From Devastating Relationship Pain to Miraculous Relationship Renewal


Santa Fe Easter
Santa Fe Easter

“We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

This is Easter weekend, a time for the celebration of renewal, rebirth and resurrection. This time we call Easter is actually a blend of the secular and religious, deriving as it does from a myriad of cultures dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Italy and Persia leading up to Judaism and Christianity. 

All of these cultures had central figures of legend who died and were resurrected centuries before the birth of Jesus. Even bunnies and eggs were associated with fertility and new life in Spring by Romans, Persians, Egyptians and Babylonians. Though they were probably not made of chocolate and sold in stores as we do today!

The true meaning of Easter is to be found within your own heart and celebrated in ways that bring you joy in feeling connected to the Universal rhythm of life as resurrection is made plain in newly budding and blooming nature; a nature in which we, as human beings, are as embedded as a fetus in the womb.

It is in this spirit that we share with you a story of the miraculous resurrection of a marriage relationship that was experiencing its own kind of death.

 John & Lisa Heal the Deep Pain of Infidelity in Record Time

When “John” and “Lisa” walked through our door together, it was the first time they had seen each other since his recent affair was revealed. It had been an ongoing affair, but Lisa had just found out only a week ago while John was away on a business trip.

John was in California and Lisa was on the other side of the country. She was going along in her life as usual when she had a strong impression he was having an affair. Without much thought she picked up the phone and heard herself ask him if it was true. He knew he had been caught and though his first impulse was to lie, he confessed instead.

"Oh my god, what have I done?"
"Oh my god, what have I done?"

Lisa sat there frozen in pain. The collision of feelings left her speechless. Disbelief, hurt, anger, wanting to strike out, fear and dread sent seismic shock waves through her whole body. John was in a panic. He loved his wife and never wanted to hurt her. He thought she would never find out. His mind raced trying to find the right thing to say. He kept running into dead ends. The silence over the phone line was deafening.

“We’ll talk later,” Lisa said and hung up. John heard the click, awash in a sea of his aloneness.

Lisa then called us and said she felt like killing him and asked for an appointment. The arrangements were made and within a week she flew in. John, already in California, drove down the coast, showing up at the same time for their session with us.

It was taking everything they had to appear calm and rational on top of a boiling cauldron of relationship pain. They looked as though their emotions would burst out of control at any moment. She loved him but felt betrayed, angry and hurt. He felt guilty, confused and he didn’t want to confront her anger. It was a very strained situation, to say the least.

Meridian Tapping Techniques

We worked with each of them separately, for about an hour, using a meridian tapping technique to calm and heal their pain. We have been using meridian tapping since the late 1990’s. It is a form of Energy Psychology that uses the invisible meridian lines that are used in Chinese acupuncture. But, the technique is to gently tap on the end points of the major meridian lines with your fingertips. The tapping activates what we call the emotional immune system.

Literally, in a few minutes our clients are restored to emotional balance and wellbeing. They are then free to access the more resourceful parts of their brains and think through problems calmly. They are in a good state of mind where they can be coached to locate the “learning opportunity” in the most difficult of situations and find workable solutions.

Within an hour Lisa had shifted from wanting to punish him and hurt him as badly as she had been hurt, to wanting to take responsibility for her part in the marriage deteriorating to such a place. She wanted to stop feeling victimized.

John’s feelings of guilt were so intense he could sense the part of him that wanted or needed to be punished to get some relief. The meridian tapping helped him work those feelings out and forgive himself enough to stop feeling so defensive and more able to support Lisa through her feelings.

After the individual work, they sat on the couch looking into each other’s eyes. Their energy was now completely different. It wasn’t that the problem had been resolved but they had defused their emotional pain sufficiently so they were able to think clearly. They were able to be in one another’s presence and look at each other without feeling like they were going to pop out of their skin.

They were then ready for us to coach them. There were a lot of questions asked and answered to bring clarity to how the whole thing happened and what they wanted to do about it. This situation had the potential to be a devastating crisis that ended the marriage or be a catalyst for more intimacy and understanding and perhaps an even stronger marriage than before.

After a total of about three hours they left holding hands and gazing softly into one another’s eyes. They had essentially fallen back in love with each other. Now, that’s a lot of territory to cover in three hours. Of course, they had work to do when they got home, but they were able to overcome a huge hurdle in a short period of time. They were able to gain enough perspective to be able to see this as an evolutionary learning opportunity and to embrace it as such.

Feelings of Gratitude

When they left, we talked about how grateful we are to have a tool so powerful that it can produce truly remarkable, some would say miraculous, results in minutes. We have been relationship educators and coaches since 1976 and we have a reputation for being on the leading edge of the latest theories and techniques for working with relationships. Even we were somewhat surprised at what we had just seen happen.

What did we do that allowed John and Lisa to cover so much painful emotional ground in such a short period of time? We used a meridian tapping technique you may have heard of or be familiar with, called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). We learned EFT from the man who created it, Gary Craig, and we’ve been using very successfully since about 1997.. We were certified as EFT Masters in January 2006. EFT has transformed our coaching practice and allowed us to serve people all around the world working with them over the phone.

Relationship education and coaching has been a passionate commitment of ours for over 35 years. We are continually on the lookout for easier, more effective tools and methods for helping our clients. EFT is the simplest and most potent tool we have discovered, so far. The kind of miracle we relate here in John and Lisa’s story has become common place in our work with others.

EFT is easy to learn in a relatively short period of time and can become a life-long skill that you can use for releasing fears and phobias, dissolving anxiety, overcoming self-sabotage, fear of meeting new people, public speaking, insomnia and so much more.

If you have followed our blog for any length of time, you may recall our sharing about the incredible challenges we have faced in the months since Paul’s emergency open heart surgery last summer. We can tell you right now that the physical and emotional pain we have gone through individually and in our relationship was significantly mitigated by our regular (often daily) use of EFT, both with each other and alone.

In this time of great transition and uncertainty in which much of what we hold dear seems to be being stripped away, we need powerful tools that can help us navigate the unknown as we are being reborn into a new life in which it is safe to love, to trust and to embrace the unknown as the very crucible of our own resurrection into new life.

“We are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

Easter Bunnies with Easter Eggs
Easter Bunnies with Easter Eggs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
© 2012 Paul & Layne Cutright


4 responses to “From Devastating Relationship Pain to Miraculous Relationship Renewal”

  1. Wow! What a wonderful sharing! Thanks you guys! (guy and gal!) It’s amazing to see this couple come back into the centre of their hearts. Imagine what would happen to the divorce rate if more couples could do that! Beautiful!
    EFT works wonders! So do you both!

    I have to also remark on this blue door photo – a stunning shot, with the wreath and the shadowed leafy ‘lace’ accentuating the door! very nice.

    Blessings to you both!

    • Yes, that was a pretty amazing and gratifying experience. It should be said that both of them had worked with us extensively before, so there was already a strong bond of trust built that definitely served them that day!

      And thanks for your comments on the blue door photo. I always like to hear how others see and respond to my images.

      Love — P aul

  2. Hi Paul & Layne,

    Thank you for that inspirational story. I keep forgetting about the power of EFT & how effective it has been previously in my own life too. Great Reminder 🙂

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