
I don’t want a “good relationship,” as many relationship coaches would tell me to get…. I want a fantastic, outrageous, over-the-top connected soulmate-earthmate relationship. Why would I settle in my romantic partnership? I haven’t settled in the past. I didn’t get a “day” job when I got divorced as other people thought I should. I didn’t settle by giving up on my dreams to make my coaching practice full time and be able to support myself and my children in comfort. I didn’t settle when I wanted a way to heal my body after trauma (that search led me to EFT but it took 12 years to find it). I didn’t settle when I felt trapped living in urban sprawl and knew I wanted to live on a piece of “heaven on earth” island in the Pacific Northwest.
I believe one of the reasons why people settle is simply that they haven’t seen another model. My new clients tell me this all the time. Some of them have never been in that kind of relationship, they’ve never seen any of their friends in one, and they never saw that level of love and affection from their own parents. Knowing what that feels like and helping my clients attract this has been my passion for the last eight years and so I decided to write this blog on what it’s like and what its not like, to be with the “one,” according to me – the relationship coach contrarian.

Alina Frank and Dr. Craig Weiner – partners, lovers, best friends, earthmates, soulmates
Most relationship coaches will tell you it’s about compatibility. Not so say I. My husband loves to attend community civic functions but I don’t. He likes to be outside when it’s cold, not me. If he likes to scuba dive and I like to fly-fish, does that really make or break a relationship? I am here to tell you that there is no truth to this one.
Relationship coaches would like you to believe in complicated formulas of acting, behaving, and speaking in order to maintain or achieve relationship nirvana. That is bunk! The hallmark of the kind of relationship I am talking about is that it’s E-A-S-Y! That’s right- it’s like rolling off a log. It’s one of the ways you know you are in this kind of “I won’t settle for anything but great” partnership.
Relationship coaches would tell you to work on yourself because you will attract at the level you are, as if somehow personal growth or spiritual elevation is going to make you just right for someone else. I’ve heard it said all kinds of ways but the most common is that you attract what you are and as a result you’d be attracting someone below par if you somehow are flawed and messed up. No way! Another telltale sign of being with “the one” is that the person opens up and facilitates all manner of healing for you. This happened to my husband and I when we first met in such a rapid fashion that we wept for joy when we noticed all the healing that was taking place on a regular basis.
It’s better to be alone than to live with someone who does not feed every part of your being. Like I tell my clients, “Live your life, enjoy yourself, go out with your friends, do what you love to do, because it won’t be long until your partner magically appears, as if hearing your call through the ethers.”