Girlfriend for a Year: Learning to live in conscious relationship

I have been ‘boy mad’ all my life: I remember first falling in love at six years old with the curate’s son. In 1982 I married for the first time – for keeps, I thought. I would never have imagined, as I’m sure few of us do, that I would ever become a divorced person. Yet I am now a divorced person four times over…

My journey of exploration through intimate relationship has been a lifelong quest to find true love. I have been in many relationships before, going in full of enthusiasm and hope, only to be disappointed both in myself and in the space I found myself in. In this journey I have learnt that true love comes from the inside out; that relationship is a mirror and intimacy the magnifying glass, and that in all the relationships and the loves I have journeyed with, I am the common denominator and that I can only work on myself and my own part. I have spent my life learning how to love and how to let go of need, of expectation, of insecurity and instead to accept myself and others and to listen and to validate the truth of another. Quite a challenge at times!

I have written ‘A Girlfriend for a Year’ to chart the beginning of a relationship and its unfolding, using myself and my own, ‘real-life’ relationship with my partner Anadi as the case study. ThisThe book is, on one level, the story of a relationship, and it is, I hope, an interesting story, but you would be forgiven for pointing out that I have been in relationships before, have indeed been married before, so why is this one special? Why is this one worth putting into a book?

My answer is that this is the first time I have felt able to have a really, truly, authentically conscious relationship....