Arielle Ford - Turn Your Mate into Your Soulmate: A Practical Guide to Happily Ever After

For Claire Zammit

Thank you for sharing your ever-expanding

world of possibility, magic, and fun!

I am blessed to be showered with your love,

friendship, creativity, brilliance, and support.

Happily. Ever. After.

I believe these are the three most dangerous words for women in love. They imply the neatly tied-up-in-a-bow ending of a fairy-tale kingdom we were conditioned to believe exists. Real love couldnt be farther from those castles in the sky.

Even the smartest women fall into a love trance, thinking that now they have found, in their soulmate, the love of their life, that perfect elixir for all that might have gone wrong in their lives until then. During the at-last moment, women harbor the belief that men will naturally know how to make them happy, satisfied, and content. A love relationship with our soulmate is the perfect antidote to all that ails us. Or so we think.

Weve all heard that relationships take work, commitment, and occasional sleepless nights to strike a balance. Yet so many of us believe that real soulmate love will somehow be different, effortless, deserved. We fully expect that our rare, precious, and unimaginable soulmate love will conquer everything.

And then reality settles in. Sometimes it takes a year, or ten, or twenty, but at some point we find ourselves restlessor worse: angry, frustrated, disappointed, and ready to give up. We begin to wonder whether its time to head for divorce court. Our day-to-day reality does not match our dream of what soulmate love should reflect. Suddenly, we perceive that our Prince Charming, our once shiny knight, has turned into a rusty, stubborn barrier to happiness and fulfillment.

Even if you are blessed to be with someone who is physically, emotionally, and spiritually compatible with you, its likely that there are days when your mate annoys you and you wish things were different.

It wasnt predictable that I would be writing a book such as this. I was a first-time bride at the age of forty-four, a late bloomer in the love department. Heres what happened. One morning I woke up very early. Before I opened my eyes, my right arm stretched across the pale-blue sheets of my queen-size bed, seeking the soft fur of my soulmate cat, J.B. J.B. wasnt in his usual spot, and as my hand searched for him I became aware of the empty, vacant space in the bed. I was suddenly hit by two dark simultaneous thoughts: Why is my bed so empty? and Oh my God, I forgot to get married!

As I was lying there, I began to replay my life in my head, trying to wrap my mind around the reality that here I was, at age forty-three, still single. It didnt make any sense to me. I knew that I was relatively attractive, fit, successful, and fun and had a great life. And yet I was alone.

The plain truth of the matter was this. I had put most of my time and energy into building my business. I was highly ambitious, and when it came to success, the more I got, the more I wanted. I had studied and mastered a variety of techniques for manifesting and had used them to create a career that was exceeding all of my expectations.

One of my big manifesting wins resulted in the nearly instant creation of my first business, The Ford Group, a public-relations firm based in Beverly Hills, California. I had been working for a PR firm for three years and began having thoughts about launching my own company. A part of me didnt really believe it was possible, because I had neither the money nor the specific training to open a public-relations firm on my own. However, that didnt stop me. I began to imagine what it would feel like to wake up each morning excited to walk into an office with my name on the door. I tried to envision what it would feel like to be able to call the shots about which clients I worked with and the ways I would successfully garner impressive results for them. Each day I would sit quietly and feel these feelings, using my imagination to see and feel the potential of having my own business.

After I had been doing this process for ten days, I received a phone call from a former client, Mark, who said he and his business partner wanted to take me out to lunch. I had worked with them the previous year and landed them a ton of great media spots, including an interview on Good Morning America. I really wasnt sure why they wanted to meet me, but I was excited to find out. After we ordered our meal, they got straight to the point.

Mark said, Weve been talking about you, and we think that its time for you to strike out and start your own PR firm. We know how good you are, and we want to be your very first client.

Mark then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, handed me a check in the amount of $18,000, and said, As your first client, we are paying you our fee for one year of your services, in advance. How soon can you start?

Three weeks later I opened The Ford Group, which quickly became a success. Clients seemed to literally fall through my door without much effort on my part. My life was busy, fulfilling, and excitingexcept for my love life.

My love life up until that point had never been easy. Having grown up with two parents who didnt loveor even likeeach other, I didnt have any role models when it came to love relationships. Quite simply, my love life sucked.

I began to wonder if I could apply the prayers, rituals, and processes that brought me business success in order to manifest a soulmate. I decided to find out! I made a list of all the practices I had used in the past, including creating a very specific list of my desires, prayers of gratitude for having it all easily and effortlessly delivered, daily visioning practices, and affirmations. Within a year Brian and I met at a business meeting. On the day that we met, we knew. Everyone in the room with us knew. Three weeks later he proposed, and a year after that we had three weddings. As a late bloomer I figured I was entitled to celebrate our union as much as possible! That was eighteen years ago.

As an older bride, I unintentionally became the poster girl for single women over forty. Often these women would pull me aside and ask, How do I get a Brian? I would share all the details of my process with them, and then weeks or months later they would excitedly call or e-mail me that they too now had a soulmate. Eventually my formula became the subject of my books and workshops known as The Soulmate Secret, which has now worked for tens of thousands of men and women, of all ages, in forty countries.

Once I manifested and married my soulmate, Brian, I fully expected that I had somehow skipped over the relationships take work part of life, because I had the perfect guy. I really believed that our relationship was special and blessed.

Like many newlyweds, I was engulfed in a delicious, super feel-good experience, my brain flooded with dopamine, oxytocin, and other wonderful neurochemicals that come with being in love. I really thought wed be living on autopilot, happily floating through one delicious, romantic day after another.

Although I was certain that Brian was the perfect guy for me, and I believedand still believewe have a special relationship, I was wrong about the skipping over part. I came into the marriage with zero partnership skills and no working understanding of what it means to share your life with someone. I had never given it a moments thought.

As the reality of living life with Brian set in, I quickly realized that, since I was an entrepreneur and business owner, my major strength was being the boss. I discovered that this skill was the antithesis of whats necessary to grow and strengthen love. I hate to admit it, but I am not the most nurturing, giving person on the planet. My nature is to first think about whats in it for me. Brian is the opposite. He is one of the most loving, generous, nurturing people I have ever met. He is a true giver. But givers also have needs, desires, and childhood wounds that flare up.