How many times I have been asked how did I get into coaching and especially relationship coaching. It’s a cute story and significantly impacted my life perhaps it will yours also. I got divorced after 23 years of marriage. I left in 1989and started learning about relationships shortly after that. I took several relationship courses, one called The Man Woman course taught by a man and a woman.
During that class I could hardly sit still, I was so excited to learn how to make a relationship work. Unfortunately, everything I had done in my marriage to make it work had destroyed it. That seems to be the way things go these days. We all learn things the hard way or backwards. Needless to say, if I had known everything I learned in that series of classes when I got married, I might never have gotten divorced.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my husband, I did. I just couldn’t tolerate living with him anymore and didn’t know how to fix what was wrong. Anyway, back to the story. I met a man who was considerably younger than I (17 years and 51 weeks to be exact) and we were very attracted to each other. We started out having a very brief romance but it wasn’t going to work and we both recognized that quickly.
We became very close friends and he actually helped me through the tough part of my divorce. He had a girlfriend, who was 26 and very naïve and spoiled, that he treated badly and broke up with and picked up again at his discretion. Because Bruce (not his name) and I remained close friends we talked a lot on the phone and I shared with him a lot of the things I had been learning in the Man-Woman Course.
Gina (not her name) was very jealous of our relationship and to put it mildly disliked me intensely. We had words several times with her expressing her jealousy and her intention to marry Bruce and have his children. I, being not nearly the nice person I am now, wasn’t especially nice to her either. I disdained her emotional outbursts and petty jealousy, and frequently insinuated that she should grow up.
Over a period of time, Bruce and I talked a lot about everything while Gina observed. After at least two life altering crises with Bruce, Gina finally decided that Bruce was not what she wanted. Because of her observations of how Bruce and I interacted, Gina stepped outside of her ego and made a very significant request. She spoke to me one day saying, ” I know I haven’t been very nice to you and there is no reason why you should help me, however, I have watched how Bruce is with you. It’s different. All these months when I have had his body, you have had his soul. I want to learn how to have an intimate connection like that with a man and I believe that you can teach me. Will you? ”
Needless to say I was shocked and thought it was just another of her manipulative tricks, but Gina persisted and begged me to teach her. I reluctantly agreed to try and that led us into a two year coaching relationship where I taught her how to choose a man she wanted and to have the self respect to ask for what she wanted and to get it.
During that time, Gina dated approximately 20 men. We had fun, became great friends and we both learned a lot. Because she was willing to do everything I asked her to do, no matter how difficult, she got what she wanted. She didn’t settle for anything. She has been married now for ten years, has two wonderful sons 5 and 8 and they have the hottest married relationship around. He produces for her. She expresses her appetite and every now and then gets intimidated by the power of her desire and expression.
The most difficult task for a woman in relationship is to achieve clarity about what she wants and have the self esteem to ask for it. I learned how to be a first class relationship coach, to push my clients beyond where they think they can go, never to settle for less than what they want and to be willing to risk losing everything they think they have to get what they really want.