(Be sure to scroll down to read the Introduction!)

Millions of singles across the world are looking to create relationship bliss.

It takes time. It requires energy. It mandates desire. A lot of people have all that.

What they don’t have is a valid and reliable Roadmap to Relationship Success.

Whether they’re accessing Yahoo Maps or their personal database—if the information used to create this Roadmap is faulty, they’ll end up lost.

Monster Relationships: Taming the Beasts that are Killing Your Relationships is a journey—not the type of fun and fabulous travel during which you get on an airplane and fly away to some exotic land. Rather, it’s a quest to acquire new knowledge about yourself, knowledge that can be used to defeat the problems that are killing your relationships. Relationship Guru, Rod Louden, takes you on a wonderful journey through your personal belief system. At the same time, Rod will arm you with "weapons" and tools that you’ll use to defeat the tyrannical beasts that are keeping you in the bondage of relationship hell. Self help books fill the shelves. What sets Monster Relationships apart from the rest is that it combines colorful and insightful tales from Rod’s own journey of personal change, with the theories and techniques that he uses as a licensed marriage and family therapist to empower clients. This distinct blend creates an enjoyable, insightful, and enlightening read. In the end, you’ll have the knowledge to forge a new and reliable Roadmap, one that you’ll follow, as you strive to create relationship bliss.

CONTENTS

Introduction:
Physician Heal Thyself

I’m not a doctor. And I don’t play one on TV. However, as a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in Los Angeles , I have been there. Where? — To the land of painful and unfulfilling relationships. After a series of failed relationships, I reached my limit for pain. I was tired of repeating the same old pattern: Meet woman > sleep with woman > have fun with woman > fun ends with woman > break-up painfully with woman > immediately seek new woman. I knew that something had to change if I was ever going to create my “dream relationship.” I finally figured out that that “something” was me.

In the fall of 1994, I set out on a journey. It was not the type of fun and fabulous travel during which you get on an airplane and fly away to some exotic land. No, my trek would take me to a place that, even in this age of CAT scans and group therapy, remains cryptic and forbidding to humanity: the inner workings of the mind. In this case, I stuck particularly close to home and chose to look into my own mind. I decided that, in order to be successful in life, I would have to explore this unknown land. So I summoned up some courage and started on my journey.

“Where do I start?” I thought. How does one go about taking a journey into one’s own mind? I decided that I should start by looking at how I was making life choices. So I asked myself another question, “What are my choices based upon?” It seemed logical that my choices were based on a combination of my emotions and knowledge that I believed was true. I concluded that I needed to look at the knowledge on which I was basing decisions, as well as at the emotions tied to this knowledge.

In the world outside my mind, there were a lot of places where I could go to seek knowledge. I could access the Internet, enroll in school, or go to the local library to search for answers. Internally, however, there was only one location — my own mental library of knowledge. So, with a bit of trepidation and a lot of curiosity, I entered my own “Emotional Library” to check out the volumes of knowledge that I had written and stored on its vast shelves.

I grabbed a pen and paper. I decided that the best way to evaluate this knowledge of my life would be to write down some questions. I knew that the answers to my questions could only come from the knowledge that I had written and stored on the shelves of my Emotional Library. I realized that all my life experiences, from the time I was born until that day, had played a major role in forming the knowledge that I had written and accepted as “truth.”*

“What are my core morals?” was the first question that came to mind. I sat ready to start writing, but my pen rested idly in my hand. “It sure is taking me a long time to find the answer to this question,” I thought nervously. After several pain-filled minutes, it became obvious that I had not written and stored much information on this subject. I stared down, only to be blinded by the glaring whiteness of the paper that lay before me. I found this quite disturbing.

*I will use the word “truth” throughout this book. For our purposes, truth will be defined as useful and productive knowledge that leads to positive self-change.

I spent hours writing down questions and hours more exploring the shelves of my Emotional Library, looking for answers. I was especially interested in answering questions regarding relationships. I wanted to find out why I was stuck in my painful relationship pattern. As I slowly started to locate some answers, I began to realize that a lot of the knowledge that I had written and stored was false and misleading (and, in some cases, just downright stupid!). For example, when I asked myself, “What is the best way to deal with the pain of a breakup?”, I wrote, “Find another girlfriend as quickly as possible.” As I pondered this answer, I realized that I had written down a way to run from pain instead of retrieving useful knowledge about how to deal with pain in a healthy and productive manner.

It was in this moment of clarity, excitement, and shock that I realized that the “roadmap” I had created — and had been relying on to take me to my dream relationship — was incredibly flawed. The map was defective because there was a great deal of false knowledge incorporated into its creation. Sadly, I had believed that this false information was true. It dawned on me that if a lot of the knowledge that I had been relying on in order to create a roadmap to relationship success was false, then a lot of my “Emotional Knowledge” (the feelings that I attached to the information that I had stored) must also be misleading.

A roadmap is simply a guide that tells us how to get from one point to another. We each have an internal roadmap that we follow and that we believe will take us to the destinations that we wish to reach in life. As you begin to explore your own Emotional Library, you will start to find the flaws in your unique roadmap.

You may have used Yahoo! Maps or MapQuest to identify the best route to your desired destination. I don’t know about your experiences with these services, but I have been led astray on more than one occasion. What went wrong? The database that these services used to create my directions had flawed information. I, however, believed that the directions were accurate and therefore did not question them. When I jumped into my car and followed every turn and side street, I ended up lost and confused. Sound familiar?

Now, I’ll grant you that finding your way across town is a little easier than finding the mate of your dreams, but the dynamics of both ventures are systemically similar. Consider: Instead of helping me to find the woman of my dreams, my useless roadmap had taken me in emotionally painful circles for almost 20 years! Throughout that time, I thought that I had been working productively on making my dream of finding that “someone special” come true: in reality, all that I had created were real life nightmares.

My flawed roadmap led me to “Kathy,” a survivor of child sexual abuse, who stated that she loved me and then slept with other men. I followed my roadmap’s unsound directions to “April,” whom I discovered was dating five other men. When I confronted her, she gleefully replied, “But you’re my favorite.” Following my roadmap, I traveled over the hills and through the woods to find “Mary.” On the night that we met, she told me that she had broken up “months ago” with her boyfriend, who lived in Florida (we were in California ). She failed to mention that she had also had a boyfriend in California — and that they had broken up earlier that day. After two months of dating me, she revealed this fact. She went on to tell me that they had been speaking everyday on the telephone and were getting back together. My dysfunctional roadmap took me to the bank of a raging river. I fought my way across, as it had instructed, in order to reach “Jane.” After months of dating, she disclosed that an old boyfriend was obsessed with her and had been sleeping on her balcony while I lay next to her in bed at night. She was considering getting back together with him! I could go on and on.

I created my first goal for change: I would rid myself of false knowledge and replace it with truth. A second goal soon followed: I would increase my level of “Emotional Skill.” That is, I would enhance my ability to control my emotions and keep them from running wild during times of stress. As a third goal, I would seek out and destroy any obstacles that stood in my way. I believed strongly that if I were able to achieve these goals, I would be able to create a reliable and valid roadmap — one that would lead me, not across barren wastelands and to frozen glaciers, but to my Promised Land.

“But wait a second,” a thought raced over me. “I’ve always treated women with respect. I’ve never lied, cheated, or played head games with any of the women in my life. I’m a hard worker, a college graduate, and I have positive and realistic goals that I’m trying to achieve. These are all great qualities. How much false information can I have stored over the years?”

I traveled deeper. On the surface, I thought that these qualities should instantly qualify me as a “good catch.” But what was below the surface? I knew that I couldn’t be perfect, so what were my flaws? Question after question entered my mind. I realized that I needed to seek out more answers. This quest for personal truth led me straight into the heart of what I call the “ Emotional Desert .”

In the Emotional Desert , I challenged every belief I had about the world and myself. There I was able to increase my level of Emotional Skill and “write” new knowledge to replace the false ideas with which I had been living for years. Most importantly, I was able to seek out and destroy my own personal “monsters” that had wreaked havoc in my life. These were ugly beasts that had regularly “tricked” me into making poor life choices. Poor choices led to unnecessary pain and suffering, and the monsters feasted on this negative energy. (I use the phrase “unnecessary pain and suffering,” because there are times when pain plays a useful role in life and helps you to grow mentally and emotionally. I’ll write more about this later in this book).

Goal number four was born: go on the offensive and blast these negative and controlling monsters out of my world.

Having reached my goals, I woke up one day to find that I had arrived at my “Oasis of Truth.” It was in this peaceful place that I created my new roadmap — one that was based on truth, not false information and lies. I also started the construction of a new foundation — a solid base upon which I would build my new life. Once I completed work on my new roadmap and foundation, I left the Emotional Desert . I went back into the outside world and created my dream relationship. My new roadmap worked beautifully. It led me to Linda’s doorstep. We married three years later.

Many of my clients have asked me where I came up with the idea of traveling across an Emotional Desert . One night in the summer of 1994, I was watching one of my favorite movies, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh. I always have loved this movie and been fascinated by the story of Moses. I began to wonder why I was so drawn to one particular scene. I sat puzzled, mentally and emotionally, and then, as realization dawned, the concept of making such a journey was born.

In the scene to which I’m referring, the “over controlling” Pharaoh, accompanied by several guards, has taken the “never say die” Moses to the desert’s edge at the outskirts of the city. Pharaoh commands Moses to cross the desert alone. Before Moses embarks on his journey, Pharaoh instructs a guard to give Moses a flask of water. The guard objects to Pharaoh’s order, knowing that the flask will be dry in days. Pharaoh knows this, yet ignores the guard’s plea.

With all odds against him, Moses sets out into the desert with only water and a walking stick in hand. The Egyptians believed that no one could successfully cross the desert on foot — certainly not with only a few meager mouthfuls of water.

Moses had an intense challenge. His goal was to somehow cross the brutal and dangerous desert and survive the ordeal. With every step, he experienced tremendous pain and suffering. But he pushed forward. His will to survive was strong. The strength of his convictions and the choice to be true to himself pushed him forward. Exhausted and almost dead, Moses managed to reach the other side. Upon doing so, his life changed forever. He freed a nation from bondage. He was directly involved in the creation of one of the first moral codes. He married and raised children. He was a very happy and fulfilled man.

“Aha!” I shouted. Moses freed himself by choosing to live his life in accordance with newly discovered truth about his identity. What do I mean? For most of his life, Moses thought that he was of royal blood, a son of Pharaoh and a future ruler of Egypt . Why would he have thought any differently? Everyone treated him as such. Then, in one life-altering moment, reality came crashing through the palace doors. Moses discovered that he was the son of a Hebrew slave. He carried no royal blood and should never have been standing at the side of Pharaoh.

Upon discovering this, Moses had to make a choice between hiding this secret and maintaining his status or going on a journey to seek out his true destiny. Moses disappeared from the Palace, donned the clothes of a slave, and went to work blending straw and mud into bricks. A servant of Pharaoh recognized Moses and brought him before Pharaoh. Moses stood before Pharaoh, the only father he had ever known, and exposed the truth. Pharaoh was stunned. Reluctantly, Pharaoh turned his heart away from Moses and ordered that all knowledge and history regarding Moses be stricken from record. Pharaoh then ordered that Moses be exiled from the city. Thus, Moses arrived at the desert’s edge. Watching this scene, I realized that I also needed to seek the truth about myself. I could no longer go on living the lie that I was a “great catch.” I had work to do.

This idea became the basis for the journey that I took. I had been living the lie that I was someone that I was not. I had always thought of myself as a very together, happening and cool guy, a fine mate for any woman. In reality, I was loaded down with my own negative personal issues that had been created by living according to false truths.

I found strength in the idea that I could do something — not to change my past, but to create my future. I made the journey to my Oasis of Truth and, like Moses, positively changed my life forever. However, it didn’t take years of wandering across miles of sandy acreage to do it. And now you can learn even more quickly from my journey.

If you really want to change the direction of your life, you’ll grab your walking stick and begin your own journey to your personal Oasis of Truth. Like Moses (and mine), your journey won’t be easy, but it can be brief. Like Moses (and me), you’ll experience fear, pain, and suffering. You’ll face many challenges and dangers. You may find yourself wanting to quit, wanting to turn back and return to the false safety of your old self. Don’t do it. Just keep pushing forward. Personal success awaits you once you’ve realized the truth about yourself. Only when you know and live truth can you create a reliable roadmap that will help guide you to your dream relationship.

Unlike Moses, however, you’re not going it entirely alone. I’ll be your guide through your Emotional Desert to your Oasis of Truth. Rest assured — I know the terrain well. During this journey, all of the thoughts and feelings you’ve stored about yourself and relationships will be put to the test. All the knowledge that you’ve catalogued in your Emotional Library throughout your lifetime will be examined thoroughly. You’ll replace outdated and misleading information with useful knowledge based on reality. I must warn you that you will be coming face to face with the monsters that reside in the previously unexplored areas of your mind. Don’t be afraid. Before you reach these beasts, you’ll acquire new “allies” and develop new “weapons” to help you battle and rid yourself of these self-damaging demons forever.

When you reach your Oasis of Truth, you’ll find power and self-control such as you’ve never known. You’ll discover how to correct your faults and deploy your strengths, no matter what challenges you face. You’ll learn how to break destructive cycles and replace them with healthy and productive actions. In doing so, you’ll create a new foundation upon which you’ll build your dream relationship. Unlike the previous shaky foundations you’ve built on lies, this foundation will be constructed on the steel of truth. From this new sense of power and control will be born the ability to create the relationship of which you’ve always dreamed. You will have created your own personal roadmap to relationship success.

We are bombarded daily by so-called “reality” shows filled with people searching for the loves of their lives. In part, these shows are reality. They portray the degree to which life can become screwed up. On the other hand, dating a plethora of beautiful people while flying around the world in private jets and being driven by limo to the planet’s best restaurants is anything but reality for most people. These shows do point out the commonality and strength of the ideal of creating a dream relationship — as well as how poorly schooled we are in how to make this ideal a reality.

Your journey to your Oasis of Truth will lead you to discover the truth about yourself. Like Moses, myself, and the thousands of others who have made this liberating journey, you’ll also find the keys to unlock the chains of your current bondage, the mental shackles that were forged out of false knowledge, and the lies put forth by monsters. If you’re ready to take a life-changing journey, turn the page and enter your own Emotional Library.