To follow or not follow the crowd?

I was never the cool kid, in with the ‘in gang’ or hanging out in all the ‘right’ places.

In all honesty if all the cool kids were doing one thing, I’d make a point of doing something completely different.

And that behaviour followed through into my relationships.

I married my first husband not long after turning 20, divorced at 22, then married husband number two when I was 30 and was divorced again by 40.

No-one understood why I married either one of them, which is partly why I married them! Because no-one ‘approved’.

I was 42 before true love, real love, entered my life to stay – although it had appeared briefly when I was 28.

Once again, this wasn’t a standard or traditional love affair (it still isn’t). We met on my 28th birthday, dated for a year, then went our separate ways. There was no big drama surrounding our separation, it was simply logistics. Back then mobile phones weren’t commonplace.

When he came back into my life 11 years ago, we both knew we were blessed with a second chance, and moved in together within 3 weeks.

We may or may not get married but that doesn’t matter. I changed my name by deed-poll when we’d been together longer than either of my marriages had lasted.

We have a relationship that’s completely unconventional in some respects, yet totally conventional in others.

What matters most is that it works for us.

It’s built on solid foundations of trust, honesty, respect and equality.

We get real – by being completely open and honest with each other, sometimes brutally so.

We silence the fear monsters – by meeting our individual and combined fears head on and work through them.

We apply the secret weapon – we work at our relationship.

We step into selfish – by taking time out for ourselves, individually and as a couple.

We make defiant decisions – fully informed, and with our eyes wide open.

I never try to make my clients create a carbon copy of my relationship or the ‘fairytale’ relationship because I know that everyone is different, and we all seek and want different things from relationships.

The only things I implore them to do is create the same strong foundations because this stuff works.

I know so from my own lived experience of getting it so very wrong and then so very right.

I know so from the clients I’ve worked with to date.

And I know so from the years of studying and research I’ve done into human relationships and behaviour.

You don’t have to listen to me of course, you’re more than welcome to continue making the same mistakes over and over again.

You’re also welcome to choose to lead the rest of your life creating strong, healthy and robust relationships that work for you, on your terms.

And, you can do this stuff even if or when you’re single, because every human interaction is the very start of a relationship.