Bill Elbring and Judy Hartline Elbring have become Relationship Mentors. They coach clients in improving relationships. They guide men and women through re-education and re-modeling. Here are the highlights of their story:
We were college sweethearts in the early 60's. After a brief campus romance we went our separate ways. We each pursued a professional career, sought advanced degrees, met someone else, married and started a family. Judy's marriage ended in death, Bill's in divorce.
We met again in 1980. Older and wiser, we were excited and grateful to have a second chance for love. In the fall of 1987, we took the most important step in our relationship. On the recommendation of a friend and colleague, we attended a four-day "personal growth" seminar. We knew little about the content. We had our friend's high regard for his discoveries and the fact that the people providing the seminar offered a money-back guarantee. That was enough to persuade us to attend.
The possibility of LifePartners began in that moment. Attending that seminar woke us up! It was as if we fell in love all over again -- with each other and with life. Each of us began to realize how much intimacy, joy, pleasure and excitement we had traded away for an illusion -- Judy for the illusion of security and Bill for the illusion of success. We each knew what it was like to work 60 to 70 hours a week and come home too tired to enjoy being a family. We became determined to change that.
New friends recommended another seminar, specific to the relationship between men and women. Within the first hours we heard information that touched us -- made us see each other with new eyes. We transformed our romantic relationship with each other. For the first time we began to see the differences between us as natural and healthy, not as problems needing to be solved. We learned better ways to support each other's hopes and dreams. We became more loving, joyful friends.
When addiction became an issue in our family, we read several books recommended during family counseling. We discovered the importance of understanding our childhood experiences, the messages given to us in our growing-up years. We saw more links between the patterns of behavior in our grandparents and parents and between us and our children. For the first time we understood how vitally important it is to take action to avoid passing on destructive patterns to the next generation.
We became hungry to know more, for ourselves and for the people we cared about. We attended a wide variety of seminars and workshops about relationships. And read more books about relationships. And listened to more audio tapes series about relationships. Each new step gave us greater awareness of what it means to be human beings. We learned specific techniques for turning arguments into discussions. We learned how to listen to each other more effectively and lovingly. We learned to nurture and guide our children with love and firm support instead of anger and demand.
Together we are building a vital life partnership. In 1989, inspired by our own results, we founded LifePartners as a vehicle for bringing the possibility of creating enduring life partnerships to others.
Today we are deeply in love and profoundly committed to each other. We are determined to share our experiences and insights for creating extraordinary, passionate, lasting relationships. We believe that the future of human-kind depends on elevating our awareness of our relationships with each other and with the Earth.
LifePartners offers relationship coaching and guidance in selecting effective, personally-reviewed relationship resources -- workshops, seminars, books and tapes -- that we believe have life-enhancing value. We stand behind our recommendations with our money-back guarantee.