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The TV star Kelsey Grammer recently indicated in a TV interview that he thought his third wife married him because he was the very popular TV character, Frasier. She married her dream, and the reality turned out to be an ordinary, vulnerable person with extra-ordinary talents.
Did the same happen when the model Heather Mills married the musician Paul McCartney? Did she also marry a dream and wake up to a different reality?

This does not only happen to rich and famous people. Women often get married to a “knight in shining armour” who takes them away from circumstances that they dislike – only to find that the sting is not in the circumstances, but in how they view their lives.

For example, a teenage girl married a man who took her away from parents that relied financially on their child, and she had big dreams of a life of being in the limelight. A month after the marriage she found herself pregnant in a culture where abortion was not an option, and where everyone celebrated the arrival of an heir. She discovered that she had moved from an escapable nightmare to an inescapable nightmare, and she was forced into the role of mother prematurely – with disastrous consequences. She eventually died from an overdose of drugs because she could .

We like to read in the press about well-known people having whirlwind romances and getting married quickly. However, we are left with a sense of confusion when those fairy-tale romances disintegrate into bitter public divorces.

How can such an outcome be prevented for an ideal courtship?

The Universe is in complete balance – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, as Isaac Newton discovered centuries ago. This has in recent decades been confirmed when it was discovered that every positive charge also has a negative charge.

Where a famous (or not so famous) person is swept away into a wonderful romance, and there is talk of marriage or even living together as an indication of commitment, the couple should be encouraged to take stock of their situation. They should be guided to discover the downside of every dream-like experience that they have together.

And no, this is not the opposite of positive thinking. This is a means of finding balance. If the focus is entirely on the dream-like experiences, the laws of nature will ensure that the nightmare-like side of the experience will be added. Why not rather find the balance before making a public commitment that could result in an equally public down-fall?

For example, when you marry a famous person, you get famous by default for a short time. However, over time the famous, talented person continues to get the attention based on their talents, while the not-so-famous spouse fades into the background.

Even when you marry a person that is successful but not famous, you may find that their success is based on a single-mindedness that excludes everything else while they pursue their dream. And what if you are part of that dream, and you lose their interest once they have “achieved” you?

Look for the downside of your dream before you leap. That will help you to find balance and make more realistic decisions.

Are you struggling to cope with the reality of your marriage? Do you want to find your own identity while remaining married to a famous or successful person?

I can help you.

Visit goo.gl/lbFkN for an intuitive assessment of your relationship.

Kamala Beach

Continued

Two: A marriage certificate is a legal contract, not a death sentence. The contract is not a guarantee against change. The contract only spells out what the initial agreement was, and in some instances it also documents the agreement on a potential outcome. The contract does not say that you will die if you are in breach. Experience says that you may die from ill health if you insist on never ending the contract and clinging to it at all costs. It’s your call.

Three: There are two people in a marriage. They either grow together, or they grow apart. That is life. When you allow a whole community or society into the marriage, then nobody grows, except in terms of the amount of fear of change that they gather and share.

Every relationship has a natural life cycle. That includes a marriage. If people manage to let go of their fantasies and accept what comes natural, the end of a marriage will be accepted as a wonderful growth experience.

What we have instead is often a prolonged nightmare that is dictated to society by people who either vowed never to marry but made the rules, or who spend lots of energy upholding their own fantasy in the eyes of the world.

Here endeth the sermon.

Now get yourself a coach who understands that divorce is both the end of the world as you know it, and also a tremendous opportunity for growth. Then find your own balance in your thinking, and get an amicable divorce where everyone can congratulate themselves on being better off emotionally and spiritually as a result of the divorce. Then get on with your life.

Or stay married and find yourself a good doctor who will help you camouflage all the symptoms of your distress, and spend all your energy on maintaining a fantasy in the eyes of the world, while you are deeply unhappy.

There is no reason to become a victim when your marriage ends.

I know which approach works – been there, done that, and lived to express my deep gratitude for the experience. I also learned how to cut the process of making sense out of the experience from 10 years to a few hours. It can be done because it is a scientific process that can be repeated at will.

Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am The Intuition Coach. I help people who lack clarity, vision and purpose to remove their blocks, discover their intuition and achieve their goals. What is consuming all your energy? Visit www.TheIntuitionCoach.com for a FREE New Start Quiz.

Picture this: Sicily 1965. (If you are giggling about this, you remember Sophia and you probably have grey hair!)

A couple has been married for 20 years. They have teenage children. He is the breadwinner – and he has done so well that his family now prefers cake to bread. She is the home-maker – and she prefers to not leave home, in case a flower arrangement or a recipe needs urgent attention. The picture of perfection. Or is it?

Here is another picture: he started his career at a high, being the best student, then the best intern, then the heart and soul of the party and a social asset to the company – but not quite living up to professional expectations. She was the strong support in the background, and quietly worked her way out of the kitchen and onto the bench in the courtroom. They have a “pigeon pair” son and daughter who are also achievers in their own right. Everything is all right – or is it?

In both instances the cracks in the marriage are there to see for everyone – except for the main players.

Too often couples achieve their “picture of perfection” and are then trapped into maintaining their circumstances at all costs while they grow miles apart. And oh boy, do they pay – and pay.

Any change they are willing to accept must be external, as in a bigger house, a better car, more exotic holidays. The marriage must remain intact, “until death us do part” – because that is the norm.

What are the consequences? The marriage becomes artificial. The participants become physically ill, because they resist change in their spirit, mind and body.

Here are some tips on how to deal with the situation.

One: change happens all the time. Resist it at your peril, or ride the wave and grow from it.

To be continued

Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am The Intuition Coach. I help people who lack clarity, vision and purpose to remove their blocks, discover their intuition and achieve their goals. What is consuming all your energy? Visit www.TheIntuitionCoach.com for a FREE New Start Quiz.

I was dealing with a client who is going through a marital crisis after about 20 years of marriage. A big part of the crisis is that she had lost her own identity to the extent that she is no longer anyone other than Mrs Husband. She did this because she believed it was the right, good Christian thing to do. The church will have a lot to account for on doomsday!

That made me question the practise of women taking on the surname of the husband upon marriage.

The kabala teaches that every sound, and therefore every letter used in your name and surname, carries its own meaning and destiny. When you change your name or surname, you in effect change your destiny.

Long before I discovered this, I got divorced and took back my maiden name. At the time I was regarded as a rebel (so nothing new there) and out to break tradition. There were people who told me that changing my surname would not make any difference to me, but it did. When I had my new identity documents showing my own surname, I did feel a sense of freedom and newness.

Have a look at this website – I was astonished to discover that in many countries women in fact did not change their surnames upon marriage and were not expected to.

This is just one of the things where we believe there is only one way to do things, and that is the way we are told to do by self-appointed authority figures. I have taken another step out of ignorance.

Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am The Intuition Coach. I help people who lack clarity, vision and purpose to remove their blocks, discover their intuition and achieve their goals. What is consuming all your energy? Visit www.TheIntuitionCoach.com for a FREE New Start Quiz.

I was married once, and I ended the marriage against much objection and prejudice after I had faced the wrong end of a fire-arm.  I had to struggle for years with the guilt, the sense of failure and the programmed prejudice that was targeted at me and making my life one great misery.

Did I gain from the marriage and the divorce?

Of course I did.  Even during my marriage I had to rely on my own resources, and that made me realise that I was emotionally much stronger than anybody gave me credit for.  I had to find solutions for problems that were not described in any textbook.

After my divorce I was a “sinner” and an outcast.  That forced me to reach out to people who otherwise would have been off-limits to me for ridiculous reasons such as a different religion, language or marital status.  I made great friends and learnt about unconditional Love.

When my 10-year-old son ran away from home in the night, I could not talk to anyone that I knew – not even my parents – to get help, because that would have provided proof of my failure as a single parent – which was predicted all round as part of the culture I grew up in.    It was part of the burden of being a divorced woman in a culture where the institution of marriage was (still is) worshipped.

I found my son within half an hour – and he was quite embarrassed and happy to be home again.  That brought us closer and I learned to listen more to what he was saying, and also to what he was not saying – a skill that has been invaluable throughout my life.

And the other day my boy spontaneously told me that he is very happy to have me as “the oracle on parenthood” now that he is becoming a father.  That was a humbling experience and it made more than 20 years of being a single parent worth every minute.  Without my “failed” marriage I would never have had that experience.  And I can write a book about the other wonderful discoveries I have made about myself and other people over the years since I got divorced.

The Celtic hand-fasting ceremony is far more realistic than any religious marriage vows that I have encountered.

I will quote selectively from the vows that go with the hand-fasting ceremony – if you want to know more, contact me and I will provide a link to the full wording.

“Will you cause him/her pain?
I May
Is that your intent?
No

Will you burden him/her?
I may
Is that your intent?
No

Will you cause him/her anger?
I may
Is that your intent?
No

Will you take the heat of anger and use it to temper the strength of this union?
We will.

The knots of this binding are not formed by these cords but instead by your vows. Either of you may drop the cords, for, as always, you hold in your own hands the making of breaking of this union.”

These vows do not create any unrealistic expectations.  They consider the fact that we are the masters of our own destinies, and that when things “go wrong”, there is not necessarily malicious intent.  Life is about positive and negative experiences, and all these experiences are meant to provide balance.

And above all, the vows are not based on the assumption that “failure” implies guilt.  There is no such thing as failure.  There is such a thing as being blind to the insights we are meant to gain from the relationship.

The lessons we learn and the wisdom we gain from ending a relationship are forever.  The legal and religious paperwork attached to a relationship are not forever.  The guilt and sense of failure may be forever, if you choose to hold on to that for the rest of your life.

Click here to ensure your seat on the seminar planned for 3rd June 2010.

Love and Light

Elsabe

PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.

What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?

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I recently wrote an article in which I explained that any relationship has a natural duration, after which it ends – unless the people in the relationship hold on to the relationship for dear life.

This raised a question about marriage vows.  Divorce statistics prove to us time and again that despite the religious and legal pressure on us, marriages do not last for ever – they do not even last for a lifetime.

And even where a marriage lasts for a lifetime, people often tell me that they have been desperately unhappy in their “long and happy” marriage because they were forced to stay in it for health or financial reasons or because of social pressure.  In these situations, even though the marriage certificate is there, the marriage did not last for a lifetime.  Who are we trying to fool?

Why do we have marriage vows?

The earliest marriage vows were not between two people.  The vows were between a person and the village that this person joined by means of a ceremony.  The person undertook to help watch over and protect the tribe and the village, in exchange for their protection.

During the Middle Ages marriage vows became a legal contract between families, and it was meant to protect the interests of the two families that were tied together by the union between a man and a woman.  There was not necessarily a religious aspect to this.

Later on the church got involved and insisted on having a public ceremony where a couple made promises to each other “until death do us part”.  Sadly there is so much religious pressure on many marriages that those words become the sentence people have to live with – mostly emotional death, sometimes physical death.  If you are still trapped in a marriage that has technically ended long ago, you will know what I am talking about.

Someone said to me the other day that even though he is divorced, he still believes that a marriage should last “for ever”.  He said that when you get married, you do not decide whether you take the 10-year or the 15-year deal.

Of course you don’t, and even if you could, it would not make sense to choose any duration for the marriage in terms of time.  The marriage – that is the relationship, regardless of its legal status – will endure for as long as the couple teach each other what they undertook in their soul contracts which they entered before they were born.

The religious view on marriage vows has caused a lot of heart-ache, violence and emotional damage.  People are expected to buy into the fantasy that a relationship will last “for ever”.  When reality destroys the fantasy, the church and society heaps guilt onto the “guilty” parties for failing to live up to the fantasy.  When the relationship eventually ends – legally – too often the partners walk away with a sense of failure, rather than with a sense of achievement.  This sense of failure in fact keeps them in the relationship well past its sell-by date.

Do we achieve anything from a broken relationship?  Of course we do.  We just do not acknowledge our achievements.

To be continued

Click here to ensure your seat on the seminar planned for 3rd June 2010.

Love and Light

Elsabe

PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.

What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?

Skype ElsabeSmitUK

Twitter ElsabeSmit

LinkedIn Elsabe Smit