There is more to life than we ever choose to experience

Chris and I knew that there had to be more to life, and in our own somewhat skewed way we were experiencing the first shift in our consciousness and awareness. We were reading books together, that included Bible teachings, Meditate on this books, and we experimented with going to specific churches. We read Neale Donald Walsch, Brandon Bays, William P Young, Selwyn Hughes, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Oriah Mountain Dreamer to name but a few.

Talk about having somebody’s number!

I introduced Chris to Richard Higgins. I was sure that Chris would be fascinated by numerology, but given how esoteric numerology is, I knew that Chris’ “clinical analytic and rational” approach would kick in first. We arrived at Richards’s rooms, and Richard was dressed in a flowing purple cotton shirt with his long white hair in a ponytail. We started the session and Chris was sitting back, arms folded, space closed looking at Richard in a rather scornful way. Richard could sense this, so he asked Chris whether he’d be prepared to grant him five minutes to provide him with some insights. Chris gave Richard his date of birth and in under five minutes, Richard had exposed Chris’ most significant pain points, explained why they existed, put them in to context in terms of his life, and made him aware of the price he would pay going forward if these were not addressed. Richard spent about two hours going over our chart with us too, and from being a scornful client, Chris became an open and receptive student.

When Richard looked at our combined numerology chart he said that the 5 at the top implied that it would be a good idea for us to have a lot of movement and travel in our relationship as 5 is all about kinetic energy and not being bogged down or confined. Given this – can you now imagine what we went through when we were literally “confined” to the tiny room we lived in during from August 2013 to February 2015?

Next were the two 1’s at the bottom of the triangle, 1 in the family and 1 in the world / career if you will. 1 and 8’s he taught are all about beginnings and endings and that’s when he became very intense. “If you’re prepared to go through hell then there’s something very special on the other side for the two of you but given the pair of 1’s and 8’s the big question here is – will you make it, will you go the distance or will you fold, as my sense is you’re going to have everything plus the kitchen sink thrown at you?” he said.

Neither of us had an inkling of what Richard was alluding to back then – only he knew because only he could see it – but what he saw, that which caused him to ask us if we had the guts for this ride, must have been the devastating chain of events whose impact we’ve successfully weathered the past 5 years. He’s a very special man Richard Higgins – we love him to bits.

We knew exactly what we didn’t want

We were very clear at that time on what we didn’t want, we didn’t want another failed relationship and we didn’t want to repeat the habits of our past. Now, you have read about my familial past and my relationships so you have a pretty good idea of what I didn’t want. Chris had been married twice before, with some failed relationships too and he openly admits that he was a bit of a player with an eye for beautiful women.

We slipped into a routine of sorts over the next few months. Chris was under a huge amount of pressure in his job. The world economy was in a melt down and the banks were letting people go and demoting roles all over. Keeping his position, keeping his pose and performing to his highest ability, was exhausting.

Our home was complicated, as were my business relationships too. The dance and lifestyle business was still haemorrhaging money and we were embarking on a plan to stem the flow and turn it into a more viable long term business for us. The emotional connection between me and the remaining partner in the business still complicated things and Chris had this to contend with too. My sons were not making it easy for me either. There was still a lot of money going in their direction with very little return. Our stress levels were always running in the red zone, and talk about building a relationship and life on a foundation of quick sand. On the whole our relationship was going well though. Chris and I had a deep connection to each other and I can only believe that it was the connection and intermittent traveling that kept us going.

The cracks were beginning to show

In December 2009 we holidayed in Malawi, at Lake Malawi with my business partner and her husband. Her parents had a house there, and although we were in beautiful surroundings I could see some cracks that I couldn’t put my finger on. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my business partner and her husband had started to run interference in our relationship.

We returned from holiday just before New Year’s Eve and decided to celebrate the New Year at a hotel nearby our home. We were seeing my mother and Chris’s parents on New Year’s Day to set our wedding date, and although Chris had asked me to marry him previously at St Paul’s, this time we had simply set the date. On New Year’s Eve, whilst sitting next to me in the noisy hotel ballroom, he proposed to me by text message. My fingers moved over the keyboard, yes, yes, yes!

Running the family gauntlet

This time we were getting married the way we wanted to, we were getting married in the Leadwood Clearing at Thornybush Game Reserve with our closest family and a few friends. We were going to celebrate with other friends and family at a lunch in April so that we could share our happiness with all those dear to us. I was so excited for my big day. Leading up to our wedding the familial cracks were beginning to show again. My sons and Chris didn’t see eye to eye for many reasons that seemed legitimate to all three of them. At that time my boys had casual jobs in the retail and restaurant industries, it was a no work, no pay environment. My eldest son was engaged, and my younger son had a long term girlfriend. I decided that I would ask them to attend our wedding lunch and not the wedding service at Thornybush. I did this for emotional and financial reasons. Emotionally, I wanted to limit the potential family discord and fallout that could permeate in the close quarters of an exclusive lodge, coupled with alcohol and emotions. Financially, it wasn’t the cost of having them at the lodge, although it would mean an extra 4 adults per night, it was that I would have to cover all their extras at the lodge, their fuel costs up to the lodge and cover their loss of pay, it simply didn’t make sense.

My mother behaved badly

I did my absolute best to include everyone in one way or another, but my mother’s discontented and controlling nature was starting to show through. The day before the wedding on her arrival at Thornybush, she created such a huge scene that Chris had to intervene, and he threatened to send her home. It was the end of any form of civility towards Chris by my mother, and the beginning of a highly cunning game of interference by my mother, my business partner and her husband.

My mother continued her bad behaviour after the wedding, she stirred the pot between my sons and Chris and me, although I only found this out much, much later. Barely ten minutes before we had to leave for our wedding lunch both my sons decided they were not coming, a real knife in the back, and once again a financial niggle between Chris and I as they had been catered for anyway.

The running interference

One of the most shocking discoveries I was to ever make was to understand the level to which certain people inside my business were going to, to stir trouble between Chris and me. When you’re both new to a relationship and in your forties, you will both be bringing a “tonne of baggage” into the relationship and so carelessly made statements, or worse still, statements made with the purposeful intent to distract and to upset the apple cart, will have an enormous impact on the relationship.

Chris was trying to find his feet around everyone in my company, which was my social circle too, and given his financial background and natural attention to detail, you can only imagine the distress and anger he experienced when casually asked whether he knew if my taxes were in order and fully paid up? Another carcinogenic throw-away line was how much of a spendthrift I was and how much money I must be wasting on unnecessary items.

Instead of dealing this immediately with me, he chose to say nothing as he understood the size of the potential personal and professional fall-out which would happen if he were to address this with me. That said, don’t for one moment think the “wondering” went away; quite the contrary, the seeds had been planted, they had taken root and were growing rapidly in to a huge weed in his mind – a weed which painted me as being financially irresponsible. When the explosion came and it had to – remember, weeds like this will grow and grow and take over your entire mind until you reach the point where you finally have to rid yourself of them because of the extreme damage they’re causing – it was of epic proportions. Chris threatened to walk out on me as he’d experienced financial distress before at the hands of his second wife and it would be a dark day in hell before he allowed that to happen again he told me.

I share this with you so that you and everyone reading this article can understand what horrific damage people do to people – often simply because they’re wanting to keep control and the fastest and easiest way to keep control is to intentionally create rifts between people as that keeps them anxious, distressed, exhausted and therefore unable to be fully aware of what the other persons are up to. Such acts are always underpinning a bigger agenda – whether it be around money or power or whatever – but know this – when someone close to you behaves in this way, they have something to hide because they’re up to no good.

Chris did not only have this thrown at him in terms of my money management but there were also not-so-subtle inferences made that he should aware of my past and the tremendous damage I had caused lovers (An Old Man’s Sweetheart article refers) and then, most astonishing of all, he was instructed to sell his car and demand that I buy him a much more expensive one. Can you make any sense of this behaviour because back then, I surely couldn’t? One moment those close to me in my business are sprouting to Chris how bad I am with money and the next they’re encouraging him to bully me in to buying him a much more expensive car!

Chris was stressed to capacity, and miserable. We were fighting fires on so many fronts that we were not generally having any fun or enjoying our marriage. We did manage to escape for long weekends here and there, and we snatched a few moments of togetherness when we could. Thankfully and regardless of what else was happening it was always enough to keep us together.

All of this interference was causing a huge rift between Chris and me. They were tearing a huge hole in what was a new and fragile relationship. Things came to a head in late July when my business partner’s husband wanted Chris to go on a Range Rover day with him. I wasn’t too keen as Chris was so stressed out at work at this time, that I felt our weekends were sacrosanct. Our weekends ran so that Friday evenings I would make sure the house was calm, my daughter would usually go out with friends and arrange a sleep over, or she would watch TV. I would make dinner for us, and let Chris unwind in the formal lounge. We would have a glass of wine and talk the evening away. Saturday mornings he would go to the gym and start to become human again by lunch time. I would love this time as we would have until around lunch time Sunday, when I could see the stress seeping back in, as Monday was edging closer. My business partners’ husband was extremely persistent and I just told him to ask Chris if he wanted to go. A short while later all hell broke loose. Chris was shouting at me over the phone and I had no idea what was going on. I had to wait until that evening to try and work out what had happened. Whilst on the phone my business partner’s husband told Chris that I had said he could go. Chris was livid, as why did we all think that he didn’t have a say in the matter?

Chris and I don’t fight, I don’t mean that we don’t disagree, but we don’t like to fight. Losing my temper upsets me terribly. This is a throwback to my childhood, I had, had to learn how to control my temper around my mother and as a result I prefer to talk things through. When we got home that night he spelled it all out, the manipulation, the innuendo about me, my past, my abilities or lack of them, and also how the bank was trying to demote his position again.

We talked, and I must say, when confronted with issues like this, talk, talk, talk and when you’re not talking, listen in order to understand, not to respond. Do this and you’ll quickly know what the root cause of the distress between the two if you is, and if the source of this is people close to you, then be brave and be bold and clinically exit them from your lives as simply put, they’re totally toxic. Repairing the damage caused by this interference took a very long time and was a very difficult thing to do, but we did and though such backstabbing disgusts me, what it did was teach us a hugely important lesson around openness, honesty, transparency and immediately dealing something which causes either of you any form of distress.

Resort to default strategy and save the relationship

This was just before my birthday and I encouraged Chris to leave the bank, and to set up in business with me. I knew that we would work amazingly well together and he agreed. I had been shaken by these latest revelations and was feeling unsettled. We went away to the coast for my birthday and I could feel that all wasn’t completely ok after the fight. I was trying to make sense of what I at that time, felt was betrayal from my mother, my business partner and her husband, so I put my feeling of uncertainty down to that.

There are no words

There are possibly only two occasions in my life where I have been completely speechless and one of these occasions was the 21^st October 2010, five months to the day that we were married. I had been invited as a guest of my corporate labour and commercial lawyers to attend an international test match. Our National Team Captain, John Smit, would be playing his 100^th test and it was to be a big match. Chris had been to the gym, and when he arrived home, came upstairs, put his things down on the dressing table, kissed me hello and went downstairs all whilst I was blow drying my hair. I was just finishing my hair when Chris’ phone vibrated, a message had come through, and I am sure that the world stopped rotating on its axis for a moment. I am not that girl who checks her man’s phone. I had never picked up someone else’s phone and checked the call and message log, but that day I did, and my world changed for ever.

From the content of the message it was clear that Chris was having an affair. For the second time in my life I felt that I was about to lose the only thing that I had wanted for myself. The emotions that washed over me were a kaleidoscope of feelings. I remember walking downstairs and confronting him while he was putting water in to the fountain. I remember asking him four excruciating questions that day.

I asked him who she was. I asked him to confirm they were sleeping together. I asked him if he wanted and divorce, and I asked him if he loved me. He gave me her name, he confirmed that they had been sleeping together, he said he didn’t want a divorce, and he said that he loved me. I don’t know how, but I knew that I believed his answers, all of them. I also knew that I had to leave at that moment or all my emotions would surface and as I was expected at that event. I also knew that my mother and business partner would be there, so to would my hosts all of whom knew me very well. I knew that I was going to have to put on an Oscar winning performance so that they wouldn’t pry. I have no idea if they guessed that there was something wrong or not, as the rest of the day is a blur. I didn’t remember any details of the match as I was stunned by the morning’s events.

The Price to Pay

You have read in, An Old Man’s Sweetheart that there is always a price to pay for whatever you do in life. No matter how you try and justify your actions, someday, somehow, you will pay. Karma, the Universe, Spirit, and God, whatever you want to call it will always balance the scales. I don’t think that you are always initially aware of what the payback you are experiencing was for, but in my case, right in that moment I knew.

All the signs were in place for a cataclysmic storm, and I didn’t see them clearly at all. In hindsight, I am glad I didn’t because I might have walked away right then, I might had decided to cut my losses and divorce Chris, and that would have been my greatest loss of all.

It was an extremely complex situation, in that she worked at the same bank that Chris did. Not in the same department, but in the same building. To complicate things she was the sister of the partner of one of my most important clients and advisors, and she had told him over the weekend about the affair. Getting him to not share this with my business partner, her husband and my mother was a difficult ask. He didn’t have the back ground of their interference, he really cared about me and he believed that they cared too. To the best of my knowledge he never knowingly spilt the beans.

Chris was convinced I was going to ask him to leave. He shared his experiences of the past few months, not to justify his behaviour at all, just simply to put it all on the table and give me his perspective of things. He had been feeling so miserable and trapped. The interference from my mother, business partner and her husband was exhausting. He felt that he had not been able to tell me about what they were doing as my relationship with all of them went back years and years. He wasn’t sure if I would believe him. The drama around my dance and lifestyle business and exiting the partner, as well as the ongoing saga around my sons, had made him feel like he was living in a soap opera.

Listening to his side, was tough to do

It was hard to hear, Chris told me she was fun, she made him feel like being around her was a lot less complicated than being around me, and she was his port in the storm of our life. Previously in all of Chris’ relationships, if the going got tough or complicated, then he got going on to the next relationship. This was his strategy, it was a huge admission on his part. We spent time probing our behaviours, the why, why did he need her or anyone other than me to that extent? Chris was fully committed and he told me the truth, somewhat brutally in some ways. She was gorgeous, she had a hot, hot body, and that was never me. It hurt, but I wanted to know. He genuinely wanted us to stay together and so did I. We agreed that therapy wasn’t going to be an option. Chris had already resigned from the bank before I found out, so the temptation was going to be removed to the larger extent though.

We started our journey of change and discovery in earnest

Throughout our journey of discovery we found out many things about ourselves and about each other. We went on an intensive Life Coaching course, not as one of the attendees put it “to help other people” but to help ourselves. The material we covered and the revelations and aha moments we had about our lives set the course for our continued learning. We went on to do a Master Coach accreditation in Life, Business, Relationship, NLP, Time Paradigm Technique and Stress Coaching, and Hypnotherapy. We studied Transpersonal Numerology with Richard Higgins, co-author of The Human Pin Code and spent many sessions with him going through our own individual and relationship charts until we knew them off by heart. We embarked on educating ourselves across so many modalities and disciplines of the mind, and this is what brought us to becoming involved with the Bob Proctor project almost a year later.

Keeping Up Appearances, Again

Throughout this time I had business obligations to carry out, which included annual travel to Paris and London, for business and leisure. Chris and I had to play, once again keeping up appearances, but this time with my business partner and her husband.

It’s difficult when there is a third person in your relationship

Along our road of intense introspection and our commitment to growth and change, there was one person of the three who wasn’t playing along. It was a difficult entanglement, even though Chris and I were working hard at change, it isn’t easy. Where there was third person in your relationship, who wasn’t playing to the same rules, buttons being pushed, even subtly, and default paradigms and operating systems would kick in, and old habits would return. How this affair had started, and others before we met, was via sexting. Casual conversations that would lead to flirting and so on. Although Chris was a fit, handsome, sexy man, he sometimes struggled terribly with a low self-esteem. If something triggered the low self-esteem he would literally reach for the phone, and even the most casual message, would start the behaviour over again.

She wasn’t going to go quietly either and within two or three months the sexting was in full force again, and once again I found out. They hadn’t physically seen each other, but it didn’t matter to me, I felt it was cheating all the same. I was at a loss as to what to do. Chris told her that we were staying together, but for her own reasons she couldn’t stop. I was furious and behaved very badly by screaming at her like a fish wife over the phone. It all stopped again and Chris carried on working on himself and our marriage. I was too and one of the hardest things for me was to not throw it in his face when I had a moment of insecurity. I let myself down a few times, over the next year as we worked through it all, and when I did, I could see the pain in his eyes because he was working so hard towards changing his behaviour.

Now I can imagine a few raised eyebrows here, but you see Chris’ relationship with me is none of my business, and my relationship with Chris is solely my business and none of his business. He had to play all in 100% and he was, whenever the old behaviours raised their ugly little heads he was the first to take responsibility for it. It is a very simple process to change your behaviour, but it certainly isn’t easy to do as it takes hard work and persistence. I love the saying “Do or Do Not, There is No Try.” I know for a fact that Chris wasn’t trying, as trying always has a failure option built in. He DID work on the change and sometimes when something got in the way, he DID NOT, but the minute he realised what was happening, he reaffirmed his commitment and started again. As a Relationship Coach, I knew what to look out for now I had studied Tony Robbins and Chloe Madanes’ Strategic Relationship Interventions, Gary Chapman’s Relationship Principals and Mort Fertel’s Marriage Fitness System. I was going to keep my side.

She just wouldn’t stop

Over the next year, she carried on contacting Chris intermittently, usually when she had been out with friends and had a little too much to drink. She wouldn’t stop the contact no matter how nicely I intervened, and in terms of the Laws of Cause and Effect, she was at effect. It was always someone else’s fault, Chris’ because he was supposed to leave me, and my fault, because I wouldn’t let him go. I am sharing this part with you for a few very good reasons. I was paying a very extreme price for once being the mistress to my older man. I had justified my behaviour seven ways from Sunday, and in truth I had no justification. I understood this now and I also understood where she was coming from. Whether Chris had told her or not that he was going to leave me, it was what she wanted to happen, and I know there were many times in my past that I had wanted that too. The need to feel that the married man is going to leave his wife serves a deep seated need in a Mistress. I felt a certain amount of empathy for her here. Chris had been involved with her before we married, so I knew that he wouldn’t be leaving me for her as he could have done it at any time and hadn’t.

If I wanted happiness and a great relationship with my husband, I had to genuinely want happiness for her, it was really tough sometimes but I worked on sending her positivity and not negativity.

Laying a new foundation

Chris and I were beginning to rebuild the foundation for our new marriage turning it into something very special, when the Bob Proctor project came to light. I share my behaviours around this in the business disappointment article. I was not faultless in any way in terms of my contribution towards the struggles in our marriage. My desperation fed all the wrong energies from the start, and I carried these into Bob’s tour and into saving our marriage. The bills were piling up and the money running out, and I was convinced that Chris would leave me for her. This was impacting on my health, my confidence, my ability to work and I was close to a nervous breakdown.

When the dust had settled after Bob’s departure back to Canada, Chris and I were left to pick up the pieces. We had decided to close all our other businesses as our various financial partners weren’t performing in their relative arenas and we couldn’t be left shouldering the responsibility anymore. I was sick to my stomach and Chris took me out to the lake at Waterlake Farm. This was where we were supposed to build our dream home with the profit from Bob’s tour to South Africa – instead we went on to lose this signature property in the end.

We were sitting next to the water and I couldn’t take it anymore. When we got together many would have said that I was the catch that I had more to offer. I owned my own business and earned a huge salary, I owned my own home, drove a good car, had good jewellery and nice clothes, I attended gala dinners and international sporting events and travelled and holidayed internationally too. Now this was all about to be gone, and I certainly wasn’t a catch anymore. Sitting watching the ripples of the water against the light breeze, Chris had told me she had emailed him and made contact again. I had to ask him if he was going to leave me, and he said no. That was a major turning point for me. I wrote to her that day, as a coach, not as a betrayed wife. I told her what she needed to do, and how to find a coach to help her get through this too. Chris and I were going to continue rebuilding our marriage and deliberately so.

We knew there was more to life than our past!

There Is More To Life Than This is all about learning to see challenges which test you to the core, as being on the way and not in the way. It also brings perception in to play. Your perception of things is how you see them and how you see them is your reality. So, if you want to change how you see things then you have to change how you perceive them. The way people view you and the way you present yourself is the impression you will leave behind. As you go about the business of carrying out your life people will make judgments about your appearance, personality and capabilities. If you don’t like the way your life is playing out you can always take charge of your own perception of reality. Remember, you are in control of your story so make it a good one.

Question:

What’s eating at you right now, occupying so much headspace that it’s causing you to lose all perspective, crippling your creativity your ability to focus on your dreams and goals, and, what if you were to change how you feel about all this from its being in the way, to its being on the way?

Exercise:

1. Think of an event which is troubling you right now. Write it down.
2. How is this event getting in the way of what you want to achieve?
3. What’s the price you’re paying for allowing this?
4. How much energy is this event sapping from you?
5. Do you want to continue to waste so much energy on this event?
6. How much of your own baggage are you projecting in to this event given how you perceive it?
7. What if you were to change your perception of this event from its being “in the way”, to its being “on the way”?
8. What thoughts just came to mind?
9. How does this make you feel?
10. Would reframing all this and how you think and feel about it (to change it from being “in the way”, to being “on the way”) allow you to move on?

My profound lesson:

What did all that I’ve written about in There Is More To Life Than This teach me? It taught me that I had one of two options and that I had to make a powerful perception-based choice which was, to allow what Chris has done to take me down, or to strengthen me – I chose the latter option as I’d learned that perception is projection and I needed to be very careful what I was about to project in to all this. Chris’ affair blew a huge hole in my world and when I look back at it now, even though I didn’t realise it when it happened, this kick in the teeth may have been the best thing in the world for me. If I’d decided to make him pay dearly for it, if I’d decided to see it as being in the way of our success, as opposed to being on the way to our success, the strife between us would have been so intense that he’d have left for sure and we’d not be together today. Said differently, I’ve always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and so I’ve got to have that drive and determination to overcome them en route to whatever it is that I want to accomplish – seeing them as being on the way gives them a whole different perspective and allows me to see them for what they are – events that happened, therefore it just is, and, it is what it is. The size of the fall-out would therefore be as big or small as I decided to make the event. The best decision I ever made was to not embrace this affair with the same negative energy that existed within it and around it, but to rather look to how this adversity could be turned in to a new opportunity for us to rebuild our very broken marriage.

To your success with love

Suzanne.