In this episode of the Satisfied Woman podcast, I want to discuss the trouble with confusion in relationships and why confusion is such a challenge and why it is actually a form of abuse. Welcome to the Satisfied Woman podcast. I'm your host, Alana Kyalia. This podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at the

satisfiedwoman.com. Also, for my podcast listeners, I have a special page on my site, the

satisfiedwoman.com/mpowerme. And on that page, you can get free access to my starter kit for Satisfied Woman, giving you a free video, a chapter of my book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman, as well as a quiz to see if you're on the feminine polarity. And of course, if you don't yet have a copy of my book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman, it is available anywhere and everywhere books are sold. Okay, welcome to this episode of the podcast. I have been really digging in with my community about relationship. I a few months back started talking about how to attract and bring in an amazing masculine man into your life because I know that that's a huge uh consideration for women. Even the most powerful, high achieving, accomplished women at some point in their lives are going to want relationship. In fact, I believe every human does. We as human beings are hardwired for relationship. And in fact, some of our greatest psychological and personal transformation and growth happens in relationship. One of the key phrases of psychology is that we are wounded in relationship in early childhood and we are then healed in relationship as adults. That healing in relationship as adults, however, really only takes place when we're doing the work and aware enough of our past patterns and traumas to be able to work with those triggered moments, move through them, heal them, and change them. And the reason why relationship is so powerful in this regard is because it often takes relationship to trigger us deeply enough to reveal the hidden patterns or deep things embedded in our psyche that actually need to be worked on. Our early childhood relationships with our primary caregivers are where those wounds are initially created. Now, this is all kind of basic fundamental psychology 101 stuff. So, you know, if it sounds cliche, it is because it's true and it's pervasive and it's something that we live and experience our entire lives. So, yeah, your childhood wounding is really critical and it's your childhood wounding that inevitably will show up in your adult intimate partnerships. This is why we tend to fall in love with the same kind of person over and over. This is why we have the same kind of arguments and fights over and over. And unfortunately, and trust me, this is unfortunate, we are destined to repeat those patterns unless we resolve them. So, I've been speaking to women about when they get out of relationship, they're single, they're ready for a new one, they're looking for the right one. of course, they don't want to attract that same um toxic or just wrong person for them. So, I've been working with women individually to set themselves up for being in their own feminine power in order in order to attract the right masculine partner for them. But what this has revealed to me and what I really have discovered in these last few months in speaking with women and talking with women and the questions that I'm getting have been incredibly eyeopening and I've actually done a survey with my audience and I was stunned by the answers. If you listen to my last podcast, you heard some of these answers that I revealed to you, which is that 90% of women believe that they are in an unhealthy relationship and feel emotionally or financially drained by their partner. 90% of women. Imagine that. Look, if you're one of the lucky 10% who are in a dreamy relationship with an incredible human who values and cherishes you, then not only am I incredibly happy for you, but know that you are in rarified air because your feminine counterparts, they're suffering. And if you are one of the 90% of women who report actually being in a relationship that either emotionally or financially drains them, then I hope that you're listening closely to my podcasts. This one, the last one, and the ones to come. I'm going to be focusing on this for a while because look, I have a lot of ways to help women. Of course, I, you know, I wrote the book on the way of the satisfied woman, and I want you to be satisfied in every area of your life. And trust me, I understand that A, we don't need a man, and B, we can be happy and satisfied on our own. I get it. But I also know that as humans who are hardwired for connection. And the fact that our greatest growth and transformation lies in relationship. At some point in in our lives, we're going to wander back to relationship. In fact, I literally just got off of a coaching call with a woman who was married for nearly 30 years as a very early uh sorry young woman. Um had an amazing daughter from that marriage. Of course, that was the blessing of the marriage. Eventually left the husband of 30 years. Ended up in a toxic partnership uh that was financially draining for her. And I'm not even joking on this call. um the current partner uh arrived and you could immediately feel the tension in the call and we had to close out the call. And guys, I I want you to really understand there's no shame in this, okay? There's no shame, there's no blame. There is no position for us to blame any woman for getting herself into a partnership that really isn't serving her, that is emotionally or financially draining her. Number one, it happens to the best of us. And can number two, it happens to the smartest, most accomplished, most powerful, most educated, most loving, most kind. Any woman can be in this situation. And the reason is that our culture trains us to do it. Our culture trains us to tolerate bad behavior from men, to love them through it, to be responsible for their change and their well-being. Our culture trains us to to believe that our greatest value lies in how much we give ourselves away. And so we give and we give and we give of ourselves to try and make this relationship work because if we don't, we fear we'll be discarded. We fear abandonment. Now, this is pretty much universal only because these are the values of the culture that we were raised in. If we were raised in a western culture, if we were raised here in America, these are the kinds of narratives that women get. That's what we receive. I just um watched a talk by a woman at the UN. I believe it was back in like the '7s or something. And um she was talking about how dangerous it is to teach young girls to be kind and likable and to smile in order to be pretty. It's because this is the kind of behavior that actually allows manipulators and abusive people to take advantage of it. We're trained to be kind, to be to smile and to be likable. And when someone who is predatory, whether they're conscious of that predatory, manipulative nature or not, they take advantage of it because we will try and smile through the pain, we will try and be likable even though we are being mistreated. And we will stay and love them because we have also been trained to be the emotional regulators of our home and family environments. Now, unfortunately, the feminine is actually really good at this assignment. The feminine is amazing at emotional regulation. This is the kind of thing that we we train for as young children. What's interesting is young children all over the world, regardless of culture, regardless of time or place, um regardless of, you know, what kind of school that they're in, up until about the age of five, they play together with no problem. And then around age five, they actually self-segregate into gender and they start to play quite differently. The girls will get together and essentially run through communication scenarios. So they'll play a house for example and in that household, you know, mommy will get angry at daddy and have a fight and then they'll have to kiss and make up. And they run through these emotional regulation scenarios that improve connection, communication, collaboration, empathy, and that's really at the heart of the feminine. And the little boys segregate and they go off and they play war games. They strategize. They uh do shock and awe games. they uh compete with each other and that kind of go get them energy toward a goal, that drive, that leadership, that decision-m that is actually what we prize in the masculine. So each of these young children, genderbased, are affirming and kind of polishing their skills in their particular polarity. Now, of course, remember, you've heard me talk about this. Every human has both polarities within them. We all have both masculine and feminine. At any point, we can move into the other polarity to bring forward some of the good qualities in order to get through whatever it is that needs that oppositional polarity. However, we will have a polarity that is our most comfortable and our most dominant. And you know, it's 2025. There are no rules in terms of your gender, which polarity is more dominant for you, your sexuality, which polarity is more dominant for you. All of those iterations are okay. Everything is awesomely okay under the sun. Um, it's just that my work and who I speak to is the feminine woman. So, again, all iteration is okay. I'm just speaking to the feminine woman right now who is often a victim of abuse in partnership. Now, I want to I want to recognize that abuse comes in many forms because one of the things that I'm running into and working with women individually is that they say, you know what, I don't know that it's that bad. I'm uncomfortable. I'm unhappy. But is it really bad enough for me to call it abuse? There's also a tremendous amount of shame, especially I I tend to work with really high-powered, high achieving women. And the idea that this high-powered, high achieving woman who can be so completely capable in her life has this other thing going on behind closed doors creates a lot of shame for her. You know, we're at a really precious time in history where we as women can be highowered and high achieving. We can have our own careers. We can have our own money. We can make our own living. We can move through the world in a way that we mostly choose and feel relatively not always but relatively safe to do. And so to admit that there's this huge element of our lives that is not going well can be really difficult to do even to our friends and family. And I know this cuz I've been there. I myself have been in abusive and toxic relationships in my lifetime. I understand how difficult it is. And I understand how again that training to be likable, to smile, to put on a brave face no matter what is actually to our detriment in relationship. So one of the things I wanted to talk about on the podcast today, the the topic for this podcast today is, you know, beyond just telling you that I see you. I see you. I know what you're going through. I understand and that you are not alone. is to talk about a way in which you might be able to better recognize that perhaps the relationship you're in has some deeply toxic patterns. And one of the surprising factors for me even in my own toxic relationships and speaking to women trying to demystify like no actually it is that bad. You know this this does call for some course correction here. And whether that course is learning to do things differently, leaving the relationship, the course always includes reaffirming your femininity. Okay? Your femininity gets either diminished, repressed, or completely dismissed in these toxic relationships. You end up putting on the masculine. It tends to intensify the toxicity. Um, one of the things I want to identify really is this thing, confusion. Okay, confusion is a a huge red flag for you to know that you are in an abusive or just a toxic and neither are good relationship pattern. Okay, when you are confused, you are likely being manipulated or gas lit. Okay? Because what I know about um what I know about women generally is that they have an inner knowing. One of our superpowers as feminine women is our intuition. And when we are connected to and listen to our intuition, we are always going to be set on the right path for us. That is without fail. I can say that unequivocally. I can also say unequivocally that no way and no how has anyone ever been served by not listening to their intuition. But one of the things that happens, especially in a toxic relationship, is that we start to question ourselves. We start to question our intuition. And furthermore, we start to not listen to it. When our partner says, "Oh, that doesn't make any sense. You're just crazy. No, that's not true. You're getting emotional. You're irrational." We start to think because we think they love us. Wait a minute. Is that is that true? Am I just being overly emotional? We start to apologize for our feelings. Now, feelings never need an apology. By the way, actions and behaviors, sure, if they, you know, are not correct or in alignment with your values and virtues, if they're not in your highest good or that that of others, if you've acted or behaved in a way that's not great, sure, you can apologize for it. But we don't ever need to apologize for our emotions. And I know women do a lot of that because the masculine values of our culture don't value emotions. They don't prize them as a source of wisdom and truth. Even even many women will try to repress stuff down their emotions, try to logic their way through things, and that's going to skew what you know to be true, right, and good for you. So, if you're in a situation in your relationship where you're feeling confused, I mean, and it happens, right? this that specifically doesn't necessarily mean there's a toxic element, but if you're feeling confused, like there's behavior and you're not sure that it's right, like for example, let's say you're out to dinner and you see him texting on his phone and then as soon as you look over, he deletes that entire thread and you say, "Hey, you know who was that?" Because we're curious. Women are curious. If you're in a relationship, if you're in a truly committed relationship, everything is transparent. Everything. I mean, that's just that's just trust. Okay? So, it's not wrong to ask who who was that, you know, who were you chatting with? Like, we're at dinner. What's going on? Is everything okay? And if they say, "Oh, it was nothing." Or, "Oh, it was no one." And you start to feel that little I know what it is. It's like this little it's a little hitch in your breath or a little butterfly in your tummy or this question that gnaws away at your mind. As a feminine woman, unfortunately, because of how you're built, that will never go away. Okay? You will never be able to rest. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about, right? We are the inquisitors. When we have a question about something that isn't right if we don't get that question satisfactorily answered, we will never have a feeling of comfort. And a woman who is not comfortable, who is not at ease, she's not safe. She doesn't feel secure. She begins to lose her trust in herself and the person that she's with. And she certainly doesn't feel cherished. Now, one of the pivotal and foundational elements of being a satisfied woman are these four things. I call them the four keys. If we don't have trust in ourselves and others, the world around us, if we are not cherished by our masculine counterparts, meaning if they do not honor our intuition and emotions, if we don't feel safe to be who we are in body, mind, and heart, if we don't have security, our basic needs met, then if those things aren't there, we cannot relax. We cannot feel comfortable, and we certainly cannot feel satisfied. So even though it's a small incident, we saw them delete a text message. The fact that the question isn't answered for the feminine woman is catastrophic. What this can digress into is the questioning by the woman that becomes incessant that that men then call nagging. Nagging is the behavior of a woman who doesn't have clarity. Nagging is the behavior of a woman who doesn't have assurance, who doesn't have safety, who doesn't feel secure, who isn't 100% knowing that whatever this is is going to be answered or handled. Okay? And I'm not talking about the kind of nagging of, "Hey, put the dishes away. No, put the dishes away, please. Wait, I told you yesterday to put the dishes away." Um, that's mothering. That's a little different. Nagging is, "Hey, wait." like that nagging feeling. I did, but I did see you text somebody and it was deleted. So, what was that all about? And was it important? And if it wasn't, then why won't you just tell me that nagging continuous question? Here's the thing, okay? When someone doesn't share information with you, if they're not transparent about it, now transparency means that they don't even have to be asked. They simply share. That's transparency. That's a level of trust in a relationship that really is indicative of commitment. It's indicative of a healthy relationship. And it's indicative of a a real strong and deep loving connection. When you have transparency with your partner, there are no questions. Something will happen and rather than you have to ask or dig or poke or prod, information is simply offered. What that does for the feminine woman is it brings comfort. It calms that inquisition within us. And if we have questions, right, perhaps they forgot or you know we just a question arises. If we have questions, those questions are always answered in a way that makes us feel safe and heard. This is a silly um a silly story, but I was watching Love is Blind on Netflix. Oh, bless their hearts, right? And it's entertainment. It's it's kind of late night TV to just have a narrative of something else. But, um, there was an incident that happened in this most recent season, I think it's season 8, where uh, right out of the pods, you know, they they have the in order to get out of the pods, you the the male has to propose to the female, she has to accept, and then they are able to go on like a a little vacation-y honeymoon kind of thing together. and they get to see each other finally after only having heard each other up until then. So they see each other, everything seems fine, and then you see, okay, the next morning she's got a question. She thinks that he has actually been following her on social media and knew the whole time who she was. So, she has this belief that because he's followed her on social media and knew who she was, he was kind of manipulative and trying to get her to fall in love with him and seeking her out this whole time, which based on the rules of this particular show, I can see how that would be really unappealing and untrustworthy. So, she confronted him. And amazingly, she even had an app that showed everyone who's ever followed and unfollowed her. And right in front of him, cuz he was like, "Look, you know, I mean, I don't know you. I didn't know you. I wouldn't have done that. Those aren't the rules of the show. Um, you know, I don't think I did this. If I did, it was unintentional and I don't remember you. So, our, you know, everything's been true up until this point." And she looked at the app and, you know, he allowed her to do that. He didn't suddenly throw it back in her face, right? He didn't try to shame her or make her the villain for the question. He said, "Look, I don't think so, but whatever you need to do to be comfortable." And she looked at the app right in front of him, you know, and he probably at this point doesn't even know whether his name is going to come up or not. In fact, it didn't. And then she had the answer satisfactorily, you know, um, given in this case. Now, look, I didn't finish the episode and I haven't finished the season. So, I don't actually know how that story line turns out, but based on just that one little exchange, what I appreciated about it was that he he stayed calm, right? He didn't fly off the handle. He didn't become emotional. He didn't call her the villain and he allowed her to get her questions answered and he answered all of her questions. Okay? So, I don't know how it turns out, right? So, hopefully it turns out well. But what happens often times when we have this confusion, there's a lack of transparency, which is a huge red flag. Anytime someone is hiding something, omitting something, not revealing something, there's a lack of transparency. Ladies, we are not safe. Okay? We are not safe and there is no trust. Trust means always acting with the highest good of your partner in mind. So, back to my original um scenario where you see your partner texting and then they immediately delete the thread, right? One thing that could happen in that scenario or a scenario like it is that as soon as you question say, "Hey, who was that?" They make you the villain and say, "It was none of your business. Why don't don't you trust me?" Right? This is gaslighting and manipulation. What I want to really hit home here in this podcast today is that your confusion is a red flag because you as a smart, high-powered, high achieving, capable woman doesn't confusion is not who you are. You are not a confused person. You don't get up in the morning and are confused by what to do throughout your day. You don't interact with friends of yours and are confused by their behavior. You don't have a conversation with someone and leave confused. You pursue conversations, events, your life, things, everything in your career in such a way that you have your questions satisfactorily answered. And because you have all the information, you can act accordingly. What? Because you have all the information, you can behave in a way that is in your highest and best interest, that does uphold your values and your integrity. When you are confused, you don't have all the information and you cannot act in a way that is in your highest and best interest. Okay? Because you don't have all the information. You have to act. It's like it's like it's like walking through a completely pitch black room. You're going to stub your toe. You're going to fall over. You're going to run into something. That's not healthy. We need light. We need clarity. Okay? Confusion requires answers and accountability. It requires answers and accountability. So, I want you to start to watch for this. When you get into any kind of situation in your relationship when you feel confused, know that it is not your problem. Your confusion is as a result of not having all of the answers which are theirs to give. If they shame you, if they turn you into the villain, if they increase your confusion, that is a toxic pattern that leaves you in a diminished, disempowered state. That leaves you prone to further manipulation and gaslighting. That makes it easier to control you. Because when you don't have all the information and you can't act in your highest and best interest, they will act in a way that is not in your highest and best interest. Now, this doesn't mean that everyone who creates confusion in your life is a bad person. Remember, we all grew up in this culture, okay? We all did. So many people, many masculine men, many partners of incredible women simply think that this is just the way that people interact and behave. They're trained to hide certain things from women. What I want is not necessarily for us to hit the eject button immediately. Look, if you are in harm or danger, eject immediately. Period. It is okay to give them the benefit. It is okay to give them an opportunity. It is okay to say, "Hey, I feel confused. I need transparency and accountability. How can you answer my questions?" Give them a chance. Let them step up and in to a healthy masculine role for you. If they don't, that's more information for you, isn't it? If they do, then we may have a path forward. Okay? Because we can't change anyone. We have to allow them their experience and ability to change when they want to. But if they love us and and there are men and trust me amazing men with big big hearts who do love hard who have had the same improper crappy training that we have in this culture. We also ladies are learning how to step into our femininity to reclaim it as a source of strength and power that is different and equal to the power of masculinity. All right. So we're learning too. If you give your partner an opportunity to step up and learn and he does, wonderful. But if he doesn't, ladies, one of the one of the biggest most surprising things that I learned in my survey is that the biggest reason women don't leave relationships is they hope it will get better. And unfortunately, women stay too long as a result. They stay until they're completely exhausted, completely drained, that there's no resilience left. I've seen comments from women that it's it feels as if they've actually died before they finally finally let go. I don't want you to get to that point. I want you to maintain your resiliency, your vibrancy, your zest for life, your sense of joy, your creativity. So, let's arrest these toxic patterns before they become so toxic it's debilitating. So, this is the work that I'm doing with women. This is what I'm talking about. It seems to be on everybody's mind right now. Um, especially at this time. And I hope that this has been helpful for you. My guess is that it has given that 90% of women believe that they or that they not believe that they are financially and emotionally draining relationship. And if you're not one of those women, I hope that you'll share this podcast with someone that you know who might be in this situation. And until next time, ladies, I am committed to helping you find satisfaction in all areas of your life, not just relationship, career, finances, uh self-expression, fulfillment, everything. That is my work and I am incredibly privileged and grateful to be doing this work with you. So until the next podcast, find pathways towards satisfaction and I will talk to you again soon.