Soulmates Reunited…

In April 2007, when I set my intention to connect with my Soulmate, I had no idea that during that same month, a man called Andy was on the top of a mountain in Austria putting the same wish out there. We had both come through failed marriages and we both wanted things to be very different in the future.

Back then, I ran a monthly support group for women in Inverness, and when two women in that group mentioned a new online dating website, I began to get a nagging sensation which wouldn’t subside. This inner voice kept telling me to join the site. It lasted for days before I finally had the courage to go for it. I’d never done any online dating, and having been in a 20 year marriage previously, I hadn’t even dated, so this was very new for me. However, the pull was strong, so I joined the site and wrote my profile. I spent a while creating a profile that gave a clear message of who I am and what I was looking for in a man and in a relationship. Not only that, but I included what I wanted for my life too.

The moment came and my online dating profile went live…

Just 10 minutes after my profile went online, I found myself chatting with Andy. He’s my one and only experience of online dating. He had signed in for the first time in 8 months at the exact moment my profile went live, because a woman from America had sent him an email and wanted to connect. So he signed in to read what she had written. At that particular time there were only a dozen people online, none of whom were the lady who had sent him the email. We connected within minutes. Within half an hour I received a long email from him. I remember getting in my car to go to a hairdressing appointment after reading it, and my hands were shaking. Something inside me just knew that my life was about to change dramatically. I remember the whole sequence of events like it was yesterday.

That’s the most amazing thing about life… I began to ask myself why it is that I always remember with great clarity the events and people that are about to have a profound effect on my life, whilst the rest just blur into normal memories.

The timing of our connecting was synchronised too. Andy was traveling back to the UK from Austria for the first time in 18 months that very same weekend, so he asked me if I would like to fly to London to meet him. I booked a flight and we met less than one week later. I will never forget how excited and terrified I felt as I walked towards the arrivals gate at the airport. I knew he was just beyond those doors…

There he stood. This tall, handsome, smiling hunk of a man. He smiled, took my suitcase then took my hand in his, and I felt utterly safe. I remember that moment and feeling so clearly.

We spent four incredible days together (in separate hotel bedrooms). He was a complete gentleman and he treated me in a way that I had never been treated before. He took care of me. For the majority of my life it had always been me taking care of others.

Six weeks later he flew back to the UK for our second meeting. I flew south from Inverness and we met up in Warwickshire. This time he took me to meet his parents, family and friends, and then drove me all the way to South Wales so he could meet my parents and younger brother.

Three months later we both left our respective countries and moved in together, living and working as a team with a joint purpose from the very first day. Andy arranged to move back into the home he’d rented to a lodger during his time in Austria, and we moved in there together in January 2008. Our pull to be together was huge… I can’t describe it really. The way we were brought together, the synchronicities were simply not something we could have planned ourselves. The timing of it all was ridiculously perfect. If that lady from America had not emailed him when she did, we would not have connected and our futures would not have unfolded the way they have. It’s unlikely he would have signed on to the dating website again for some time. If we had connected at any other time, we would have missed that one opportunity to meet straight away. Neither of us were remotely interested in a distance online relationship, so it’s very likely we would have fizzled out.

What I’m now aware of is just how much we actually know deep down that we simply don’t hear in the midst of the ‘noise’ of everyday life. You see, three months prior to us connecting in July 2007, I had written a list of 60 things I really wanted in a partner and how I wanted my life to unfold. Yes, I know it’s a lot. But here’s the thing; Andy is every one of those 60 things, without exception, and our lives have unfolded exactly as detailed on the list (in fact, they have far surpassed them now). I have realised that my list wasn’t simply a list of what I wished for. It was actually a list of what I already knew deep down was about to unfold in both of our lives. Part of me was remembering that our meeting was imminent. When we re-read that list a decade after we became a couple, we both sat in eerie silence at how accurate it was.

So these days I listen to what I know… previously I would have been blissfully unaware of the significance of it. It might have shown up as an inkling, or intuition. Call it what you will, but it’s there. It speaks to me all the time, guiding me as to what is right for me and how the future will unfold. I quieten my mind so as to hear it, then trust its wisdom implicitly. I hold no doubts, no fears about it. My mind and heart are clear to hear its wisdom. The better the place I am in within myself, the more clarity it guides me with. I know everyone has this capability. We just have to stop the noise and listen.

Since January 2008, Andy and I have chosen to work and live together full time. It’s been such an exhilarating journey. It really has. When people ask us how long we’ve been married, my answer is always the same; “We’ve been married since 2013, but in terms of the actual amount of time we’ve spent together, it’s more like 50 years”. It always raises a smile, but in actual fact it’s true.

We’ve been through an amazing journey together and it continues still. We are both very strong characters, both very different. So when we became a couple we faced some interesting challenges. Learning how to overcome those challenges provided us with some of the most profound learning and growth that either of us had ever been through. Neither of us would swap a day of it for anything on earth.

I know people often think that a Soulmate relationship should be smooth and easy from the moment the connection takes place. But I believe its purpose is far greater. A Soulmate relationship will bring everything to the surface that needs to be healed within you. A Soulmate will hold up a mirror to the parts of yourself that you don’t want to see, and vice versa. They are the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. The challenges that arise from this are part of the reason that Soulmates (quite literally, souls which reconnect through lifetimes) are brought together once again. To continue the journey…

During the five years living in Warwickshire in Andy’s home, he always knew I longed to be home in the Highlands, specifically in the home I had bought in Culloden in 1990. My ex-husband, who was still living in that home, called me toward the end of 2012 and said that he wanted to move on to pastures new, and he asked me what I wanted to do with my half of the house.

I said to Andy “I don’t suppose you fancy moving to Inverness, do you?” He didn’t need to think twice. Three short months later Andy had purchased the other half of my Culloden home, he’d put his own home up for sale, and in February 2013 he moved into a property in Inverness that he had not even been inside until he moved in. He had no idea what he was coming to, and he didn’t know Inverness. But he trusted, stepped up for me and brought me home anyway…

Then two months after we moved to Inverness, he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. On our wedding day in August 2013, the love flowing from his eyes as we read our vows to one another left me breathless. I thought I had already seen the best of him, but I was wrong.

I have seen every side of his nature, and he mine. We know our vulnerabilities, our strengths, our triggers. We know one another as well as we know ourselves.

There is not a single morning that I wake that I do not feel joy at waking beside him. He is one of the most beautiful souls on this earth. We take care of each other, bring out the best in each other, and we work together so well. He taught me how to receive, rather allowing me to slip comfortably into being the giver (so many women are conditioned into this). I taught him how not to be such a perfectionist, how to connect more with his joy. We bring very different talents into our lives and business, which allows us to create something really wonderful. Rather than being alike, we encourage the other to be more of themselves. We love and thrive on our differences.

Andy responded to a facebook post a while back, which posed the following question specifically to men – “What has been your biggest source of growth – your business or your relationship?” His response was “There’s no doubt that my relationship has caused the greatest growth and meaning. This is in no small way down to my wonderful wife’s love and holding the mirror up, holding me to account and encouraging me (like no other). I love you Diane.”

He has done exactly the same for me. For many years now, our relationship has been smooth and easy, because we practised love, truth, kindness and communication until we began to dance together in perfect harmony… now we practise dancing…

If you have met your Soulmate, you will know. You will feel a bond with them which is unlike any other. If anyone tells you they can accelerate the process of you meeting your Soulmate, please know this simply isn’t true. You and your Soulmate have already pre-arranged to meet in this lifetime, and very little can prevent you from connecting at the right time. What happens once you connect is up to you… there’s destiny and there’s free will. Destiny will bring you together, but what you do from there is up to you. But no one can override the arrangement you have already made with your Soulmate. If Andy and I had connected at any other point in our lives, it wouldn’t have been the right time for either of us. Yet, in one window of 10 minutes, both of our futures were to change beyond anything we could ever have imagined…