American self-help guru Susan Jeffers has used her own experience of broken relationships to help the rest of us avoid the dark side of love, writes Anne Dempsey.

You might think Susan Jeffers has a bit of a cheek. Married young, her divorce after 16 years in a union where both had affairs, was followed by 12 years of unsatisfactory relationships, most of them sabotaged, she says, by her own "obnoxious behaviour". Then in 1986, she met her second husband, film-maker Mark Shelmerdine, and they have been living happily together ever since.

Still, to write a book on enduring love may seem a little ambitious given past struggles and failures. Not so, says Jeffers, speaking from her home in Santa Monica, California - it's precisely because she's been there that she has the necessary credentials.

"One day I realised I was the problem. Unless I stayed in a relationship to learn what was going on in me, I knew I would be leaving them for the rest of my life," she says. So she was that pilgrim.

Susan Jeffers is in Ireland next Saturday to conduct a workshop on her latest manual. But readers who pick up The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love looking for ideas to change their partner will be disappointed. Jeffers believes it's less a question of choosing the right person as being the right person. Her philosophy could be summed up in the two words "be responsible" - for your thoughts, feelings, actions. Unlike many such blue-sky practitioners, she is also happy to share her mistakes on the way to learning the way.

When problems surfaced in the first marriage, she played the blame game, she says, rather than looking honestly at the causes inside herself. And while their two children brought joy, they were also a source of angst. "Nora Ephron says a baby is a hand grenade tossed into a marriage, and nobody tells you parenting will be so difficult. I remember walking a child at night, the tears streaming down my face, and my husband sleeping next door. He became 'the enemy'. I thought I would go out of my mind staying at home with small children and have told my son he is responsible for my psychology degree, my masters and my PhD, because when he was old enough, I knew I had to get out there," she says, laughing.

"There were a lot of things myself and my ex-husband didn't realise during our marriage. We didn't know that relationships need hard work, that no one is a mind reader, that we were supposed to take care of each other, that we were both frightened. We thought all our needs should be filled by marriage, we didn't know our most important need was a sense of self."

Divorce was a mutual decision. Alone again, Jeffers realised she had always been afraid, irrespective of any achievements. "My fears never seemed to abate and I never had a moment's peace. Even my doctorate in psychology didn't do me much good." One day, dressing for work (she was a health administrator), she looked in the mirror and saw a familiar sight, eyes red and puffy from tears of self-pity. Suddenly furious, she shouted "enough", continuing to roar until she was hoarse. The fears didn't go away that day, but something important did happen, as over weeks and months she began to unlearn the thinking that had imprisoned her in her own insecurities. The seeds of her best-selling book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway were sown.

Jeffers says now that while this was a time of learning, her relationships continued to be disastrous. "I felt whole and free on my own, but whenever I got into a relationship, I began losing myself again and inevitably left it. I realised I was afraid of losing the strength I had from being on my own, I was avoiding my insecurities, my inappropriate expectations. Luckily, I met Mark, and consciously made the decision to stay put when I experienced the recurring desire to leave."

In 1987, a year after her second marriage, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway was published, catapulting her into instant success. Its thesis is simple, if not easy. She suggests that if we wait to stop being scared before attempting the things that frighten us, we could be waiting forever. Instead, she advocates suffering the feelings of great discomfort, fright, terror even, which may arise - pushing through our fears - to do what needs doing. So the only way to get rid of the fear of going out and doing something is to go out and do it.

The role of fear in stultifying love is continued in her current credo. Fear, she believes, causes us to close our heart, becoming rigid and judgmental, while love causes us to open our heart, becoming relaxed and compassionate. The theme of responsibility, which took root two decades ago in her first book, is in full flower in her latest. She uses the symbol of a mirror to help us stop fooling ourselves and see ourselves, with kindness, as we really are. "Pick up the mirror instead of a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass represents our symbolically pointing a finger and blaming our mate for our unhappiness. This makes us feel helpless because when we think our happiness depends on someone else, we give away all our power," she writes.

"The mirror is our antidote to blame. It represents our looking inward and taking responsibility not only for our actions but also for our reactions to what is going on in the relationship. When we pick up the mirror, we look at not only what our mate is doing but at what we are doing - or not doing - to make ourselves unhappy."

Her core principle is that the most important purpose of any relationship is to learn how to become a more loving person. Not a more loving doormat. So while some couples can recover and learn from infidelity, others cannot. Some men and women can live with alcohol and drug dependent spouses, others cannot, while repeated physical, emotional or sexual abuse is, for her, a no-no.

"This is a 'first time shame on you [ for doing it], second time shame on me [ for taking it]' situation. If I was physically abused by my mate I would be out the door so fast, I would leave a cloud of dust behind me," she says.

Her look at long-lasting love moves out of the domestic sphere to consider how gender stereotyping can injure relationships. "If you don't love, respect and admire the opposite sex, you won't by definition love, respect and admire your mate," she says - advocating the use of the pronoun "some" as in "some men are sloppy", "some women are nurturing" and so on, rather than imprisoning ourselves and our relationships in limiting generalisations.

She is now in her mid-60s and strikes a blow for sex between older people by discussing the physical intimacy in her marriage. In this she differentiates between the routine of sex and the ritual of sex. She and her husband schedule sex for weekend mornings, preceded by a languorous ritual of breakfast in bed and showering together. "Friends know not to phone before 11am on Saturday and Sunday. My kids cover their ears when I talk like this, but Mark is fine with speaking about it, and we wrote this section together," she says.

Finally, I wonder, does she still have fears. "Yes, lots. I still have a lot of fears around money and wonder if I really have enough. I haven't been on tour for a long time, and I know when I stand in front of an audience again, my heart will start pounding. But then I'll laugh, decide I'm gonna give it the best I can, and I will."

Susan Jeffers' 10 love lessons

1 Remind yourself constantly that the most important purpose of your relationship is for you to learn to become a more loving person

2 Stop blaming your partner if they don't want to work on the relationship with you. You

can still work on your own and get results

3 Change negative energy between you and your mate by sending silent "I love you" messages. They will hit the mark

4 Notice your resistance to accepting you might have to change too

5 See if you can go a day without blaming your partner in thoughts, words or action

6 Don't lose yourself in a relationship. Cultivate other interests such as hobbies

7 Be honest with yourself as a requisite to being honest with your partner

8 Remember you may be

right, and you may be wrong

9 Stop the vicious circle that defensiveness can create

10 Have patience, some change will happen slowly

* The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love, by Susan Jeffers, is published by Vermillion, £8.99 (€13).

* A Morning With Susan Jeffers will run at the National Concert Hall on Sat, May 28, 10am-1pm. Tickets cost 60. Further information from: 01-4170000; www.jsaonline.ie