Days 17 and 18 – I Almost Picked a Fight in Lingerie But Didn’t

Living Full-On Every DayMany of you know me as a life coach at my company, Freedom Junkie. You may not know that I am also a midwife, and when I am on call, it is easy to feel Full On when catching a baby, but kind of hard otherwise. You have to stay close to the hospitals (so no hiking or bike rides or skiing), no vino or other excessively fun things, and if you decide to have sex, you better be ready for that pager to go off at any time. Dancing is kind of the only things I can do with reckless abandon when I’m on call, but none of that was going on until 10pm. So…I decided on the sex. THIS lady was going to live Full-On every day.

Even though my partner and I were both exhausted after traveling a bunch and now working a ton, and even though I had a runny nose and wanted to simply curl up and go to bed, I thought, “What the hooha. Might as well live it up.” I rallied, put on that piece of lingerie you see up there, blow dried my crazy hair, and cooked my man some mushroom risotto. He was working hard all day too, and being half-Italian, I knew he’d be psyched for it. He came home after his long day and had a huge grin after walking in and having the scent of onions, garlic and olive oil fill the air, and seeing me in my cute lil outfit being all domestic and shit (I’m not your stereotypically domestic Stepford Wife, although I DO love food and wine).

We ate happily and I poured him some wine and he laid back on the couch, all things content…and promptly fell asleep. Not just dozed off. Like…uber crashed out.

“WTF?!”

No, it’s not a skirt…it’s a freakin’ dress!

Did you know that we humans pick fights when we’re too happy? WE DO! It’s an example of an Upper Limit Problem, a term coined by Gay Hendricks (you can read about it in his book The Big Leap). I was about to do that. Yes yes yes I was going to brilliantly hide it behind the guise of “sharing my feelings,” but it was really going to end up as a conflict of sorts. I was about to get all sobby to the overtired man I love and complain that I felt unloved and unwanted and I wanted to go to sleep too but I didn’t and for fuck’s sake I was wearing a skirt as a dress and I’m not feeling bloated for once!

But I didn’t. I knew better. I knew that he was tired, and he is hardly EVER tired. In fact, I usually look forward to him being tired because it confirms for me he is human and not some bionic athletic machine 100% of the time. I knew that if I said something in the way I was about to say it, it would not serve me, or him. I knew he loved me and wanted me and would have not fallen asleep if he hadn’t worked hard all day for several days and burned 6000 calories a day for the past 2 weeks with less than 8 hours sleep a night (yes, that was vacation).

I knew I was tired and feeling particularly vulnerable and sensitive and I had a few too many cups of coffee which didn’t help me not feel tired – it only made me feel tired but with enough mental energy to madly spin the anxiety wheels in my head so I thought of the 101 ways I could have been sexy enough to keep him awake. LOL. We humans are so freakin’ crazy. Well, I guess I better just speak for myself.

In any event, I decided that I would go to bed, and if I felt strongly about it the next day, then I would say something.

I am so glad I did that instead of get all crazy in my lingerie.

I woke up to his bionic arms around me, sweet kisses, an apology for falling asleep, a promise to cook me dinner tonight, and him radiating love and appreciation like no other, even as I felt him walk out the door to work. And one of the greatest things about him is I know he follows through. On everything. So yes, I felt good about all that.

And I was proud of myself (and grateful!) for knowing that just because something makes me uneasy doesn’t mean someone else has to fix it all the time. That doesn’t mean to hold things in and walk on eggshells. It means to first notice what’s going on, decide what’s important, what I’m able to do about it, get to the root cause of my icky feeling, and if all that isn’t clear, wait until it IS clear.

Full On.

Note: Ana Neff is a personal life coach, guide and FreedomJunkie™ She helps individuals awaken their lives of freedom and personal success with confidence, clarity, self-love, and passion. Her monthly Freedom Junkie ™ eZine goes out to hundreds of subscribers. Her Full-On 365 blog posts stem from her commitment to living full-on, every day, for 365 days in a row. If you are ready to take your life and your world to the next level, you can learn more about her coaching programs and download  her FREE Getting Clear Guide by signing up at FreedomJunkie.com! Sign up for her next FREE Jedi Juice Training at FreedomJunkie.com/jedi-juice