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I believe in psychics - my husband thinks it's claptrap. So could an 'energy reading' be the key to sprucing up our marriage after 20 years together?
No matter how much you love a man, after 15 years of marriage – and 20 years together – the things that once struck you as endearing little habits tend to make you want to grind your teeth.
That’s how it is for me and my husband, Cornel. We have a good relationship, but there’s not much swooning these days. He was once the spontaneous one, strutting through life like a brave young buck. Now he’s more slow old deer, while like many women in midlife I have become increasingly stressed and distracted, and now barrel through the days at a thousand miles an hour.
We don’t need a drastic intervention – but we could do with a bit of sprucing up.
So, offered the chance of exactly that in the form of a ‘couple’s energy reading’ by a renowned celebrity psychic, I was hardly going to say no.
Julie Cook and husband Cornel tried out the 80-minute 'energy reading' session
But Cornel had doubts about its benefit whereas Julie was more open-minded
For £160 a session, US expert Kathy Fitz gives the equivalent of a marriage MOT – over the phone, no less – assessing whether you and your partner are still ‘tapping into your energy’. After just 80 costly minutes, she promises couples will notice ‘an improvement in communication, a way of accessing emotions or energies that are holding them back’.
Readings like this are big business – the psychic services industry is said to be worth $2.3bn (£1.8bn) a year in the US alone. Fitz’s celebrity fans also include queen of wellness, Gwyneth Paltrow, who rhapsodises about her work on her lifestyle site, Goop.
So one grey, drizzly evening, I book us in for a ‘uniquely personalised’ session.
After two kids, aged 15 and ten, and two decades of more-or-less domestic harmony, we know each other inside out. But will Fitz consider our energies aligned?
Cornel sniggers.
‘Isn’t that a load of tosh?’ he says. ‘How can someone do that over the phone?’
Already, the psychic is bringing our differences to the fore. Because Cornel is a hardened cynic, about as ‘woo-woo’ as a Scotch egg.
US expert Kathy Fitz gives the equivalent of a marriage MOT via an 'energy reading'
Fitz’s celebrity fans include queen of wellness, Gwyneth Paltrow
I, on the other hand, am decidedly woo-woo. I have had two psychic readings, one of which was so spookily accurate I have never forgotten it.
It happened when I was just 13, and saw a gipsy fortune teller at a fair. I handed over 50p and she sat me down and pronounced that I would rise to the top of my profession before having to choose between two men.
In 2005 I was promoted to be editor of a magazine. I was married at the time, but shortly afterwards met Cornel and had to choose between the two men.
The prediction was bullseye-true.
Then there was the time I visited a blind psychic when I was 27 who told me I’d have two children, a boy, then a girl. That happened too.
Still, I’ve never involved Cornel in my less mainstream beliefs.
‘Everything is energy, ask an astrophysicist,’ I tell him.
He shrugs, which I know after 20 years together means, ‘Oh, go on then’.
Julie says she has had two psychic readings, 'one of which was so spookily accurate I have never forgotten it'
On the evening of our reading, Cornel sits down at the table next to me and I dial Kathy at her Florida office via the non-esoteric medium of WhatsApp. Her voice, when she answers, is a languorous, warm American drawl.
According to Kathy, all humans have a unique energy field. She will ‘clear out’ the ‘old energy’ holding us back. The result? Positive vibes that will make our relationship stronger.
‘Who wants to go first?’ she asks. I look over at Cornel but he is already playing a snooker game on his phone. ‘You,’ I hiss, making a bid to grab his phone off him.
‘Er, yes, OK, I will,’ he says.
Kathy asks Cornel to say his full name several times, which he does, while still trying to pot balls in his game.
Then the line goes silent. Suddenly, Kathy starts breathing in and out heavily, telling Cornel to do the same. Cornel rolls his eyes. Then she pauses. ‘Some of this could be old energy, or from old family dynamics, but what it’s showing me is a responsibility that you had to carry,’ says Kathy. ‘Sometimes it can slow you down, like wearing a heavy backpack.’
Cornel and I exchange glances.
He grew up in Communist Romania with his mother, who was then a single parent. She had been hit by a car when he was a baby and their life was hard and impoverished. He’d started playing the piano aged seven in a bid for a better life.
Kathy explains that this sense of responsibility used to be a positive force, but now Cornel’s older it doesn’t serve such a useful purpose. Cornel’s eye-rolling stops for a moment and he looks reflective.
Julie enjoyed the session and felt Kathy got some things about her marriage 'exactly right'
Kathy says she is going to ‘get rid of’ this old, negative energy, inhaling and exhaling sharply several times. How does that work from 4,000 miles away? There’s no explanation, but Kathy continues…
‘There’s this no-nonsense part of you that wants to get things done, it’s served you very well.
‘It’s just that now your life is different. It’s like you’re at a restaurant and get to pick and choose what you want from the menu.’
I am baffled, but Kathy explains that Cornel can now let go of old pressures and seek luxury. ‘I’m seeing a velvet robe and slippers,’ she says, without a trace of irony.
I almost laugh as Cornel loves the dark red dressing gown and posh Barbour slippers he got for Christmas.
‘I see you kicking back in a luxurious way,’ she adds.
She then exhales loudly again and asks if he has a creative outlet. Cornel replies that he works as a musician and Kathy says he should look into painting, or even just doodling, to ward off negative energy.
Then it’s back to the loud breathing. We wait silently. Once she announces she has cleared Cornel’s energy – he dutifully says he feels better, then gets back to the snooker – she moves on to me.
As with Cornel, she asks me to repeat my full name a few times. She exhales loudly before saying: ‘You’re at a sewing machine and you’re sewing really fast…’
Cornel is drinking tea and spits it out.
I know why. I can’t sew for toffee and once sewed two legs of a pair of trousers together.
‘She doesn’t mean literally!’ I mouth.
Kathy goes on to say: ‘And you’re pressing the pedal but it doesn’t go any faster and you’re really frustrated.’
This I nod at. I am the least patient person I know.
‘No matter how fast you’re going you want to go faster. Let’s look at what’s driving that…’
She exhales again and tells me: ‘The picture that is showing up, you’re running and you’re looking back and as long as everyone’s behind you, you’re golden. There’s a distance that allows you to be yourself, but once someone gets a little closer, you want to get going again.’
This is me, undoubtedly. I have few close friends and don’t like getting close to people. I offer a non-committal, ‘That’s accurate.’
She suggests this is to do with ‘old family energy’ that makes me feel I need to ‘get ahead of the game’.
She ‘clears’ this old energy – and strangely I do feel lighter, almost happy as she does this – and then turns her attention to our energy as a couple.
‘A lot of times with couples, their energies are just so intermingled and enmeshed that it can be problematic. But you two are a little bit the opposite. You have a relationship space and so does he… but those spaces are not necessarily together.’
This, Kathy says, is a good thing, but can be frustrating when we want to share deep togetherness as a couple.
I look over at Cornel, engrossed now in his emails, and nod sagely.
‘Sometimes you want to connect but, Cornel, you’re too practical and, Julie, you’re too speedy.’
Now this does ring a bell.
Cornel is definitely the more pragmatic one and I am the impatient one, rushing and not thinking things through. He is a saver, I am a spender. He searches for a holiday for hours, I book in seconds.
‘With this shift you are moving towards, there’s a lightness that will move in,’ Kathy intones, between breaths.
‘There’s a slowing down, and this will make it so much easier to move into a deeper space in your relationship.’
Huff, puff, more deep breathing. Cornel looks at his watch.
‘The idea of this reading is to release energy so you don’t stay stuck in a rut. I picture you young and getting to know each other and that combination can be very exciting.’
Exciting? That doesn’t sound too bad.
‘You both have a stubborn energy,’ she says. We both nod vehemently.
She tells us to take a deep breath in and let it out when we’re comfortable.
We do.
She ends the session by saying she sees us – our energy – entwined with ‘curiosity’ as if in a braid.
‘You’ve known him for so long but there’s still a lot you don’t know about him – and vice versa.’
When the reading’s over, Cornel staggers out of his chair dramatically and moans ‘Starving!’ before heading for the snack cupboard.
I feel lighter, more alert.
‘Does your energy feel any different?’ I ask.
‘Well my blood sugar’s low,’ he says, biting into a Double Decker bar. He’s very much the same man he was 80 minutes ago, then.
So was our reading a genuine stepping stone to becoming closer? It’s a no for Cornel, who thinks the phone call was a bit of expensive claptrap.
But it was an emphatic yes from me: I feel Kathy got some things about us exactly right.
And the joy of this method is that, in theory, it can work for both of us even if Cornel remains cynically unconvinced. His energy has been cleaned whether he realises that or not.
In the following weeks, Cornel and I decide to make time just for us, to laugh and be a bit lighter together.
As for long-term harmony in our marriage, only time will tell.
Will I ever slow down? Probably not. Will Cornel enter his fated luxury robe and slippers phase?
He’s already there.