This is a story illustrating what the power of strong thought decisions can do for a relationship. Thank you dear Client, for your story…

 A client comes to me at the beginning of a passionate relationship. She had been through a bit of heartbreak to get to a point of balance her life , and she was reluctant to let a new relationship emerge, unless it was on her terms.

 Her object d’amour was crazy about her but there was one issue – he was still involved with his girlfriend. She was ambivalent about becoming his lover or girlfriend till she knew for sure what his intent was for his girlfriend. He had been involved with her for a while. I saw that he had a financial connection to this womanwhich - I felt he owed her something , and this was a major reason he felt indebted to her, and this kept him from feeling he could leave her.

Working  with Client X, we decided she should start seeing him, but with the idea in mind that if he didn’t end his relationship with his girl, that she would have to move on. My client was serious. She had reached a point of stability that she didn’t want to intentionally destroy, and moreover she didn’t want to cause the girlfriend grief. So we hatched a plan.

My client put up a series of boundaries to prevent him from rushing into their relationship too quickly. She also needed to ascertain when he was with ending the relationship with his friend. So we decided that she should proceed with caution, bearing in mind that he may be in a financial bind with his girlfriend, and we wanted to ascertain if this relationship would work for her in the short term, under her conditions. In my experience, curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat, it can make for well informed decisions, and some foresight.

It was getting intense between them, so she called and asked me what she should do. We both agreed the next meeting was the time to put up the final boundary – that he should cut his girlfriend loose, or lose her. She was cocked and ready….the meeting ensued….

The next call was celebratory.

“Guess what Carmen, you were right – he owed her money, and today he paid her back,
and broke it off with her!”

So that was a happy beginning. Her interesting question I want to address with you was this:

 “What Carmen do you think changed between our last meeting and this one, that made him make the exact decision that I was going to force him to make?”

 I thought about it, and realized YES! The Power of Empathy! This man was so closely linked to her, that he had sensed her decision, a strong emotionally based but serious decision that she was going to break it off with him, if he couldn’t make the decision to leave his girlfriend. Before she was able to utter those words, he told her he had made that choice.

 My theory on this matter is that she sent through an empathic impression strong enough for him to receive it and act on it in the correct timing. It’s not like he thought; “ I feel she is going to end it with me Thursday if I don’t end it with XXXXX. “

It was more his subsequent choice based on the strong and vindicated contagion of her thoughts about the girlfriend that was more unconsciously received, but he caught it anyway, and in time, ended the relationship.

This is a good example how your thoughts, good or bad, are not only yours. Your partner will pick them up.

Have you ever noticed, that you would have a plan with a friend and all of sudden you don’t feel like seeing them that night – only to find out later that they cancelled on you that day anyway?

  Either you thought

A) “ I am not in the mood for a meeting’ and she picked it up,

or she thought

B)  " I am not in the mood for a visit today’ and sent the message to you.

This is another example of empathic choice in action.

 So what changed, my dear client, was that you made the choice, based on his intentions, on how to manage the relationship in your favour – and your partner picked up on it, subconsciously!

Be careful what you think and feel towards someone, they will catch it. They may not catch it by verbatim, but they will get the feeling, and grow closer or farther apart. In this case, we were able to use his openness and his looking for an opportunity to leave his ex, to get that message through. And it got through before he would possibly have become disempowered by her rightful demand, for an honest start to a relationship.

Use it, use it well. People listen, even if they don’t know it. Think loving thoughts to
people you love, they will become closer to you. Think ill of someone, and nothing will be solved. This is the power of Empathic Choice making.

Copyright Carmen Miro 2008