Soul Mates:
The art of creating the healthy, loving relationship you’ve always dreamed of – and keeping the flame alive.

By Evelyn K. Rice

The journey to a Sacred Relationship is an exhilarating, lifelong adventure in which you awaken to the person you are and the joy that life has to offer. Soul Mates are partners at the deepest levels, infusing one another's existence with passion, understanding, and honesty.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Yet so many people settle for less. Those who have given up hope of ever finding Soul Mates are the most tragic figures I encounter in my work.

I've heard a lot of sad excuses. "I'm too old to find someone" is a common one. Others lament, "I had a Soul Mate (as if there is only one!), but I destroyed what could have been a wonderful relationship through my own ignorance." Perhaps the most common one I hear is, "I missed my Soul Mate because I wasn't ready and now they're married to someone else."

Such hopelessness is totally unfounded! People who have resigned themselves to their "fate" need to wake up to the fact that the universe is full of potential Soul Mates. Your only limitation is a closed mind. Open it to the great gifts that are in store for you.

I'm not saying this it will be easy. Soul Mate relationships don't just happen. They require a commitment to growth, to reality, and to facing some hard truths. You will need to make conscious choices and take one hundred percent responsibility for your history and your life.

In a Sacred Relationship, you are not dependent on the other person to "make" you feel one way or another or to solve your problems. Instead, your partner is a gift who will help you grow and gain a greater understanding of yourself.

One of the myths about Soul Mates is "If I find my Soul Mate, all my relationship challenges will dissolve." If you're looking for a relationship that will solve all your problems, you're inevitably going to be disappointed. The Sacred Relationship is not about perfection. No one is perfect.

This myth of the perfect relationship has contributed to many a person's frustration and loss of hope in relationships. Even if we have a potentially great relationship that we feel was destined to be, when we don't understand the physical, mental, and emotional components that drive us, we are like ships without rudders or airplanes without navigators. We can unwittingly sabotage a potentially healthy and satisfying Soul Mate relationship.

If we are to achieve and maintain a living connection with our intimate partner, it is imperative that we free ourselves from wishful, unrealistic fantasies. We can take the personal blinders from our eyes and develop the full range of our abilities, sensitivities, powers, and depths as human beings. Taking off those blinders reveals our potential and also our fears and weaknesses. Overcoming these fears and weaknesses is hard work. It requires a strong commitment.

Like the Sacred Relationship itself, commitment doesn't just happen. The source of commitment is courage. Without courage, we are likely to turn away from our fears. By ignoring the disappointments, the anger, and the hurt that are in our past, we allow them to dictate and destroy our relationships. We allow them to keep us from our Soul Mates.

Courage allows us to make the commitment. The commitment allows us to make conscious choices. The conscious choices allow us to overcome the problems that have sabotaged past relationships. Together, they can move us to take the step the frightening, thrilling step to seek out and attract a Sacred Relationship.

Any single step can open the door to unexpected and phenomenal opportunities. We can change our personal visions so that we can see life working for us rather than against us. It has been said that the only thing that can limit the fulfillment of our desires is our own lack of understanding and our failure to go forward in truth.

My moment of truth, and much of the inspiration for writing the Finding Your Soul Mate Handbook, came several years ago through an amazing encounter at the Madison, Wisconsin, airport. A fellow passenger on my flight to Chicago, a man named Jerry whom I never saw again, shared with me knowledge that would forever change my life.

I have often reflected on what this remarkable man said about choices. At the time, I had a tough choice to make at home ending my relationship with a man I dearly loved but who clearly wasn't the right person for me. The two years we had been together required so much effort and created such intensive emotional highs and lows, I felt drained all the time.

Jerry told me about the three foundational keys of a Soul Mate relationship, saying, What you do with this information is your choice. If you use it, it will serve you well. The words gave me the courage to never again settle for anything less, to embark on an exciting journey of understanding what love I really about.

Where Am I Going?

Everyone needs dreams and goals to live life fully. If you don’t know where you want to go, you may end up in places and with people not of your own choosing.

The first foundational key for creating or drawing a Soul Mate relationship into your life is Shared Reality. What we mean by this is an understanding that when two people have goals and values that align with each other, they increase their chances for experiencing a reality of support and trust.

To begin creating the space for Shared Reality with a potential partner, you first need to ask yourself the question: "What is my individual purpose?" When you are really clear about what you want, it helps you move toward those desires. Ask yourself, "If I only had six months to live, what impact would I want my life to have made for myself and others?"

Creating the Ideal Mate

It's important to specify exactly what you desire in a mate all of the physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual qualities you dream about and admire. So the next step is to make a list. Write everything down, being as complete as possible -- height, weight, physique, temperament, attitude toward life, personality, etc.

This list will help you see whether a potential mate is compatible to your life’s goals, values, and dreams. This exercise also helps you clarify exactly what you think is important in a relationship. It ensures that you are living your life by choice, not chance, and that you are spending your time wisely and in a way that draws you closer to your desires.

Opportunities are not as rare as your ability to see them. They are all around us, but if we are not focused on those things we truly desire or if we don't know what we specifically want, we may be missing opportunities for growth.

Healing Old Wounds

Shared Communications, the second foundational key, entails understanding who you are, who your potential partner is, and what the two of you bring to the table in the arena of relationship patterns and interactions.

Relationship belief systems are thoughts and ideas about how the world should be. Our strongest relationship beliefs are created in the first six years of our lives, and they motivate us thereafter on an unconscious level. Unhealthy beliefs and patterns often wind up unconsciously sabotaging a rewarding relationship.

I know this from personal experience. My dad left the family when I was five years old. He was a cold and distant father, and he was also my first exposure to what love was. I devoutly believed he wouldn’t have left if I had been a better little girl.

As my life progressed, I became a workaholic, unconsciously trying to prove I was a good person deserving of love. I was attracted to emotionally unavailable men, men like my father! It took thirty years of struggle and pain before I discovered the truth that the answers lay within my hidden belief systems and understanding my past history.

Developing Healthy Strategies

How can you determine what your relationship beliefs are? You can begin by looking at what's around you. Your external world is a reflection of how you see yourself and what you believe you deserve or don't deserve.

What you have created is what you are willing to be in your life. Relationships show us where we need to heal and do inner work. Pain is the signal that something needs to be healed. Yet when pain arises in relationships, it is easy to move into resistance, withdrawal, avoidance, cover-up, and denial, indulging in worry and obsessiveness. These patterns are based on fear and contribute to repeating wounded patterns from the past. In relationships, we form certain strategies that dictate how we interact with others.

Every relationship is perfectly designed to give you what you want, based on your belief systems. If you desire to improve your relationships, you must first identify the invisible barriers hidden in your belief systems. By recognizing unhealthy beliefs, you can begin healing wounds from the past and be more present in the moment. You can realign your beliefs about yourself to who you want to be today. A statement I often hear is, "I'll believe it when I see it." The truth is, "You'll see it when you believe it."

Working with belief systems and healing inner wounds is a process of discovery. Life is a series of moments that reveal who we are internally. When we take time to be responsible for our experiences in relationships, we can begin the healing process.

When I started my own conscious relationship healing process, I soon discovered it was important to love myself into change, rather than judging and self-criticizing what I wasn't. Self-blame and judgment are prescriptions for suffering.

As I found myself falling back into old patterns, rather than criticizing my inadequateness I began acknowledging what I had misjudged about the situation. I identified the lesson I had learned and set a goal defining what I would do the next time the pattern or event occurred.

In Sacred Relationships, both partners are aware of how unhealthy beliefs and unhealed psychological wounds can damage or destroy a potentially good relationship. They consciously act as mirrors to see the areas within that need healed, beginning the process of creating a sacred space for acceptance, truth, honesty, and growth.

True Love or Not?

If you find yourself in a relationship with someone you might love but at the same time don't actually like the warning bells should be going off. Liking and feeling a kinship with your partner Affinity, the third foundational key is an absolute given in a Sacred Relationship.

Relationships go through phases, and we're not always able to see a person clearly, especially at the beginning. In the Expansion Phase (the first phase, also called the romantic phase), a chemical reaction is in the driver's seat.

When you're eager to meet a special someone, your unconscious mind automatically turns into a matchmaker. At parties, the office, even on vacations, it constantly sizes up people who might match your belief systems about love. The unconscious mind is looking for someone who will help you heal wounds from the past.

In this first phase of the relationship, people tend to experience strong attraction, bliss, magnetism, hope, and ecstasy. It is also the stage where our judgment can be most distorted, and when we tend to ignore red flags and potential problems.

I can only say, watch out! The experience is created by the release of a natural endorphin called PEA. This attraction chemical is nature's way of bringing individuals together, and it doesn't last. When PEA wears off, you begin to see the other person on a more realistic level.

Surviving Bumps in the Road

When the relationship enters the Contraction Phase, unhealthy patterns and fears from the past begin to emerge. This is typically a time of disillusionment, frustration, power struggles, and puzzlement. The ease in which you move through this phase depends upon your willingness to communicate effectively, resolve conflict in a healthy way, and openly acknowledge the fears and unhealthy interactions you bring to the relationship.

By being aware of the physical dynamics occurring in relationships, such as the effects of PEA, unconscious belief systems, and old emotional patterns, you are more able to choose healthy interaction patterns with others.

In Re-Expansion, the third phase of the relationship, partners begin to consciously apply previously learned relationship skills. Both are able to move forward in healing their wounds. Healthy interactions replace outdated patterns, and the relationship becomes a stable and safe place for continued growth and exploration.

Actualized Love, the fourth phase, is another name for Soul Mate love. It brings feelings of harmony, joy, and compassion, and is a catalyst for creativity. Is everything always perfect forever and ever? No, of course not. But when storm clouds start to gather, Soul Mate partners don't let anger blind them to their true feelings of deep affection. They nurture each other through thick and thin.

Sacred Relationships are one path to a joyful way of living.  It will take some work, it will take honesty, it will take perseverance. And it is worth it!