships develop organically — for example, I know a couple who only fell in love with each other after 1 year of being good friends. Before that, they were always only going out as friends, enjoying each other’s company, and never thought of each other as romantic prospects at all.

   On the other hand, if this person is not even compatible with you as a friend and you’re not interested to stay in touch at all, then let him/her go. There’s no need to force something to happen. Think of it as a necessary step to attract more of the right people into your life.

All 10 tips in 10 Steps to Attract Authentic Love apply. 🙂

As for Ken, it’s quite possible that his hair loss will return as we recently agreed for him to stop taking the hair loss medication. That’s because I don’t think that it’s healthy to take any medication on an ongoing basis, especially if it’s voluntary vs. being medically required. Whether he loses his hair or not though, it doesn’t matter because balding or being bald is just a different look, just like having a lot of hair is another look. Either way, he’ll always be attractive to me. 🙂

Much love to your love journey, and let me know how everything goes! 🙂

Also check out:

• What If I Have a Lack of Physical Spark with My Partner?
• I Get Nervous When I See an Attractive Guy/Woman. What Should I Do?
• Should I Marry a Guy I Don’t Love?

Dear Enchanted, thank you for sending this letter. I want to applaud you for sending in this in because it takes courage to seek help on a matter like this. As you know, there is a strong stigma surrounding abuse, for both the victim and the abuser. Yet you have bravely sent in your question and I’ll do my best to assist you.

Laying Out the Problem

Let’s try to break down the problem here:

1. Your partner frustrates you sometimes.
2. In response, you become abusive sometimes, which can include cursing and raising your hands to your partner.

On #1, this is understandable. All relationships have their moments of frustration. My husband and I have moments when we frustrate each other too. Usually we handle these in a variety of ways from letting it pass to discussing to arguing, but we always try to resolve them and reach a positive place.

But #2 is an issue. Because as much as someone frustrates us, physical violence isn’t the way to handle the situation, whether the person is a stranger or a partner. One may say that it’s worse when the violence is meted out to your partner because this is someone you love, who trusts you not to inflict harm on him/her.

The good thing is that you recognize that (1) this abuse is a problem and (2) you want to stop it. There are abusers who feel that abusing is their right and they are entitled to violence against their partner. These people have a separate problem altogether. You clearly do not think that way. So how do we tackle this?

Understanding the Source of the Physical Abuse

First, let’s understand the source of the abusive behavior. As we have established above, the source isn’t that your partner frustrates you or her frustrating behavior (that she never seems to listen to you). There are many couples who face problems, including feeling that their partner isn’t listening to them, yet it doesn’t result in violence. Or you can put someone else in your position, in this exact situation, and he/she would probably feel irritated, but not get violent.

The source is something else and we’re here to understand what.

Enchanted, you mentioned that you grew up in an abusive household and I feel this could well be a strong link to your abusive behavior. According to studies,

• About one-third of people abused in childhood will become abusers themselves.^[1]
• Men who as children witnessed their parents’ domestic violence were twice as likely to abuse their own wives than sons of non-violent parents.^[2]
• Children of domestic violence are 3 times more likely to repeat this cycle in adulthood.^[3]

Why is this so? That’s because our childhood years are our most formative years. That’s when we form a big chunk of our life scripts, what I call childhood stories, until we consciously rewrite them later. So imagine a child who grows up in an abusive household. The subconscious beliefs formed become something like

• “It’s okay to use violence on others.”
• “Using violence on loved ones is a normal behavior” (because the child’s parents used it on him/her/each other).
• “I can use violence to express rage.”
• “Violence can be used if the situation calls for it.”
• “Violence is a way to exert control.”

Even if the child is later educated in school/society that violence is a no-no, this will not override the fundamental childhood beliefs — especially if they are deeply embedded, especially if the child never got to work through these false beliefs.

I’d like to stress that such beliefs can develop even if the child didn’t grow up in an abusive family. It could be from being a victim of a violent crime, from childhood neglect, from growing up in a verbally abusive family, from being in a broken household, or from being bullied.

As a result, you can have situations where the child, now grown up, is completely nice and gentle. You can’t tell that he grew up in an abusive family or that he’s prone to violent tendencies. He is in total control of his behavior and he genuinely cares for others. (I use the male pronoun for simplicity. A woman can a perpetrator of domestic violence too.)

However, when he gets riled up, this is when anger takes over and things get ugly. His childhood conditioning takes over as he starts shouting at his partner (or child), yelling and perhaps hitting things and hitting him/her. It’s like he’s a demon possessed. He says things that he doesn’t normally say and he does things that he would never, ever do. Alcohol aggravates this behavior as it lowers inhibition and rational thought, and causes the deeper issues to surface.

When everything is over and the dust settles, he begins to deeply regret what he did, said. He apologizes and vows never to do this again. And he really tries his best. But somehow there will be something that trips him down the road, that results in the same cycle all over again. This is known as the cycle of violence.

To those of you who relate to Enchanted’s problem, does this feel familiar?

1) Violence is Not the Start of the Problem

The first thing I’d like you to understand is that violence is not the start of the problem. Violence is the tip of the problem, albeit a very extremely serious tip with grave consequences.

The real problem started way before the violence surfaced. It could be when you witnessed or received domestic violence in your household. It could be when you made certain conclusions about yourself and the world after experiencing the abuse. These incidences, combined with other issues/beliefs, brewed over time to give rise to abusive behavior.

Hence, when the abuse happens, it’s because there has been a certain build up of pain, angst, and grievances, as well as a lineup of preconditions (like abusive beliefs), that results in the lashing out. This is why the abuse occurs despite your best effort — it’s often the final display in a series of unresolved issues.

By saying this, I’m not in any way excusing the abusive behavior. Your partner has physical and emotional pain that she now needs to live with, as do you — but understanding this is crucial to get resolution.

As a result, working on the abusive tendency only isn’t going to solve the problem. You need to get to the root of the issue. Because of that, if you are abusive, I recommend you get professional aid as resolving this will take time. I will, however, keep writing this article to give you a general guide.

2) Understand What’s Triggering the Violence

There are usually triggers to violence. If not, you would be violent to everyone 24/7 which isn’t the case. (There are people like that and they obviously suffer from a different problem.)

Our goal is to understand what these triggers are. It doesn’t mean that these triggers are the issue though. Like I mentioned, violence is the tip, not the start, of the problem. Likewise, these triggers are merely catalysts of the abuse. There are certain pre-existing issues causing the violence to occur. Knowing what these triggers are will give us insight into these deeper issues.

I have an exercise for you:

1. Get some quiet space with yourself.
2. List the past 3 incidents when you got violent with your partner (or kid, or family member). If there’s been one incident in total, then work with this one.
3. Think about what happened in each incident before you got abusive. Perhaps your partner wasn’t listening to you, said something that insulted you, or did something that pissed you off. Write this down.
4. Pick the incident where you had the biggest reaction. Imagine you’re in the situation right now, getting abusive. Ask yourself, 
   
5. Type the answers that follow. Think of it as having a conversation with yourself, and keep probing until you get to the root reason of the violence. Be prepared for strong emotions surfacing. You’ll know the root cause when you reach there.

Take for example, someone who gets abusive when his partner refuses to listen to him. Here is a set of possible answers:

• Why am I getting violent?
  • Because I’m very angry
  • Because she refuses to listen to me
  • Because she keeps rattling off even though I’ve told her to stop
  • Because she refuses to listen to me
  • Because it’s the only way to get her to stop
• Why am I getting violent?
  • Because it’s the only way to make her pay
  • Because otherwise she won’t know how serious I am
  • Because I hate her
• Why am I getting violent?
  • Because I don’t know what other way to get through to her
  • Because I’m already tried my best
  • Because I’m at my wits’ end
  • Because I don’t know
  • Because I don’t know better
  • Because I’m a pile of shit
• Why am I getting violent?
  • Because I hate myself
  • Because I don’t know what else I can do
  • Because I just want her to listen to me
  • Because I feel like I’m alone in this world
• Why am I getting violent?
  • Because I just need her to listen to me
• So why violence?
  • Because if I don’t use violence, I don’t know if she will ever listen to me. I may never get my point across. I may never be heard and understood.
• So why violence? Because you have no right to use violence.
  • Because I don’t know any other way. Violence is the only way I know to get heard. 
• Why is it important to get heard?
  • Because if I don’t get heard, I don’t exist. I’m not a real human being.

The answer is out: as it turns out, the person in this example gets abusive because he is screaming to be heard. If he is not heard, he becomes non-existent; a non-existent human being. This thought terrifies him and he cannot accept it. So he desperately lashes out in physical violence, screaming and crying for the one person who matters to listen to him: his partner.

Does this justify the violence? No of course not. Violence is not justifiable under any circumstances, unless it’s self-defense. The above is meant to understand the trigger for the person’s abusive behavior. Of course when you think about it, it doesn’t make sense because not only does violence not help one get heard, but it will make it difficult for any trusted communication in the future due to fear and trauma. But many deep personal issues are not logical and stem from emotional difficulties. It’s important to recognize and understand them to start the healing process.

Besides this, there can be other reasons for domestic violence. Such as

• Using violence to keep love by your side,
• Using violence as an act of superiority and create power over your victim,
• Using violence to release your pain,
• Using violence as an act of vengeance, to make your partner “pay” for a wrongdoing (say, infidelity), and
• Using violence to feel that you’re wanted/needed.

Continue the exercise for the other 2 incidents. If you have more incidents to dig into, repeat with them. Keep doing it until you’ve uncovered all the root causes of your abusive tendencies.

3) Deal with the Root Issues

Depending on your results, you can have multiple factors driving your abusive behavior. These factors can be different or related. Each factor likely deals with a deep personal issue, possibly linked to the trauma you experienced as a child. Get down to the root of each root issue (yes, there are roots to roots) and understand how it came about.

Let’s say you have been using violence to get heard. Your reason is because if you don’t get heard, you feel you don’t exist. Some questions to dig into are

• Why do you have this belief?
• What makes you think that you don’t exist?
• When did this thinking start, and why?
• How can you start “existing” in this world?

Or let’s say violence is your way to keep love by your side. You feel that you lack love and you cannot stand the thought of not having someone with you. Some questions to think about are

• Why do you lack love?
• What’s keeping you from feeling love?
• What’s love to you?
• How can you start loving yourself?

Tackling each root will likely open a floodgate of emotions: anger, bitterness, hatred, and pain. It will also open up a flood of childhood memories and unhappiness. While uncomfortable, it’s necessary because this is the s*** that was not processed before, that subsequently led to your violent behavior today. What’s different is that you’re now an adult, stronger and more conscious of who you are. What was confusing before can now be properly analyzed as you are able to dissect and understand them.

The above will take time. You need time to work through grief, pain, anger, hate, and perhaps even loss. I recommend you to read my How to Deal with Anger (series), which is on removing anger from your life and identifying deeper issues that drive anger in us.

In any case, the self-healing must happen, first and foremost, before you can expect a fully functional relationship with your partner. You must work on your self-love before turning to your partner for love. You must work on your issues on “being heard” before expecting your partner to listen to you. You must work on neediness issues instead of turning your relationship into a needy one. Because unresolved internal issues will ripple into your relationship with your loved ones — it’s not a coincidence that your inner struggles have impacted your life. When you heal yourself, you make it possible to have a meaningful relationship with others.

4) Use Coping Strategies in the Interim

As the healing will take time, it’ll be good to have coping strategies to manage the abusive behavior. I recommend the following:

1. As there is an unhealthy dynamic between you and your partner right now, I recommend to limit physical contact, at least until you feel you have made enough headway in your recovery such that the abuse will not recur. This is really for your safety and her’s. With the internet and smartphones, it’s easy to still be in touch while not being physically by each other’s side. If you are spouses, consider living in separate places (like with a parent). Time apart will also help you focus on solving your inner issues.
2. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you must cut off complete contact. Keep your partner in the loop of your discoveries. Involve him/her so that he/she can encourage you and be a part of your healing process. 
3. Should you need to meet,
   1. Meet in public spaces. If not, have at least 1–2 other people (adults) in your company.
   2. Have your partner save a few emergency helplines on speed dial and keep her phone on her at all times. She should call them should there be anything amiss.
   3. If you feel an abusive streak surfacing, get as far away from your partner as possible. Leave the place. Journal the questions I provided in Step #2. Write as much as you need to and let the angst flow through the words. Get to the root of why you’re suddenly feeling the need to abuse again. Is it a new root? Or something you’ve uncovered? Address it as per Step #3.
4. Your partner should call a domestic abuse helpline to receive counseling as a victim, so she is better equipped to deal abuse situations. 

5) Recognize the Sacredness of Your Partner’s Body

As you work on your self-healing, I want to bring attention to the sacredness of the human body. One of the factors of domestic violence is that the abuser feels like they “own” the victim’s body and they have the right to do whatever they wish to it. This belief is subconscious rather than conscious, especially if the abuser does not consciously want to abuse.

Understand why there’s a part of you that is okay with hitting your partner. You may have these answers:

• “Because she’s a part of me”
• “Because I can do whatever I want with her”
• “Because she’s my spouse/partner and hence she’s ‘mine’ “
• “Because she says she loves me and hence she’d be okay with that. She’d understand.”
• “It happened before and she forgave me. So, she’ll forgive me again even if I lose control.”

Go through each statement one by one and ask yourself if it’s really true.

Because while she is your partner, that doesn’t give you the right to hit her or feel like you can “control” her. Your partner is an individual human being as are you. Her body is sacred as is yours. Rather than subconsciously feel that you “own” her body because she is with you, you should recognize and treasure the sacredness of her body, as you would with any human being’s. Your partner is a separate human being and she deserves love, respect, and dignity as do you. To use violence on her would be to disrespect who she is and abuse your place as her lover and partner. This understanding is fundamental to breaking abuse patterns.

Wrapping Up

Abuse is a very deep topic and it’s not possible for me to cover everything in just one article. What I’ve done is provide general pointers to put you in the right direction. I hope I’ve helped in some way.

This article is not meant as a replacement for professional help for addressing abuse. I highly recommend that both you and your partner get professional aid in addressing this episode. For your partner, it’s important because there is trauma associated with abuse. Letting this sit in her without dealing with it may result in a cycle of violence later in her life.

I did a Google search and there are many organizations that provide domestic abuse help. Here are some helplines to call; these helplines are 24/7:

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline (US)
• Love is respect (US / for teens)
• National Domestic Violence Helpline (UK)
• 1800 RESPECT (Australia)

Even if you’re not in those countries, I think you can just call them — I honestly do not think that they restrict help only to people in their locality. Skype allows you to make international calls; just add the country code in front of their hotline number.

There are also domestic abuse counseling services in many countries and you can do a Google search for results pertaining to your locality. Just calling the helplines above will be a great start.

Please keep me posted on how this goes, okay?

If you’re a victim of domestic abuse, read: I’m in a Domestic Violence Situation. What Should I Do?

Also check out: How to Let Go of Anger (series)

https://personalexcellence.co/blog/stop-being-abusive/

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In my post on Advanced Divorce Sales, commenter Rhen suggested that women lose interest in men around age 55:

It has been my personal observation that whenever the discussion turns to the Dating/Mating/Marriage marketplace for women later in life the first response is denial, and after overwhelming data is provided the second response is that women don’t really want men around later in life anyway.

But since this assertion comes up fairly frequently I decided to see what I could dig up on the question.  If it turns out to be correct that around age 55 or so women feel a sudden urge to no longer be married, this would seem to reinforce those voices calling for an all out marriage strike.  If women aren’t interested in marriage for life, what is the point?

I did some searching around but either there isn’t much written on the topic or I wasn’t using the right search terms.  My own sense on this is that women tend to drop out of the dating market when their options are the slimmest just like men do when their options are slimmest.  I also think that the sex specific stigma of terms like spinster and old maidprobably aren’t “social constructs” as so many assume.  It strikes me that in evolutionary terms a woman and her offspring who didn’t have investment from a man later in life would be at a disadvantage safety and resource wise compared with women who did. I don’t see any reason why this would suddenly cease to be around the age of 55.

At any rate, as I said I can’t find any studies which confirm this one way or another.  If you have any links I would appreciate it if you posted them in the comments section.  However, I do have access to data from the US Census, so I decided to chart out women’s relationship status by age bracket.  The data below is from the 2010 Census.  I limited the data set to White Non Hispanic women to remove potential trends which might be due to a demographic shift over time.  All values represent percents.

I think this data pretty well dispels the idea that women are wired to prefer to divorce and live alone later in life. A woman’s likelihood of being married remains surprisingly flat between ages 35 and 65.  Only after age 65 is the percentage of women married on the decline, and this is driven not by women divorcing and remaining unmarried, but by them becoming widows and not remarrying.

The only caveat that I’ll add is that each age bracket represents a different group of women.  So you can’t assume those in their 20s now for example will marry at the same rate today’s 30 year olds have.  However, if there were a strong biological preference for women to divorce and remain unmarried around age 55 I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t show up in this data set.

Update:  I now have data on 2009 US divorce rates per 1,000 married women by age.

https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/are-women-done-with-men-after-age-55/

 Relationships and man/woman interactions:  https://dalrock.wordpress.com/

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