I have always been fascinated by love and how the rom-com culture creates a lot of unrealistic expectations about relationships,” says Valentina Tudose, Founder of Happy Ever After. Her company offers Relationship Coaching and Clinical Hypnotherapy for individuals and couples who wish to improve their relationships with others and themselves.
Tudose says that after living in Hong Kong for 10 years, she noticed that many struggled to find love or to feel happy with their romantic partner, which she attributes to the challenges of Hong Kong being a ‘transition city’ and the ‘work hard, play hard’ culture, which, she says, has caused a lot of commitment phobia and relationship problems.
Wanting to help, Tudose qualified as a Singles and Couples Coach with the Relationship Coaching Institute of San Jose, California, and earned certifications as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner, because she says she noticed that some of the issues her clients were facing were difficult to solve with willpower and conscious reframing alone. She started to explore hypnotherapy and NLP as modalities for rewriting relationship patterns in the subconscious (what she calls, I Love Map) to speed up transformation and provide long-term sustainable healing.
“We work with Singles looking to find their ideal partner, needing support in enhancing their confidence, and wanting to learn advanced communication and relationship skills; Couples in all stages of relationships, looking to determine if they are right for one another, resolve ongoing conflicts or repair disconnection, infidelity or ongoing relationship issues; and Individuals who have experienced breakups and loss and want to heal and move on.”
“I focus on helping clients learn how to look at relationships differently, take responsibility for their actions and learn to generate their desired outcomes, even long after we stop working together. This way, each person decides what success looks like for them and they are able to create their own individual path to achieving this success in the shortest time possible,” she says.
Tudose’s typical clients are women, 35 to 55, successful and independent, entrepreneurs or working in corporate roles, who seek help, “because they are going through a period of transition: from single to finding a partner, in a relationship that has stopped working or overcoming a breakup or infidelity.” She adds that things like losing a job or seeing their kids go off to college triggers an identity crisis of sorts, and they seek support in finding a new sense of who they want to become.
Tudose also works with men, though less often, and shares that they often struggle with communication or self-esteem issues, breakups, rejection or loneliness.
According to Tudose, her coaching follows a client-focused approach that involves a process of co-creation and continuous realignment with the client’s goals and life vision. As a result, she says that the definition of success is entirely dependent on the client achieving their stated goals and consistently meeting or exceeding expectations. “The way I like to put it is, ‘We can all create our very own happy ever after by writing our own love story’.”
“Things have been changing a lot, especially during and after Covid,” she shares, adding that though issues in the social and political realm impact relationships negatively, the best change has been an improvement in people’s perception of therapy and coaching, more openness about reaching out for help, while issues are still fixable. “They have more desire to put in the conscious work instead of settling for less. There is more desire to proactively work on individual mental and emotional health.”
According to Tudose, most people think relationship issues can be resolved with better communication, but the real breakthrough is not in talking, but listening to each other. “Poor listening skills lead to conflicts never being resolved. The unmet needs that caused the issue in the first place remain unmet for the longest time and gradually people stop listening altogether, believing they have heard it all,” she says, adding that in reality, people do not listen to understand each other’s point of view, so this lack of empathy and understanding leads to resentment and anger, which, in turn, leads to a disconnect, a lack of intimacy, and is the reason people give up on each other.
She adds that the ‘Seven-year Itch’ has shortened to four years or less these days, because younger people have a more individualistic perspective of love. “That is, ‘If you are not making me happy, I will go and find someone else who can’, so they stop trying to address relationship issues, believing that real happiness lies with someone else.”
In addition to coaching, Happy Ever After also provides clinical hypnotherapy services for people who struggle with anxiety, addictions (alcohol, smoking, drugs), fears (flying, public speaking, etc), insomnia, confidence issues, negative relationship patterns, as well as promoting weight loss and performance.
“The best advice I ever received was from my mother a long time ago. She said, ‘In life, remember that done is better than perfect, so even as you strive to be better, remember that 80% is good enough’, says Valentina Tudose, Founder of Happy Ever After.
“I am grateful that my mother instilled this belief in me because it gave me a lot of space for ‘failure’, which I understand as an opportunity to grow, despite (or maybe because) of the discomfort it creates, which motivates change and transformation.
Embracing this growth mindset has helped me face a lot of challenges in my business and professional life, and I am very grateful for it.”
Happy Ever After
10A, Nam Pak Hong Building, 24 Bonham Strand West, Sheung Wan.
By Appointment Only.
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