Coach Laura A

Learning to Love—in a Healthy Way

When I met my husband I was very young, naive, and inexperienced. Everything I knew about relationships I had learned from the CosmoGirl advice column, rom-coms, and my closest friends, who were just as confused as I was. Jane Austen and Nicholas Sparks inspired my countless fantasies of what my perfect love story would look like. My man was going to sweep me off my feet and dedicate the rest of his life to making me blissfully happy. I couldn’t wait!

As my relationship with an actual man unfolded, I began to feel jilted. He didn’t quite know how to make me happy, and neither of us really knew why. I just wished that he would be more ambitious, romantic, and sensitive; maybe then I’d be happy.

I also quickly realized that I had competition. During our early courtship, we worked together and it was obvious that I wasn’t the only woman who had fallen for his charms. I began struggling with jealousy and paranoia, constantly looking for evidence that he was doing something wrong behind my back.

Unconsciously, I adopted a new mantra that I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t pretty, funny, or exciting enough to hold his interest. This was the beginning of my long struggle with feeling inadequate.

Over the next several years, I continued to sharpen my detective skills. Everything he did was potential evidence that I wasn’t good enough. Despite our problems, I was very much in love, so immediately after graduating from college, we got married. I thought that getting married would finally get rid of that awful feeling that I wasn’t good enough.

Unfortunately, that feeling persisted, and my list of evidence grew. Year after year, I felt lonelier and lonelier. I would tell my husband that he made me feel unloved and unappreciated. Then when he failed to change, I would feel even worse because it was further evidence that he didn’t care. I desperately wanted him to change so that I could finally be happy.

I was eight months pregnant with our first child when I determined I had to do something. We were about to start a family and I wanted more than ever to feel secure and strong in my relationship. So I pulled out the book I had read so many times over the last two years, The Empowered Wife, and read it again.

But this time, I read it differently. I decided not to pick and choose which of the Six Intimacy Skills™ sounded good to me and dismiss the ones that sounded impossible.

For the first time, I was going to do them ALL, and I was going to do them like a champion.

The most important Intimacy Skill that I learned by far was how to truly self-care. Learning that only I was responsible for my own happiness changed everything. It was so freeing and exciting to realize I have a hand in my own experience. Self-care to me means doing what nourishes my soul, body, and mind and being actively grateful for all my blessings.

It also means NOT engaging in old patterns that cause me unnecessary pain. I was finally able to set my husband free from the heavy and impossible burden of making me happy.

The most difficult Skill for me was relinquishing control of the finances. I had a million reasons why I shouldn’t trust my husband with such an important part of our lives. But I wouldn’t know for sure until I tried, so I decided to experiment with this Skill for six months. He soared with his new responsibility. He paid off my student and car debts, we were able to move into our first home, and I was able to cut down to part-time work.

Had someone told me this before, I wouldn’t have believed it! Of course, I did not take back the finances.

My marriage has become a safe place for me to find love, laughter, and tenderness. Instead of being a detective for my husband’s shortcomings, I am now a detective for his merits.

I was so inspired by all of the beautiful changes in my life that I wanted nothing more than to share it with more women. I signed up for Relationship Coach Training and began a second, deeper transformation that I had not anticipated. Many blind spots were revealed to me as I discovered the hidden ways I was still holding on to control and fear.

I have become more compassionate and loving towards people I once found difficult to be around. I now practice the Skills with my young children by modeling and celebrating them when they use the Skills themselves. I want them to be empowered as they learn to navigate relationships with peers, teachers, and family members.

Perhaps the most important change that has come about for me during Coach Training is healing the very deep wound that I created so many years ago. I have finally flipped my old story that I am not good enough. I now know that I am magnetic.

I have finally learned to love myself and, in doing so, can now fully love my husband and everyone else important to me.

I have learned that to truly love someone is to accept them fully, just as they are, without trying to change ANYTHING about them. I’ve learned that I have the power to create my own experience by choosing what I want to focus on. And I now know that no outside source, not even my husband, can make me happy, heal my wounds, or confirm my value as a woman.

My goal is to bring these Skills to as many women as possible so that they can step into their own light and shine it on everyone around them.