Real Life stories of finding true love over the age of 40. Feel free to contribute your story. Email Pam

Jeff and Sue Allen are a couple in their fifties whom I know who almost split up 12 years ago. It was their discovery of the principles of A Course in Miracles and the therapeutic work of Psychology of Vision that saved their relationship. This is an unashamedly spiritual story. The bold bits are quotes from A Course in Miracles. Read on.

Sue writes:- ‘Light and joy and peace abide in me’

What about the time when, in a build-up of resentment, I goaded Jeff into throwing a glass of red wine against the yellow wall, and leaving in a squeal of tyres?

Or the months I spent consumed with jealousy, making undercover phone calls to prove how badly I was being treated? There certainly wasn’t much light and joy and peace around then! In fact I felt miserable, trapped and powerless in a nightmare marriage (my second) with a wayward husband (my second), 2 small children and plenty of people who agreed my situation was dire and undeserved.

If I had known about A Course in Miracles then, the most relevant principle would have been ‘a meaningless world engenders fear’ – caught in a swirl of confusion and blame, I was paralysed by my fear of future betrayals, fear of my children’s grief, fear of admitting my failure, fear of facing my feelings.

That was 1990 and 14 years later we are looking at the flip side of the same coin – the same players, but we cancelled the divorce and began to rebuild our relationship. The children, now adult, have learned along side us about bonding and forgiveness, and witnessed our faltering steps towards happiness. We are following our hearts in our work, and feel rewarded by love that surrounds us.

Whole days of contentment and even joy go by, with only the occasional subverting little voice that insinuates, ‘it cannot last' and now I know that is a thought from the past.

And is it always light and joy and peace? Absolutely not – we have our moments of sudden upset and complete forgetfulness. So is there more to go? Absolutely – the difference is now we welcome the lessons, instead of dreading them.

‘I have invented the world I see’
The key for us in the midst of crisis was finding A Course in Miracles through the work of Chuck and Lency Spezzano and the Psychology of Vision.

As soon as the penny of accountability dropped into our whirlpool of despair, everything began to change.

Suddenly we saw another way of looking at the world. So the world wasn’t ganging up on us, serving up a monotonous diet of ‘wrong’ relationships!

Amazing - it wasn’t Jeff who betrayed me, it was me who betrayed me by my withdrawal and my grievances! I wasn’t the biggest mistake of his life – for better or worse I was an integral part of it! The incredible romance and excitement of our meeting was not a sick illusion but the kernel of potential happiness together.

The beauty of A Course in Miracles is its simplicity. Once we had grasped that basic Big Idea, so many conflicts became easier to understand and work through, and we had some great ones going.

There’s the irresponsible/responsible polarity for a start

Jeff was the swashbuckling adventurer, I was the good capable handmaiden. That partnership was fine until what we actually liked about each other suddenly turned into the worst-case scenario.

What about miserly/generous, controlling/freefalling? Once we saw these ‘personalities’ as mirrors, recognised and integrated the other as a part of our minds, magically the bad feelings disappeared until now most of those conflicts are a distant memory.

Whenever a new conflict pops up, as of course it does, we have the tools to work through the turmoil to reach another level of understanding.

I remember one time a few years ago during a walk with the dogs. We stood opposite each other on top of a Hampshire hill and angrily communicated all the judgments between us until the miracle of joining happened, and we could begin to laugh at our mistaken and meaningless thoughts.

‘Forgiveness is the only gift I give’
Seeing our own part was a key, and so was forgiveness. There was plenty of bad behaviour to forgive in the roller-coaster of a relationship which is now 28 years old - blatant infidelities, falsehoods, emotional and mental cruelty, enough to qualify many times over for a full and final settlement.

It has taken years and many painful moments to stand totally open and tell each other the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Jeff tells the story in workshops of how our then teenage daughter began lying to us, about where she had been, who with, and what she had been doing. On the face of it, they were relatively unimportant fibs but we sensed they signalled danger.

We decided it was time to tell each other the truth about everything we had ever hidden, for whatever reason. The two of us walked and camped for three days in Wales. There were stutterings and tears and eventually there was passion and the relief of forgiveness.

In the aftermath of peace we were closer to each other and our daughter began to share everything with us. We knew we had all reached a place of blessed safety in terms of the adolescent lessons in store for her.

Now the principles of truth and forgiveness have been proved friends and not foes, they are easier to hold as guide ropes. What was once a single strand reaching for the smallest foothold now forms an increasingly solid bridge.

‘Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God himself.’

Of course we share the same yearning to bridge our separation not only from each other but ultimately from God. We must be slow learners or we would not spend so much of our lives in workshops, finding ways with the help of others through the barriers between us all and between us and the Divine.

Every step we take towards each other in our relationship is also a step towards melting away our egos, and that’s such an important motivation. How I long for the day when I can say with certainty that I cease looking through the eyes of my ego, and instead live the principle to which I most aspire:

‘The Holy Spirit looks through me today.’

Find put more at www.psychologyofvision.co.uk