Finding Each Other Through The [Landmark] Forum (excerpt)
Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday MagazineDianna Marder, January 2002
Does having happily married parents make it easier or harder to find the right mate? It’s surprising the self-help aisle isn’t groaning with titles on this puzzler.
Eileen McKeogh’s parents are great role models who’ve enjoyed 34 years together. Following in their footsteps wasn’t going to be so easy.
“I was looking for someone who would court me,” and coming up empty, Eileen said. “I found it difficult to find that in today’s type of dating.”
So in the best self-help tradition, Eileen enrolled at the Landmark Forum, “to figure out what I was doing wrong.”
The Forum is a fairly well-known worldwide program of intensive weekend and evening seminars designed for people who want to make major changes in their relationships or careers. Sharing the “gory details” of one’s dating history is part of the program, Eileen said.
There, in September 1999, Eileen crossed paths with Ben Eskra, a Thomas Jefferson University medical student who had been turned on to the Forum by his sister. Ben was smitten at first sight.
“There was something about her I was immediately drawn to. I couldn’t put my finger on it.”
So he arranged to be Eileen’s partner for some of the Forum exercises, and when they started dating, at the conclusion of the program, each was well-versed in the other’s emotional baggage.
Eileen got what she wanted: a man who wooed her, despite his med-school budget, with small gifts, frequent phone calls and impromptu picnics. And when she won his family’s approval, Ben knew he had it all too.
She’s a dark-haired, statuesque beauty who went to La Salle on a volleyball scholarship. After a time in the unstable information technology field, she’s selling residential real estate in Chadds Ford.
“She’s a very genuine person. You can sense it. And I know my family was struck by that right from the start,” Ben said.
A native of Mystic, Conn., Ben’s the oldest of four children in a churchgoing, choir-singing family where “everybody was willing to do anything for you at a moment’s notice.”
His father is a research scientist who stayed home for the first year to bond with Ben. The two are now great pals and recently ran the Philadelphia Marathon together. Ben’s mother taught children with severe disabilities, and he volunteered in her classroom.
Ben started college at Cornell with thoughts of the diplomatic service, but after training for an emergency medical transport team, he switched to medicine. He’s a surgical resident now at Christiana Hospital in Bear, Del., and plans a specialty in plastic surgery.
Eileen, 30, and Ben, 28, were married in a candlelit ceremony on Dec. 7 at St. Eleanor Church in Collegeville, Eileen’s hometown. Ben’s parents and his sisters sang an Irish hymn during the lighting of the unity candle, and everybody celebrated later at the Limerick Golf Club.
At Ben’s insistence, his whole family has been to the Landmark Forum now.
“When my sister did it, she told me how great it was, and of course I didn’t believe her because she’s my younger sister. You really do get your life out of it,” he said.
Reprinted from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, January 27, 2002, Philadelphia, PA, USA.