Well, I'm very excited about this interview.

It's with someone who I've known for, I don't know, maybe four decades now, Ariel Ford, who has been a premier influential figure in the field of higher consciousness and specifically is just having to do with relationships, finding your soulmate and all of that stuff as well as spirituality. Ariel has a book that's coming out or maybe by the time you see this it is out called The Love Thief. And as her friend and her colleague, I am so proud of her because this book really goes there about relationships and it really goes there about spirituality and also the relationship between the two. So I'm very excited to talk to Ariel and I'm excited that you and obviously so many others are going to find out about this book. There's a whole lot there. So hi Ariel, welcome. Thank you, Marianne. I'm so excited to have this conversation. Me too. I'm excited. The book starts with a very American scene. Woman meets man. It's everything she ever hoped for, harmonically, physically, all of her dreams, and he turns out to be a jerk. Pretty, pretty common in a way. And of course, this could go both ways. Men meet women who disappoint them the same way. I'm not saying they don't. And so it certainly goes into a relationship pattern that often ends with the toxic narcissist and so forth. Then when all of that blows up, she ends up to go to going to India where she finds herself and it's a very profound treatise. The book is both entertaining and profound. So I'm excited. Do you want to start by telling us as someone who has done the kind of work that you've done as a relationship expert and stuff? Do you see this kind of a scenario which, like I said, is common? The guy seems to be everything you could possibly want turns out to be someone else. Do you have any commentary about why you think this happens so much? What are the signs that she should have seen? What are your thoughts about all of that? Well, according to the psychiatrists who wrote the book, The Sociopath Next Door, one in every 24 American men is a sociopath. So you're already dealing with a pool of some pretty sick guys. I mean, we're very familiar with the term toxic narcissists, sociopath, but these guys are almost unavoidable. And what's so sad about it is they tend to be very smart, very charming, very charismatic, and they pray upon smart, successful women. Because they know that these women have managed to accomplish so much in their lives, except when it comes to the love part. So you become a target, you become prey, and they whisper in your ear, everything your little heart has always yearned to hear. And you become an addict, you become a junkie, you know, they get all your oxytocin going, and they take you on this romantic ride. And at the end of the day, two or three months in, who they really are shows up, and you start getting gaslit, and you start seeing that your bank account may be depleted or is depleting, and all the promises aren't coming true, and it becomes a nightmare. And you know, you were saying, well, what are the red flags? Well, you'll see those in retrospect. I mean I don't know if you remember this but the first line of the book is my mother was right. Right? My mother was right because Holly, my heroine, was warned ahead of time. You know people were saying this may be too good to be true but she's too far gone already. She's 38 years old. Her bioclock is, you know, off the charts ticking. She's spent her whole life waiting for the white pick offense and then Prince Charming shows up and she's never experienced anything like this. And it's great until it isn't. And then her life falls apart. You know, her dream is busted. Her physical being is falling apart. And she is beyond, beyond devastated. So let me ask you a question. First of all, you talk about how statistically common it is for a woman to run into a man like this. Are there as many women who are these toxic, sociopathic narcissists as there are men? You know, I wasn't focused on that when I was reading the book, so I doubt it. I really doubt it. I did read a very interesting memoir written by a female sociopath who lets us into her inner mind and how she manipulates people. But I think it's mostly men. And when I was writing the character Holly, she's based on four women that I know. All of these women are super successful. Some of them are household names. Some of them had this happen to them because of a lover or a business partner because betrayal can come in many forms. So I was the person holding the hand of the devastated person, which is why I was so able to sort of access the anger, the rage, the guilt, the disappointment, the shame, all of that that comes with having been scammed essentially. Now, like you said, the beginning of the book is that her mother suspected him from the beginning. Why would what wasn't about him that the mother figure would have suspected? So their actual first date was a trip to Budapest. He said to her, I need to go on this trip, I take once a year to collect artwork for my parents' collection. He sent her an Excel spreadsheet telling her about every event that would happen and suggestions on what to wear and how to be. She thought it was very thoughtful.. Oh, how nice he knows I've never been to Europe. How great. And the mothers like, oh my God, that's such controlling behavior. So right from the very store start, you know, mom was saying you better be careful. And then three months into the relationship, he proposes to her at the end of a Padre's game, Peco Park here in San Diego, on the Pitcher's Mount, and it's broadcast on the jumbo tron and the local news. And the mother's saying, you know, don't you think this is a little fast? You know, so, and all she's thinking about is he's already told me he wants more children and they were kind of beautiful babies together. And you know, she's, yeah, I said she's the most. It's the main key because I'm thinking about people that I have known and people, particularly my mother's generation, where they met, got married fast and stayed together for the next 50 years. So is the main issue slowing down? Well, you know, what happens when we're in the state that we call being in love, or what I like to call the world's greatest drug high, your brain on drugs, you're having this experience with a stranger. You don't know anything about who they are and their values. So back in the day when I was coaching women about love, I was telling them, really take your time. I was thinking about the days of you and I sitting in Pat Allen's auditorium. And you may never know. Oh, yeah. I'm about to Pat Allen. And I still believe that what she taught us is true one year. Yeah. And now it's up to two years. Dr. Laura Slesinger says, get to him for two years You know because you really do need to know what you're stepping into and of course Holly in the book says Well by the time we do the wedding it'll be a year. Yeah exactly so it turns out that he is More than a shlameel. He's a he's a really a. He's a, as it turns out, he's even a criminal.

She goes to India and you know, once again, I congratulate you because this could have been so gimmick and it's some nod because she goes to India and I You of course have spent time there. The book to me, it's clear was written by somebody who really knows the place knows what the sort of spiritual journey is that someone can take who goes

there. The book, to me it's clear, was written by somebody who really knows the place, knows what the sort of spiritual journey is that someone can take who goes there. I thought it was interesting. You named them in Deepak. I know there's a little bit of honor sewn to a mutual colleague there. I just want to tell you, so Deepak's one of the most common names in India. I didn't know that. I love. But the character of Deepak doesn't actually have a smidgen of Deepak Chopra in him. He's really a combination of Neil Donald Walsh and Gay Hendrix and a little Mary Ann Waymson and basically everything wives didn't even learn. Yeah and you say in the book that his wife they attended the church in Michigan when I was there I liked that piece. Yes, it wasn't like I felt he reminded me of Deepak Chopra. I just know because I know the actual relationships. Talk to us about a little bit of what her journey was. Really, and her heart had already been cracked open by the pain.

I mean, that, and that of itself, that kind of heartbreak, you know, that Scott Peck's line, there's more love in a broke, what is it? More room in a broken heart, more, whatever in a broken heart that you open up, your cracked open. So she was more open to hearing certain things. She talks about how this woo woo stuff is about my mother. and then ends up Realized that's this she is the the only child of a new age baby boomer who used to hang dream catchers over her crib So she was anti Everything that we know and teach and believe in right she and she had no idea that Rishikesh India was one of the holy cities or what a holy city even was. She had an Indian born auntie who said, I was going to give you $10,000 as a wedding gift. Now I'm going to give it to you as a heal your heart gift. And I suggest you go to my cousin's cooking school in Rishikesh. So she lands in Rishikesh not knowing that it's the yoga meditation capital of the universe, right? She's not interested in any of this, but as fate would have it, she ends up being befriended by the owner of a spiritual bookstore who's a retired professor from University of Michigan of counseling psychology. And she goes there every day to get her caffeine fix, her cup of tea, and then she starts to unload, and he starts to counsel her. And it becomes this beautiful dance and relationship because what she doesn't know initially is that his heart is broken. The love of his life has died after a 30-something marriage. And they form this deep relationship and they have these deep conversations. And then she starts to have mystical experiences, not even knowing how to explain them or what to call them. So it's a slow growth thing. She doesn't go looking for spirituality, but in the end, it's's like Deepak once said this to me when we were doing this 13 kilometer Amulation around mountain Runchula and he looks at me with the weirdest look he's ever given me and he says in India Spirit is in hard to find. It's impossible to avoid. And that's what happens to Holly. Well, there's even some comment in the book about how, and I remember feeling this years ago in Cancun, Mexico, that the veil was very thin. Yeah. And I think somebody explains that to her that the veil is very thin here and the things that happen. And of course this character of Deepak tells her towards the end when they're about to leave, you know, each other, she's saying farewell to him. That this relationship, as you said, was as much a healing for him as it was for her and that every time he was telling her something, he knew he was speaking to himself. And of course, you and I know that phenomenon very well, of course. So explain a little bit because she goes home and it's a, it's a, it's really a nightmare situation. I mean, there's legal issues involved that wouldn't necessarily have gone well. But I think that what, what I'm interested in is she was stuck in a paradigm around love That was very risky, very American, very, I say American because it's very infused by the mythology of popular culture, not all of which is true and real. So then she goes, so she, her heart is broken open, she goes to India, she has these experiences. And as it happens, these experiences where she finds love, which is the greater love, actually prepares her because it writes her, you know, realigns her. She becomes someone who knows how to love correctly in terms of the things that she's looking for in her life. When you talk about your mystical experiences, talk to us a little bit about what she learned in India, about herself and about life and about God and about love. Well, one of the biggest experiences she had was, while she was in Rishikesh, she was attending evening, artsy ceremonies where there's chanting and prayers being given to the Ganga, to the river. And then going to Satsangs with a holy woman that we both know, named Saviji. And Saviji, one night, shared the story how she was healed, how her broken body and broken heart in mind were healed when she surrendered all her problems to the river. Just got inside the water, dipped down and said, take my pain and she was instantly healed. So that sounded very intriguing to Holly. In the first time she tried it, nothing happened, but the second time she tried it, she just decided to surrender completely, open her heart, open her mind. And she had what could be called an enlightenment experience. I like to call it a Santoshia experience because one of the things that's happening right now in America is there's a million books on happiness. How to be happy? Everybody wants to be happy and there's studies on happiness. And I've pretty much come to the conclusion that happiness is the wrong goal. And the reason for this is that happiness is based on people, places, things, and experiences. So we set out to get them. They want us, we want them to make us happy. And then when they disappear, we're not happy. But santocia, which is a Sanskrit word, means utter contentment. That we get to the state of being, that regardless of the outside experiences, we maintain our inner contentment. And in fact, I had this made up on Etsy, which is a daily reminder on my desk to seek San Tosha. And as I was writing this book, my whole thoughts about law of attraction were changed radically. I used to teach it. I will never teach law of attraction again. And the reaction for itself, Erochols. Right? It's ego- driven. I was willful. God, I want this. I'm making a vision board. I'm doing affirmations, blah, blah, blah. And most of the time I get what I want it because I like to make things happen. And then I realized the biggest, grandest, most amazing stuff that's ever happened to me. I never had the imagination to dream of. They came to me out of the lowest depths of pain I'd ever experienced. I threw my arms up and I just said, God, just please, please, please show me the next step. And I became receptive and out of being receptive and trusting that there was a a destiny for me That's when life changed so you know people say oh you should teach the sounds like no No, I don't want to teach us. I just want to live it if it's my destiny like writing the book was an unavoidable Destiny for me. I did not want to write it. I'd already written 11 nonfiction books. There was nothing on my to-do list that said, oh, you should write a novel. Never. And then it shows up in my head, kicking and screaming and demanding to be written. And so I spent five and a half years learning outright fiction. I'm very pleased that I did it. And, you know, it's doubtful all over do it again. Well I think that that also relates to what Holly went through because I so agree with you and I've been of course saying it for years. The difference from a course in miracles perspective between magic and miracles. Magic is what so many people are into. You're using God as your air and boy. I want this. I want this. want this, I want this. And of course, you're attached to the idea of that. And as Buddha said, all pain and suffering comes from that attachment, the miracle state of mind is the availability, the receptivity and the attitude of service. How can I help you? And from that, the universe, which knows more than you do about what would actually make you happy like you would never have dreamed of this. You were just seeking contentment, as you were saying, inner peace, alignment. And then the next thing you know, you're supposed to write a book. And then this book explodes into this, this marvelous thing. In Holly's life what's so interesting to me is it actually brought love back around that she wasn't, she didn't go home saying, dear God, let me, let me try again and have the perfect boyfriend. She didn't do that. wasn't she didn't go home saying dear God let me let me try

again and have the perfect boyfriend she didn't do that it's she just saw alignment with God and and the alignment with truth as she understood it and then the book you know things unfold in a way that makes all the dreams she previously had come true, but not because she tried to make it happen. Let me ask you. Let's go back to this issue of the sociopathic norse assistant so forth. In your book, Justice is done. He gets his in a big way. Do you think that normally usually happens?

I mean, we know karma, everything will come back to, not necessarily in this lifetime. What do you feel about that? What is the fate in terms of this lifetime of most people who carry those traits? You know, I'm still trying to understand that. You know, Holly wanted revenge on him so badly because he took everything from her, including her best friend. You know, and at the end of the book, she is able to get to forgiveness for the best friend because she sees that she really dodged a bullet by her best friend's bad behavior. And someone had pointed that out to her in India, one of the people had said, pointed that out. And of course, as of yet to forgiveness for the evil one, you know, she never gets to that. And I've been thinking about that lately because you and I both read The Widows Guide to Dead Bastards and how remarkable that book is and how she gets to forgiveness after her guy didn't almost worse things than you could ever possibly imagine a husband doing, right? And that's a true story. It is a true story. It is, and's, and it's so beautifully written. But will Holly ever get to forgiveness? You know, because now by the end of the book, she's her, her wife's together and she's happy. But, you know, I saw that writing this book for me was a very cathartic act that the evil one is in this book is somebody I once knew. And while the actual events didn't happen to me personally, I was on the sidelines of really bad stuff going on. And I was able to see by the end of the book that being able to tell this story, because the the majority of the things that he did happen to other people was a healing, but am I apt for forgiveness? No, there's still a part of me that, you know, says wicked evil things about what I wish could have really happened in real life to him that didn't. Without going into details or personalities, do you think that many of the things that happened might not have happened had he not come into the scene? Now I actually believe in destiny on that level too. Like my story is the woman for whom most of the bad stuff happened. I think it passed life. These two murdered each other. You know, I think there was karma that needed to be worked out because certainly talk about red flags being there. They were all there and they were there early. the way things things worked out, she was an ever-welling to give up on him. I remember meeting him once and just not being impressed, not understanding why anybody was impressed. So what given how the search for love, God's love, divine love, and a sense of oneness and love with all of the universe is like a prerequisite for her finding the earthly love that she's looking for. That is, juicy, that is the main theme of the book and the necessity? No, from me. The theme is really about for all the women who've had this experience and it's a huge number to really forgive themselves for thinking they could have done something different or better to let go of the shame or guilt because they were prey. They were targeted. They really never stood a fair chance and they didn't know it. Now of course if it happens the second time you've got to ask yourself, hey you've been here before, you know. But for me what I've learned about love in all these years because you know I grew up with the Disney picture of love, you know, your eyes meet across a crowded room and you're going to have all these feelings and that's what love is and I've really come to understand that true adult mature love is first and foremost it's a behavior and it's a choice and it's a decision and it's an action and it's a way of being and if you're with what you consider your soulmate life partner,

there are going to be days when you hate them. And it doesn't mean that you don't love them. And people really need to understand that. That, you know, to have a best friend lover devoted person who will take a bullet for you and be your biggest cheerleader and your best friend, And it comes with a cost.

And the cost is that like Brian and I have now been together 28 years if you can believe that. You know, I'm the first writing I remember I was talking to in a car when you told me about him. I remember that. And there are still days when I can totally annoy him and he can totally annoy me. The thing is, you know, we get through it really quickly now and we are devoted life partners and it, you know, I ended up writing all these books on love and marriage and partnership because I needed them because, you know, did I manifest my soulmate? Yes, I did. I allowed destiny to bring us together. However you want to put it. But what I didn't know, almost as soon as we got married, was that I had no partnership skills. The thing that I was best at in life was being the boss. I was used to running a business and being the boss. I had no relational skills. And I decided, well, great, I manifested this great guy, but am I going to be able to keep him because I can be such a bitch? And I decided to become a student of love and I studied and studied and I did this thing with involving wisdom for several years called the Art of Love where I interviewed every single love, marriage marriage, and relationship, and dating expert, and then ended up writing like being a reporter. I didn't do the research. I just read everything for you and said, okay, this is what worked for me. Here's why it worked for me. This is what you should do. And I would put scripts like, and turn your mate into your soulmate. I put whole scripts on there on how to have a hard conversation when, you know, you're ready to kill somebody. And kill them. They are in the introduction to the Course in Miracles. It says this, this course is not aimed at teaching the meaning of love for that is beyond what can be taught. It aims at removing the barriers to the awareness of love's presence and so often both with myself as well as people

I will work with I'll say okay name three things

What we might call character defects or at least?

Characteristics of your personality that just might keep a guy at bay

Because he's been spending all this time blaming and blaming them. Except for one experience like when I was in my early 20s, I have not been betrayed in love but I've been betrayed in life. And one of the things that is talked about in the book is the decision that you have to make within yourself. I realized in my own situation something that occurred over the last couple of years, if I didn't find a way to forgive both the person, the people, as well as myself for allowing them anywhere around me, then I would age as an angry, pathetic woman. And so really forgiveness becomes a gift to yourself, or at least softening around it. Taking responsibility. You know you mentioned in the book about the Deepak and his wife having gone to the church in Michigan and hearing me say that concept from the course which is only what you were not giving can be lacking in any situation. And what the course in Miracle says is that you have to take 100% responsibility for your life. And if you don't, you won't be able to change it. And so when these terrible things happen to us, although, you know, you were just saying women have to know you couldn't have known, although she could have gone slower, right? She could have listened to her mother. Isn't it interesting as we get older, how smarter mothers really were? Oh, so true. It is so true. I remember one situation in my life and I don't want to go into the details of what it was. But after I had already met a terrible decision, I talked to my mother about it and she gave me very wise counsel. And I thought what a tragedy it was that we had not had the relationship that I would have gone to her first. I remember my mother used to sometimes when I would be at home from college or home having lived somewhere else or maybe even when I was in high school. Late at night, her makeup is off, she's got a night gown on, and she would come talk to me and she would sit on the edge of my bed and talk. And she was a different person. She was stripped of all affect and she was this wise woman. And I think that that's really what it's about, stripping, we have such masks masks and maybe when we when Holly met Barry in the book right um she was in love with a mask she was in love with a fantasy with this long-term dream she was an only child never knew her father. In fact, even though she asked her mother

all the time, who was my dad, it was a one night stand with a rote from a band. She couldn't even remember his name. And she said, the only conscious thing I remember from that night is I swallowed the quailwood.

But that gets dealt with in India as well. Yes, yes, and she ends up having a mystical naughty reading. She finds out a lot about who that dad was and the fact that there are half-sisters to be found, which ends up not being that important to her. But yeah. But yeah. You know, I once went for an astrological reading in LA years and years ago, is at a low point in my life. And the woman, I remember the reading thinking, I can't believe I'm paying for this because she said to me, she said, you are in the winter of your life. Everything's buried deep amongst snow and it's going to be like this till spring and spring's a long way off. And so I was not happy with the reading. But what made the whole reading worthwhile was at the very end, she said to me, she said, today is that one year anniversary of my mother's death. And I've always felt a lot of shame that my mother and I were never closer. But she came to me in meditation this morning and she said to me, I was the way I was towards you and you towards me in this lifetime because that's the agreement that we made with each other so that you could become the woman you are today. I think there is something that happens when our parents leave the stage. There is something that happens no matter how good our relationships might have been with our parents. There is a coming into our own that simply doesn't happen while they're there, whether it was a bad relationship or a good relationship, it propels us to something. You said that you felt that writing this book was destiny and I can see knowing you and knowing your work, how so much of what you've learned as a person but also as a professional is in this book and in this story. Can you tell us a little something about how you feel? I mean, I know you've written other books, you've written non-triction books, but I would think that this must be in some ways qualitatively different. I mean, I know how it feels to have written a book and how it's nice and it's done and you know, I'm not minimizing that. But what is what is your experience now? And

now it's going to be coming out into the world and more manifest ways. It's very exciting.

Congratulations. Tell us about your journey and what it means for you that you've wrapped

up so much of what you've learned and taught in this one story.

Yeah. It wasn't something I intentionally set out to do. If there was any intention with this book, I wanted to code it with love and healing, that the women who would read this book would feel seen and heard and have some solace around the fact that they had this horrible experience and that it wasn't their fault. So that was the real intention. But I was always very pleased when I could be writing some dialogue between Deepak and Holly and he's going deep with her and explaining what love bombing is and what that looks like. And I would always sort of harken back to where I would learn this information and conversations I had with other love experts. So it was very gratifying to be able to take, you know, really, I'm almost 73 now, to take decades of studying and reading and learning and weave them into a narrative that was going to help somebody. Well, I think that's part of aging too. We want to not only wrap up the, you know, the campsite, but also clean up the campsite, but also turn it into some legacy that this is what we are giving, what we are passing on sort of before we go. But you know what? You do talk about love bombing and you mention that word in the book. And obviously her experience with Hamlet's go to Budapest with all that stuff you love on the hurt. What was that? That was a Marine helicopter going over the ocean. Sorry, man but okay. Also, Lauren, when she came back after the freeze, she's on the other side of me, so I'm looking at her, it's going to look kind of weird. I guess there's nothing we can do now. We've got to finish up by no chance time. So never mind, let's just go from where we where we were okay You're talking the book about love bombing you use that expression and obviously anybody can see the love bombing aspect of You know as soon as you meet so let's go to Budapest and all of that kind of stuff But when you look at the man she meets and I don't want to give away too much at the end, at the end of the book, it's what a mature woman finds more attractive. It's a different kind of love bombing, but it's the real thing. The conversation, the sharing, he's sexy. I think the guy at the end is far sexy other than the guy at the beginning. Right, but she, you know, she was going for this standard fairy tale version, Toldeurk Enhancum, when in fact what she needed was sort of this, you know, somewhat all American boy next door, not the cutest thing that ever lived, but, you know, was on a pillow. There's something about it. I mean, I did it and I actually got one. I mean, there's something very sexy about him, like he's an FBI, you know, I mean, it is.

He's an FBI.

Yeah. on a piano. There's something about it. I mean, I did it and I got one. I mean, there's something very sexy about it like he's an FBI. I mean, it is. Yeah, it's his own, like,

you know, for me, I think she really, I don't know if you remember this, but there's

...