Introduction
I’ve read a lot of psychology books — from men’s issues to dating, to inner child work, to success and persuasion, to marriage and relationships. Among the most curious to me is a book from 1980 called Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D.
I’ve always known that two wounded people will find each other if they have complimentary wounds, so I’ve been thinking that the answer is just to find someone who’s good on paper but doesn’t interest me much.
But…don’t we all want that fiery chemistry — that rip-your-clothes-off-right-now type of attraction? I know I do.
Like the movies I grew up watching, I thought that type of chemistry was great, but then as I read more about things like Attachment Theory and sex and love addiction, I began thinking that this was a really bad sign.
So how then, can two wounded people find each other, and actually create a healing relationship? Getting the Love You Want seems to have an answer, and it’s called “Imago”.
I. Unfinished Business
It’s no secret that our childhood affects our relationships, but to what extent? In short, it has a lot more of an influence than most people realize.
Imago, or “image” in Latin, is a composite of our parents and people from our past, and is the main factor in determining who we’re attracted to.
The authors state that our partner selection has everything to do with healing the wounds from childhood. Therefore, while it may seem counterintuitive for a solitude-loving man to choose an anxious, undifferentiated woman, that’s who he’s likely to be attracted to.
Why? Because he likely had an overbearing mother, and his childhood defense mechanism was to withdraw.
Conversely, if a person had a parent who abandoned them or was emotionally unavailable, they will subconsciously find themselves longing for unavailable people. Their defense mechanism was to pursue.
Sometimes both defense mechanisms are present, and a person will chase after unavailable people, then withdraw or shut down when the other person becomes available.
Another aspect of attraction is looking for completion through another person. If one is sexually repressed, they may find themselves enthralled with someone sexually adventurous. If a person tends to talk a lot, it’s possible they’ll wind up with someone who’s relatively quiet.
In terms of Attachment Theory, if you’re anxious, you’ll almost certainly be attracted to an avoidant, and vice versa.
Childhood
When we were kids, we were needy. We needed clothes, food, diaper changes, and lots and lots of attention. Often times our parents — especially if they were too busy or involved in their own relationship turmoil, were unable to give us the attention we needed.
Another common occurrence is when one parent — usually of the opposite sex — was overly involved in our lives, leading to a sort of role reversal. It wouldn’t be long before our needy parent, instead of giving us healthy love and attention, was actually taking from us.
These resulted in wounds, and those wounds got stored in our primitive emotional brain for immediate recall later on. This wound storage will play one of the biggest roles in how we relate with people as adults.
When two people enter into a relationship unconsciously, the patterns of the past will eventually take center stage. The three ways in which we recreate our parent-child dynamic are:
a) We find a partner with complimentary wounds.
b) We project the opposing behaviors onto our partner.
c) We create a dynamic in which the opposing behaviors are manifested.
All in all, our childhood coping mechanisms, when acted on unconsciously, will drive our relationships from the backseat. Then we sit with our partner in the front seat and blame each other for the faults in the relationship.
II. Growth Machine
Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, calls relationships Powerful Personal Growth Machines. This idea is backed up in Getting the Love You Want, as the authors state that we can heal our childhood wounds through changing ourselves to meet our partner’s needs.
This may seem like a tall order, but the book states that by actively listening to our partner, understanding their core childhood wounds, and doing our best to unconditionally meet their childhood dependency needs, we not only help them heal, but help ourselves.
By unconditionally, they mean scrap the “quid pro quo” in the relationship. Much of what gets couples into trouble is the unconscious score-keeping about who did what and the expectation of payback.
That I can attest to. All of my relationships became transactional after a point, and that’s like driving with the emergency brake on. It’s only a matter of time before the relationship wears down to the metal.
Could it be that instead of constantly trying to find people we’re not attracted to, we actually invite that attraction and then consciously grow together?
Codependency
There are many definitions and manifestations of codependency, but I’ve found that there are two main types: the Pleaser and the Punisher. For myself and the men I work with, the Pleaser is often referred to as Nice Guy Syndrome. Given that our childhood role was that of the caretaker of one of our parents (usually Mom), we grew up thinking three things:
- By ignoring my needs and meeting someone else’s, I’ll be safe and loved.
- By finding women to fix, I’ll fix my feelings of inadequacy.
- By attaching myself to a victim or martyr identity, I will garner attention and soothe my fear of abandonment.
All of these behaviors are ways in which we mitigate anxiety, but anxiety is usually a symptom of underlying emotions.
The two that come up for me are anger and fear.
Imago Therapy encourages couples to change the transactional nature of the relationship, and doing so requires both partners to actively voice their wants, needs, and desires. Then, they leave it up to their partner to comply (or not).
This takes courage, because those of us with relationship issues often feel unsafe with vulnerability. It was often the case that a parent violated our trust, either by abandoning us in our most vulnerable state, or using the information they had about us to infringe our boundaries and autonomy.
Getting the Love You Want suggests that the couple have Imago Dialogues, where a list of requests, coupled with a mutual understanding of childhood wounds, create an environment where each person can meet each other’s unmet dependency needs. This will require effort and a willingness to push through discomfort — at least initially.
The problem that most couples face is giving to get something in return, expectations instead of agreements, a fear of vulnerability, and a breakdown in communication. When a relationship starts to feel unsafe, it perpetuates the lack of communication, which then pushes the couple more and more into a power struggle.
Expecting your partner to read your mind or giving with a price tag on it, all dissolve the trust and intimacy required for sustainable romantic love.
From Expectation to Request
The first step in creating a healing relationship is to identify your needs and wants, then clearly and kindly stating them. This not only ensures that your needs can be met, but gives the other person the honor of knowing where you stand. There’s no more guessing, interpreting, and assigning meaning to words and actions.
Both partners can be clear about what they want and need, and come up with solutions together on how to meet them for each other. The worst thing, I think, that couples can do, is pretend that they’re invulnerable; that they have no uncomfortable feelings, or that they have no need for closeness and connection.
A pitfall in relationships is that we’re attracted to certain traits in another person — usually ones we’ve repressed or lack in ourselves — yet as the relationship progresses we come to resent those traits. What initially drew us to someone becomes a point of contention later on.
While this is the point at which most relationships end, it’s actually the point at which the healing can begin. Instead of turning away from our partners or expecting them to change, we can turn toward each other and agree to do things differently.
Of course this requires effort, but removing criticism, resentment, and compounded negativity from the relationship, the partners can become curious about each other again, similar to when they first started dating.
The problem is that as time goes on we expect our partner to be more and more like us, when in fact we were attracted to them because they were not like us. This is the principle behind “differentiation,” and one of the main ingredients of sustained attraction in relationships.
According to Hendrix and Hunt, we can move through the stages of infatuation, power struggle, and the banal settling most couples do before they break up or divorce, and into a cooperative and loving partnership.
Addictions
One thing that Imago doesn’t really account for is addictions. This could be to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, love, gambling, etc.
Two overlooked addictions that I’ve witnessed are to anxiety and fantasy.
If a couple starts using Imago Dialog to calm their relationship, and one or both are addicted to anxiety, there might be a constant pull to create chaos. This comes down to brain chemistry as well as the parent-child dynamic we’re used to.
If our household was chaotic, we’re wired to associate abuse and unpredictability with love. If our relationship waters become still, it could feel like the partnership is “dead.”
Similarly, if we used fantasy to escape as children, we’re prone to fantasize about other people, exes, or who we want our partner to be, and are less likely to experience reality with our partner.
. . .
Overall, I think Imago Therapy makes sense. Do you?
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Possessed Photography on Unsplash