Great Relationships Start With Self-Awareness, Says This Dating Coach

The Short Version: Valentina Tudose, a Hong Kong relationship coach, has worked in coaching for 10-plus years, guiding women toward their own routes to what she calls “extraordinary relationships.” Sharing a goal with your partner and speaking up about your needs are two of the ways to turn that kind of relationship into reality. The harder part is doing the introspection and inner work it takes to shake off bad habits, get through conflict, and break relationship rules.

Very often, the one obstacle keeping you from a happy relationship is you.

No advice is more irritating to hear. None is more useful, either.

“I tell my clients that I don’t give advice, because in truth, I believe that they are the expert at what they need to achieve in life. I’m only a guide,” said Valentina Tudose, a well-known relationship coach who works out of Hong Kong.

Even so, her specialty is helping women build what she calls “extraordinary relationships”, meaning romances shaped by exactly that advice. Growing as a person, she said, is frequently what makes a relationship succeed.

As a relationship coach, Valentina Tudose views her role as guiding women who are looking for love.

“I felt very strongly that there is work that needs to be done internally for each woman,” Valentina explained. Of course, working on yourself is hard, which is exactly why this advice drives people up the wall!

Examining your own needs and bad habits honestly can be deeply uncomfortable. In effect, you’re holding up a mirror to your deepest desires and letting the person whose opinion matters most to you see it. Yet Valentina says that pushing past that discomfort, along with the conflict that comes up as you work on yourself, is vital to building bonds that last.

“Sometimes, we are caught up in our own story,” Valentina explained. The inner work starts once you can share your story with your partner and hear theirs in return.

Aim for the Same Goal as Your Partner

Even if you spoke every language in the world, some of what you said would still be lost in translation.

“Language is imperfect,” Valentina said. That goes double for romance, where emotions run high and so does vulnerability. “We think we say the same thing, but actually, everyone has a different meaning.”

Take the phrase “I want stability”: some people hear it and think of financial freedom, while to others stability means a strong family unit.

Talking about your needs clearly and with confidence is a skill people often overlook, and Valentina recommends sharpening it. “You need to be able to express the no-gos — the areas of a relationship that do not work for you — to your partner,” she said.

Valentina believes lasting love starts with “a common vision” and with being able to “communicate to each other very clearly what the stops on this journey need to be.”

There’s no way your partner can know how to make you happy (or you them) unless you tell each other your wants and boundaries. Partnerships last when both people sign on to the same goals; put another way, when you both mean the same thing by stability.

“If we have a common vision and we are able to communicate to each other very clearly what the stops on this journey need to be for us to be happy, then we have a really good opportunity to grow together,” Valentina explained. She told us growth is the clearest sign that a relationship is extraordinary. “If we don’t grow together, we grow apart.”

Shared goals vary from couple to couple, and keep in mind that they shift as the relationship deepens. A newer couple might aim to split their time fairly between friends and each other, while a married couple’s shared goal might be to listen to one another more.

Getting there won’t always be a smooth ride, but Valentina reassured us that trying is what counts. “An extraordinary relationship is a relationship in which the partners make a commitment to help each other grow toward that common goal that they set in the beginning,” Valentina said.

Feel Free to Break Clichéd Relationship “Rules”

Society teaches us to stick to certain norms, but Valentina pointed out that love won’t always fit neatly into a box. “I believe extraordinary relationships are those relationships that do not follow prescribed rules that we’ve all been programmed to follow,” she explained. “I don’t think everyone has to be in the same kind of relationship as everyone else.”

Be clear on what you want, but don’t stress about sticking to so-called “relationship rules.”

Monogamy is among the biggest “prescribed rules” of all. “I don’t believe monogamy or exclusivity is the answer,” she said. “Every couple can create an extraordinary relationship according to their own rules.”

Valentina works with women to figure out which rules, if any, they should break.

Many people assume, for instance, that true “soulmates” never fight or hit rough patches. In fact, reasonable conflict can be a sign the relationship is doing its job. It may show that both of you are willing to tackle uncomfortable subjects.

Push past the “should’ves” and tell your partner what’s bothering you. Go ahead and have that argument: if it’s your truth, your partner needs to hear it.

“I actually believe that conflicts are what help us understand each other better,” Valentina said. When you work through conflict together, it shows you have enough respect for each other to trust that a handful of disagreements won’t blow the relationship apart. So don’t sidestep conflict; dive in.

Is this argument truly about the dishes, or is there something bigger underneath? “Conflict actually represents unmet needs,” Valentina shared. “They also represent a great opportunity to rewrite unproductive patterns.”

To Valentina, love is about growth as well as companionship.

Breaking unproductive patterns and relationship rules works much like kicking a bad habit. It can demand time and patience, but in the end it sets you free. “I don’t believe an extraordinary relationship is an easy relationship, but it’s a very fulfilling relationship,” Valentina said.

Valentina’s chief aim is personal growth within a relationship. “Every challenge that you meet as a couple and every difficult conversion you have can really help you grow,” she said again. “And that, to me, is why I’m in this business.”

Relationship Stuck? Look Inward

Nearly every good dating coach, Valentina among them, will tell you that working on yourself is a key step toward finding true love. “If you want to meet your ideal partner, you have to become your ideal partner,” she said.

Do you express yourself the way you’d like your partner to? Do you respect your partner’s goals and back them as fully as they back you? When conflict comes up, do you ignore it, or do you let it take over your relationship?

If you’re not able to grow yourself, it’s unrealistic to expect huge leaps of growth from your partner.

Self-awareness is the key to figuring out your wants and how to reach them.

“For me, it really doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re at as long as you understand what kind of ideal relationship you’re ready for,” Valentina said. 

If you know the ways you want to grow and you’re willing to support your partner along the way, Valentina’s coaching services are a fit for you. “I don’t tell my clients the answers,” she said. “I help them find their own answers through a program that I tailor for them.”

Our relationships grow weaker the less we understand our own habits, traumas, and beliefs about love. Still, self-awareness is harder to reach than it sounds. You can’t just flip a switch, and that’s something Valentina has worked to understand herself.

“My main advice is something that I use for myself … because I’m still in the process of learning about love,” she said. “The advice is, if you feel unhappy about something another person does  or doesn’t do, ask yourself, ‘How can I do that myself?’”

Put simply, you need to be able to reflect the qualities you’re looking for in a partner. Doing that makes it easier to say what you want and to notice when what you’re asking for can’t be done.

Queen Rising, an immersive and transformational group coaching program, is one of several programs Valentina offers, along with Love Compass, Love Alchemy, and Unbreakable: Breakup Recovery Coaching.

Valentina calls this idea mirroring. When you reflect the qualities you need in a partner, you may learn more about yourself and what you need.

That search for self-knowledge is what gave rise to Queen Rising, Valentina’s immersive and transformational group coaching program. It welcomes women at any stage of life, whether they’ve just divorced, have always been single, or are settled in a long-term partnership. In the program, women lean on one another, learn from what they’ve been through together, and move past feelings of discomfort and loneliness. “It’s about helping women find the next version of themselves,” Valentina explained.

And with Valentina as your guide, that next version of you can be extraordinary.