I’d spent thirty years studying people and relationships. Mediating difficulties. Coaching people through painful situations. Building a programme to help couples grow stronger.
Yet here I was, at breaking point in my own.
What I heard was: you suck at relationships.
That wasn’t what Michelle had said. But in the moment, it was what her words meant to me.
She was asking me to be present. I heard a verdict on my ability to do the thing I’d spent years studying and helping others with.
When things became difficult, I went quiet and tried to make sense of them. Inside, I was working hard to understand what was happening between us.
To Michelle, I felt absent.
The meaning I heard in her words made it harder to respond to what she was asking for.
Analysis was familiar ground. I could step back, find the pattern and return when I had something useful to say.
Being present meant letting her meet me before I had the answer. Confused. Unprepared. Sometimes feeling inadequate.
I’ve always disliked waste.
Food thrown away. Effort that goes nowhere. People suffering through something they could find a way beyond.
What troubles me most is the possibility of someone reaching the end of their life and realising how much of it they never got to live.
That concern has shaped my work for years. I want to help people understand the problems in front of them, find a worthwhile direction and become more capable of moving towards it.
That search began long before Unifiers.
As a teenager, I became convinced that problems happened when we met situations we weren’t prepared for.
So I tried to learn ahead of life.
When something troubled me, I would go to my room, lie on my bed and think it through. I’d take it apart, look for the pattern and keep going until I could see a way forward.
That developed into a strength. I learned quickly and became confident that, given enough time, I could make sense of difficult things.
It was also a way to feel safe. I could return with an answer once I was prepared, rather than let someone see me uncertain.
I became comfortable in the role of the Navigator.
I opened a gym when I was twenty.
Trying to understand why people struggled to stick to their routines drew me towards therapy. Soon, I was more interested in the people and their problems than in running the gym.
I wanted to help them get beyond whatever was holding them back so they could go on and thrive.
One conversation stayed with me. I had explained to someone that they could find themselves back with a similar problem. Their response was simple:
“I can just come back to you and you’ll fix it.”
I laughed it off at the time. Then I went away and thought about it.
The work began to feel less meaningful. I wanted people to become more capable of facing their lives. I was also uncomfortable with being someone they would continually depend on. My own need for independence was part of that.
At twenty-five, I left the gym behind and went to university to study psychology.
I was drawn to happiness. What could life become when people had more freedom to live it? Where could we point them beyond the problem they wanted to escape?
That became the direction behind my first book, First Face North.
Life would always bring another problem. But solving the one in front of us could improve our lives and leave us facing a different, better set of challenges.
We needed somewhere worth heading.
As I coached people towards happier lives, most of the problems they brought me involved a relationship.
A boss. A colleague. A parent or child. Most often, their partner.
Each person came with a particular situation. As I looked beneath the details, I kept seeing the same patterns.
People would ask, “Am I just broken?” or “Am I unlovable?”
They were drawing conclusions about themselves from relationships they couldn’t make work. The way they understood relationships, what they expected and how they responded could keep producing painful results. They took those results as evidence of who they were.
I came to see that people could mistake a broken operating model for a broken self.
That distinction mattered. There was something we could work with beyond the verdict people had reached about themselves — the patterns they were caught in, and a way forward from them.
I continued exploring those patterns through relationships, teams and leadership. I wanted to understand how people could work together, grow through challenges and become capable of things they could not do alone.
But I could still step outside an experience to understand it.
Sometimes, while editing a podcast conversation, I would hear something important that I hadn’t fully processed when the person said it. Afterwards, I had the space to make sense of it.
A relationship asks you to respond while the other person is still there.
You have incomplete information. You haven’t prepared your answer. You can feel confused, inadequate or unsure what to do.
And someone you care about is meeting that version of you.
With Michelle, being in the relationship became as important to me as work.
I felt loved, supported and cared for. We could work together, take on difficult things and grow together. I wanted to be fully part of that.
We also had differences that were hard to navigate.
The conversation at the beginning of this page came out of a difficult period around a holiday in Egypt. We were already under pressure from serious concerns about my parents’ care. Misunderstandings between us kept becoming arguments.
We came home unsure whether we would stay together. Rebuilding understanding and trust took time.
Alongside that difficulty, we were facing a serious crisis with my parents’ health. Michelle was there with me through it. We kept working together to respond to what was needed.
That ability to face life together was real. So was the distance we could create between us.
I needed to give more of my attention to the relationship while I was in it.
Understanding our dynamics did not remove the effort of listening, staying present or allowing another person to influence what happened next.
I still find that difficult at times. I can interrupt, become impatient or retreat into analysis. Knowing what I know does not make relationships effortless for me.
What has changed is my appreciation of what it takes.
Earlier in my work, I could offer someone an insight and a prescription and think: there you go, do it or don’t.
Today, I am more willing to stay in the situation with them. To recognise the courage, support and capacity involved in doing something differently.
My work with teams and leaders gave me ideas I wanted to bring back to couples. My relationship gave that work a deeper personal importance.
I want to help couples understand what happens between them and become more able to build the life they want together.
A shared direction both people help shape.
A partnership both actively participate in.
Room for each to grow and be fully themselves.
The aim is for what you build to become increasingly yours: your understanding, your choices and your capacity to meet what comes next.
That is the possibility that keeps me interested in this work.
What can we become together?
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