Single in the Suburbs gets a bit of relationship coaching (From Your Local Guardian)

Single in the Suburbs gets a bit of relationship coaching

12:54pm Tuesday 14th June 2011 in Freetime

This week Alexis Thompson uncovers some home truths after a visit from a relationship coach.

A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a lifeline in my quest for love. The lifeline came in the form of happiness and relationship coach Paullette Schwartz, a local woman from Elmbridge who wanted to help me in my search for Mr Right.

Paullette told me that she wanted to get to the root cause of why I was struggling to meet someone special and suggested that perhaps my own insecurities and reservations were holding me back.

I agreed to meet her but I have to admit I was a little afraid. What if I found out things about me which I didn’t like? What if she discovered I had a whole load of issues, which no one, not even a shrink, could help me resolve and as a result I’d be single forever?

On meeting Paullette, her warm and friendly personality helped to put me at ease but I was still apprehensive.

She began by asking questions about my ex, Mr H.

“So I hear you’ve deleted Mr H from your Facebook. What have you done to celebrate this?” she asked.

I was confused; why would I celebrate deleting my ex from Facebook? I felt a mixture of sadness and relief when I saw his face disappear from my page but not joy.

“Perhaps you should treat yourself,” she continued. “Go out with friends, get a facial, anything you fancy.”

I don’t need many excuses to go out and treat myself so I nodded vigorously and told her this is exactly what I’ll do.

She then asked what I had learnt from my relationship with Mr H. I told her I had learnt lots but mainly never to get drunk in front of your boyfriend, scream abuse in his face, and then pull another man in front of him.

“I was immature back then”, I told her. “I played silly games and they backfired on me. I didn’t realise how much I could hurt someone with my childish, drunken antics.”

Paullette told me this was a form of attention seeking and I was doing it because I felt I was lacking the attention I needed in my relationship.

I’ve never been the type to crave attention but perhaps she had a point - during my relationship with Mr H I did feel very neglected.

Next she moved on to the reasons why I was struggling to meet anybody new. I told her that I had met other men, lots of them in fact, but none of them were boyfriend material.

Paullette said I was probably attracting the wrong types. “Instead of thinking about the types of men you’re attracted to, think about the types of men who’d be attracted to you. Who do you think these men are?”, she said.

“No doubt the wrong types,” I told her. “You see, the problem with me is I flit from one extreme to the other. After a few drinks I give the impression I’m a little, um...loose perhaps? Whereas the sober me gives the impression I’m uptight and not interested. I can’t seem to find the balance.”

It seemed strange telling a woman I’d never met before all of my innermost thoughts and secrets but Paullette had this amazing ability to get this information out of me, without hardly saying anything herself. And it felt good, the more I talked the more I could make sense of things.

Then Paulette told me something I’ve always suspected, that I have a fear of rejection and so I put up barriers to protect myself from getting hurt.Those barriers only tend to come down when I’m drunk, and the drunken me attracts the wrong sort of men.

So is this the reason why I’m single? I think it’s more to do with not meeting the right person yet but perhaps I’ll only meet that person once those barriers have come down.

If, like me, you’re in need of some dating or relationship coaching, you can contact Paullette via her website at idealhearts.co.uk