I’ve blamed many things for my lack of a partner – my age, my weight, my shape, my personality, my arcane interests – but I never thought to point the finger at my house.
On the face of it, it’s pretty average – a modest three-bedroom terrace in a provincial city. But underneath that benign facade is it secretly a man-repeller?
‘It’s possible,’ says Katie Malik, an interior designer and ‘house whisperer’ who reads homes the way most of us read menus. She can tell whether your space is helping or hindering your health, your career, your finances or, indeed, your relationships.
If you’re scoffing, I totally understand. It does sound crazy. However, over the past 40 years I have learned that there’s far more to our homes than mere bricks and mortar.
I first came across feng shui, often dubbed ‘acupuncture for houses’, back in the 1980s. I was living in London and working for a pittance, so hard-up that I regularly sold off my possessions to pay my mortgage.
Then I interviewed a feng shui expert who told me my home was lacking a ‘money corner’ and that I needed to place a heavy pot with a healthy plant in a particular spot to fix it. I laughed all the way to the garden centre and back.
However, the very next day I was offered a job paying five times my salary. Coincidence? Surely.
A few years later, when my then partner Adrian and I moved to Somerset, I made damn sure our new home had a perfectly well-formed money corner, complete with lush greenery to symbolise growth and vitality.
Money flowed in but our relationship hit a snag. I could work from home, but Adrian had to stay in London during the week for work. Was the house to blame for our mismatched careers too? I called in the experts.
Katie Malik, an interior designer and ‘house whisperer’ who reads homes the way most of us read menus
‘What do you know about the people who lived here before?’ asked Sarah Shurety, the feng shui specialist who I had invited to analyse the house. Oh. They had mentioned they were selling because the guy was having to work away during the week.
Sarah gave that kind of ‘there you go’ shrug. ‘That’s predecessor chi,’ she said.
You what? Turns out we can inherit patterns from the people who lived in our spaces before us. It sounds woo-woo but a physicist might say it’s down to complex systems theory.
Indeed. Systems (houses) carry memory, and past states (the relationship dynamics of those who have lived in them) constrain future possibilities.
All I know is that Sarah did her thing (bells, incense, a few judiciously placed crystals, plus some knocking down of a couple of stray partition walls) and, lo and behold, Adrian’s boss suddenly allowed him to work from home (and, believe me, that wasn’t usual back in the 1990s).
I’d forgotten all about it until – fast-forward 20 years, two house moves and one child – my relationship with Adrian came to an amicable end. At this point we bought two small places close to each other so our son could easily see us both.
For me, it was love at first sight. A little Victorian terrace, stuck in the 1970s with vinyl wallpaper, beige tiles and, yes, an avocado bathroom suite. I knew it was The One.
I figured I’d enjoy living on my own for a bit and then, maybe, meet someone – you know, that human version of The One?
Except, it turns out it’s much easier to find your soulmate in a house than in a man. Ten years later, the house has been totally redecorated, but I’m eyeballing permanent singledom.
I have tried, albeit a bit half-heartedly. I went on a couple of dates with one chap a couple of years ago who sounded great on paper but turned out to be an egotistical bore. It was like being stuck in the date equivalent of a TED Talk; I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
I gave a dating app a go, but was deluged with messages from men who (let’s not mince words) were angling for a quick hook-up. I deleted it faster than you could say ‘yuck’.
‘Do you think it’s your house?’ said my friend Liz, who knows all about my mystical inclinations. ‘Have you had it looked at?’
I laughed before remembering my previous experience with feng shui, complex systems and so on. And hang on – the woman who owned it before me had lived and died alone. Was it predecessor chi? Or were some other weird psychic shenanigans going on?
It was time to call in the experts again, which is how I ended up discussing man-repelling decor with house whisperer Katie.
Warm and friendly, Katie explains that her work is far more than feng shui. ‘It’s a therapeutic process. It doesn’t just explore physical design but emotional energy,’ she says.
‘I’ll look at how your space reflects your inner world and hopefully identify any blocks, tensions or misalignments that could be affecting you. When your home feels “off” it can affect your mood, your health, your creativity and, yes, your relationships.’
Katie tells me that the things with which we surround ourselves are energy magnets. Everything is symbolic. If you want to attract love, you need to surround yourself with images and items that suggest coupledom, emotional warmth, intimacy, passion.
‘Let’s start small,’ she says encouragingly. ‘Show me around.’
We kick off in the hallway where I have a wall of black and white prints. Katie points out that most of them show women on their own. Or animals, also on their own. There isn’t a couple in sight. I start to see her point. ‘I’ve got couples going on in my bedroom,’ I say rather pathetically. We head upstairs.
We kick off in the hallway where I have a wall of black and white prints. Katie points out that most of them show women on their own. Or animals, also on their own
I love my bedroom. Clean and clear, it’s my sanctuary. White-painted floorboards, white walls, white blinds, white bedlinen. There’s also a big modern print of two people kissing
I love my bedroom. Clean and clear, it’s my sanctuary. White-painted floorboards, white walls, white blinds, white bedlinen. On the walls hang a reproduction of a favourite painting, The Beguiling Of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones. It shows Merlin clearly infatuated with Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. There’s also a big modern print of two people kissing (well that’s how I see it). But I can tell Katie isn’t impressed.
‘Look more closely,’ she says. OK, so it’s actually two female angels about to snog hanging over a woman floating inside a horse on top of a church. It’s called Lost Souls. Maybe not so romantic?
Observing the room through Katie’s eyes, I can see the problem. It’s virginal, nigh on monastic, a paean to singledom. Nothing remotely juicy going on.
Her prescription is clear. Bring in some colour (preferably red, orange or pink). Have a pair of bedside tables rather than my single one (it’s that symbolism again). Soften up the windows with curtains or Roman blinds (again, preferably in a bright colour). Clear out a drawer and leave some space in the wardrobe – symbolically making space for someone. Buy some new lingerie. I cringe.
She isn’t done. The photo of me and my son (as a baby) doesn’t pass muster. I’m ‘holding on to him emotionally as a baby’, she says, rather than moving on confidently into a new phase of life. The picture of me and my dad on my wedding day? ‘That has to go too.’
Poor old Merlin and Nimue also get short shrift. ‘It’s clearly not a happy relationship,’ says Katie, and given that Nimue has just trapped her lover in a tree for eternity, I see her point.
Finally – and perhaps inevitably – a sculpture of a witch gets the heave-ho.
‘She’s alone and she looks pretty miserable. You need to bring in happy things that represent love and passion.’
Katie whisks round the rest of the house and I’m prescribed a hefty dose of clutter-clearing. ‘Why hold on to the old? Why keep things that belong to your old life?’ she says, perfectly reasonably.
Why on earth have a cupboard stuffed with fancy china and glassware when I never host dinner parties? I’m clinging on to my mother’s dressing table out of guilt. I don’t like it so why keep it?
‘You have to be ruthless with yourself,’ says Katie. ‘You don’t want to hang on to your old life. Make room for something and someone new.’
The embarrassing thing is that I know all this – I even wrote a book called Spirit Of The Home, which was all about making your home a sanctuary. Awkward.
‘It’s about the psychotherapy of space,’ she adds, and tells me that, alongside the clutter-clearing and rejigging, I need to start thinking about what I really want in my life.
At which point, it’s time ‘to go deeper’. Katie brings out the astrological chart she has drawn up for me. ‘It’s just a blueprint,’ she says, ‘not a life sentence. We all have choices. It simply gives an idea of what we’re dealing with. For instance, I can see you have a tendency to withdraw from life when it gets difficult.’ Wince.
‘It’s also showing you need to let go of hurt feelings and toxic relationships from the past in order to move forwards.’
Ouch. She has barely been here an hour and we’re delving deep into my psyche.
I’ll freely admit I’ve always found relationships difficult. I never had proper boyfriends in my teens or 20s (just a few short and generally ill-advised encounters and liaisons) and it took a while before I was able to commit to a marriage. This is deep stuff and a million miles away from the feng shui consultations I’ve had in the past. Can’t she just wave around some incense and tell me to move my furniture?
Katie smiles. ‘My work goes way beyond standard feng shui. This is a deep emotional exploration. Subconsciously, you’re scuppering yourself. You think you want a relationship but, on an energetic level, you don’t. You’re scared.’
It hits home.
She asks me what I’d do if I met my ideal man.
‘Er… tell him to hang on while I lose a couple of stone?’
Katie shakes her head. ‘Holding on to weight is a classic form of self-sabotage, a way of not being open to intimacy and a relationship,’ she says. ‘No amount of incense is going to do that for you. You have to start with a decision. Do I know what I want? Am I ready?’
I must be looking despondent since Katie decides we can work on the physical house after all. ‘Let’s do some groundwork to make it easier.’
She lights up some incense and gets out a pendulum to check if there’s anything in the house holding me back. My house’s psychic health check is reassuring. There’s no nasty energy hanging around, and no serious predecessor chi. Except…
‘Have you got anything here that belonged to the former owner?’ Katie asks. I admit they left behind a couple of glass vases and some garden ornaments.
‘Get rid of them,’ she says. ‘You don’t want her energy in your life.’ OK, that’s easily done.
However, Katie isn’t letting me off the hook so simply. ‘It’s no use thinking vaguely that you’d quite like a relationship,’ she says. ‘Be very specific. Write down a profile of your ideal guy. What do you actually want?’
It’s a really good question and I realise I’ve never really answered it. I don’t have a ‘type’ as such, I say (feeling like a 60-something version of a Love Islander). I suppose my perfect partner would be open-minded and big-hearted; someone who’s curious about everything (ideas, people, places); someone who loves a good road trip but is equally happy curling up by the fire with a book.
Katie nods. ‘That’s a good start. Now you need to keep visualising – our brains work by repetition.’ If it sounds like standard New Age manifestation, there is some science behind it. Cognitive psychology says when we vividly imagine a future outcome, our brains partially treat it as a real experience – with the result that when you do meet someone, you are more prepared, confident and fluid. Interesting.
There’s also a concept known as ‘attentional bias’ that could come into play. Your brain starts to notice opportunities (or people?) you would previously have ignored.
By the time Katie leaves, my head is in a spin cycle. Looking round my house with fresh eyes, I see it’s actually quite juvenile – the painted floorboards, the paper lampshades, the floor cushions and my collection of 1980s cookbooks all scream ‘student’.
I haven’t really progressed from my teenage days; my emotional life is stuck in the 1970s, just like my house was.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for both of us to move on.
