I wanted to start this blog with a little apology, and a gratitude, to all of you, for your endurance and support.
Those of you who read my blog, or get my newsletter, may at times, need to endure my mass marketing and promotions, of my Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop, and I bet it could be a bit of an annoyance.. I am grateful and truly appreciate your patience, your support, and the vote of confidence.
Thanks and gratitude for referring clients, friends, colleagues, and family to our workshops, and coming yourselves!! Thanks to ALL OF YOU, our workshops are Sold Out!! (every time).
I am always inspired, and fascinated, as I help couples navigate and figure out this landscape of relationship. Our workshop last week, May 5-6, here in Nevada City, was another amazing, heart opening, life changing weekend.
Here are few of the testimonials we got. It never ceases to amaze me how shift and change and 
breakthroughs happen in this magical weekend:
“I went to this Hold Me Tight EFT workshop this past weekend with Dalia Anderman and Owen Marcus and was blown away by the experience and the results. I want to share the knowledge that something like this exists which I think every couple could benefit from! I was recommended this by another friend who shared with me that every couple should do this workshop and it would prevent a lot of heartache and problems.”
“My relationship now is stronger than ever and I feel so filled up with love, hope, joy and gratefulness. If you are motivated to work on your relationship I suggest trying to get in now as the next workshop is not until Fall 2018, only 12 couples can attend, and it sells out. Thank you Dalia and Owen, I am eternally grateful.”
“My husband & I just returned from the HMT workshop. Dalia & Owen definitely have the incredible (secret) gift in strengthening relationships from all ages & stages. My husband & I grew more this weekend than we have in 20 years of marriage. It’s like couples therapy on steroids. My husband was able learn about & experience the life changing benefits of being vulnerable. We discovered what negative pattern(s) we get into that keep us disconnected & trigger our “issues” rather than help move us towards growth, healing & connection. They make it easy to find & understand our “raw spots” without shame or judgement. Thank you Dalia & Owen for your labor of love & dedication to this important life changing work!”
“Dalia and Owen are miracle workers. They know how to drop into the deepest places with us, while keeping us feeling safe and secure to do so. Something that can be very hard to do on our own. They helped us realize that the difficult dynamics we have is common, and that by turning into the hard stuff, shedding our fears of opening up, we can overcome any conflict through an emotional connection that supersede the issues at hand.”
Our next Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop, is October 13-14, 2018.
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There is one question that keeps showing up for all of us. It sure has been on my mind, and in my heart, ever since my first ‘falling in loves’ when I was a teenager, and throughout my adult life… ‘ARE YOU THE ONE’? ‘How would I know that you are the one’.
In my psychotherapy practice, I hold space for exploring this question, as my clients, young and not so young, fall in love, fall out of love, come together, break apart, and come together again, and again. As we unpack those heart aches, and as we explore the difficulties of relationships, we keep inquiring, ‘Are you the ONE’… We wonder about soul-mates and serendipity, and fate, we make lists of what we wish for, we cross off lists, and we keep wondering, ‘are you the one?’..
I found a great article in a blog in the sex lubricant Astroglide online magazine: 
15 Soulmate Signs: How to Know When You’ve Met the One
“When you’re young, it’s easy to believe that life will be like a Disney movie: you’ll meet your soulmate, fall in love at first sight, and — after 40 or so minutes of mild conflict and maybe a few talking animals — you’ll live happily ever after. Yet many of us find ourselves giving up hope when our “happily ever after” doesn’t appear on schedule. And in a dating world where Tinder is king, finding a true soulmate can start to feel like nothing more than a fairy tale.”
The article mentions questions to explore and ask yourself when you meet a new love. Do you have shared and common interests and compatibility? Do you have a friendship? Do you share respect? Do you understanding each other emotional languages? Great questions to ponder.
Relationship advise expert columnist April Masini, write about good indicators for the ‘right one’:
(Taken from: the insider article: 11 surefire signs that you’ve found ‘the one’)
In an article ‘How do you know you found the one‘, in MindBodyGreen Margaret Paul PhD, writes:
“In order to move ahead with a relationship, you need to make sure that you accept them exactly as they are—exactly as they are. You need to be able to fully love the lovable aspects of them and fully accept the wounded aspects of them—the aspects you don’t like. If you can’t tolerate and fully accept the aspects of your partner that you don’t find lovable—such as drinking, smoking, eating habits, anger or withdrawal, workaholism, unreliability, messiness, lateness, porn addiction, sexual demands, sexual disinterest, hygiene, anger, rage, people-pleasing, resistance, selfishness, moodiness, emotional unavailability, neediness, criticalness and so on—then this person is not the right partner for you.”
Dating sites can be alluring too, but also confusing. They promise that they can help you find your match.
They have algorithms and equations and good questions, and they have ‘trade secrets’, to help you navigate through the thousands of ‘ones’, that are there, for the same reason.
I have to admit that dating on line is hard, intimidating and hard work, full with vulnerability, disappointments, and heart aches. But it also has the great advantage of being able to read people profiles and stories and sort out through pics, interests, likes and dislikes, compatibility, distance, age, vision, and so on.
But will that be the determining factors? what about that mystical illusive factor we call LOVE, chemistry, and that ‘one secret ingredient’, that ignite the heart with fire, that sends us questioning, yet again, ‘are you the one’?
In my work and studies I have done with Sue Johnson’s Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) ,I have come to understand relationships in a new way. In her work and research Sue Johnson has discovered a new meaning to love. It is about feeling securely attached and connected, and perhaps, we can never feel we found the ONE, if we are experiencing the trauma of disconnection.
The focus of Emotional Focused therapy (EFT), is to help partners understand more clearly each other’s deepest traumas and emotions. Feelings are often hidden, unexpressed or misunderstood. Our relationships can be a cause of stress and pain or a source of comfort and joy. In EFT, we help couples learn how to deal with their feelings together, reach towards each other, and be responsive in more loving and positive ways.
In recent years I came across the work of Brené Brown, who teach us about vulnerability and how essential it is to love, relationship and connection.
In my blog about vulnerability, I wrote how we fear that if we show our vulnerability, share our deep real emotions, and talk about our hurts and needs, we will be looked at as weak, we will be dismissed or ridiculed, or worst of all, we will be abandoned and rejected by the person we turned to. On the contrary, the connection that comes once we are willing to be seen by our partners, creates a powerful lasting connection.
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.”
“Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It’s the magic sauce.” ~ Brené Brown
As a therapist and couples counselor over many years, I wonder at times, is finding the ONE, may be a myth? Having been in many relationship myself, long and short term, at various points in my life, I have learned lessons and got to know myself through them. I have tried to explore that longing to be known by that ONE special person.
Maybe we need to find the courage to love in ourselves. As Rumi tells us:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”― Rumi
Or is it more about accepting the relationship we have, not trying and hoping to change our partners, but learning how to love them. Maybe it is not so much about wondering if ‘you are the one‘, but perhaps diving deeper into the unexplored possibility of our connection.
As we all navigate this mysterious and wonder-full labyrinth of relationship, take care of your self and of each other. We are all in this together,
Love,
