NEWPORT BEACH : Series to Share Ideas on Finding Mate

About a decade ago, free-lance journalist Christine Gustafson had gone solo around the world, risen above a difficult childhood and made peace with herself. Still, she felt a relentless longing, so she embarked on another journey: to find someone to share life with.

The result of the eight-year voyage of navigating through the dating jungle, a time that included talking to scores of single and married women about being in relationships, was both a happy marriage and a published book called “Ladies & Gentle Men: Women Sharing With Women About the Art of Relating to Men.”

This week the Corona del Mar resident, married three years to Frank Marshall, who took photographs for Gustafson’s book, will teach a four-part series on the art of finding a mate.

The classes, titled “It’s an Inside Job,” “Imagineering,” “Packaging and Marketing” and “Coupling for the Long Run,” will run from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on consecutive Wednesdays at Martha’s Bookshop on Balboa Island. A $2 donation is suggested.

“It was the women I talked to who loved me through the process of being on my own, dating, engagement and, finally, marriage,” says Gustafson, 39. “Now I want to share what I’ve learned.”

Gustafson says one of the most important things to understand is that a woman must work on herself before expecting a good relationship with a man.

“It’s first an inside job,” she says. “It’s while alone that one must clear away the old to make room for the new. Painful as it might be, I don’t think it’s possible to move forward without taking stock of where one is.”

She speaks from harsh experience. At the age of 21, she was addicted to alcohol, drugs, nicotine and food, all of which she overcame before looking for a husband.

“I looked in the mirror and asked myself: ‘Would I want to be married to me?’ ” she recalled. “My reply was: ‘No, not in a million years.’ A truth-filled look at yourself is the beginning, the first step into your new life, a step only you can take.”

Also, a person must learn the use of imagineering, or creative visualization.

“I think for a person’s life to change, self-image has to change,” she said. “You actually engineer a new life by visualizing the lifestyle, observing others who have what you want and emulating them in your mind.”

Other classes will address the way one looks and presents oneself and how to keep a relationship “fresh, current and full of life.”

“Everyone loves to fall in love because of those feelings you have at the beginning,” Gustafson says. “Believe me, it is possible to create a marriage that’s like a new love affair every day.”

For more information, call (714) 723-1334.