Let’s just start with, “I used to suck at relationships”.  It was not for lack of trying, mind you. I had put a lot of time and money into books and workshops on communication skills and the like but still two years was the longest I could hold a relationship together and the average was far less. I dreamed of a relationship that would be easy and not drain me through having to spend hours trying to resolve conflicts.

Then one day an ex-girlfriend, Tia, called me and asked “hey, you want to go to a party?” Well, after being at the party for about five minutes I realized that I was not at a normal party. They were calling it a Creative Assessment Party but since we were in Boulder, Colorado, I decided to roll with it.  After snacks and mingling they took about 20 of us to a back room and sat us in a semi-circle.  At the open end of the circle was an older man who talked to us for some time about his research into what he called compatibility factors of couples. Then he said that he would go around the circle and tell us about ourselves based on what he saw in our faces. I thought, “yeah, right.” But when he named the things he saw in me it was my heart that knew he had seen what others had not.

I studied with this man for 7 years, attending classes for 3-9 hours a week. He had us analyzing thousands of photos of people and taught us to see people in an amazingly deep way.

I found the love of my life about a year into being at that school. Today we enjoy life together in the Rocky Mountains.