Love, Men, and Confidence with Rachel Davis

Rachel Davis is the relationship whisperer. Through past experiences, Davis helps women everywhere get the best out of their relationship, and finds that her area of profession is understanding why men are the way they are. Davis spent most of her career as a Fortune 500 executive, which tends to be predominantly male. Through those experiences of hard work, team leading, and project management, she is well equipped with a unique perspective and skill set to fully help women everywhere who are seeking to find their purpose in life and love to her best ability. She hosts talks, training courses, coaching sessions and more to teach women the importance of reaching their highest self. With Valentine’s Day approaching, we spoke with the lovely Rachel Davis to talk about relationships, understanding men, and self-love.

How did you choose the term “relationship whisperer” to define yourself?

What’s interesting is that was my husband who coined the term “relationship whisperer”. He was watching a television show and I think it was “The Horse Whisperer”, and he was like “oh my gosh that is so you, you have this perception by which you just know and you have a gift to be able to have very little information but make a quick diagnoses in terms of what’s wrong and help people put a plan in place that can fix the problem”, so that’s how that came about.

How did you get into this profession of consulting people on relationships?

It was shortly after my second marriage, and I got married pretty young about 23 years old and it was an epic failure due to the fact that neither of us was equipped with the tools in order to be successful at marriage. When you get married at an age where you’re still coming into your own, and there is an element of self-preservation that’s there that you want to hold on to because you haven’t quite yet reached your maximum potential, there can be friction in a relationship. So that, and a combination of just not necessarily having the same life goals and same life mission, having poor communication skills, [and] just not having the ability to connect made it very difficult for that marriage to last. It took me about eight years to get married again, and the second go-around, I was definitely interested in making sure that I had the skill sets necessary to be successful, so I started studying men. As a result of studying and understanding the behaviors of men, studying the psychology of men, as well as studying the development of men, I became fascinated with the topic, and that’s how I got started.

You were saying there are specific tools for making a marriage or a relationship work, what would be those tools?

First and foremost, understanding that men are not women. I find that a lot of us talk to men the same way we would talk to our girlfriends, and we expect the same level of understanding and comprehension from men in the way that we would expect from other female counterparts. So, one of the tools I would encourage women to have in their toolbox is really learn how to better communicate with men. Number two is owning your personal power. The age-old adage is the man is the head of the household. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but if you take it and interpret it in a way that he may be the head, but as the woman, I’m the neck, and in essence, the woman dictates like the neck dictates where the head goes. And when you own your own power and you own your own position in your relationship, you’d be able to navigate that relationship and help him navigate your relationship with him by where he gets to then start to march to the beat of your rhythm, and not the other way around. Number three is really just understanding where he is in his life. And I think if a lot of women stop looking at men and relationships through pink colored lenses, and really look at their engagement with this man for who he is and for where he is in his life, there’s a lot of mistakes we just won’t make.

What is the number one thing girls should keep in mind when looking for a significant other?

The number one thing to keep in mind is to be open to attraction. The other thing I would say in addition to that is really mastering the art of flirting, and really getting very grounded in her femininity. The reason why that is important is because being comfortable and being grounded and flirting ties back to really being comfortable in yourself, and in your feminine self as a woman. That’s also important because polarity breeds desire. So, if you are interested in attracting a masculine male, it’s very important that you come across as being a very feminine female.

Do you have any pieces of advice on getting to that level of finding what femininity works for you and how to be better at flirting?

The best advice I would give a woman is to identify a woman that she admires that demonstrates uber-femininity. It could be someone she knows personally, it may be someone that she admires from afar, it could even be her favorite actress, or whomever. But, identify who you resonate with and who you admire and the feminine traits that they have, and start to embody that within yourself.

How does that tie into the importance of self-love and confidence?

When it comes to self-love, I’ve said this to a myriad of women in my talks, training courses, coaching sessions, etc., confidence in relationships is you having the ability to teach people how to treat you. And, I think the dogma that’s been around in terms of gender roles that have been very disempowering for women is that “the man is the way that he is”, “you can’t change him”, “you have to accept him for what he is”, but I completely disagree. I think the woman has the power and the ability to teach a man how to treat her and that ties into self-love. When you love yourself, when you treat yourself well, when you give yourself the best, you then inadvertently teach people how to treat you in that same way. So self-love is all about loving yourself and teaching people how to love you and treat you, in the same way, you do for yourself.

Do you have some advice for women who are still on that journey to finding self-love?

One of the things that I teach women to do is an exercise in self-love, and it requires you to set the mood a little bit – nice soft music, lighting some candles, and in a place where you’re completely alone- and get completely nude, and stand in the mirror and look at yourself. As a default, for us, we’re immediately programmed to start to criticize – ‘oh my gosh I look so fat, my belly’s so big, my butt’s so flat’. The exercise I have women do is to hold that area and start to speak words of love to that area. Instead of saying ‘oh my gosh my stomach is so big’ be like ‘oh my stomach is so beautiful, I appreciate everything that my stomach does for me, my skin feels amazing under my hands’, and really start to speak words of love to our naked selves, and really feel what it is that we’re saying. In the beginning, it’s going to be awkward, it’s going to be uncomfortable because no one has ever taught you to demonstrate love to yourself. But when you start to do that and really own the love and the beauty that you’re speaking to yourself, it’s one of the best ways to start to enhance the way you look at yourself, so you can start to learn to love yourself better.

Through your experience, what has been the most common reason or reasons that relationships don’t always work out?

A couple of things. The first one is not necessarily being honest with yourself in where he is in his life. So, if you meet a man who’s in a stage in his life where he is not ready for a commitment, the worst thing you could do is to try to connect with a man who does not desire to have a commitment like you do. So that’s the biggest thing that I think we as women fall short of. I think it has a lot do with the fact that there is a scarcity mindset and a scarcity mentality that’s being permeated within our culture today in terms of there not being an abundance of good quality men. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy, and I would submit that women don’t subscribe to that philosophy. Some of the challenges that women experience that they can overcome is being very open and honest about what you want up front so that way you don’t waste your time with somebody who isn’t who they need to be to make you happy within your life. And, make sure it’s someone who you can talk to, that you can have great conversations with, and that you can be yourself with. And, intense and insane chemistry is also important, and a lot of people don’t necessarily put enough emphasis on it. You just want to be with somebody for the sake of having somebody versus being with someone that you genuinely like and are genuinely attracted to.

So far, what has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a relationship whisperer?

The biggest lesson is really understanding that men and women alike, we’re constantly evolving. And, the concepts and the ideas and the lessons and the knowledge that we’re taught about men in relationships really doesn’t fit the narrative for 2019. So the biggest lesson is understanding that we, in essence, are ever-evolving and the nature in which we interact with people evolves as well. So, we’re in a constant state of change, and so it’s important to really be equipped with the knowledge that ties into our nature as human beings when it comes to really have a good solid relationship versus taking the advice of your grandmother, or your mother when they lived at a time where the roles for men and women are very different from the roles they play today.