Getting married and moving to Germany!

Yes, you read that correctly. I am getting married and moving to Germany permanently on October 22.

This post will [mostly] take a break from my developmental theories. It reminds me of the joke: “Enough talk about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”

My developmental theories are sourced from my life, it’s about what has worked (and not worked) for me in Authentic Relating leadership. Thus, its not really possible to NOT talk about me, at least in a blog format. So when I say “enough talk about me”, what I mean is that I am taking a break from my ceaseless whining. Try as I might, its difficult for me currently to find anything to whine about. The post is long and may not be of interest to anyone who doesn’t know me. But here it is.

Specifically, I will tell how a 64-year old unsuccessful author who hasn’t gotten laid in 10 years (despite that being his most ardent desire), and who was beginning to think that he was too broke, crazy and ugly to attract any self-respecting woman, happened to meet a beautiful and brilliant young German woman, fell in love and is moving to Germany.

You may recall I moved to Mexico in July of 2023, eventually starting an intentional community there which was a spectacular failure, albeit with many great learnings. That story told (in lurid detail) on the substack, 2024: The year I finally landed in my life.

For all the mishegas created in the 18 months I was in Mexico (I am an expert in mishegas, no doubt because I enjoy it), during that time my AR career took off. I ran many successful on-the-ground developmental groups there in a style called Practical Relational Leadership through Authentic Relating, and the online groups were also quite successful. Sophie joined one of the online groups in February of this year, 2024, and that group was fantastic. I later learned that most any group in which Sophie shows up (including those that she leads in Germany, online and  on-the-ground) are fantastic. The girl has some talent as an AR leader.

Anyway, I liked Sophie so much I hired her to lead a new program that I was offering, sponsored by the Global Eco-Village Network. That group ran in June-July and was also amazing. While this group was running, however, I decided to leave Mexico, packed all my stuff inside, on top and in the back of my beat-up 2-door hatchback car, and headed north for Philadelphia.

Sophie and I had gotten quite close during the time that we were teaching together, and she would occasionally “counsel” with me. Meaning that we would do AR together. In one of these sessions, she suggested I come to Germany and save her.

Being rather dubious that I could save even myself let alone anybody else, and too shy and too insecure to name that a beautiful woman 16 years younger than me was flirting with me, I initially made a joke out of it. We continued the joke for a while, and there was no loss as I enjoyed talking to her so much. After a few days, however, I went for it and responded with a 5000 word essay on my sexual and romantic history, which is actually not very impressive. I had done this before with new dates by the way, and it had not gone well. What was I thinking?

To my shock and amazement, Sophie loved my letter. We continued intense correspondence and chats for the next week, even as I was traveling. Thousands of words and voice-mails crossed the wires during that time. Most of these words came from me, but she met me at every step, which also amazed me. She is actually a very good writer. Later she listened to the entire audio of my memoir, which also impressed me. And we fell in love.

After a week (we would now be into the third week of July), and just for the heck of it, I checked Orbitz.com for flights to Berlin, and found a $270 round-trip airfare to Belin for two weeks in early September. I checked with her, the timing worked, and I booked it.

In the next two weeks, even as I was traveling and having big experiences with that, the heat built up even more. Despite both of us being broke, I decided that the anxiety was not bearable any more, of not knowing whether this was just a fantasy. I booked another ticket, also at a very good price, for the last two weeks of August.

Well, I’ve been back and forth to Berlin twice now, each visit for two weeks. In the first visit we more or less spent two weeks in bed. Sexual compatibility, the big question, has been resolved (intellectual and emotional compatibility was never in question). In the second visit (which I just returned from Sept. 22, a bit under two weeks ago), we decided to get married. She found us a large bohemian-like apartment in the heart of Berlin, two enormous rooms for us (one of which we can use as an AR event space), and one room for her 11 year old son which she has joint custody. The rent is well under-market (around 1000 Euros a month) as it’s a sublet / co-housing with one of her friends. Sophie has a million friends, all of whom adore her. She and I will be moving in together on November 1st.

“Damn“, I was thinking to myself. “In addition to being brilliant and beautiful, this girl gets shit done”. Oddly, her self-concept is that she is constantly overwhelmed by life and never gets anything done. This may be the reason she likes me, btw, that I have a perspective on her that is vastly different from her self-concept. More about our relationship dynamic below.

In the second visit we also resolved the logistics of the marriage and immigration. The marriage is necessary for us to be together, otherwise I could only stay 3 months out of 6 on the standard Schengen tourist visa. The immigration is actually surprisingly  straightforward. It needs an appointment at the immigration office, which is heavily booked. Once you get an appointment, however, you show up with your marriage certificate (the marriage requires an appointment somewhere else which also takes a while), passports, German A1 proficiency test (this is a bit of a racket, but I have 5 weeks to get to level A1 German, which is doable) and 80 Euros. It takes them 4-5 weeks to process the application, after which they give you a temporary residence permit for a year. After the year you ask for permanent. In the meantime I can work in Germany and I get on her family / state health insurance. Easy-peasy. Now it’s just a question of solving the non-trivial problem of how to pay the bills.

Well, on the surface — I am just saying so you know that I know this — it’s all pretty crazy. We have very little money. I am on Social Security. We both derive a modest income from running AR programs and coaching (she more than me), but its not enough. She quit a full-time job at the Australian embassy three years ago because it was killing her. I still have technical skills from 10 years running a web design business, and I am going to need a part-time technical job, probably doing online VA (Virtual Assistant) work initially. What a guy will do for love 🙂 . Knock-on-wood that this will work. Long-term we have what I believe to be high-value offers in the AR space and book publishing space, but that may just be delusions of my bipolar brain.

So that’s that. Its a great romantic story, such as I never expected to happen to me again in this lifetime. My romantic engagements have, for the most part, been disasters, with the exception of a sweet 9-year marriage with Rebekah, who is now my best friend. We were very good together and quite happy, especially at the beginning, and manifested great things together, including the commune that we ran for 6 years (2017-2013). But that marriage failed, and it’s taken us both 10 years to “recover”. Rebekah is back in NYC and happy again, thank God. But I had not expected to fall in love again, so quickly and so completely. And Sophie either.

Oddly, in spite of the difficulties and the manifest craziness of all this, Sophie and I are both “all in”. There is zero doubt from either of us. I often think, it’s more risk on her side than mine. In a way, things have not gone so well for me in the last several years. For sure there have been spectacular successes, but also spectacular failures. I call this “karma acceleration“. Things DID start to turn around for me 18 months ago when I moved to Mexico. I had some glorious experiences there. But overall, it was not a happy scene. I had few friends and my sex life, in particular, was non-existent. I write in my memoir, that I am not fully happy unless I am in love or writing a book. Now, it turns out, I am doing both. Our union is sourcing a kind of kinky erotic sapiosexual novel, loosely based on our relationship. It has some commercial potential. And our joint AR leadership is really good. Clients are coming, slowly but surely.

In support of Sophie’s decision — I say this to feel less insecure that this beautiful and extraordinary young woman would actually want me — I am a “Morehouse-trained guy”. This is a sexual technique, but more importantly it’s a model for doing man/woman relationships that always made total sense to me. I later learned that this is called “sexual polarity” and I wrote a whole book about it in 2015, which continues to receive great feedback. It’s a style of relationship that goes counter to “modernism” (or even “feminism”), but it is time-tested and it actually works. In this model, the man (or masculine partner) is primarily responsible for handling the “production” (meaning generating the money and “getting  shit done”) whereas the feminine partner provides what’s called the “appetite” or the pleasure. It works because both serve or support each other in their area of expertise and joy. I have always enjoyed “getting shit done”, although that hasn’t generated much money in recent years. And every woman, of course, enjoys pleasure and freedom, good sex, and the love and devotion of her masculine partner. Sexual polarization is not “exclusive” by the way (I mean role-switching naturally happens), that would not work. It also only works if there is a very high level of honest and loving communication.

Well, that level of communication and care IS present to a higher degree than I have ever had before in any relationship. Rebekah and I had it pretty good. But I was still pretty much of a relational idiot in those days (and man/woman idiot too, there ARE quite important differences between the sexes, which you can only ignore at your peril). You could say that Rebekah, and all the Morehouse training I received, prepared me for Sophie, for the “real enchilada” relationship.

I am a very happy man, but also scared. I view this fear as proof-of-sanity, btw.

I am leaving North America permanently, although perhaps we’ll setup a part-year residence here at some point, especially when the money starts flowing. The truth of the matter is that I never wanted to be in North America in the first place. I arrived here with my family 50 years ago, and its been a pretty turbulent ride. A lot of “sturm and drang“, which carries the risk (as I often say) of “sound and fury signifying nothing“. I do like it hot.

Well, what can I say. I never quit, and I finally got lucky. I found a woman who likes it as hot as I do. A woman who wants to live for love, and for whom everything else is unimportant. Who happens to be brilliant and beautiful, and who loves me. Plus we are in the same business.

Crazy? Perhaps. However, I have always believed in the adage, “Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all…”

Oh happy, happy Marco.

PS: God only knows when I will be back in the US, but I greatly value the deep and fulfilling friendships that I have made in this bizarre country. I never entirely fit in to the culture, but this did not stop me from enjoying the people.

PPS: Interested in attending one of Sophie’s and mine programs starting Oct. 22? That link again, Practical Relational Leadership in Community