Steve Pavlina has been through marriage and divorce, and now he has become ready for a new commitment.
This new commitment was sparked when he met Rachelle Fordyce.
A Conventional Relationship
Rachelle also has her own romantic history prior to meeting Steve.
Rachelle had started dating when she was 16.
With a handful of shared interests, it was easy for Rachelle and her fellow high school student Adam to become close friends. Over the course of their friendship, Rachelle dreamed that Adam was dating another girl, and this encouraged her to try dating Adam in the romantic sense. When she told Adam about it, he found it eerie because a girl really had been showing some interest in him. After this incident, Rachelle and Adam began officially dating.
Five years later, they got engaged and decided to get married during their 7th year anniversary, which was still 2 years away.
Around this time, they also began living together, with Rachelle putting a huge down payment, which she’d managed to save from working part-time in a call center while she was going to university. It was at this point that Rachelle began noticing changes in herself, mostly due to the new experiences and people she was becoming exposed to in her theatre classes at the university. She began forming a life that was not centered around Adam, and began to desire spending time with friends without Adam.
It was also during this time that her personal growth led her to becoming a vegan.
She finally fully embraced the vegan diet in 2001 after realizing that the ideals of veganism resonated strongly with her. She began considering becoming a vegan for the rest of her life, which was something that Adam did not agree with. She began then to worry about their future together, especially since she realized she wanted to have a vegan wedding and raise her future kids vegan as well.
At this point, she also began questioning whether it was wise to marry the one and only man that she has ever been with her whole life. She started thinking how it would make more sense to experience several other things first before settling down for good. Her doubts grew until she became stressed about the relationship, and this prompted her to ask for some time apart from Adam before they got married.
Adam wasn’t happy about it and gave her an ultimatum.
They would continue living together and would get married, or they would break up and just call off the wedding. With Rachelle realizing that she wasn’t ready for a long-term commitment, they decided to just break up.
They sold their condo and Rachelle embarked on her first experience in living independently and alone.
An Unconventional Relationship
Shortly afterwards, Rachelle met Michael, a vegan, spiritual, and geeky person who seemed like a good match for her.
Their relationship, however, was not the conventional type.
Although they began dating monogamously for a year, their relationship eventually turned into an open one. In a nutshell, they were mostly friends, but they lived in the same house and slept together occasionally. But since they were just friends, they were allowed to become involved with other people.
This went on for a year and a half until they realized that it was time to move on.
A Rocky Relationship
This was followed by a relationship with Andrew, who Rachelle also ended up living with.
Although they loved each other, Rachelle felt like they brought out the worst in each other. This kept them from becoming positive inspirations for each other. It was her relationship with Andrew that prompted Rachelle to book a reading with Erin Pavlina in an attempt to gain some insight about what she was going through.
During the reading, Erin noticed that the men Rachelle had been with did not have much personal power and then commented that someone as driven and ambitious like Steve would be perfect for Rachelle.
Erin’s reading plus some experiences in online dating helped her come up with a list of qualities that she wanted in a partner.
A Relationship of True Desires
In 2009, she finally had the chance to meet Steve in his Conscious Growth Workshop.
During the workshop, Rachelle met a lot of friends and had a great experience, although she also sensed that there was something about Erin and Steve’s relationship that seemed to gold them back from their individual growth.
She somehow had the feeling that their marriage would end that same year, and it did.
After Steve announced his separation from Erin, he posted a Facebook status regarding D/S play, a topic that piqued Rachelle’s interest and gave them something to connect with. Thus began an intense attraction toward each other, which ended with them falling in love and becoming involved, finally, in a long-term relationship.
Steve and Rachelle have been in a relationship since, acknowledging that they found each other only because they were both brave enough to let go of their past and pursue their true desires.