2019-08-14 - Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendrix
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I have read several couple's therapy books and this one seems to
"click" with me more than the others. I disagree with many of the
author's assumptions yet i found much of the content compelling and
thought-provoking. Below are excerpts intended to jog my memory
later.
Introduction
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We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we
can be healed in relationship. Indeed, we cannot be fully healed
outside of a relationship.
Chapter 1, The mystery of attraction
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Biological model of attraction: we instinctively select mates who
will enhance the survival of the species.
Exchange theory of mate selection: we select mates who are more or
less our equals.
Persona theory of mate selection: an important factor in mate
selection is the way a potential suitor enhances our self-esteem.
... a curious fact--those few individuals that people ARE attracted
to tend to resemble one another quite closely. It appears that each
one of us is compulsively searching for a mate with a very particular
set of positive and negative personality traits.
The "old brain" or unconscious has no sense of linear time.
Regarding our highly selective choice of mates, we are looking for
someone who has the predominant character traits of the people who
raised us. Our old brain, trapped in the eternal now and having only
a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the
environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to
resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but a
compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.
You fell in love because your old brain believed it had finally found
the ideal candidate to make up for the psychological and emotional
damage you experienced in childhood.
Chapter 2, Childhood wounds
===========================
Freud correctly labeled us as insatiable beings. And no parents, no
matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all of these
changing needs.
"The feeling of unity that a child experiences in the womb and in the
first few months of life gradually fades, giving way to a drive to be
a distinct self."
[This is pure speculation from the author that the fetus feels some
sense of mystical unity.]
... we all have parts of ourselves that we have hidden from
consciousness. I call these missing elements the "lost self."
Whenever we complain that we "can't think," that we "can't feel
anything" or "can't dance" or "can't have orgasms" or "aren't very
creative," we are identifying natural abilities, thoughts, or
feelings that we have surgically removed from our awareness. They
are not gone, we still possess them. But for the moment they are not
a part of our consciousness, and it is as if they do not exist.
There were certain thoughts and feelings we could not have, certain
natural behaviors that we had to extinguish, and certain talents and
aptitudes we had to deny. In thousands of ways, both subtly and
overtly, our parents gave us the message that they approved only a
part of us. In essence, we were told that we could not be whole and
exist in this culture.
Parts of self:
* Your original being you were born with.
* Your "lost self," those parts of your being that you had to
repress because of the demands of society.
* Your "false self," the facade that you erected in order to fill
the void created by this repression and by a lack of adequate
nurturing.
* Your "disowned self," the negative parts of your false self that
met with disapproval and were therefore denied.
Chapter 3, Your imago
=====================
What people are doing in these yin/yang matches is trying to reclaim
their lost selves by proxy.
Imago: author's coined term for an unconscious image of the opposite
sex [hetero-normative] you have been forming since birth. ... The
only way you can glimpse into your imago is in dreams. If you
reflect on your dreams, one thing you will notice is that your old
brain capriciously merges people together.
Not everyone finds a mate who conforms so closely to the imago.
Sometimes only one or two key characteristics match up, and the
initial attraction is likely to be mild. Such a relationship is
often less passionate and less troubled than those characterized by a
closer match. The reason it is less passionate is that the old brain
is still looking for the ideal "gratifying object," and the reason it
tends to be less troubled is that there isn't the repetition of so
many childhood struggles.
Chapter 4, Romantic love
========================
What causes the rush of good feelings that we call romantic love?
Psychopharmacologists have learned that lovers are literally high on
drugs...--natural hormones and chemicals that flood their bodies with
a sense of well-being.
To gain additional insight, we need to return to the field of
psychology, and to the view that romantic love is a creation of the
unconscious mind.
By listening to popular songs, reading love poems, plays and novels,
and listening to hundreds of couples describe their relationships, I
have come to the conclusion that all the words exchanged between
lovers since time began can be reduced to four basic sentences--the
rest is elaboration.
* Recognition: I know we've just met, but somehow i feel as though
i already know you.
* Timelessness: This is peculiar, but even though we've only been
seeing each other for a short time, i can't remember when i didn't
know you.
* Reunification: When i'm with you, i no longer feel alone; i feel
whole, complete.
* Necessity: I love you so much, i can't live without you.
For a while, lovers cling to the illusion of romantic love. However,
this requires a good deal of unconscious play-acting. One bit of
make-believe in which virtually all lovers engage is trying to appear
to be more emotionally healthy than they really are. After all, if
you don't appear to have many needs of your own, your partner is free
to assume that your goal in life is to nurture, not to be nurtured,
and this makes you very desirable indeed. ... most of us go to a lot
of trouble in the early stages of a relationship to appear to be
ideal mates.
Projective identification: unconsciously identifying yourself with
someone else's vision of the ideal partner.
To some degree, we all use denial as a coping tool. Whenever life
presents us with a difficult or painful situation, we have a tendency
to want to ignore reality and create a more palatable fantasy. But
there is no time in our lives when our denial mechanism is more fully
engaged than in the early stages of our love relationships.
Chapter 5, The power struggle
=============================
When does romantic love end and the power struggle begin? ... for
most couples there is a noticeable change in the relationship about
the time they make a definite commitment to each other. ... the
pleasant, inviting dance of courtship draws to a close, and lovers
begin to want not only the expectation of need fulfillment--the
illusion that was responsible for the euphoria of romantic love--but
the reality as well. Suddenly... [their parters] now have to satisfy
a whole hierarchy of expectations, some conscious, but most hidden
from their awareness.
Once a relationship seems secure, a psychological switch is triggered
deep in the old brain that activates all the latent infantile wishes.
It is as if the wounded child within takes over. "I've been good
enough long enough to ensure that this person is going to stay around
for a while. Let's see the payoff."
At some point in their marriage, most people discover that something
about their husbands or wives awakens strong memory of childhood pain.
Some factors to fuel a power struggle:
* Our partners make us feel anxious by stirring up forbidden parts
of ourselves.
* Our partners have or appear to have the same negative traits as
our parents, adding further injury to old wounds and thereby
awakening our unconscious fear of death.
* We begin to project our own denied negative traits.
All of these interactions are unconscious. All [that] people know is
that they feel confused, angry, anxious, depressed, and unloved.
In despair, people begin to use negative tactics to force their
partners to be more loving. They believe that, if they give their
partners enough pain, the partners will return to their former loving
ways.
When we were babies, we didn't smile sweetly at our mothers to get
them to take care of us. We didn't pinpoint our discomfort by
putting it into words. We simply opened our mouths and screamed.
And it didn't take us long to learn that, the louder we screamed, the
quicker they came. The success of this tactic was turned into an
"imprint," a part of our stored memory about how to get the world to
respond to our needs: "When you are frustrated, provoke the people
around you. Be as unpleasant as possible until someone comes to your
rescue."
Chapter 6, Becoming conscious
=============================
We need to take the rational skills that we use in other parts of our
lives and bring them to bear on our love relationships. Once we
forge a working alliance between the powerful, instinctive drives of
the old brain and the discriminating, cognitive powers of the new
brain, we can realize our unconscious goals. Through the marriage of
old-brain instincts and new-brain savvy, we can gradually leave the
frustrations of the power struggle behind us.
... in most interactions with your spouse, you are actually safer
when you lower your defenses than when you keep them engaged, because
your partner becomes and ally, not an enemy.
Ten characteristics of a conscious marriage:
* You realize that your love relationship has a hidden purpose--the
healing of childhood wounds.
* You create a more accurate image of your partner.
* You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires
to your partner.
* You become more intentional in your interactions... you train
yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.
* You learn to value your partner's needs and wishes as highly as
you value your own.
* You embrace the dark side of your personality.
* You learn new techniques to satisfy your basic needs and
desires... your partner can indeed be a resource for you.
* You search within yourself for the strengths and abilities you
are lacking.
* You become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole and
united with the universe.
* You accept the difficulty of creating a good marriage. ... a good
marriage requires commitment, discipline, and the courage to grow
and change; marriage is hard work.
Chapter 7, Closing your exits
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The authors ground rules for therapy:
* Couples must agree to come for at least 12 consecutive sessions.
Statistically the majority of couples quit therapy between the
third and fifth appointments. The 12 session commitment gives
assurance that the couple will stay long enough to work through
their initial resistance.
* Define their relationship vision.
* Commit to staying together for the initial 12 sessions of therapy.
* Gradually close their exits.
In the romantic stage of a relationship, people find it relatively
easy to be intimate, because they are filled with the anticipation of
wish fulfillment. Their partners seem to be Mommy and Daddy and
doctor and therapist all rolled into one. Months or years later,
when they come to the realization that their partners are committed
to their own salvation, not theirs, they feel angry and betrayed. A
tacit agreement has been broken. In retaliation they erect an
emotional barricade. In effect, they are saying, "I am angry at you
for not meeting my needs." Then they begin to systematically seek
pleasure and satisfaction of their needs outside the relationship.
An exit is acting out one's feelings rather than putting them into
language. Acting out means expressing a conscious or unconscious
feeling in behavior rather than words. An exit withdraws energy and
involvement from the relationship that belongs in the relationship.
Chapter 8, Creating a zone of safety
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Once a couple has made a commitment to stay together and to take part
in a program of marital therapy, the next logical step is to help
them become allies, not enemies. ... I learned that i could influence
the way a couple feels about each other by helping them artificially
reconstruct the conditions of romantic love. When two people treat
each other the way they did in happier times, they begin to identify
each other as a source of pleasure once again...
But there is no genetic code that governs marriage. Marriage is a
cultural creation imposed on biology. Insight into childhood wounds
is a critical element in therapy, but it isn't enough. People also
need to learn how to let go of counterproductive behaviors and
replace them with more effective ones.
Why is this simple [reromanticizing] exercise so effective? The
obvious reason is that, through daily repetitions of positive
behaviors, the old brain begins to perceive the partner as "someone
who nourishes me." This opens the way for intimacy, which is only
possible in a context of pleasure and safety.
But there are other, subtler reasons the exercise works so well. One
is that it helps people erode the infantile belief that their
partners can read their minds. The exercise requires couples to tell
each other exactly what pleases them, decreasing their reliance on
mental telepathy.
The exercise also defeats the tit-for-tat mentality of the power
struggle. This exercise also helps people see that what pleases them
is the product of their unique makeup and life experience and can be
very different from what pleases their partners. Another benefit of
this exercise is that, when couples regularly give each other these
target behaviors, they not only improve the superficial climate of
their relationship, but also begin to heal old wounds.
Surprise list: add unanticipated pleasures to the daily regimen of
caring behaviors. This lessens the law of diminishing returns.
Fun list: also engage in several high-energy, fun activities per
week. These are to be spontaneous, one-on-one activities like
wrestling, tickling, massaging, showering together, jumping up and
down, or dancing.
People who grew up experiencing a great deal of repression tend to
have a particularly hard time with the reromanticizing exercise.
They have difficulty coming up with any requests, or they sabotage
their partners efforts to carry them out.
Isolators often have a difficult time with this exercise. They want
to cooperate, but they just can't think of anything their partners
can do for them; they don't seem to have any needs or desires. What
they are really doing is hiding behind the psychic shield they
erected as children to protect themselves from overbearing parents.
They discovered early in life that one way to maintain a feeling of
autonomy around their intrusive parents was to keep their thoughts
and feelings to themselves. When they deprived their parents of this
valuable information, their parents were less able to invade their
space. After a while, many isolators do the ultimate disappearing
act and hide their feelings from themselves. In the end, it's safest
not to know.
Chapter 9, Increasing your knowledge of yourself and your partner
=================================================================
When you accept the limited nature of your own perception and become
more receptive to the truth of your partner's perceptions, a whole
world opens up to you. Instead of seeing your partner's differing
views as a source of conflict, you find them a source of knowledge:
"What are you seeing that i am not seeing?"
* Principle 1: Most of your partner's criticisms of you have some
basis in reality.
* Principle 2: Many of your repetitious, emotional criticisms of
your partner are disguised statements of your own unmet needs.
* Principle 3: Some of your repetitive, emotional criticisms of
your partner may be an accurate description of a disowned part of
yourself.
* Principle 4: Some of your criticisms of your partner may help you
identify your own lost self.
In order to deepen your understanding of your partner's subjective
reality, you need to train yourself to communicate more effectively.
To do this, it helps to know something about semantics: even though
you and your partner speak the same language, each of you dwells in
an idiosyncratic world of private meanings. Growing in different
families with different life experiences has given you private
lexicons.
The "couple's dialogue" is the name of a three-part exercise that
serves a number of vital functions in your creation of a conscious
marriage. First of all, it focuses your attention on the actual
words your partner is saying. Most of us rarely listen to what other
people are saying. When we should be listening, we are responding to
the impact of what we are hearing. In other words, we are listening
to ourselves react. When you manage to focus on the words your
partner is saying, you stand more of a chance of getting the meaning
behind those words. Second, when you engage in dialogue with your
partner and really listen to the words and search for their meaning,
you discover that you live with another person whose inner experience
is different from yours much of the time. It is essential that you
realize that you live with another person who is not an extension of
you. Not to recognize this is the major source of conflict between
partners. Finally, the regular use of Couple's Dialogue, especially
when you are in conflict, creates a deep emotional connection between
you and your partner. When talking together reaches this profound
level, it becomes a spiritual experience.
The three parts of Couple's Dialogue are called mirroring,
validation, and empathy.
Mirroring is a combination of "i" statements and reflective listening.
An "i" statement is expressing a thought or feeling in a short
sentence beginning with "i." When one of you has something important
to say, then use an "i" statement.
Reflective listening is when your partner restates your sentence in
her or his own words and then asks if the message was received
correctly.
You repeat this process until your partner clearly understands what
you meant to say.
Then your partner deepens the communication by asking if you have
anything more to add to the topic, typically by using the words "Is
there more?" You then add another piece of the message, which your
partner paraphrases and confirms. You continue with this process
until you feel satisfied that you've conveyed your full message and
that your partner has received it accurately. In my work with
couples, i have found that this "tell me more" part of the mirroring
exercise is one of the keys to its success. When you are encouraged
to convey the entirety of a thought or feeling to your partner, your
partner is given enough information to begin to comprehend your point
of view.
Validation is when you affirm the internal logic of each other's
remarks. In essence, they are telling each other, "What you're
saying makes sense to me. I can see why you would think that way."
Empathy is validating feelings and affirming raw emotions.
When couples master the three-step process of mirroring, validation,
and empathy, their gender differences begin to diminish. A man who
was relatively repressed in the beginning starts to value empathy as
much as his female partner. The reason this occurs is that seeing
and acknowledging feelings in the other makes them less foreign to
the self. Meanwhile, a woman who was emotionally volatile becomes
less so. Because she no longer needs to amplify her feelings in
order to have her stoic partner acknowledge them, she can express
them with less force. This is especially true for anger. It is
always surprising to me to see how quickly anger will dissipate once
it's been received and fully acknowledged.
As helpful as the Couple's Dialogue may be, people have an almost
universal reaction to it: "Do we really have to go through all these
steps in order to communicate something meaningful?" The answer to
this specific question is no. If all you're seeking is effective
communication, then mirroring alone may be sufficient. But if you
want to move beyond communication to communion, then you need to
include all three steps.
Couple's Dialogue requires you to abandon some deeply ingrained
habits and adopt a formulaic way of relating. Much of the time, it's
going to feel forced. But as you begin to experience some of its
benefits, you will become less resistant. Eventually--and it may
take years--you will have transformed your relationship to the point
that you will be able to abandon the exercise altogether. When that
day arrives, you will be communing, not just conversing.
Chapter 10, Defining your curriculum
====================================
At the time i was getting the same counsel from my own therapist.
"You have to accept the fact that your mother didn't have any energy
for you, Harville," he would tell me. "And your wife can't give you
what you want, either. She can't make up for those early years. You
just have to let go of those longings." In other words, "You didn't
get it then, and you're not going to get it now. Grow up and get on
with life." I tried to accept what he was telling me, but i was
aware that in the core of my being i was unwilling to let go of my
unfinished business.
Eventually i sought out a different therapist, one with a more
optimistic view about the possibility of resolving childhood needs.
He believed that it was possible for people to make up for what they
didn't get in childhood through self-love. ... The reason this
approach doesn't work is that it is sabotaged by the old brain. When
we were infants, unable to meet out physical and emotional needs,
pain and pleasure came magically from the outside world. When the
bottle or the breast appeared, our hunger was satisfied. When we
were left alone in our cribs to cry, we felt angry and afraid. As we
grew older, our old brain remained in this passive worldview: good
feelings and bad feelings were created by the actions of other
people; we couldn't take care of ourselves; others had to do it for
us. The part of me that hurt couldn't accept love from within myself
because i had externalized my source of salvation.
I gradually resigned myself to the fact that healing love has to come
from outside oneself. ... After numerous experiments like this, i
concluded that the love we are seeking has to come not just from
another person within the context of a safe, intimate relationship,
but from an imago match--someone so similar to our parents that our
unconscious mind has them fused. This appears to be the only way to
erase the pains of childhood.
If people were going to be healed, i conjectured, their partners
would have to change. ... In other words, in his efforts to heal his
partner, he would be recovering an essential part of himself. The
unconscious selection process has brought together two people who can
either hurt each other or heal each other, depending upon their
willingness to grow and change.
I reminded Melanie that letting her husband know how much she wanted
him to share a bedroom with her was an important piece of information
for him, but in no way obligated him to cooperate. The only
legitimate power she had in the relationship was to inform Stewart of
her needs and to change her own behavior to meet Stewart's needs.
To summarize, Melanie and Stewart reaped three important benefits
from the Stretching exercise:
* The partner who requested the behavioral changes was able to
resolve some childhood needs.
* The partner who made the changes recovered aspects of the lost
self.
* The partner who made the changes satisfied repressed needs that
were identical to the partner's.
This beneficial change always involves some resistance. Resistance
to the satisfaction of a deeply held need is more common than most
people would believe.
Marriage can fulfill your hidden drive to be healed and whole. But
it can't happen the way you want it to happen--easily, automatically,
without defining what it is that you want without asking, and without
reciprocating. You have to moderate your old-brain reactivity with a
more intentional, conscious style of interaction. You have to stop
expecting the outside world to take care of you and begin to accept
responsibility for your own healing. And the way you do this,
paradoxically, is by focusing your energy on healing your partner.
It is when you direct your energy away from yourself and toward your
partner that deep-level psychological and spiritual healing begins to
take place.
Chapter 11, Containing rage
===========================
Barbara was learning something that i had suspected for some time:
she was secretly very angry. She kept her anger hidden from both
herself and Allen by turning it inward as depression. But in order
to repress her rage, she also had to stifle her sexuality, her
appetite for food, her interest in playing the piano, her excitement
at new ideas--any stirring of her life energy was threatening to her.
... As a consequence, she was living a shadowy half-life. An
adaptation that served a useful purpose in childhood was now draining
the life from her marriage.
Anger is destructive to a relationship, no matter what its form.
The idea that one should be in touch with one's own pain and anger
goes against some powerful directives. How can we release our anger
and not hurt the people we love? The answer is a process called
"containment."
Exercises designed to reduce rage are a fairly new arrival to the
field of psychotherapy.
The "container transaction" is a rage-containment exercise that i
have specifically adapted for couples. Its purpose is to allow you
to express your angry feelings without having your partner counter
them, or deny them. Instead of arguing about the cause of your
anger, your partner is trained to acknowledge its existence. When
your partner listens carefully, paraphrases your remarks, and then
acknowledges the existence of your intense emotions, your need for
attention is satisfied, the environment becomes safe and affirming,
and your anger gradually dissipates. The Container Transaction is
not designed to eliminate the source of your anger--that can be done
at a later date by requesting a specific behavioral change. The
exercise simply affirms the reality of your emotions. Essentially,
the Container Transaction is a graduate level version of the
mirroring exercise, described in chapter 9. The main difference is
that in the Container Transaction the person who is sharing the
information has more intense emotions. This increased voltage
necessitates three ground rules.
* Neither partner is allowed to leave the room until the exercise
is completed.
* Neither partner can damage any property nor touch the other
person in a hostile manner.
* The angry person must limit all remarks to a description of
behavior, not a description of character.
When it's your turn to do the containing, you learn to become more
skilled in nonreactivity. You learn that your partner's anger won't
harm you. You begin to allow each other fuller expression of your
emotions, because you have desensitized yourselves to anger.
Eventually you develop a clearer sense of boundaries, learning that
you don't have to be entwined in your partner's emotional state.
A technique that i use with couples who express the same intense
frustrations over and over again is called "core-scene revision."
This exercise helps reduce the frequency and intensity of core
scenes, fights, and arguments, which can be so destructive to the
climate of a relationship. Core scenes occur when the childhood
adaptations of one partner are pitted against the childhood
adaptations of the other, making the encounter doubly wounding.
Typically, core scenes end in an impasse, with both individuals in
deep emotional pain.
One couple, Jack and Deborah, had recurring fights that they named
"three-o'clockers," because they often lasted until three in the
morning. These were not explosive fights, but wearing, exhausting,
repetitive confrontations that ended without resolution. Following a
three-o'clocker they would be depressed for days.
After recounting four or five versions of what was essentially the
same fight, Jack and Deborah were able to see what the fights had in
common. At first they found it amusing to reduce the fights to their
lowest common denominators; there was a lot of laughter as they
looked at their pain from afar. But then a sadness crept into the
discussion: "This isn't something that I feel very proud of," said
Jack. "Why do we fall into the same trap over and over again?"
Their core scene goes something like this:
Act I: It is five o'clock in the evening. Jack comes home from work
and it confronted by Deborah, who wants him to do something. It
could be anything--help plan a vacation, do some yard work, sort
through the mail. Jack says he would be happy to do it--later.
After he has had a chance to jog.
Act II: Jack goes jogging. He comes home. As he enters the door,
Deborah confronts him and asks him if he will now do X. Jack says,
"Sure. After I take a shower."
Act III: Jack takes a shower. Deborah tracks him down and insists
that now is the time to do X. Jack says, "Sure--after I have a
drink."
Act IV (the climax of the drama): Jack has several drinks. He begins
to relax and enjoy himself. Deborah enters the room irate. "Why
don't you either do it now or tell me that you don't want to do it?"
Deborah yells. "I hate all this foot-dragging!" "But I want to do
it," counters Jack. "Just give me time. I'm tired. I want to
relax. Back off." Jack begins to work on a crossword puzzle and
ignores his wife. She gets hysterical. "I hate you!" she cries out.
"You never do what you say. You never listen to me! I feel like
I'm living with a robot! I have no feelings for you!" Jack tries to
block out her anger by concentrating even more intently on his
puzzle. Then, finding no peace, he gets up and leaves the house.
Act V: Jack comes home, hours later. He's been drinking. Deborah
launches into her attack once more. The fight continues, with
Deborah delivering devastating criticisms and Jack trying either to
placate her or ignore her. Eventually they both get tired of the
melodrama and turn away from each other in despair.
Let's analyze this core scene for a moment. If one were to search
for Jack and Deborah in the psychology textbooks, Jack would be
described as "passive-aggressive." He is angry angry at Deborah for
organizing his life and intruding on his space, but is afraid to
express it directly. Instead he stalls, jogs, showers, drinks, works
on the crossword puzzle--in other words, takes full advantage of the
numerous exits he has carved into the relationship. Deborah would be
labeled as "aggressive-aggressive." "She's a bulldog," says Jack,
not without admiration. She is up front with both her demands and
her anger. The irreducible element in their core scene is that the
more Deborah attacks the more Jack retreats, and the more Jack
retreats the more Deborah feels abandoned. Deborah's anger at Jack's
passivity is really disguised panic. She is terrified of being left
alone, and Jack's inertness makes her feel as if she were dealing
with a nonentity, a pale ghost with no real substance.
I explained to Deborah and Jack that, in order to end the impasse,
they would need to rewrite their play--not metaphorically, but
literally. They would need to go home, take out pencils and paper,
and rewrite the drama so that when the curtain goes down after the
final act, they would be locked in an embrace, not in conflict. Then
they would need to read their new script over and over again so that
the new options would be just as available to them as their
habituated ones.
The "Full Container" is an exercise that helps people get in touch
with their rage and connect it to its original childhood source. The
Full Container works equally well for people who are depressed and
for people who are overtly angry. I must emphasize that this
exercise, unlike the others, requires the supervision of a therapist.
I am describing it in general terms here, however, because it will
help you understand the role that anger plays in your marriage.
Chapter 12, Portrait of two marriages
=====================================
What i'm talking about is native spirituality, a spirituality that is
as much a part of our being as our sexuality, a spirituality that is
a gift to us the moment we are conceived, a spirituality that we lose
sight of in childhood but that can be experienced once again in
adulthood if we learn how to heal old wounds. When we regain
awareness of our essential inner unity, we make an amazing discovery:
we are no longer cut off from the rest of the world. Because we are
in touch with the miracle of our own being, we are free to experience
the beauty and complexity of the world. The universe has meaning and
purpose, and we experience ourselves as part of a larger whole.
It is my conviction that one of the surest routes to this exalted
state of being is the humble path of marriage. When we gather the
courage to search for the truth of our being and the truth of our
partner's being, we begin a journey of psychological and spiritual
healing.
When partners learn to see each other without distortion, to value
each other as highly as they value themselves, to give without
expecting anything in return, to commit themselves fully to each
other's welfare, love moves freely between them without apparent
effort. The partner is no longer perceived as a surrogate parent,
nor as an enemy, but as a passionate friend.
When couples are able to love in this selfless manner, they
experience a release of energy. They cease to be consumed by the
details of their relationship, or the need to operate within the
artificial structure of exercises; they spontaneously treat each
other with love and respect.
One characteristic of couples who have reached this advanced stage of
consciousness is that they begin to turn their energy away from each
other toward the woundedness of the world. They develop a greater
concern for the environment, for people in need, for important
causes. The capacity to love and heal that they have created within
the marriage is now available for others.
I have found no better description of this rare kind of love than in
I Corinthians 13:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight
in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects. It always
trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Chapter 13, Ten steps toward a conscious marriage
=================================================
This chapter outlines a course of therapeutic exercises broken into
ten weekly sessions.
As you work on the exercises, keep in mind these two cardinal rules:
* The information you gather in the process of doing the exercises
is designed to educate you and your partner about each others
needs. Sharing this information does not obligate you to meet
those needs.
* When you share your thoughts and feelings with each other, you
become emotionally vulnerable. It is important that you use the
information you gain about each other in a loving and helpful
manner.
author: Hendrix, Harville
detail:
LOC: HQ734 .H49
tags: book,love,non-fiction,self-help
title: Getting The Love You Want
Tags
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book
love
non-fiction
self-help