I ended up working with both Wendy and Terence. Through working with Six Step Inner Bonding process that we teach, Wendy learned to attend to her abandonment feelings herself rather than go after Terence or her children when these feelings came up. She learned that she was being self responsible rather than selfish when she took responsibility for her own feelings of safety, worth, lovability, happiness and joy, rather than making Terence responsible for making her feel safe and worthy. She learned that when she embraced responsibility of listening to and taking responsibility for her own feelings, she no longer felt abandoned or angry.

Terence learned that he had another option other than compliance or resistance. He learned to take responsibility for his own feelings by telling Wendy his truth when she yelled at him or blamed him. Instead of being a victim, he learned to stand up for himself and set loving limits on how Wendy was treating him. He learned to say, “I don’t like being yelled at. I don’t want to be with you when you are yelling at me and blaming me for your feelings. If you can’t treat me with caring and respect, then I don’t want to talk with you or spend time with you. I don’t like being with you when you treat me this way.”

At first, Terence was reluctant to say these things to Wendy. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her his truth. He felt his truth was harsh and that he would be unloving if he said these things. However, when he was willing to take risk of speaking his truth, he found that Wendy was actually grateful to receive truth. Rather than getting angry and hurt, she appreciated his honesty, and told him that he was helping her to learn and grow by telling her his truth.

Terence ended up not leaving. Over a period of a year of doing their inner work, their relationship completely changed. In fact, he and Wendy have achieved a new level of love and intimacy in their relationship, beyond what they had when they first fell in love.

You will need to total yearly amounts. You will need approximate yearly cost to live (at your desired level) during regular healthy retirement. And, you will need total yearly amount of costs to live in assisted or full care living facilities ( for each – you and mate).

Multiply each yearly amount by number of years you might be living in that circumstance. Example: Retire at 65. Live healthy retirement- 15 years (so 15 x yearly cost of healthy living) . Live assisted – 8 years ( so 8 x yearly cost of living in care).

You now have two totals that when added together equal your estimation of total dollar amount you will need to draw from in order to live after retiring. NOW you are ready to begin planning your investments in such a way that you can achieve that TOTAL number by time you retire.

Here are some tools to help you now that you are ready to take that first step: USA Today retirement cost calculator: http://www.calcbuilder.com/cgi-bin/calcs/RET2.cgi/usatoday Motley Fool’s retirement area http://www.fool.com/retirement.htm?source=PFinAg Metlife’s retirement area http://www.metlife.com/Applications/Corporate/WPS/CDA/PageGenerator/0,1674,P1946,00.html About.com’s HUGE retirement resource area: http://www.retireplan.about.com/

Until next time—all best, Kate