A couple who met on a course hoping to save their failing marriages ended up leaving their spouses and falling in love with each other.
Emma and Matthew Pruen have now been happily married for 15 years after meeting in 2001 on a self-development course in East Sussex hoping to fix their respective relationships.
The pair supported each other throughout the process of fixing each other's marriage which led to them becoming friends and eventually starting a romance after they both realised their marriages were unfixable.
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Now the couple move between London and France and decided to start their own self-development course.
"The only person you have any control over is you," Emma said.
“If your relationship is struggling, you can’t change someone else, the only person you can change is you and that’s the principle that underlies all our relationship courses.”
They run non-residential courses in London as part of the Hoffman Institute while also running a four-day residential course at their home and retreat centre in South West France.
The Hoffman Process is the core of their coaching - it was established 50 years ago and aims to give people the tools to make behavioural changes.
Ideally, the end goal is to improve their relationships or, if they are truly over, help them navigate separation and divorce.
Emma said: “Matthew is very good at pouring oil on troubled waters.
“I was lucky enough to fall in love with a peacemaker, which means I have a relationship I never dreamed of having.”
After the pair met each other, they remained friends for two years while navigating their own relationships, confiding with each other and providing support for each other's lives.
According to Emma, her and her former husband, who she ran a business with, realised the marriage was over during a month-long Christmas trip to Thailand.
She said: “We were away with no stress, no work and no pressure and it was just gorgeous there, but we still had the worst argument of all time, so there was no kidding ourselves. We knew we were at the end.”
Upon returning to the UK, she received an email from Matthew, who experienced a similarly bad Christmas - he then announced him and his wife were separating after nearly 20 years together.
Originally, his plan was to move to Spain for a few months to process his new life.
But Emma's reaction to the announcement came as a surprise to herself.
She said: “I found myself massively over-reacting and instead of thinking it was great and a really good move, I realised I would miss him terribly, which I thought was a bit extreme if he was just a friend.”
Eventually they agreed that Matthew would stay with her in Brighton, East Sussex, to attend a two-year reunion of the course where they met.
During the visit, the pair became romantically involved after both newly becoming single.
“I noticed Matthew and I were sitting closer and closer to each other on the sofa, so I asked him, ‘Is something happening here?’ and he just said, ‘Do you want something to happen?’” said Emma.
She added: “I was concerned because this was my best friend and I didn’t want to lose him, but it was like something from a Christmas film and all beautifully respectful.
“And it turned out we were as physically compatible as we were emotionally compatible.”
Matthew returned from Spain and moved to Brighton to live with Emma, who co-parented, Iskander, now 25 and a graphic designer for film, amicably with her ex-husband.
Emma also started a new life by spending 18 months working with the Green Party in Brighton when Caroline Lucas became the party's first MP in 2009.
In 2011, she even put herself forward as an MEP, running a two-year campaign which she then stepped down from to allow the candidate who topped the party list to press on.
During this time, Matthew had been invited by the Hoffman Institute to become a facilitator which began his training as a couples' counsellor.
After two years, Matthew proposed to Emma on her 40th birthday - they married in November 2005 and also had a child together, Chris, who is now 15 and identifies as non-binary.
Matthew also has two children from his first marriage, Tom, 37, an entertainer, and Rosey, 35, a photographer.
In 2013, the couple bought a €180,000 run-down four-bedroom house with a huge barn in Poitou-Charentes, South West France, spending €300,000 converting it into a centre.
The property is now known as The French Retreat – where they now live and run couples’ retreats, as well as leasing the space to other teachers and healers.
Emma said: “Matthew grew up in Lebanon, in the Middle East, with an English father and a Middle Eastern mother, so was raised between two different cultures and is very good at conflict resolution.”
While Emma has trained extensively in family counselling, she says Matthew’s childhood experience has made him a natural in this field.
But she warns that, while we tend to seek out a romantic partner who will bring to the relationship those parts we are missing, this can bring problems, too.
She said: “We are all drawn to something different but that can bring challenges and cause conflict. because at some point, we realise just how different we are and then can feel repelled by our partner.
“The other factor is that when we get into bed with someone, we also get into bed with their parents, their families, their belief systems and their way of being.”
While Emma is delighted to be enjoying a compatible and fulfilling marriage to Matthew, she says that although a large aspect of their work focusses on helping couples to resolve their differences, if a relationship is truly over, they also guide people towards a more amicable parting.
Still, she hopes that people will, like her, be lucky enough to find their soul mate, saying: “Matthew is very real and funny and is a natural and gifted peacemaker. We are very happy.”
Meanwhile, Matthew is confident that by helping others through their work, they enable their own relationship to grow.
He said: “The way we met was great because we got to know each other very deeply and very quickly, warts and all.
“Working together as relationship coaches has only deepened that, because in sharing our ups and downs with others, we continue to learn even more about each other. ”
For more information about the Pruens’ work go to www.retreat.fr/relationship-workshops.
To find out about the Hoffman Institute see www.hoffmaninstitute.co.uk
