Life is changing faster than ever, and this includes the world of partnership.

Do you desire a traditional, legal marriage to raise children together?

Do you wish to remain single but in a committed relationship?

Do you want to share your life with your BFF from grade school, sans sex and romance, and raise kids while you both can still date others for fun?

Or, how about never using the word single again and just embrace the adventurous world of being a solo?

Baby, you’ve got options!

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other:

“Do you believe in life after delivery?

”The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

Happily. Ever. After.

These are the three most dangerous words for women in love.

Even the smartest women fall into a love trance thinking that now that they have found their soulmate, the love of their life, he/she will naturally know how to make them happy, satisfied and content.

Sure, you’ve heard that relationships take work, and yet you believe that your “soulmate love” will be effortless.

You’ve found a love that is rare and precious, an unimaginable love.

A love that will conquer everything.

And then a year, or ten, or twenty later you may find yourself restless, or worse, angry, frustrated, disappointed and ready to give up and head for divorce court.

One of the most common questions I am asked is:

“How do I know if he/she is my soulmate?”

During the dating process we are often on high alert for “red flags,” the things they say or do that trigger fear that they could be trouble. We’re looking for our deal-breakers in a fierce need to protect our tender hearts from potential heartbreak.

While it’s smart to be paying attention, and when you see or hear something un-settling or disturbing, be SURE to do these two things:

1. Never make assumptions.
2. Ask clarifying questions before coming to any conclusions that will have you throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I recently came across a wonderful list of “relationship green flags” from therapist Sara Kuburic.

The cool, quiet room was overflowing with the grieving faces of friends and family as the funeral director invited Mrs. Lee up to the podium to speak. The petite, elegant widow walked slowly to the front of the small chapel and calmly began her eulogy.

“I am not going to sing praises for my late husband. Not today. Neither am I going to talk about how good he was.” Mrs. Lee’s eyes flashed.

“Enough people have done that here.” She took a deep breath, allowing the air to fill her lungs before she continued. “Instead, I want to talk about some things that will make some of you feel a bit uncomfortable.”

Several people stopped fanning themselves and sat up a little straighter. “First off, I want to talk about what happened in bed.” She paused dramatically, shifting her weight from side to side. A crow cawed outside the chapel window. She watched it perch itself on a nearby tree.

“Have you ever had difficulty starting your car engine in the morning?” She carefully studied the faces about the room. With a loud, grinding sound, she snorted and rumbled, violently shaking her tiny frame.

Lets talk about Love. It’s right up there with air, food and water as one of the most vital ingredients for existence. Love nourishes our souls and arouses our deepest desires. And yet, for many people, it’s the hardest thing to find. AND, even harder still is sustaining that love once you’ve found it.

Have you ever wondered why we humans seek a soulmate, a life partner, a beloved? What is it about us that craves this deep connection to another? Are we genetically made up to be mated?

One fascinating and possible answer comes from Aristophanes, the acclaimed comic playwright and philosopher of ancient Athens. He offers a wild tale that he shared at Plato’s Symposium about how the deep desire for Oneness came about.

Long, long ago in primal times people had doubled bodies, four arms, four legs, two heads and they were big and round…. These roly-poly creatures wheeled around earth like clowns doing cartwheels & were very powerful.

Nearly everyone I know right now is grieving someone or something.

The number of critical illness diagnoses, family and friends dying from cancer, love lost, and so much more seems to be at epic proportions.

The other day I found this beautiful post on my Facebook feed and felt compelled to share it all of you who may be in state of grief. I hope you find some solace in this.

Living with a Broken Heart by Gary Sturgis – “Surviving Grief”

Remember what the Tin Man said in the “Wizard of Oz” after he finally got a heart….

“Now I know I’ve got a heart because it’s breaking.”

Several years ago we were vacationing on the insanely beautiful island of Capri in Italy.

One afternoon we went for a walk, searching for a beach, to take a swim in the refreshing, sparkling Mediterranean sea.

We eventually found one and hiked down to a sweet little cove with a sandy beach jammed packed with men, women and children, in all shapes and sizes.

As we waded into the water, I noticed a small canoe-like boat that was painted red and on the side were the words, in big block letters, Salvatore.

My first thought was, “I wonder who Salvatore is and why does he need his name so boldly on the boat?”

And, even though I don’t speak Italian, I soon figured out that Salvatore wasn’t some man’s name but rather it means “Savior,” and that this was a boat used by lifeguards.

As all of us continue to navigate through these scary and difficult times of the COVID-19 virus, it’s becoming clear that there aren’t enough lifeguards right now, and it’s really up to us to figure out how to rescue ourselves and our loved ones.

If you are single and dating online, How Not To Die Alone by Logan Ury is a MUST READ. (She is the Director of Relationship Science for Hinge.)

I consumed most of it in one sitting, riveted by all the research and science she included that explains why online dating can be a struggle because it offers “too many” choices.

And, if you understand this, how you can overcome it.

Hint: Most people do best when they have six or less options to choose from!

Drawing from years of research, author/behavioral scientist turned dating coach Ury reveals in her book:

• What’s holding you back in dating (and how to break the pattern)
• What really matters in a long-term partner (and what really doesn’t)
• How to overcome the perils of online dating (and make the apps work for you)
• How to meet more people in real life (while doing activities you love)
• How to make dates fun again (so they stop feeling like job interviews)
• Why “the spark” is a myth (but you’ll find love anyway)

> Get it Here <

Many people suffer from patterns of behavior that hold them back from finding love.

Self-love seems to be the hot topic in the personal growth movement these days and when it comes to finding soulmate love, there are a lot of myths that until you fully love yourself first, you won’t be able to get anyone else to love you. Is this really true?

My experience has been that most women (at least in the Northern hemisphere) live with a negative, critical voice in their heads that is often filled with ugly, shaming thoughts, self- doubt, and brings with it feelings of never being “good enough.”

And, I began to wonder, do you really have to eliminate that persistent voice in order to find true love?

Do we really need to be 100% in love with ourselves to experience Big Love?

No.

I believe we are all perfectly imperfect beings doing the best we can, most of the time.

And yet, we are now living in an era where cancel culture has become de rigueur, second chances are few and far between, and the art of forgiveness appears to have vanished.

We all have said and done stupid, regrettable things and I believe that if we own what we’ve done, and give a proper apology, and make amends, shouldn’t we be forgiven?

I see this as an issue in our personal relationships as well as in our culture.

Your significant other may be the greatest person on the planet but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to make you crazy from time to time.

Are you a liar?

I believe most of us are. (Hey, we are all human, no judgement here.)

And the biggest lies we tell are to ourselves.

We lie to ourselves in small ways and big.

For instance, perhaps you do some or all of these:

You want to be healthy and yet you consistently blow off exercising and eat things you know are not good for you.

You want to nourish your mind with loving thoughts and yet you make up stories about how you are not good enough, loveable enough, or whatever and you let those stories keep you stuck.

You are in a relationship with a narcissist or someone who clearly exhibits bad behavior and you stick around hoping they will change. (They won’t)

Yesterday was our 23rd wedding anniversary. As I thought about the wonder of it all, I asked my beloved soulmate, Brian, what his thoughts are on how we have created 23 years of togetherness and what he thought our “secret of success” is.

Here is what he said:

“Our sacred union was ignited in an instant when I literally found myself immersed in a grand conspiracy of love with the Woman/Goddess of my dreams 23 years ago.

The day we met the magic began and the Universe/God supported our journey of love on every level. It was a ginormous love explosion where both our tides of love rose together into one ocean of love and where love began to dance with itself!

We celebrate our miracle of love every day as we live grounded in Higher Love with the necessary ingredients of respect, honor, joy, unlimited fun, attentiveness, acceptance, admiration and care of the other’s well-being.”

When I met my soulmate Brian, I was smart enough to use everything I knew about the Law of Attraction to manifest an amazing soulmate.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any real experience or partnership skills to assure our marriage would be a dream come true.

I made tons of mistakes, mostly because I didn’t understand that not only are men’s brains different from ours, you also need to know how to talk to them in a way that makes them JUMP at the chance to keep us happy.

For instance, one of my biggest mistakes (and one I still deal with from time to time) is that I am not a great listener. I tend to drift. And I am also very opinionated and often want to tell Brian what to do and how to do it.

I’ve since learned (the hard way) that unless a man ASKS for your opinion, feedback or coaching, it’s often best to resist the urge to play “Big Momma” and fix his problems.

For many of us, the fifteen months of lockdown and restricted activities were extremely challenging in every area of life. As life began to open up again in recent months, we experienced hope and optimism that normalcy was on the return.

Most of us started getting out more, giddy to be social and hug our friends and loved ones that we haven’t seen beyond a Zoom screen for so long.

And some of us have even jumped on a plane and done some traveling.

Plans that couldn’t be made previously (whether career or personal) are popping up and you may be feeling like it’s time to dive back in, make a new list of goals and accomplishments, restart your life and go for it.

Except your previous “get up and go” is now stalling, procrastinating, overthinking, worrying or all of the above.

More than thirty years ago I had the extraordinary good fortune to meet Herb Tanzer and Elizabeth Goodman.

I was attending the Landmark Forum and Herb was our awesome, amazing and brilliant leader.

Throughout the weekend workshop he often gushed about how much he loved his beautiful wife, Elizabeth.

Herb & Elizabeth were really my first introduction into what a true soulmate relationship looks like.

Together they were adoring, devoted, playful, funny and clearly meant to be together.

After 38 years of loving each other, Herb passed a year ago from cancer.

Of course, Elizabeth was devastated to lose her best friend, life partner and soulmate.

Toward the end of his life, they had several deep conversations in which Herb shared with Elizabeth that she needed to “pay attention.” He wanted her to be open to finding someone to take care of her after he was gone.

Elizabeth always insisted she could take care of herself. Herb repeatedly told her to “pay attention.”

One of Herb’s closest friends was another Forum leader named Garry.

He was a recent widower. His wife of 55 years, Donna, had passed less than a year before Herb. The four of them had been friends for 35 years and had vacationed together.

If you’re anything like me, the last fifteen months on planet earth have been challenging, at times nerve shattering, and stressful to the max.

I’ve been craving peace.

Something that has really made a difference in returning me to a state of peace and contentment is a guide written by my friend, Sadhviji, who has spent the last 25 years in India as a holy woman studying the Vedas in English and Hindi.

She went from working on a Ph.D. on psychology at Stanford to running one of the largest ashrams in Rishikesh for the past twenty-five years, and she serves hundreds of thousands of devotees around the world as one of todays’ pre-eminent spiritual teachers.

Disappointment. We’ve all been there.

Whether it was the promising new relationship, the job interview that seemed so right, the passion project that didn’t pan out, we have all known the disappointment of not having our big dream met.

Even though the feelings of loss and sadness that come with disappointment totally suck, there are actions you can take to move you back into possibility.

When this happens to me, I give myself permission to spend a few minutes to experience my sad and blue feelings. Then I will journal these feelings and really exaggerate just how bad I feel. I let my imagination run wild on the negative side just to purge it all.

Next, I take a few moments to close my eyes, drop into my heart and remind myself of all the goodness in my life as I practice breathing deeply in and out through my heart.

Finally, I get my journal out again and this time I write myself five true and positive statements about my life.

Twenty-three years ago, on June 22, I married my soulmate, Brian, in a beautiful, magical Hindu ceremony officiated by the hugging saint, Amma.

What I didn’t know on that auspicious day could fill a book!

Leading up to the wedding, I had never given any thought as to what kind of wife and partner I would be to him.

Having written and manifested my extensive “soulmate wish list,” I had high expectations of what was in it for me, but never really thought about what was in it for him.

Early on in our marriage I made a horrifying discovery about myself: I had no partnership skills!

Having run a business for many years, I knew how to be the “boss” but was clueless about how to be a great partner.

Fortunately, Brian spent a good part of his life playing team sports and working in collaborative business partnerships. He modeled how to “play well with others.”

Over the years I’ve learned from him and became better at surfing the relationship waves.

Seeking more love in your life?

A fast, easy way to make it happen is to put your attention on all the love that is already around you (family, friends, pets, etc.) and then actively engage in making love happen and spread by creating a “ripple effect.”

Everything we do and think affects the people in our lives and the choices we make have far-reaching consequences. Like an incredibly interwoven and complicated tapestry, the Ripple Effect, creates connections that we are all a part of. Thoughts and actions are like stones dropped in a pond and they create ripples that travel outward.