Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat?
April 7th, 2008 by Howard DitkoffGaining Understanding of A Painful Relationship Pattern
Over the years, I’ve experienced a clear pattern in my romantic relationships, one that has been among the most painful and difficult aspects of my life. Time and again, these relationships have begun with the development of an extreme, intense attraction and chemistry between me and a particular woman. A seemingly very strong attachment builds quickly and we both become inspired by the idea that we may have finally found someone who can help us feel wonderful about ourselves and bring a newfound excitement into our lives.
However, inevitably, this inspired state soon changes drastically. The situation turns unstable as the woman begins to become uncertain, scared or ambivalent and starts to distance from the relationship. Seeing my hopes for a lasting intimate connection threatening to disappear yet again, I tend to become more needy and attached, which only serves to push her away further in a vicious cycle. In the end, the woman eventually runs completely from the relationship, leaving me feeling invisible, abandoned, disposable and very hurt.
After a number of these painful abandonments over the years, I began to seek greater understanding of why the pattern played out over and over and what could be done about it. In the wake of one such relationship with a woman who told me that she had Borderline Personality tendencies, I looked deeper into that subject, reading I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me and other related books about Borderline Personality Disorder. After another such relationship, I followed my instinct that there was an addictive quality to these interactions, and read several books about addictive relationships including Facing Love Addiction, How to Break Your Addiction to a Person (which is the book that then led me to study Inner Child Healing and its role in the pattern), and Finally Getting it Right. After another relationship, I got into therapy which helped me understand even more about how my development had led me to play out this pattern. And yet another such relationship led me to find Harville Hendrix’s Imago Relationship Therapy and its concepts when I read Keeping the Love You Find: A Guide for Singles. I also later went on to read the Imago book for those already in relationships, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples.
The Repetition Compulsion and Its Role in Intimate Relationships
While all of these books gave me different perspectives and angles on why this pattern kept playing out in my relationships, there was one thing that they all agreed and focused on in one way or another - the fact that there definitely is a well-documented tendency to repeat difficult and painful patterns from our past in our present lives. While not all of these sources named this concept precisely, many of them did, pointing out that it is called the repetition compulsion. This repetition compulsion was first formally named by Sigmund Freud, and while it can be seen in many areas of our lives, almost all of the sources I’ve read agree that it often has its deepest, most powerful impact within our romantic relationships.
All of these books explained, in their own ways, that we tend to unconsciously - seemingly magically - attract and develop the strongest chemistry with people who trigger our deepest issues and wounds from childhood, giving us the opportunity to play out and resolve what Gestalt Therapy founder Fritz Perls and Harville Hendrix have called our “unfinished business.” My own life and relationships - as well as those of many people I have known and worked with - have provided ample and unavoidable evidence to me of the existence of the repetition compulsion, especially for those with significant past wounds, and especially in the area of romantic relationships.
Schema Therapy and Reinventing Your Life: Learning From My Current Repetition
Lately, I’ve been reminded yet again just how powerful this repetition compulsion is. For, despite all of my reading, knowledge and insight, I find myself once again in a relationship that has played out according to the usual script. It began quickly and intensely, led to a feeling of deep connection and partnership, and then - despite many discussions aimed specifically at preempting this outcome - suddenly became unstable and ambivalent in the manner so perfectly captured by the title I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me. After months of push-pull dynamics, the relationship has now reached a pivotal point where, despite my hopes that this could be the relationship that finally turns out differently than the rest, it seems likely to end in the same type of abandonment as in the past.
As is my tendency, I’ve used the recent painful events in the relationship as a spur to continue gaining more insight. Specifically, since this relationship, like many past ones, has been plagued by certain typical Borderline patterns, I spent some time revisiting that issue, especially reading related message boards and websites. While much of this research simply reinforced my knowledge from past experience and readings, I did come across something new. In my past research, I had become familiar with several approaches - Inner Child Healing and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, for example - said to be optimal for improving a situation with a person exhibiting Borderline patterns. However, during this round of research I read claims that a model called Schema Therapy had, in some studies, shown even greater effectiveness. I read a little about Schema Therapy and was intrigued. When I discovered that the founders of the model had written a book called Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthough Program to End Negative Behavior…and Feel Great Again, I immediately went out and got it.
Lifetraps: Systematizing our Repetition Compulsions
Reinventing Your Life discusses how the repetition compulsion, which it names explicitly, makes it difficult to treat chronic, pervasive, unhealthy personality issues in symptomatic fashion and the need to deal with such difficulties more systematically. This idea, of course, appeals to me, Systems Thinker that I am.
The book says:
“That we keep repeating the pain of our childhood is one of the core insights of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Freud called this the repetition compulsion. The child of an alcoholic grows up to marry an alcoholic. The abused child grows up to marry an abuser, or becomes an abuser himself. The sexually molested child grows up to be a prostitute. The overly controlled child allows others to control her.
This is a baffling phenomenon. Why do we do this? Why do we reenact our pain, prolonging our suffering? Why don’t we build better lives and escape the pattern? Almost everyone repeats negative patterns from childhood in self-defeating ways. This is the strange truth with which therapists contend. Somehow we manage to create, in adult life, conditions remarkably similar to those that were so destructive in childhood. A lifetrap is all the ways in which we recreate these patterns.”
It goes on to say:
“The technical term for a lifetrap is a schema. [Note: This concept obviously interests me due to my fascination with schemes and schemas]. The concept of a schema comes from cognitive psychology. Schemas are deeply entrenched beliefs about ourselves and the world, learned early in life. These schemas are central to our sense of self. To give up our belief in a schema would be to surrender the security of knowing who we are and what the world is like; therefore we cling to it, even when it hurts us. These early beliefs provide us with a sense of predictability and certainty; they are comfortable and familiar. In an odd sense, they make us feel at home. This is why cognitive psychologists believe schemas, or lifetraps, are so difficult to change.”
The authors identify and name eleven major lifetraps. They define lifetraps as constellations of issues with three characteristics.
- They are lifelong patterns or themes (ie: they start in childhood and continue throughout life).
- They are self-destructive.
- They struggle for survival (in other words, they have a tendency to repeat themselves and strongly resist change).
Lifetraps and the Chemistry of Repetitive Self-Destructive Relationships
Reinventing Your Life spends a great deal of time focusing on how these lifetraps powerfully influence our relationships. It talks at length about how each lifetrap leads a person to feel intense chemistry and be drawn into relationships with particular people who trigger the “unfinished business” or unresolved wounds related to that lifetrap.
At one point it says:
“Let us now look at how lifetraps affect the chemistry we feel in romantic relationships.”
It later goes on to add:
“It is one of the most puzzling facts of life that we seem to keep repeating the same self-destructive patterns over and over. This is what Freud called the repetition compulsion. Why would someone who was abused as a child willingly become involved in another abusive relationship? It does not make sense. Yet that is what happens.”
The Repetition Compulsion in Intimate Relationships: Contrasting Recommendations on a Central Phenomenon
This book, discovered by way of yet another unstable Borderline-riddled relationship, and focused significantly on the role of the repetition compulsion in attraction and romance, has led me to review and reconsider all that I know about this crucial phenomenon. All of the most important books that have shaped my view of relationship dynamics agree on the central role of a repetitive mechanism in attraction and intimacy, with many of them explicitly identifying that mechanism as the repetition compulsion. However, where they differ, often greatly, is in how we should respond to this repetition compulsion in our relationships. The sources generally fall into two camps on the subject.
View #1: The Repetition Compulsion in Intimate Relationships as a Self-Destructive Mechanism to Avoid and Overcome by Choosing Partners That Trigger Less Intense Chemistry
On one hand, there are those sources, including Reinventing Your Life, How to Break Your Addiction to a Person and Finally Getting it Right, that see the repetition compulsion in intimate relationships as a self-destructive mechanism to be avoided and overcome. They recommend viewing a quick, intense, often highly sexual attraction to a person as a red flag that they are likely to help you repeat your lifetrap. They advise avoiding that person and instead becoming engaged with people around whom you feel safer and calmer, even if you aren’t as strongly attracted.
For instance, Reinventing Your Life, in explaining how to change the Abandonment lifetrap, offers the recommendation:
“Avoid uncommitted, unstable, or ambivalent partners even though they generate high chemistry. Try to form relationships with stable people. Avoid people who are going to take you on a roller coaster ride, even though these are the exact people to whom you are most attracted. Remember that we are not saying that you should go out with people you find unattractive, but an intense sexual attraction may be a sign that your partner is triggering your Abandonment lifetrap. If this is so, the relationship means trouble, and you should probably think twice about pursuing it.”
In explaining how to change the Mistrust and Abuse lifetrap, they suggest:
“Try to recognize the danger signals in choosing future partners. Knowing the danger signals can help you feel confident that you can pick a trustworthy partner. Even if the chemistry is weaker, get involved with men/women who respect your rights and do not want to hurt you.”
In discussing the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap, they advise:
“Avoid Cold Partners Who Generate High Chemistry. This is that simple rule that is so hard to follow. Do not get involved with depriving partners. The rule is so hard to follow because these are precisely the partners who attract you most. We often give patients this rule-of-thumb: If you meet someone for whom you feel a high degree of chemistry, rate how much chemistry on a 0 to 10 scale. If you rate the person a 9 or 10, then think twice about becoming involved with this person. Occasionally, such relationships work out, after a great deal of turmoil. But, more often, the strong chemistry you feel will be based on lifetraps that they trigger in you, rather than positive qualities that will make the relationship last.”
When I talk to people about my relationship pattern, I’d say that nearly every one of them, in their feedback to me, reflects this view (though of course some of them fail to take the same advice in their own relationships). And who can blame them, as it seems so obviously sensible to try to avoid partners that are likely to re-trigger a repetitive, self-destructive pattern.
View #2: The Repetition Compulsion in Intimate Relationships as a Purposeful and Required Catalyst for Full Healing Through Mastering Resolution Skills with Partners That Initially Trigger Intense Chemistry
However another extremely credible and brilliant source, Harville Hendrix, disagrees with this assessment. In his Imago Relationship Therapy model, as expressed in books like Keeping the Love You Find and Getting the Love You Want, Hendrix says that (all quotes in this section are from Keeping the Love You Find except as otherwise noted):
- The repetition compulsion in intimate relationships involves selecting partners with some correlation to our original caregivers, has been recognized by others in the past, and occurs for a purpose.
“The reconstruction of the past by selecting a partner who resembles one’s parents was originally given the name ‘repetition compulsion’ by Freud. The idea was expanded by Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy, and given the name ‘unfinished business.’ For Perls, this consists of feelings and memories that are unconscious and avoided but are expressed in behavior. Some view this repetition as an attempt to restore the familiar, thus as a static and nonpurposive process. I side with Freud’s view of the purposive character of repetition as an attempt as resolution.” - Notes from Chapter 3 of Getting the Love You Want
- This purpose for choosing the mates we do is related to an unconscious agenda.
“Now we arrive at the heart of the matter. Our ‘free’ choice of a mate is, in the end, a product of our unconscious, which has an agenda of its own.”
- That unconscious agenda is to heal our childhood wounds and become whole.
“And what the unconscious wants is to become whole and to heal the wounds of childhood.”
- In the service of this agenda, our unconscious creates an “image” of its ideal mate, which Hendrix calls the Imago, based on the way the traits of our original caregivers, usually our parents, interacted with our attempts to get our childhood needs met.
“It [this ‘image’] is forged in the interaction between how we attempted to get our childhood needs met and how our caretakers responded to those needs, and etched on a template in our unconscious.”
“I call this buried parental image the Imago, after the Latin word for ‘image.’”
- Our unconscious then compares romantic prospects to that “image” and alerts us that a potential mate closely matches our Imago through the experience of “chemistry.”
“To this end, it [the unconscious] is carrying around its own detailed picture of a proper match, searching not for the right stats, but for the right chemistry.”
“When we meet an Imago match, that chemical reaction occurs, and love ignites. All other bets, all other ideas about what we want in a mate, are off. We feel alive and whole, confident that we have met the person who will make everything all right.”
- This experience of “chemistry” with an Imago match is sparked by our unconscious belief that this is a person who can help us heal from our unmet childhood needs.
“And what is that chemistry? Nothing more than our unconscious attraction to someone who we feel will meet our particular emotional needs. Specifically, that need is to cover the ‘shortfall’ of childhood by having our mates fill in the psychological gaps left by our imperfect childhood caretakers.”
- The reason the unconscious is driven to heal from those unmet childhood needs with this particular person is that they possess both the “positive” and “negative” traits of the caretakers who originally failed to meet those needs.
“How do we go about that? By falling madly in love with someone who has both the positive and the negative traits of our imperfect parents, someone who fits an image that we carry deep inside us and for whose embodiment we are unconsciously searching.”
“What we unconsciously want is to get what we didn’t get in childhood from someone who is like the people who didn’t give us what we need in the first place.”
- The “negative” traits that this person shares with our original caregivers unconsciously exert a stronger influence on our Imago, even though we may consciously perceive ourselves being attracted only to the “positive” traits.
“Though the Imago is a picture of both the positive and negative traits of our caretakers, the negative traits carry the most weight in our attraction. Because incidents of neglect, abuse, criticism, or indifference affect our survival, they are more deeply etched on our Imago template than our memories of caring and attention. They are the aching sores that we want healed. This is frustrating, because we consciously seek only the positive traits in a potential partner, so that we can get our needs gratified. But without the negative traits, we would not be attracted in the first place.”
- Therefore, our unconscious will only accept complete healing with someone who is, whether we recognize it consciously or not, similar to the person who originally wounded us, especially in sharing their “negative” traits.
“There is a perverse logic here; the old brain [Hendrix’s term for the more primitive, emotionally-driven part of our brain] is making sure that we find what we need to heal. Inevitably, the person you need in order to heal is similar to the person with whom you were wounded, because that is the only type of person from whom your unconscious will accept what you need.”
- Because this type of person who is our only hope for fully healing shares the same “negative” traits as the original caretakers that wounded us, they are simultaneously most likely to wound us again in exactly the same ways, rather than to help us heal those wounds we so desperately want healed.
“Unfortunately, since we’ve almost surely chosen someone with negative traits similar to those of the parents who wounded us in the first place, the chances of a more positive outcome this time around are slim indeed. In fact, most people who have had serial relationships report that despite their best intentions they manage to find the same problems each time around.”
- Despite these risks, and as much as we may wish it, we cannot and should not try to consciously choose attraction to partners other than those that share these traits of our caretakers and activate our deepest wounds from childhood. For it is exactly these people with whom we must engage to confront those very traits and wounds in order to heal.
“When I was single after my divorce, I consciously sought the ideal mate, foolishly thinking I was immune from the process to which others, lacking my knowledge, were fated. I made a list of the qualities I wanted: warmth, vitality, intelligence, laughter, emotional stability, sensuality and sexuality. I tracked down several potential mates who had all these qualities, but nothing was stirred in me. They were all interesting people to be with, but I was bored. Each lacked the essential traits that corresponded with the depression of my mother; my abandonment fears were not activated.”
“There is no way around this. You cannot avoid choosing partners with the devastating problems you had at home. Many times I have had people approach me after my lectures distraught because I’ve said that they are fated to repeat the devastating problems of their childhood. ‘Isn’t there any way I can avoid marrying an alcoholic (or someone who is physically abusive, or emotionally frigid)? Isn’t it enough that I have been in therapy, that I faithfully attend AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] (or ACOA [Adult Children of Alcoholics])?’ It is heartbreaking for me to tell them that the work they are doing is of tremendous benefit, but they cannot avoid the problems, that in fact they need to confront those very problems as adults in order to heal.”
Hendrix is emphatic that it is only with an Imago match that we can become fully whole and that we do it precisely by revisiting and resolving the old conflicts and wounds that only they can activate.
“Is there no escape from falling for an Imago match? Unless your mate is chosen by the village elder, or you send away for a mail-order bride, the answer, I’m afraid, is no. To understand the Imago, and its seeming stranglehold on our will, we have to return again to our original thesis: our goal in life is to return to that original state of relaxed joyfulness that we somehow remember, to feel alive and whole. In order to do that, we have to go back to the scene of the crime, to the place where we were wounded, in order to undo the damage and re-find what was lost. From the perspective of our old brain, we must get what we need from the person or persons from which it should have come in the first place - or, failing that, from a reasonable facsimile.
But childhood is over; we cannot run back to our parents to get what we missed. So we find the next best thing - a relationship that recapitulates in its vital aspects the complex, idiosyncratic pattern of our wounding and loss. The tool that our unconscious uses to perform this feat is the Imago.”
- As much as we might wish to escape from a troubled relationship with such an Imago partner, in all but the most severely destructive situations, resolving the inevitable conflicts within the relationship is itself the cure and running away will only lead to further repetition in future relationships.
“I have had clients tell me that they were encouraged at their AlAnon meetings to leave their drinking spouses. This is appallingly ignorant. The idea of the disposability of the troubled spouse is dangerous and destructive. Relationship problems are a dynamic between two people: until you are perfect, there is no perfect partner. Until you correct your codependent behavior, you will choose an abuser partner. While you are an addict, the only partner you find will be codependent.
Wanting to escape a troubled relationship is an understandable human impulse. There are plenty of times when I’ve wanted to go away myself, just to be alone for a while, to have a break from dealing with the conflict, ill will, and day-to-day hassles that arise in any relationship. But the relationship itself is always a vital part of the cure. It is the ambience in which the early trauma can be experienced, dealt with, and integrated, so that it loses its power to cause pain. Running away solves nothing; eventually the same problems show up further down the road. The criteria for leaving a partner, to my way of thinking, are few, regardless of the severity of the problem. When it is clear that a partner is unaware of his problems or unwilling to do anything about them, there is probably no way to salvage the relationship. Often, I know, this is the case where there is chronic abuse and addiction. However, when the addict or abuser is willing to acknowledge and work on the problems, I feel the attempt to save the relationship should be made.”
- What we need to heal fully is what Hendrix calls a “conscious relationship” with an Imago match. This is a situation where a partner who has the “positive” and “negative” traits of our caretakers and activates our wounds and unmet needs commits to using new tools, strategies and communication techniques, such as those suggested by Imago Relationship Therapy, to heal with us.
“All you can hope for,” I have to tell them, “is to find someone who is aware of his or her problems and willing to do, with you, the hard work necessary to heal.”
Much of Hendrix’s work goes on to describe in great detail the nature of a conscious relationship and the particular work through which we and our Imago partner can heal.
Thus, Hendrix and Imago Relationship Therapy do not suggest that we attempt to engage with partners that fail to provoke intense chemistry. Rather, they advise that we accede to the repetition compulsion in our choice of partner and engage, as we are naturally drawn to do, with a powerfully attractive person who activates our deepest wounds. However, they explain that in order to benefit, rather than simply be re-wounded by such a relationship, we must find such a partner who is also willing, along with us, to become conscious, change and grow. When we and our Imago partner are willing to communicate in new ways that promote beneficial insights and behavioral changes within the relationship, we can avoid experiencing the repetition compulsion in the relationship’s outcome, and instead achieve mutual resolution of our childhood wounds.
To put it in the terms of the authors of Reinventing Your Life, Imago suggests not that we avoid allowing our lifetraps to influence our partner choice, but that we find a partner willing, along with us, to help each other work on and heal the issues that maintain our mutually attractive lifetraps. We should expect and accept repetition in the type of partner we choose, Imago advises. But what we shouldn’t repeat is how we relate to that partner. Rather than relating to different people, Imago tells us to relate to those people to whom we are naturally attracted in different ways - namely through using the tools and techniques of Imago Relationship Therapy.
Reviewing the Dilemma
So here we have several very credible sources in agreement about the existence and importance of the repetition compulsion in intimate relationships, but in serious contrast with each other regarding how we should respond to it.
One group of sources sees danger in our being attracted to and staying with partners that engage our lifetraps and urges us to intervene at this point in the process by avoiding or disengaging from such situations. This sounds highly sensible in many ways.
Yet, on the other hand, we have Harville Hendrix who takes a somewhat opposite view. He worries that the greater danger lies, in this day of broken marriages and homes, in the suggestion that highly intense relationships, once they encounter difficult challenges, be treated as disposable. He proclaims that we need instead to learn to stay in these relationships and intervene in the repetition process at a point within the relationship itself.
“They say that breaking up is hard to do, but that is wrong. It’s easy to walk away before the going gets tough, to find another dreamboat - until the ship starts to sink again. It’s waking up that’s hard to do.”
By working with our partner to practice and master previously unlearned resolution skills, he explains, we channel the energy of the predictable conflicts in such relationships - the very conflicts from which the other sources advise us to run - using them as mutual catalysts for growth and healing.
This Imago approach also seems highly sensible, has a certain poetic and symmetric beauty to it, and, in some ways, provides a more satisfying framework. For, while the authors of Reinventing Your Life, for example, see the repetition compulsion as a “baffling phenomenon” and a “puzzling fact of life” that “does not make sense,” Imago explains very clearly why we carry out this repetition and how to harness it constructively.
Contrasting Views of Compatibility: Another Way of Framing the Dilemma
In a way, these two contrasting approaches illustrate a dilemma revolving around the issue of compatibility. Both approaches agree that we tend to perceive compatibility when we first become infatuated with a person due to the chemistry between our respective wounds, unresolved issues and lifetraps. They also agree that if we then engage deeply with that person, we will, at some point, encounter serious challenges within the relationship.
One approach, espoused by the authors of Reinventing Your Life, How to Break Your Addiction to a Person and others, sees these inevitable challenges as proof that we are, in a sense, incompatible with this person after all - that we have simply attracted another person who will re-wound us, and so should avoid or leave the relationship. Again, this view is understandable and is the one expressed by almost everyone that I talk to each time I find myself once again in such a situation. They say that I should leave the relationship and find someone more compatible. Often, when challenges arise, my partner in the relationship also echoes these same thoughts, claiming that they have simply realized we are incompatible as justification just before abandoning me.
Hendrix, on the other hand, says that this apparent switch in compatibility is temporary and is simply part of the natural course of events in an optimal relationship between two wounded people. He states that the initial infatuation between compatible Imago partners is representative of the “romantic love phase” - the first phase of such a relationship. When the inevitable conflicts between Imago partners arise, creating a perception of incompatibility, Hendrix says that we have simply entered the second stage of the relationship, which he calls the “power struggle,” in which just such challenges arise for the purpose of being resolved. If, rather than assuming we are suddenly incompatible and leaving, we resolve these temporary, though difficult conflicts, we then grow out of the “power struggle” and achieve the third and final stage of the relationship, the “real love” stage.
The particular wording that Hendrix uses to explain this process captures well the paradoxical relationship between compatibility and incompatibility in an Imago relationship.
“Romantic love is supposed to end. It is nature’s glue, which brings two incompatible people together for the purpose of mutual growth, and enables them to survive the disillusionment that they did not marry perfect people.”
“When you meet your incompatible partner, nature has arranged for a biochemical reaction to occur, which transmutes the chemistry of attraction into the chemistry of growth.”
Notice how Hendrix uses the term incompatible to describe the type of person we should be involved with in order to provoke and resolve the “power struggle.” He believes that it is precisely someone with whom we initially feel compatible and then encounter certain archetypal incompatibilities that offers us the opportunity to achieve mutual growth and wholeness. In his view, paradoxically, a person with whom we experience this drastic shift in apparent compatibility, leading to a temporary phase of seeming incompatibility, is the only person with whom we really are ideally compatible.
Pursuing Wholeness Alone and Through Relationships: A Clarification of the Various Views
Let us be clear. None of these fields are suggesting that we can’t grow at all on our own or that personal development work done by ourselves is meaningless. Far from it. All agree that we can do much healing on our own and that the healthier we become, the healthier will be those people that we attract to us. This, for example, is part of why Harville Hendrix wrote Keeping the Love You Find - to help singles improve themselves as much as they can before entering a committed relationship, even as they learn and prepare to better negotiate those relationships when they do come along. In essence, to the extent that we heal some of our wounds on our own, we can partially change our Imago, becoming less dependent on a partner to meet our needs and making ourselves more attractive to a partner who is similarly less dependent on us.
However, where these various fields differ is in their views of how much growth we can accomplish on our own, what the necessary conditions are for us to reach wholeness, and just how feasible it is to expect humans to unconsciously settle for anything less than wholeness.
Some fields believe that we can become relatively whole completely on our own - an idea that appeals to many, but seems to me to ignore the deeply social and relational nature both of human beings and of the most fundamental wounds that stand between us and wholeness.
As Hendrix says:
“In short, we need relationships, and in particular we need the kind of committed long-term love relationships that allow us to heal and grow. To my way of thinking, perpetual singleness stunts growth, for it denies the fundamental needs of the unconscious. I believe that singleness is meant to be a stage, not a permanent way of life. There are certain things that we can only accomplish, spiritually and psychologically, in a committed dyadic relationship.”
“This preparation - your awareness and your willingness to educate and change yourself - is all you can do as a single person. You can begin the process of becoming whole while you are single, but you cannot fully heal your wounds or fully recover your wholeness without a partner.”
Other fields seem to believe that you can become whole through a combination of your own work and work in a safe relationship of the type promoted by Reinventing Your Life or Finally Getting it Right with a partner who doesn’t fully trigger your most sensitive buttons. Still others advise that since we can only become whole with a highly triggering partner, and such a partner poses too great a risk of re-wounding, we should instead give up on our dreams of wholeness and settle for something less.
Imago goes further than any of these other fields. It claims that our quest for wholeness is “nonnegotiable,” despite any attempts to repress or suppress it, and that its success depends not just on any relationship, but specifically on a conscious relationship with an Imago match who triggers our lifetraps and unresolved issues.
“Although our unconscious selection process doesn’t bode well for marriage as a way of life, I am convinced that the negative Imago traits of our partners are the catalyst for personal transformation at the deepest levels. A conscious relationship, in which partners call on each other to change those aspects of themselves, and in so doing unleash repressed potential, is in fact the most effective path to psychological and spiritual wholeness. Our other options - denying our unmet childhood needs, trying to fill them on our own, or through friendships, ‘live-in’ relationships, or serial lovers - will never heal us. The love that is essential to our healing must come from an Imago match, and a partnership - committed, continuous, consistent - is the process through which we heal and regain our original wholeness and full aliveness.”
Declaring our drive for wholeness compulsory, while simultaneously viewing its achievement as dependent on such a specific partner and such a challenging process, Imago sets the bar very high, raising both the probability that many of us will never achieve it and the emotional and psychological stakes of that failure. Hendrix realizes that this can make accepting his theory somewhat unpalatable. In a section of Keeping the Love You Find entitled ‘We Can’t do it Alone’ he says:
“People disappointed in love don’t want to hear that they need a relationship to heal. They want to feel that they can be autonomous, and restore their spiritual wholeness on their own, if their caretakers, or their mates, aren’t up to the task. But this is a delusion. While there is much you can accomplish on your own, especially with regard to modifying your character defenses, you can’t go the whole way to healing without a partner.
The idea that we need the help of others for our fulfillment is unpopular because it challenges the primacy of the individual. The sovereignty of the individual is, rightly, a cornerstone of democracy. The tension between the individual and the collective, the individual and the dyad, the family and society, produces the chemistry of the evolutionary process, in terms of growth as well as in the development of new social and political systems. But there is no individual not in a context, not in a relationship of some sort, and not in a dependent relationship.”
I have known some people to find this notion that our dreams of wholeness rest on interacting with a highly risky and challenging romantic partner so distasteful that they attempt to discredit it based solely on their disdain for it. They may offer no evidence or rationale to back up their view, or even take the time to consider the research supporting Imago’s claims, but simply assert that the very idea is so unpleasant to them that it must be false. However, obviously, whether we happen to like Hendrix’s conclusion is irrelevant to the facts of the situation. The question is not which of these models we like better, but, simply, which is true for us. It is a dilemma that I continue to struggle with, as my relationships repeatedly bring it back to the forefront in my life.
Should We Stay or Should We Go?: Facing the Dilemma in My Current Repetitious Relationship
As mentioned, the pivotal situation in my current relationship, combined with the accumulated insight that I have gained in the wake of similar past relationships, has placed this dilemma at the center of my life once more. True to form, the relationship started quickly and intensely, before - despite an unprecedented level of conscious attempts to anticipate and prevent them - conflicts began to arise. My partner, just as Harville Hendrix describes in the “power struggle” stage, has taken to mentioning how, despite the initial intensity, she feels that we are incompatible after all. It is a textbook example of my repetition compulsion (and as far as I know, of hers as well).
What should I and this person - or anyone in a similar situation - do, ideally, given that both models in their ways make so much sense? Should we stay in the relationship and continue trying to heal, using Imago type techniques to resolve the “power struggle” (if this person is even willing to do so with me, of course)? Should we disengage and seek safer partners who fail to trigger our lifetraps and with whom we feel less attraction than we did initially in this relationship (assuming this is even an option, given that our Imago not only dictates a pattern in the people to whom we are attracted, but also in which people are attracted to us)? Or is there some third hand solution that can reconcile these two options?
I still can’t claim to be sure of the answer to the dilemma. Perhaps that will become even clearer later in this relationship or in future relationships. But I do have some tentative ideas on its resolution.
My Current Approach to the Dilemma
At present, my best assessment of the dilemma is this:
Seeking and engaging in a healing-oriented relationship with an Imago match is like an investment that has a high risk, but offers the possibility of the highest reward. If you can find an Imago match or have one and they are willing to do the work of a conscious relationship with you, this is the ideal situation and will provide the most healing each of you can possibly get, as well as having the greatest constructive ripple effect on the world around you. As you and your partner become more whole, growing in ways that you can only do within such a relationship, you will have even more to share with others, helping them to become more whole as well.
However, such relationships involve serious risks. Imago partners that are not willing to become conscious and work cooperatively threaten to take us to the opposite extreme, re-wounding us over and over again, rather than healing us. This is especially true in relationships where the Imago partners bear serious wounds from childhood. These situations tend to be especially volatile and to feature at least one partner whose personality is specifically constructed around a deep lack of trust in oneself, others, and the possibility of change so as to fiercely resist any commitment to becoming conscious and growing. This creates a vexing catch-22 for those of us most wounded - and thus furthest from and most desperately yearning for greater wholeness - in which the only partners with whom we can heal are those whose very personality structure is antithetical to doing so. In such a situation, where either partner is absolutely unwilling to resolve conflicts, even Hendrix admits that the relationship probably cannot be saved.
In circumstances that match us with such an unwilling Imago partner and/or render us ultimately unable to find one willing to consciously heal with us, then I believe we may eventually have to give up actively seeking complete wholeness and settle for the next best thing. We can achieve a certain measure of growth through processing the pain brought to the surface by our previous re-woundings and salvaging valuable lessons and practice even from ultimately failed relationship attempts, while seeking a safe relationship in which we can heal some, if not all, of our remaining wounds, without being constantly re-wounded.
How Long Should We Hold Out Hope for Wholeness?
If my assessment is correct, however, this leaves many of us faced with an extremely difficult question: How long should we struggle to find a willing Imago match or to convince our current Imago match to commit to mutual healing before we give up actively hoping for the ideal of wholeness and settle for something less? After all, finally abandoning our conscious and unconscious hopes for a relationship in which we can revive all of the wounded parts of our being is akin to accepting partial death and requires a profound existential sacrifice. For the drive to attain the type of wholeness that Imago is designed to achieve is, according to Hendrix, core to our humanity. As he says in Keeping the Love You Find, “Which brings us back to our innate human yearning. Our search for wholeness is compulsive and nonnegotiable. We are hooked on life and will do whatever is necessary to feel fully alive.”
And Hendrix is far from the first to recognize the deeply fundamental nature of our drive for wholeness. For example, the brilliant psychologist and student of Carl Jung, Erich Neumann, even gave it a name in his book Depth Psychology and a New Ethic:
“The structure of wholeness which is achieved by the integration of the psychic components is the fulfillment of a basic tendency in the personality - centroversion… Centroversion…arises out of the principle of wholeness in the personality, and…aims at the achievement and maintenance of this wholeness”
This centroversion does not yield easily and it is likely that even if we manage to consciously accept its ultimate failure, resigning ourselves to something less than a conscious relationship with a full Imago match, our unconscious will long continue to yearn for more.
In a way, the question of whether and when to abandon the quest for wholeness is similar to that facing a seriously ill patient who must decide how long to hold out for an ideal, but potentially unavailable cure - for instance, a transplant that can restore full functioning - before resigning him or herself to palliative care and management. It is a decision that challenges our deepest fundamental hopes and dreams for fully experiencing life.
What do you Think?
So, in light of all of these various theories, models, concepts and ideas, what are your thoughts on these issues?
- How whole can we become on our own, especially if we harbor deep relational wounds from our past?
- If we need relationships in which to achieve certain levels of healing, what kinds of relationships do we need at each level?
- Is the repetition compulsion in our choice of intimate partners a necessary, though risky, catalyst, driving us toward situations that challenge us to achieve mastery on the path to wholeness? Or is it something of which to be wary and to avoid?
- How does one ideally resolve the paradoxical situation in which the only partners that can heal one’s deepest wounds are those whose own wounds make them the least likely people of all to be willing to change and grow?
- If we do avoid the repetition compulsion in our choice of partners, are we giving up our chance for complete wholeness and settling for something safer, but ultimately less complete? Or can we have both safety and wholeness, with attraction growing for someone who wouldn’t initially activate our deepest chemistry?
And what about questions that go even further in challenging deep cultural assumptions? For example, must our healing come within what Hendrix calls “dyadic relationships” or can we heal through a variety of short and/or long-term relationships with partners that each carry pieces of our Imago?
The Profound Implications of Resolving the Dilemma of the Repetition Compulsion in Intimate Relationships
I believe that these questions have profound implications not only on the level of individual relationships, but even on the family, social and global levels. As Richard Schwartz makes clear in his Internal Family Systems model, these various levels parallel each other. So healing in our individual relationships is bound to emerge into greater health on the family, social and global levels and vice-versa - a point Hendrix makes in his work. As we learn the skills to engage and work to resolution with our most challenging intimate partners, we will also improve our ability to do the same with parents, children, co-workers, neighbors and even those billions of other people - and creatures - around the world with whom we share this earth.
At the same time, widespread failure to engage with and resolve unfinished business in our personal relationships will surely play out in increasing conflict and destruction on those higher levels and vice-versa. For example, consider how the current American approach to nations whose policies we find disturbing mirrors the avoidance strategy that many advise to those with extremely challenging intimate partners. Rather than persistently engaging and negotiating with leaders that provoke our deepest fears and anxieties, we often instead avoid interaction as a form of punishment or illusory self-protection, allowing polarizations to increase and drive the proliferation of greater threats and dangers to all of us.
While we may have the luxury of simply disengaging from problematic relationships and repetitious destructive patterns in our individual relationships, increasing globalization and interconnectedness have all but eliminated this option on those higher social levels. If we do not learn to practice resolution of unfinished business, even with those who press our most challenging and repetitive buttons on the individual level, how will we carry out those skills among social groups or nations on this finite planet that we share? Nearly all of humanity’s most pressing challenges involve familiar patterns of destructive acts or staunch resistance on the part of fearful, wounded, borderline-ish and/or narcissistic people and leaders. The paradox of global sustainability, much like that of the highly wounded Imago partner, is that the quality of all of our lives depends on motivating change in those most unlikely to embrace it.
This is why, when someone advises me to simply dispose of a relationship in which my partner repeatedly accesses my lifetraps, I often feel it is a bit of a copout. For, if we all choose to live that way, what will be the implications? While we can label people as “problematic” and simply avoid them in our personal lives, they and many others similar to them, of whom they were simply one representative, will surely continue to affect our interdependent world in a more insidious and indirect fashion.
And yet despite understanding this, there remain times when relationships fraught with mutual lifetrap issues - such as Borderline patterns - begin to feel hopeless indeed and even I wonder if it isn’t necessary to put aside the Imago ideal and seek the safer interactions recommended by How to Break Your Addiction to a Person, Reinventing Your Life and others. Either way, one thing is certain: In every role I play, from friend to lover to activist to intellectual, life persistently reminds me of the central importance of an improved understanding of the dynamics of the repetition compulsion in healing intimate relationships. And that is a pattern that I definitely expect will continue to repeat.
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Tags: abandonment, abuse, addiction, addictive relationships, attachment, attraction, avoidance, borderline personality disorder, carl jung, catalysis, catch 22, centroversion, chemistry, codependence, cognitive psychology, commitment, communication, compatibility, conflict resolution, conscious relationship, death, dependence, depth psychology and a new ethic, dialectical behavioral therapy, dilemma, erich neumann, facing love addiction, finally getting it right, fritz perls, gestalt therapy, getting the love you want, globalization, growth, harville hendrix, healing, health, hope, how to break your addiction to a person, i hate you dont leave me, imago, infatuation, inner child, interconnectedness, internal family systems, intimacy, keeping the love you find, lifetraps, love, mastery, old brain, paradox, parallelism, personal development, polarization, power struggle, psychoanalysis, psychology, reinventing your life, relationships, repetition compulsion, repression, resistance, romantic relationships, schema therapy, schemas, self destructiveness, sigmund freud, social change, suppression, sustainability, third hand solutions, transformation, unconscious, unfinished business, wholeness, wounds
Included in: An online dating carnival - April 8, 2008, Fourth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life, Carnival of the Vanities - April 10, 2008, Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog Carnival 45, Doing it Differently Blog Carnival, 18th Edition, Blog Carnival on Personal Power May 18, 2008
April 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Another insightful article Howard - thanks for your thoughts.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:38 am
[…] Ditkoff presents Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? posted at SystemsThinker.com Blog, saying, “Why do we repeatedly attract similarly unhealthy […]
April 8th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Hi there, you left a comment on my blog earlier and i must say i’m very glad you did. You’ve certainly done a lot more reading than I have and it was really interesting to hear about the similarities and differences you’ve found. I’ll have to put some of those books on my list! :)
The ideas of the Imago match and the conscious relationship are interesting ones and certainly do seem as though they might help an individual to attain growth. I think it’s in our nature to seek resolution of problems and i like that this therapy doesn’t encourage mere avoidance of the problem. As someone who believes that Schema theory best helps to explain (and has in the last six months definitely enabled me to improve my life by a considerable amount) the many difficulties that have arisen in my everyday functioning and especially interpersonal relationships, i think it’s quite likely that my lifetraps keep being triggered because i haven’t adequately resolved the issues in my childhood that caused them to be created in the first place. As to whether those can be resolved on my own… i know i can somewhat lessen the extent to which i let lifetraps have control over me… but I also think that Imago therapy might be right in suggesting that we need to find a way to work through the unmet needs of our childhood through a conscious relationship with an Imago match. It seems like it would be an incredibly difficult thing to find though. I know from my past relationships that there’s certainly the point at which my partners have decided that the relationship was no longer worth persuing anymore… i cannot possibly image somebody choosing to stick with me to work through the difficulties.. I mean, i know it’s possible… but it seems unlikely for me personally. Then again, i can’t entirely be trusted when it comes to perceptions of hope for myself, as i do have a defectiveness lifetrap. It’s possible, i think it’s possible, is what i’m trying to say.
Anyway, i sympathize with your current situation, i really hope that you can find a way to work it out. Thankyou for commenting on my blog, there’s such a wealth of information you have here, i’ll be sure to read along.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Hi Jaimi, thanks for writing. I’m glad I was able to direct you to some more books on the subject. You might enjoy looking through my Bookstore where I list all of the most important books I’ve come across, only some of which are mentioned in this article.
I am glad to hear Schema Therapy is helping you. I definitely think the inner child issues are key, though, and need to be addressed in these situations. In reading Reinventing Your Life, I was really pleased that they do address this directly. They have specific inner child types of exercises right in the book. I haven’t actually read the specific Schema Therapy books for therapists, so I’m not sure to what extent that is involved still. But at least in Reinventing Your Life, it’s directly involved.
You might want to check out my page on Inner Child Healing as well. There are resources there that might help you focus directly on that aspect, as well as a link to a fantastic article about inner child and its role in BPD.
Ultimately, I think we need to find a partner who realizes and agrees that there is no escape. As long as someone thinks they can simply run from the relationship and their problems will be cured, they aren’t going to stick around for the “power struggle” stage and resolve it. But some of us have realized it’s often just an endless cycle until we finally resolve the issues within a relationship instead of moving on to the next.
I hope you find more things that can help you throughout my site and thanks for your own writing which I found interesting.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Very well written and excellently thought provoking. I like your style. I am personally much more in congruence with the “Imago” thinking than the other approach. Personally, I have followed the third path in my own life, after many fits and starts. Thanks for sharing so fully and so well.
Al
April 8th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Thank you for your comment earlier on my blog. Although “repetition compulsion” is seen in many areas of our lives ( as I wrote about); you are correct in saying that it is most apparent in our intimate relationships.
I have enjoyed the work of Harville Hendrix and I feel his approach to couples work to be very beneficial. I think the difficulty with his approach is that both partners need to be very emotionally available and psychologically aware in a way that many people have not experienced and kind find threatening.
Gottman (at Gottman.com) has a more mechanistic and mathematical approach that (many couples find less threatening. His theory answers your question of when is enough enough. I believe it is 5 to 1. Five connecting experiences to one conflict. I’m over simplifying here, but he does take into account different relating styles and gender differences. As a therapist, I have used his model with couples.
The book ” A General Theory of Love” by Dr.’s Thomas Lewis and Richard Lannon is a fascinating book on the psychobiology of love. I really loved it but it can make you feel a little like we are even more doomed to chose incorrectly.
Lastly, since you mentioned many of the women you have had relationships with have Borderline features you might be interested in the book ” The Narcissistic Borderline Couple.” by Joan Lachkar, Phd. In this theory, the narcissist is looking for attention (because of childhood unmet needs and abandonment) and the borderline needs rescuing ( also because of childhood abandonment and childhood abuse) Many people have traits of these personality types and these unmet needs clash when the two try to form a relationship.
In the end there are no guarantees. Relationships are messy and there are no tried and true formulas. However, the work you ,or anyone does on understanding themselves brings greater insight into ones relationships. It takes determination and courage to go there and you are doing that; because of that the relationship you want can’t be too far behind.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Debra,
I agree the challenge is that a conscious relationship is the furthest thing from what most couples are comfortable with in the wake of either the romantic or power struggle phases. Gottman sounds interesting, I will check it out. It sounds like he is answering one of the questions - how long to give a particular relationship before leaving. My larger question is how many relationships to try and reach the Imago ideal before giving up on that. Both are very important questions.
I like that Gottman is based on a lot of research. I think Imago needs a lot more of that kind of thing to further test some of its claims.
The “General Theory of Love” book is also new to me. Thanks for the reference. I am familiar with the Narcissistic/Borderline relationship dynamic and I will look into it more. I’m sure I’ll find nothing since I’m superior to all possible authors and….ok just kidding :)
Thanks for your comments and for your work on your blog. Keep in touch!
April 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Brilliant essay. This is at a level much higher than I’m used to thinking about in the context of relationships, so it’ll probably take me several days to process. There’s some profound insight here.
A few reactions and bullets:
1. Would you mind describing your lifetraps and their effect on your relationships? I’m looking for a real life example of how this plays out.
2. Much of pickup is predicated on creating choice, and much of that choice comes from the disposability of partners and the ease of replacing relationships. Obviously, this clashes with the model presented here…at least on one level.
3. The model of using two conscious imago partners to heal each other is profound and beautifully symmetrically, but it seems to be highly improbable and near impractical. Very few people will even be aware of the theory or the application, and it’s a highly unattractive prospect to be used to help heal someone. Plus, the dogma in dating lit is that if it doesn’t work, move on, there’s plenty of fish in the sea.
3. Healing yourself by using many parts, ie having tons of partners, is the way to go. It’s too impractical to find, educate, and use just one partner to resolve all of your issues. She’s just not going to relish that role, and men aren’t designed for monogamy (subject for a another post).
The obvious question, which deserves a lengthy followup, is what effect your healing process has on those “parts,” ie blowing through a bunch of partners in order to resolve your issues.
4. It seems like it’s possible for unconsciousness imago partners to get together and resolve their issues, and that the mechanisms of attraction are set up for this.
5. What do you think about attraction towards partners who are NOT imago partners? I think it’s totally possible and brings people together all the time.
Thanks for point me to this,
Lance
April 10th, 2008 at 4:02 am
[…] Ditkoff presents Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? posted at SystemsThinker.com Blog, saying, “Why do we repeatedly attract similarly unhealthy […]
April 10th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Fourth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life…
…
April 10th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Lance,
Thanks for the compliments on the post. It’s taken me years and a lot of difficult situations and reading and thinking to start looking at things from this level. Along the way I’ve looked at relationships from every angle I know of from more traditional approaches to the pickup artist community’s approaches to all the fields listed in the post. I think they all have a lot of insight, but none are complete in themselves.
Your questions are very insightful and it would take entire whole separate posts to do some of them justice. I’ll just address them each briefly here. If you want to talk more about them, we can do that.
1. As far as a lifetrap example, a big one for me is the abandonment lifetrap. As I mentioned at the start of the post, there is a long pattern of abandonments for me of various types. So this leads to a tendency to attract people who themselves have a pattern of abandoning (often due to their reverse style of coping with their own abandonment). Of course this happens unconsciously. It isn’t as if I am attracted to someone because they seem like an abandoner. Just as Hendrix explains, there must be something in their vibe that reminds me of the “positive” side of what makes abandoners attractive early on.
So we attract each other and at first, it seems great. Usually these abandoners start off wanting attachment and working to create it and they are very good at doing so. It’s only after things get close that the fears kick in. And once they kick in, both people’s lifetraps get activated in a vicious cycle. The abandoner themselves may have the mistrust lifetrap, so as things get closer, they may start to get scared and suspicious and project that out and start backing away. For someone with the abandonment lifetrap, this of course is scary and they may then work to get the person back. At this point, you have the “power struggle” Hendrix talks about.
The only way out of that type of clash of lifetraps is using very intentional and conscious communication with people willing to consider that their fears are not really stemming from the present but from the past, and to be willing to calm their partner’s fears. Unfortunately, the abandoners rarely are the type to stick around and do that. And so they move on, often abandoning others, or else sometimes ending up in a relationship with someone less threatening to them.
This whole type of pattern is really central to all of Hendrix’s books so plenty on this stuff is in there.
2. Having studied the pickup artist material for many years, and grown disillusioned with some aspects of it (while also finding much of value in it), I definitely have some thoughts on this point. I could write pages upon pages about this point alone, but my biggest issue with the community is that it teaches how to initiate relationships, but it does little to help a person understand who is a wise partner to select and how to maintain healthy relationships. It really doesn’t focus much on the health of relationships, it often focuses simply on the ability to create numbers of relationships. Thus, you can end up with people who can engage in countless relationships, yet never really have deep intimacy with anyone and as a result not really grow authentically. And it also teaches people how to put on a persona that can attract a partner, but nobody can sustain a false persona forever. If you haven’t really done the inner growth to truly be that persona, your vulnerabilities will eventually crack through and then you will need a whole other set of skills to deal with that which the pickup community doesn’t really teach.
The very first thing Hendrix does in Imago is close exits because it’s only when you can’t just dispose of the person that you are forced to actually face your issues within the relationship and channel them toward growth. So this definitely contrasts with the issue of creating endless relationship choice. I think this has to be seen in a balance. I think as a single person, it is good to have choice and experience and learn about yourself and others that way. But if you never allow yourself to commit and become vulnerable - and you can have these things even in a non-monogamous relationship - then I definitely think you limit your growth and risk ending up in nothing more than an addictive cycle of using relationships.
You have two 3’s so I’ll start with the first and then the second.
First 3. First of all, I don’t think Imago is improbable and impractical inherently in a lot of cases. To the contrary, I think there are many thousands of people using it and benefiting from it. In situations where it isn’t happening or working, I think it’s often due to either lack of education about how relationships really work or having wounds so deep that they keep people from having even the minimal trust to commit to trying it for long enough to see benefits.
As far as the education aspect, look at it as a public health issue. We could say it’s impractical to expect people to do any of a number of things that aren’t exactly natural, from getting mammograms to getting their children vaccinated. But as we understand these issues more and people become more aware, it becomes more and more standard practice to do these things. I believe the relationship situation in our culture is as dysfunctional as any physical epidemic we could have. Not only do we have an incredibly high divorce rate, but the maturity and communication level within even many lasting relationships is appallingly low from what I can tell. This is a public emotional health crisis. And so it becomes an issue of educating people about it and giving them the knowledge and tools – like those of Imago and many of the fields I touch on in the post – to improve the situation. It may take time, as it always does, for the knowledge to spread and become second nature, but hopefully people will become educated about issues of conflict and dysfunction in relationships and learn some basic standard practices and mindsets that can help improve them.
It may be an unattractive prospect to be “used to heal someone.” I talk in the article about how the very reason many people don’t do what Imago talks about is precisely because they don’t like what it says. But it’s not very attractive to become aware of a lot of challenging situations, such as environmental crises, and change our behavior to deal with it rather than avoid it and instead delude ourselves with what we prefer to believe. Eventually, you hope that when things get bad enough, people will be open to considering a new way, which is exactly how Imago was created and how it usually reaches people. Beyond that, I would frame it more as two people mutually healing each other, rather than being “used to heal someone.” It isn’t using if you are doing it with each other. It’s more of a sharing process than a using process.
Of course much of this goes against the dating lit, partly because the dating lit is written often from a very cynical perspective. It’s often accurate to how the situation is right now, though it also is part of the self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps it that way. Most of the lit is written from a perspective that sees dating as almost a war between the genders, like spy vs. spy, constantly having to trick each other and maintain the upper hand. Fields like Imago are built on the belief that that entire mindset is destructive and can be changed. Cynics will say it can’t be changed. But I think many of the people benefiting from Imago are proof otherwise. The challenge is for any given person to find someone who is willing to do their half of changing from that power struggle to something more authentic and deep. And that takes trust and a mutual recognition that everyone benefits if we find a way to build trust and partnership in relationships instead of them being endless power struggles full of mistrust and constant scheming about how to maintain the upper hand.
Second 3. The impracticality issue I already addressed. There are plenty of people out there proving it isn’t impractical and that, with education and motivation, it can be done. And you again use the term “use.” Of course, nobody will relish the role of being “used.” But Imago has nothing to do with being used. In fact, I’d say the standard relationships are all about using far more than Imago. Imago is about becoming conscious and owning your own issues, learning to communicate them in a healthy way, rather than project them onto your partner. I would say the deeper issue is that people are actually more used to relationships in which they use each other than ones in which they see each other as full-fledged human beings of their own.
The issue of men and monogamy is a worthwhile one, but I still believe that even in a non-monogamous relationship, most of what Hendrix says holds. To me the issue isn’t monogamy vs. non-monogamy. It’s commitment and consciousness vs. lack of commitment and consciousness. In my mind, it isn’t necessarily having other people that you love that reduces growth in a relationship, but not being fully present in whatever relationships you are in. The real issue is, in each relationship, are you committed to consciously understanding, working through and resolving issues, rather than just escaping and seeking comfort elsewhere so you can avoid the difficult emotions of growth in any of the relationships. In other words, however many relationships you’re in, are you truly relating within them or are you just using them as addictive pills, each drowning out any concerns from the others.
So I believe if you want to really have healthy growth-oriented relationships, you certainly don’t go “blowing through” partners. I think that phrase, just like the “using” phrase, reveals this fearful, power-based mindset that is itself the very problem with so many of our relationships and with dating in general. I ask in the post whether we can only heal in one relationship or in several, but at no point do I have in mind “blowing through” relationships. I think regardless how many relationships you involve yourself in, the issue is how you relate to the people and whether you are willing to be present and conscious in both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances.
4. I’m not sure I understand this point. Attraction certainly seems set up for unconscious Imago partners to attract each other, but once their issues surface, it would seem difficult for them to resolve the issues without becoming conscious at least of the fact that there is more going on than is apparent at the surface and learning new ways of communicating about those issues.
5. Hendrix talks about people who attract each other and aren’t Imago matches. He says that the relationships usually just have much less intensity. They can be fun and playful, but are more superficial and often when the people break up, they hardly even are that upset by it. I think that if your goal is simply to have a fun and caring relationship, without the intensity and growth-orientation, it’s certainly possible to end up with someone who isn’t an Imago match. But for those whose personalities make them really driven for wholeness, and especially those who have deeper wounds or abuses, they may always long for something more, even if they can’t put their finger on what it is.
Thanks for the questions and comments. This is a topic that could be discussed for hours, so if you want to talk more about it, let me know.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
My best friend had a number of very sexually intense, dysfunctional relationships and ended up choosing a husband that lacks both the passion and the dysfunction of those earlier relationships (which I believe was her first option). Her opinion is that it’s much easier to create sexual passion than it is to resolve other serious issues. I obviously can’t speak to her experience, but they’ve been together four years and are quite happy.
I think that one of the biggest reasons that the divorce rate (and the failed relationship rate in general) is so high is because as a society we are extremely reluctant to consider the intellectual component necessary to have a healthy relationship. As I prepare to graduate with my PhD I’ve started doing some research into personal finances, and in Rich Dad, Poor Dad the author talks about how in high school we take math classes, but not household budgeting classes. It’s the same thing for relationships–we might take an intro to psych course in college, but where is the class that shows us how to improve ourselves and to be a true partner to someone? Why is our society so reluctant to teach us the most fundamental and arguably important activities we will engage in? How can we possibly leave them to “trial and error”?
But then I’m reminded of my college freshmen–I tried theming one of my Composition courses one year with popular culture and experienced MAJOR resistence–much more than when I themed a course around the potentially more divisive 2004 presidential election. When something’s supposed to be “fun,” no one wants to ruin it by intellectualizing it. IMO, intellectualizing something not only make it more “fun,” but also more likely to succeed and to add value to your life. My BF and I have entire step-by-step strategies for dealing with conflict that we’ve hashed out in order to accommodate both of our preferred communication styles. Of course, he’s an engineer and I’m a PhD student in rhetoric, so the idea of creating a detailed plan appeals to both our predilections in larger ways.
As far as practical advice, I’m not sure that you need to seek out different people (though I am with Lance as far as the idea of dating many people casually–perhaps if you exposed yourself to different types of people, you’d find that what triggers an attraction-reaction is more diverse than you’re currently assuming). Instead, you might try changing how frequently you see someone when you start dating them, or the types of dates that you go on–some sort of concrete action that will have an effect on the way you’re able to relate to the person. My BF moved to another city a week after I met him for the first time–we were long distance for the first three months we dated and saw each other maybe every two weeks. This was definitely a different relationship dynamic, and since I had a tendency to do the very-intense-thing followed by absolute-revulsion-thing in my own relationships, the fact that we were forced by distance to maintain a very gradual pace for awhile got me past my own issues, and by the time he moved back to Flagstaff I was ready to date someone I saw every day. I look forward to reading more!
April 11th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Honey,
I can’t speak to your friend’s experience either as only she really can. There are many possibilities. I could theorize many potential explanations for that scenario, but I won’t speculate.
When you mention the reason for the failed relationship rate being reluctance to consider the intellectual component necessary to have a healthy relationship, are you talking about Emotional Intelligence – the application of logic and strategic thinking to emotional issues? If so, I’d agree with that. I think we have an epidemic of lack of EQ, and it shows up all over in parenting, romantic relationships, and even in workplaces and elsewhere (check out the article from Business Week linked on my Inner Child page). As you said, we will teach theory at a very abstract level on these subjects, but practical application is lacking. That’s why I’m a huge fan of the spread of Social and Emotional Learning programs.
Now with the question of why our society is reluctant, this gets deeper. I don’t believe our culture could survive as it is if populated by a mass of emotionally healthy people. On one hand, we complain about the devastating effects of poor emotional health - domestic abuse, divorce, etc. Yet at the same time, if we were to greatly improve that level of emotional health, I believe people would start becoming more empowered and challenge even more fundamental cultural issues such as the extreme level of hierarchy in our culture. So our culture is very ambivalent on whether or not to truly empower people or not.
I do think there is also something to be said for the point you raise about intellectualizing things that are “supposed to be fun.” When it comes to relationships, where do people get this notion that relationships are “supposed to be fun” rather than that they are supposed to be partly fun, partly challenging and very profound experiences? This is where I start to bash the Disney mentality that builds up a very unhealthy and unrealistic model of relationships as some quick-fix enchanted rescue. Once people come to believe that is what healthy relationships look like, conflict and attempts to become conscious and resolve them no longer look like the signs of a healthy relationship, but of an unhealthy one and so people run looking for that fantasy again. It’s great that you are able to create more conscious and strategic methods to address conflict in your relationship and still make it fun. The irony is that if the goal isn’t just fun, but sustainable fun, then it is by using tools like Imago that you are much more likely to build that capability. Instead it seems like people often aim for fun without worrying about sustainability. And that also is a pattern that goes to the heart of our culture.
Your story of being forced into a new way of relating early on is very interesting. In fact, the longest lasting relationship I had in a while, a few years back, had an interesting start. Shortly after meeting the person, my computer was broken for quite a while. I usually talk to someone I’m involved with online a lot, but with this person I wasn’t able to do that. So we talked less often and more on the phone, where there is less miscommunication, and this seemed to really change the dynamic. I think you are definitely onto something with the idea of trying to switch up the way you relate. It isn’t the whole solution, as I could explain in depth, but it is certainly one part of a strategy to still be able to attract an Imago partner, but not play out the exact same script again.
Thanks for your thoughts!
April 11th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Thank you for this wonderful exploration of the issue of choosing a partner. I am an Imago therapist and am a firm believer in Imago theory and practice. I’ve found it to be the best model I’ve found in working with couples.
Having said that, I continue to struggle with and feel the need to explore the “choice point” at which committment is made (or broken) in both my personal life and when working with my clients.
A few points regarding my current thinking in regard to making the choice of partner and committment to our partner:
1. I’ve found that even when I consciously choose to not go with intense attraction and instead “use my head” to choose a partner, the same “Imago match” traits pop up over time. I really think our unconscious is at work no matter what we do to overrice it.
2. I think that while in relationship it’s tremendously important to focus on YOUR own response to the Imago trait that’s disturbing you. That’s a great deal of where the healing is.
In addition, developing the positive traits you “go” for in a partner within yourself and understanding the how the negative traits live within you also is very important. And coming from a place of compassion for your partner and how they came to hold those traits that you find difficult.
3. I find I have the same pattern in my life as you do, systems thinker. It’s somehow comforting to “meet” a fellow traveler. I swear, anything is possible with 2 committed people, willing to do the work. But, gees, that’s hard to find!! And what to do about staying or leaving when the other simply won’t engage in the work and exploration?
My theoretical answer is this: go for the intense attraction (I totally agree with Hendrix) and if over time the other shows themselves to not be willing to become conscious, explore and do the work, move on and keep trying.
Yet here I am in a relationship in which the other sure was willing for awhile. We became committed, and now they are not. So now what? Best I can do is keep doing MY work and hang in until and if it is clear to me that my wellbeing is compromised consistently and over time.
That all sounds so clear - but my experience is quite muddy much of the time!
Thanks for the opportunity to vent and share. And again, thank you for your exploration into this human puzzle.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Great article and comments. I passed the link to this article on into the Imago professional community. So far it has gathered kudos, even from Harville Hendrix.
I want to share something from a different perspective - mine. I am a person who was looking for the right partner, who found her two times (lost her once), and who still has her after 25 years. I am ancient at 66 - at least it feels that way some days. I have also spent the last 15 years visiting with couples who are trying to evolve their relationship into “something” that comes “close enough’ to their dreams. I have visited extensively (15 hours or so with each couple) with well over 2000 couples. I salute their courage and treasure all the experiences I have had and witnessed.
From this perspective, I think that “finding the right person” is vastly less important than what you do next. I rejected the Imago formulae for quite some time until the weight of my experience with couples persuaded me that it provided the best model for approaching committed long-term relationships. Being at heart a skeptic, to this day I look for some evidence to challenge the value of the Imago formulae, and have yet to find any. I encourage anyone to keep looking for a better way to understand that process of partner selection.
With that said, I want to offer a thought that probably differs from Howard’s. He speaks of his challenge of finding someone who is committed to work, instead of running away. It seems to me that a thinking trap we all get into is the idea that “we need to achieve something before we start.” Examples: “I need to heal my wounds before I get into a relationship.” “I need to find someone equally committed to work, before we start.” I don’t find this thinking trap worth much. As I experience reality, certainly that of couples, it is very often that one person makes the move first and the other follows later.
I think the primary issue is one of initiative. If I start doing my part well, my partner will eventually have to follow. I have to learn lots of things over time. I have to learn “what are the right things to do” when my partner does that I think is the wrong thing. The question for me is to find out what is “my part.”
In your situation, Howard, I would look for the practical things you do that tend to encourage all those partners to run. Find out what parts of those things you can change without loosing your self, and practice changing them. I can language this trick in one phrase. “Give your partner the benefits of being away from you, while they are with you.”
I wrote two articles that might be relevant: “It Only Takes One to Make a Marriage, but TWO to Make a Divorce”, and “The Testicle Principle”. Drop these quotes in Google if you are interested.
Anyway, I really enjoy this kind of getting together and sharing approaches.
Good luck, all.
April 12th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Kim,
Thanks so much for your comments. It’s very interesting that even when you do choose to use your head, you still find the traits popping up. I have had situations where I used my head and, like Dr. Hendrix described, there just wasn’t any spark. But it doesn’t surprise me at all that many times, even when you think you’re choosing someone different using wiser criteria, the traits still pop up. Another possibility is that these particular traits are just so common in the population that they pop up repeatedly very often regardless of who you choose. In those cases, you may be tapping into a wider cultural issue, which is how I often feel, and why I so often link these personal issues to broader cultural patterns in my writing, as I did in the last section here. For example, I think we as a culture often take an avoidant stance to challenges that seem threatening (ie: global warming) and this mirrors the minimizer pattern. It isn’t surprising then that there are a lot of minimizers out there who don’t want to become conscious in relationships, which makes it tough for us maximizers.
I agree with you that the main leverage points an individual does have are focusing on how you respond to the Imago trait and developing the traits within yourself, both so that it builds compassion and so that you project them out less and less. These are the types of things that are guaranteed constructive behaviors, regardless of anything else that may go on in relationships. Even if you do all of this, you still may end up attracting people who are just so resistant to becoming conscious that there is almost nothing you can do. But your best bet is always to do those things you mentioned. I think this is what Keeping the Love You Find is really about.
It’s comforting to meet a fellow traveler too, Kim. That’s part of why I started this site, hoping to hear from people who understood and maybe find some partners on this road.
I certainly agree that you should go for the intense and try to make it work, that’s the ideal. And if it doesn’t, move on and try again. The real question is how many times should you try before you stop, if that’s even possible to really do without losing parts of your potential?
I obviously relate greatly to your situation in your relationship now.
By the way, I think one thing that would be great, that hasn’t been done, is a dating pool/website made up of people who already are familiar with Imago. The tricky thing is, would many minimizers ever end up in that pool? It’s a project I’d love to work on though.
Thanks, Kim. Keep in touch and feel free to email or contact me if you want to talk more.
Howard
April 12th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Al,
First of all, thanks so much for passing this article on to people in the Imago community. Especially, thanks for passing it on to Dr. Hendrix. He sent me a nice note yesterday, which really made my day and was a huge honor for me to receive. I appreciate it very much.
Having read a lot of your work on your website and talked to you personally, your views are very valuable and respected. And it really says something to me that after so much consideration, personally and professionally, and coming from a skeptical mindset, you still find Imago the most valuable model. Like you, I haven’t found much to challenge the model as the ideal. I simply have found a lot of obstacles to how to put it into practice, especially when minimizers or severely wounded people often are set up in every way to resist consciousness at all costs. That isn’t so much a challenge to Imago’s veracity as it is a challenge to any method for constructive change. No matter how accurate your model, the issue of resistance will always be central. Imago contains some great approaches to handle and overcome resistance, but I think that the therapist plays an important role in setting the boundaries that allow for that. Using Imago without a third-party to do that makes it a lot harder to overcome deep fundamental resistance.
Al, you may have misunderstood somewhat my story, however. By no means do I expect to find someone who comes into the relationship willing to work. I don’t even expect my partners to know much about personal development or relationship skills early on. I’d sure appreciate if they did, but I hardly hold my breath for that. I am more than happy to spend time discussing those things and patiently building understanding on them. When I say that they end up unwilling to work and abandon, I mean despite every attempt – including often very patient and compassionate attempts – to bring the important patterns to consciousness and to use effective communication, etc. I have no problem being the person to make the first move, or even the second, third and fourth. But eventually, there comes a point where the other person must finally do their part.
I completely agree with you that the optimal thing anyone can do is simply learn their part and do it to the best of their ability. But when we get into more serious issues like Borderline patterns, we are talking about a personality structure set up to resist consciousness and growth at almost any cost. In such a situation, where a person actually prefers to do things like derailing rather than improve the relationship, it becomes almost impossible. Stories of relationships with Borderlines, both personal and professional, from family members to therapists alike, are ripe with such conclusions. It’s because they represent this seemingly ultimate brain teaser of potential recovery combined with resistance mechanisms as fascinating and vexing as the HIV virus, that I am so interested in the Borderline archetype.
I learned long ago that the abandoners value space and learned to give them it more and more. In this last relationship, it got to a point where often two weeks would go by without speaking before I’d finally initiate contact again. At points we didn’t see each other for many months in person. There was not any shortage of space I can assure you. I’ve tried every balance of closeness and space.
So in conclusion, all you’re saying is absolutely accurate, Al. I just believe that there are some partners, those with Borderline structures as a prime example, where there may simply be nothing you can do until they get to a point in their own life where they want out of their pattern. Sometimes you can play your part optimally and still the other person simply refuses. I guess that is the result when you have human beings that have free will. And if that type of person is your Imago, you have a real dilemma on your hands.
I’ll definitely read your articles that you mentioned. In fact, I think I may have already. All of your writings are wonderful. I recommend anyone looking to improve relationships get in touch with Al, which is why I linked to him on my Imago page.
I always like these kinds of discussions too, Al. Get in touch and we can talk some more.
Howard
April 14th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog Carnival 45…
Monday is Blog Carnivals Day. A Blog Carnival is basically a collection of articles or blog posts, all relating to a similar subject, that are gathered together for your viewing pleasure. You can quickly and conveniently see a list of Article Titles a…
April 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
[…] patterns will continue. if this sounds like it applies to you, here’s some links I found useful. Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? < an article written by somebody who posts here. very insightful. Abundant Spirituality + […]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:40 am
[…] « Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? […]
May 15th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Al Turtle pointed me to your article, and I’m a great fan of Al’s, and once again, I think he turned me on to a great resource for me. Thanks for this article. It brought up some questions for me and I thought you might have some insight I could find useful. My wife and I divorced a few months ago despite having strong feelings for each other. At this point, I won’t go into all of the specifics, however I think the two main culprits were a breakdown in communications, and her strong fears of abandonment. For years, I have believed that her life is ruled by a fear of abandonment. About a month ago, through this article, I was exposed to BPD. Until then I did not know it existed. While my ex has not yet been diagnosed, I would be quite surprised at this point if she does not have the disorder. I believe she nails most of the criteria, and on the ones where I am not as sure, its mostly because I don’t have the mental health background to make what I think would be a competent judgment. At any rate, so much of her behavior makes sense to me now. I am learning a lot about BPD now for two reasons. One, I would still like to reconcile with my ex, despite her suspected BPD, and two, my Imago matches seem likely to have BPD or similar issues. Keeping the Love You Find is one down on my reading list (I have one more BPD book ahead of it) as I want to do “better” the next time around, whether its with her or someone else.
I believe my ex and I are an Imago match. We were together 9 years, and as I learn more, I recognize the wounds on both ends that I believe we both have and why that created our initial attraction. While she is with someone else now, I suspect that won’t last long. She ran to another state, and I believe that because she is terrified of being alone, she grasped onto this guy who has been pursuing her for a long time (yes, he was pursuing her while we were married, although I don’t believe they went past the emotional affair stage, and at this point, that’s irrelevant to me…its the past). I don’t believe this guy has any clue about her “true” personality, and she has already told me she doesn’t think its working with him. How long will it last? Nobody knows. With her abandonment issues she may cling to him because he is one of the few people she knows in the area where she is living now. When it breaks up, will she come running back to me? I suspect so, and again, this is the future and unknown. I think I am the closest thing to stability she has had in her life and I think that is very attractive to her.
After all that intro, on to the crux of things. I am aware that BPD is a very serious disorder, and seems to require a lot of therapy, something to which my ex is resistant, for treatment and improvement (I hesitate to use the word ‘recovery’). That being said, for 9 years I did not “know my enemy” and now I believe I do. I am learning coping strategies from my end, and I am hopeful I can lead by example and my improvement will influence her to choose therapy for herself. In your experience, is revisiting an old relationship a good idea? Certainly I believe the ground rules would have to be difference. However, I would like to have my old wounds healed, and at this point, think she would be a great partner for that, if she is willing to do the work. I am very committed to this, and yet I believe my ties to her hold me back a bit at this point. Let us call this time apart “a separation”, although we are divorced and she is seeing someone. Do you think it is in my best interest to seek out other partners during this time, perhaps finding another Imago match, or to spend a few months just focusing on myself, and then giving her a chance to make a decision about revisiting the relationship, or perhaps a combination of both. I don’t believe I’m ready for another serious relationship at this point, I’m still somewhat reeling from the divorce. However, I also don’t believe I want to sit home night after night, hoping she’ll “wake up” and want to come back.
Any feedback you have on my situation, and especially on how it might compare to some of your experiences would be appreciated.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
EOTP,
Thanks for the kudos. I’m also a big fan of Al’s writing and ideas.
I relate greatly to your story. And while I can’t say whether your ex has BPD, it sounds like regardless of specific diagnosis, you are well aware of many troubling signs including a strong fear of abandonment, the willingness to engage with someone else while you were married, the willingness and ability to quickly disengage from you and just as quickly engage elsewhere, the ability to engage with someone while hiding from him her “true” personality, all combined with a resistance to becoming conscious of her issues or committing to recovery.
Having been in similar painful situations, I know well the deep longing and hope that we can have that this person will come back to us, become conscious and finally work toward mutual healing. I will never say this is impossible. But I will say that so far I have not had any person with that amount of wounding and defensiveness come back and be willing to heal. And that includes my last relationship in which we discussed Imago explicitly many times and I even received written assurances that she would, in fact, commit to such healing. For someone with BPD or BPD-like patterns to heal, they must be willing to face painful early traumas and commit to tolerating very uncomfortable periods as healing occurs. I personally have not yet been involved with someone with that level of issues who has done it. However, there are people out there, for example A.J. Mahari (I link to her site at the bottom of my main Borderline page) and Rachel Reiland, who have done it.
The point is, if this person really is at that level of wounding and defenses, it becomes crucial to begin to become realistic about the odds of their recovery in making your choices. While they may be willing to heal, it seems very rare, and can take years of hard work, and I would require very strong signs of commitment to healing to re-engage. Beyond that, be aware that due to the fragmented personality of a person with BPD, they tend to commit to things and then disengage, often repeatedly, so that even a commitment to healing may not be adhered to in the long run. There are people who have gone through many painful cycles of having their hopes raised and dashed yet again when BPD is in the picture.
My best advice to you is to get active on the BPDFamily.com message boards. Here you can talk to literally hundreds of people that have been and/or are in your position. You’ll find great understanding and insight and feel a great sense of support there. Spend some time reading the posts, for instance in the Staying or Leaving section, and you’ll find many stories you relate to. You’ll find stories from some who did get back together and their trials and tribulations. You’ll find stories from others who got back together only to be hurt again and again. You’ll find stories of people learning to heal themselves more on their own. And everything in between.
Finally, I recommend all of the books that I linked to on this post. How to Break Your Addiction to a Person was particularly helpful during the early stages of going through situations like yours. In the long run, Inner Child concepts were also crucial in helping me understand these situations.
I hope this helps. If not, feel free to contact me further.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
[…] Systems Thinker - Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? […]
January 16th, 2009 at 1:05 am
Hi,
I just wanted to say how insightful your article was. I recently found myself in a relationship that was so similar to a past failed relationship that it could be considered “text book”. Characterized by the intense emotional connection and then later leading into the power struggle, I believed the inevitable outcome would be similar to that of the first relationship. Considering the damage the way that relationship ended inflicted on my already poor ability to trust others, I decided in this case to bring the relationship to an end before it got there. In the end, my partner believed what we had learned was that we were fundamentally incompatible and seemed ok with the split.
The similarities between the relationships are so uncanny it is unbelievable. In the second relationship, my partner had similar family ethnicity being a Irish father/Italian mother…a similar name, 2 syllable first name 1 syllable last name with a first name ending in an phonetic (uhh) sound, similar in looks (short burnet), similar in personality (more of a free spirit then me), similar in addictions and social characteristics, very similar prior relationship history (5-6 year long term relationship bridging childhood into adulthood), very similar educational background…the similarities were countless. I’m quite disturbed I didn’t recognize them all objectively and raise a warning flag.
Toward the end of the relationship, the topic of fights, the pattern by which they would occur, the way make ups would occur, everything was so similar it is mind boggling. Even who each partner ran to after the relationship ended was exactly the same as in each occurrence.
Reading your message was both settling and somewhat disturbing. First, settling, because I felt like my question was answered. How could I have unknowingly been so drawn to someone who not only displayed such similar physical characteristics, but also the similar personality characteristics. The theory’s you helped it all make sense.
However, the disturbing part is that, I left the relationship because what I started to believe was I could not trust my partner. Realizing that I’m most attracted to individuals who possess an unwillingness to provide me reassurance that will assist me in fully trusting them, is extremely disturbing. Reaching the realization that I am most attracted to individuals who display characteristics the scream untrustworthy to me, is really upsetting.
While, I appreciate the idea of finding a 7 or 8 on my scale of attraction, I’m uncertain my nature would allow me to feel full emotional/physical satisfaction in that solution. I now am considering I need to identify the issues that attracted my mates that I possess, to onboard my next partner with this whole repair process to make it through the power struggle.
As for my last partner, it’s very disappointing, because I do believe she showed more willingness to work through the power struggle then my first partner, but I’m just unsure she was intellectually capable to grasping or would desire to grasp such complex emotional theory. Our effort never seemed to hit the mark no matter how we tried.
Any advice or thoughts are appreciated…
January 21st, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Frank,
Thanks. I’m glad you found the article helpful.
It sounds like you’re grappling with the central paradox of Imago theory - that we’re drawn for an important purpose to exactly those individuals most likely to “push our buttons” and provoke our deepest fears. The keys to Imago are both understanding the deeper dynamics that drive the surface struggles and engaging quite consciously in new techniques quite designed to address them.
I highly recommend Harville Hendrix’s books, which are linked to throughout the article. Getting the Love You Want is great for couples. But you can also begin to work on yourself so that you heal more while still by yourself and can attract someone a little bit healthier the next time. The ideas and exercises for singles are captured in Keeping the Love You Find.
Feel free to write more if you have other questions.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Hi Howard
When is enough enough?!
I do not seem to know that. When is a relationship no longer serving you? When do you decide that no amount of work on your part is going to heal your marriage? When do you decide that you alone cannot fix things (contrary to Al’s advice)?
You see, I work hard to heal my relationships…I feel that we attract the exact right partner as a projection of unrecognized parts of ourselves that our consciousness has hidden from us. I also believe that I tried to acquire, through marriage, qualities that I did not think I had. Realisations as I stand in a position making ready for Divorce (2nd marriage).
Because I believe that no relationship is random but an attraction of one’s Imago right fit, I bend myself backward to stay and fix and heal and work.
I found in my search today that if the other is not willing to look, to become conscious–necessary first step to healing, there is nothing one can do but walk away.
I also found the references to differentiation most helpful (from integral options).
I salute your courage. It gives me courage to soldier on.
Neena.
February 20th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Neena,
You hit on perhaps the central dilemma that led me to write the piece - when is enough enough in general or in any given relationship? I can’t claim to have a solid answer on that as a rule and certainly can’t claim to know for any particular relationship between other people, especially without knowing about it in great detail.
What I can say is that if your partner, after a variety of wisely informed attempts to communicate your needs, is still unwilling to grow and change then there does come a point where that decision has to be made. We end up having to decide whether to continue seeking greater wholeness elsewhere or to sacrifice those parts of us that remain unhealed in order to salvage the situation in whatever form it is. These are some of the most difficult decisions in life.
Ultimately, the only consolation I’ve found is that if you really put in the time to understand the relevant dynamics and healthy communication methods and try to apply them the absolute best you can within your relationship, then, even if it doesn’t work out, you know you tried your best and you’ll be more prepared for later relationships.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Please Help,
I have been married to a wonderful man for 20 years but have recently become attracted to someone else. It did’nt happen until the after the third time I saw him and it was on the phone after a specific comment he made. That is how the subconcious piece really comes into play for me. I have fought depression throughout my whole marriage and have been basically “numb” and this other man really woke me up and it all started with a silly comment and escellated from there. When we are in a room together there is a weird “energy” and we joke and it seems like I have known him a long time and its like looking at myself. We have stuff in common and when I explained how he helped me (he is a doctor but not psych) he gave me a hug that was interesting to say the least. Not inappropriate but I felt like he had what I was missing it was so weird! I am leaving out many other details of things that happened on other visits, but what do you do when your married and find another strong Imago match,(my intuition tells me he felt it too but nothing will ever happen) I have read Dr. Hendrix’ books and others on addictions and stuff but I can’t find anything that kind of fits my dilemma.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Alona,
I don’t think there is any one-size-fits-all answer to a situation like yours. It has to be worked out individually between you and your husband or you and a counselor or therapist. As you know from reading Hendrix’s books there is a lot of deep psychology involved in why such deep attractions can form as we project a great deal of our unconscious onto that person. Working through those issues is something that takes time and insight. I would think that your first decision is whether or not to discuss these feelings with your husband. Possibly you could find a good therapist, perhaps even an Imago-trained therapist, to explain your situation to and decide what steps to take. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more specific answer, but without knowing you and your situation in far greater depth, I can’t know what would be your best course. But I do think it is an opportunity to learn a great deal about yourself and possibly even strengthen your marriage if you use this experience to delve deeper into your understanding.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
[…] Healing Through Mastering Resolution Skills with Partners That Initially Trigger Intense Chemistry Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat? Having experienced both, I absolutely agree life is smoother and easier following View #1, but […]
May 25th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I really like the idea of a dating pool consisting of people who are already familiar with Imago. Please keep me posted on that. Thank you for your article. It’s opened my eyes and helps erase part of the guilt I carry for being in serial monogamous relationships.
Chris
May 29th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Chris,
I love that idea too and actually once called the Imago Institute to see if they had any such resource for singles into Imago to find each other. They said they didn’t. I have often thought about creating that if I found others wanting to work on it.
Glad you enjoyed the article. Thanks.
June 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Hello Howard:
A dear friend of mine happens to be an imago therapist and we are exploring the idea of starting a singles group in San Diego that would combine both the study of the imago philosophy and a social componet of some sort (pot luck, dinning out, etc).
Do you know people in the San Diego area that might be interested in helping us get this off the ground? My imago friend and I feel that there is such a vast need in this area for both ourselves and the community here in San Diego.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you,
Christine Rothwell
June 30th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Hi Christine,
Like I’ve mentioned, I love the idea and have thought about it myself before. I think that you should definitely pursue it, starting off as loosely or formally as you wish. I would just take the incremental steps of putting together a first meeting, getting the word out, and allowing the group to work things out organically as you go.
I don’t know anyone specifically in San Diego. If I were you I would search the web for anyone in San Diego interested in Imago or related fields. And obviously I’d put the word out to any Imago therapists in the area, to singles groups and events that take place there, and I’d get in touch with the Imago Institute which I linked to in my previous comment.
I think that there is a vast need for this not just in San Diego but all over the world. And if you could get something started, it could serve as a model for others.
If I can help anymore let me know and I’d be glad to talk to you online or give you a call. I’d love to be a part of creating a movement around this.