Daphne Rose Kingma has spent more than 30 years as a psychotherapist counseling couples and writing books with groundbreaking insights on how to make sense of our relationship experiences. They include Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and How To Get Through The Ending of Yours, Finding True Love, Weddings From The Heart and most recently, The 9 Types of Lovers: Why We Love The People We Do & How They Drive Us Crazy (all from Conari Press). Her fans range from Mary Ann Williamson, who wrote the introduction to The Future of Love and Neale Donald Walsh, who raved about it in Conversations With God III. Yet she has taken on her mission to heal our hearts and relationships with much devotion and little media fanfare.

Daphne offers a truly unique and useful look at how spirit moves us into the house--and houses--of love in, The Future of Love: The Power of the Soul in Intimate Relationships.  While she wrote it 11 years ago it still carries such a powerful message. She brings good tidings about the emergence of the conscious, loving and solid partnership between people who are committed to utilizing relationship as a vehicle to evolution. And she validates our suspicions that something larger than our human personalities is at work in our romances. Yet she warns that, as the status quo shifts, intimate relationships may be in for unprecedented intensity; and we may be shocked and pleasantly surprised by the many ways love will manifest in our lives.

"The real undertaking of relationships is to have an experience of love and we can’t force love to have a particular form of relationship," she said in our interview. "I think we’re going to be surprised by the forms and the people we are being given to love. And we may also be surprised by that the forms are many, and extraordinary, and they all can be a container for love."
"It’s all in the process of transforming," she said. "Something larger than us is breaking up the relationship pattern. Its not as if we all woke up one day and said lets make mayhem in our relationship lives. This transformation really is to show us that, no matter how diverse the forms, love is still operating. I think we’re being shown that, through awareness, we can honor love -- wherever it occurs. If we can expand through our prejudices and limitations, more love can occur."

Reverend Laurie Sue: Relationship issues are a national obsession. It’s tough to be in them, tough to be without them. Why are so romantically challenged?

Daphne Rose Kingma: I think in a way it's because we’ve been sold a mess of pottage. We believe relationships are supposed to be perfect, that partnership will always be ideal, that marriage is the one thing in life that can’t corrode or corrupt. But the purpose of relationship is to really grow our souls. It’s very hard to keep that in mind because we are so romanticized about relationships.

It’s confronting to think intimate relationships may challenge us even more than they already do.

We’re just so engaged with our emotional lives that to find out that they too are going to go through the chaos (of the times) is very disturbing. Looking at the whole phenomenon of our relationship lives in a spiritual context really is the only way that the suffering experiences of relationships make sense. I think we’re all trying to make this transition from personality to spirituality. That’s a very big step, a huge step--and we’re not certain we’re ready to take it. It’s very scary--in this culture, especially--because we’ve really elevated relationships to the level of a God. So, to not have them be absolute in our lives--absolute fulfillment, absolute security, absolute comfort, absolute witnessing of who we are, absolutely indestructible and forever--is every challenging.

When people get a whiff of what relationship can be from a highly spiritual perspective, it’s sometimes tough trying to ground it in the real world.

The human experience is an interesting tension between the material and mundane world, and, on the next level, the emotional. It’s a mixture of those levels with the transcendent spiritual. We are uniquely called to continue to move back and forth in this reality where we get to experience it in terms of great awakenings, soul connection and divine love, along with Saturday night dates, co-parenting the kids, socks on the floor, red roses, car accidents, hospitalizations. We’re being invited to experience love as it is infused in this material plane.

That is so true… and whether we are tuned in or not, the soul is busy helping us to grow?

Consider that beautiful image of the Kundalini and the two chords interwoven. I think people need to know we are always simultaneously personality and spirituality and the development of those aspects may be parallel and synchronistic or it may be very uneven. People who are "seeking" are more likely to have the soul opening through their personality experience and vice versa. People who are just watching television are going to have a harder time in general. Awakening is a combination of a divine gift --and it’s purely a gift--and ones own movement toward it.

Isn’t it possible to have soul friends who are not romantic prospects?

In general, there is a great movement toward soul connection. In the American culture we tend to romanticize it. We’ve elevated the relationship to the level of soul mate, as in you’re going to find your soul mate and live happily every after. I think more and more soul connections are being made and acknowledged and it’s not just lovers or marriages. It’s more like people crossing paths with kindred spirits and recognizing they’re undertaking something together.

But soulful, passionate romantic love is here to stay, right?

Absolutely and I call that "Illumined relationships." But I think what we need to realize is sexuality is the divine attraction and romance is the Spirit’s way of inviting us into the relationship which will then invite us to grow. American consciousness is stuck at the romance step.

When the tinglies die down and reality bites, we get nervous and think "this isn’t working."

Exactly. We mistakenly think that it should be a 45-year romance as opposed to a 45-year journey of spiritual evolution or of psychological evolution--and hopefully both. The romantic myth is held in a container with very specific attributes: It must be daily, domestic, exclusive and forever. And we really believe that these are the four tent pins that will hold up the romantic myth. In fact, they don’t. They hold up daily life and a lot of times they don’t hold up daily life that well. Romance imagines the 100 per cent connection. It really is like God: You’re going to make all my dreams come true, be the perfect partner, protect me, be the great lover, the perfect parent. It’s the expectation of perfection. That is what the high energy of romance is. Its like you’re the one, forever true, only you, it has that quality of ...

...A devotional.

A devotional, yes. And because we haven’t made the distinction between that spiritual longing--the longing for God, for absolute union--we are continually disappointed in our relationships.

What does it take to make a relationship strong and long lasting?

A conscious awareness that these relationships are a spiritual as well as a psychological undertaking. And that the tests and crises within them are always an opportunity for spiritual expansion. Which means, put in simple terms, a greater capacity for love, and a more inclusive love. It’s like this: Can you love the person who’s driving you crazy? It’s always a question of can you expand your capacity for love?

That’s the great test … but how many of us can pass?

In this culture, we have not seen many examples of: what does a relationship look like when it’s really about love? We’ve seen it when it’s about keeping up with the Jones’s, when it’s about healing the wounded child. We haven’t seen it when it’s really an embodiment of love. We need to see what it is to treat your partner as a king or queen, to lovingly hold the person you love, to live your sexuality as an experience of opening consciousness as well as physical passion, to live in an environment that is peaceful. I know a number of couples who’s spiritual work, I believe, is just to hang around and show people what love looks like; to embody what marriage looks like when it’s lived on the spiritual level. And that takes consciousness of saying: We are undertaking this. And we choose to go through those rites of emotional and spiritual passage in a relationship that will bring us to a larger place.

Do you believe all relationships are gifts?

I believe a relationship is a very profound spiritual gift. Think of it this way: You cannot insist a relationship into your life. You can’t say, "This is Friday. I’m going to go downtown and buy myself a relationship." You can buy yourself a shirt, a car or a bottle of orange juice but you can’t do that with a relationship, so it is a spiritual gift.

I have in recent years seen an extraordinary trend of people finding love where they least expect it. When we drop our expectation of love having to "look a certain way," it really opens up the door to great relationships.
At the soul level we are open...to that person who is a different color, speaks a different language, or is deaf. This is about surrendering. We are brought the experience of love that our soul needs. The nature of the soul is it’s so powerful that it draws us off our ego, off the path where we think we are in charge, and surprises us about the nature of love.

Are these relationships easier or more comfortable?

The truth is, very often, soul connection relationships are the most demanding because they come into our lives to require us to let go of something that we’re really entrenched in or to transform us in a way that’s very difficult. The soul is trying to bring--and bring and bring--home the lessons.

How does the soul speaks to us and move us in relationships?

The soul uses the personality--aspects of the personality, such as passion, need, childhood wounds, and hormones--to take us to a lesson. It’s like you walk by the bakery, and smell the fragrance of the fresh bread. That’s what draws you in. That’s why some relationships are such a surprise: oh, why am I with this woman who doesn’t speak my language? Why am I getting married when I swore I never would? I don’t know if we actually know where our souls are taking us, in the moment, unless we are very conscious. We may have that ineffable feeling that says my soul is telling me to be here, but a relationship is always an interplay of the personality and the soul. They are both always growing but it’s hard to see what the soul is teaching is until later.

People often wonder, "How will I know he/she is the one?" What is your spiritual Litmus test for knowing the soul has delivered us to the "right" place.

Whenever we feel love, wherever we are changed by love, the soul is at work. But in a given time frame, it may not look right. You can say, "Well this is the last guy on earth I thought I would of fallen in love with, but I am feeling love here." That’s the soul at work.

On the other side of the spectrum, how does the soul let us know with certainty when it’s time to move on?

You know when the relationship is finished. It may go through a process to get to that point but you move toward it and there’s a poignant understanding of "Oh, I guess we’re not supposed to set up housekeeping together" or "I guess we really have finished what we came here to do." Sometimes there simply is no energy in a relationship. Sometimes it’s announced by another person showing up and sort of holding a lantern: oh here’s the next step I’m supposed to take. Many people find that difficult because of the notion that we can only love one person in a lifetime.

So should we follow our hearts to love, or should we follow our souls?

I think when we follow our hearts we’re being led by the soul. We can trust love. Love is always a journey and people want it to be a destination. Its like, okay, I’ve got that nailed down, now I can go and work n my career. But the real experience of love is a continually unfolding journey.

What do soulful singles need to know about coping with the trauma and drama of relationships in tumultuous times?

The important thing we need to realize is we are in a time of great change and upheaval in our relationships and this is not a disaster. But it’s an opportunity...to expand our capacity to love and to expand our experience of love. If we can relax into that and trust, we can actually experience more love and the more vast experience of love that our souls are leading us toward. They are not leading us to specific relationships; they are leading us toward ever-expanding experiences of love. Much bigger than we ever imagined. The ultimate goal of all our relationship experiences is to deliver us to a place of pure love. No judgment, no ax to grind, no needs to whimper over or insist on being fulfilled. Just love. Pure love.

For more on Daphne Rose Kingma, visit her website at http://www.daphnekingma.com/.














Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway offers her insights on love, relationship and how to feel like a hot tomato with wisdom and humor. As our Love and Relationships columnist, this author, interfaith minister, wedding officiant and love coach covers the gamut between marriage and menopause, romance and dating, and sex and spirituality.

She is author of 12 books, including: The Goddess Pages: A Divine Guide to Finding Love and Happiness (Llewellyn, November 2008); Pet Prayers and Blessings: Ceremonies and Celebrations to Share with the Animals You Love (Sterling Books, September 2008); Wedding Goddess: A Guide to Turning Wedding Stress Into Wedding Bliss (Penguin, 2005); and Release the Seductress Within: How to Seduce A Man and Thrill You Both (Random House, 2004). She is also author of  the e-course Find Your Spiritual Soulmate.

Laurie Sue has a very active wedding ministry in New York, marrying couples of all faiths and backgrounds. And she is coach and creator of The Soulmate Project on Beliefnet.com. She is editor of Wedlok.com.

Prior to being ordained, she enjoyed a colorful career as a journalist writing for women. She was editor-in-chief of Playgirl and Single Living, and managing editor of Women’s News. She's written for NY Daily News, Denver Post, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Ladies' Homes Journal and Woman's World.

She returned to school - seminary school - at 40 to become an interfaith minister. It was there that she met her husband, Rev. Victor Fuhrman. She married her true love at 48.



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In 1999, I had the pleasure of connecting with Daphne Rose Kingma –  author, poet and psychotherapist – for the first time. I fell in love with her, and you will too.
The time I spent with Daphne back then, and reading her books over the years, transformed my thinking and truly inspired me to a new level of understanding of soul mates and soulful love. Her wisdom on matters of the heart and her approach to creative wedding ceremonies guided me in my early years as a wedding officiant.  I am forever grateful to her.

In my opinion she is by far one of the nations most soulful relationship counselors. She is the real deal, someone who has been on the front line of helping people. Her book The Future of Love had just come out when we met and she shared her insights on love, marriage, intimacy, community and relating. Given the compelling questions of our day – and our deepening desire to connect with others in the spirit of love, community and family – I wanted to share with you this interview.

Daphne Rose Kingma's latest book is The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart: An Emotional and Spiritual Handbook (New World Library, 2010). I will share more on that in a future column.