Romantic Love Glues Us Together, yet Real Love is Born In Relationship

by David McCann, Ph.D. & Janis McCann, Ph.D.

A revolutionary theory is circling the globe today, stating that marriage--or any long-range, committed relationship--holds the greatest potential for psychological healing and spiritual growth.

But is that what we're looking for when we fall in love? Not according to Nature's plan for us. While it is true: we may be looking for the person who can always make us feel loved and safe and meet all of our needs. We may relish the continuous high of romantic love, when we feel as if we've found "Mr. Right" or "Ms. Right" and that we will always be loved, always feel safe-and live " happily ever after", just as so many of the romantic fairy tales end. While our conscious mind wants us to feel happy all the time, our unconscious mind has another agenda-- and that is, to grow up, finish childhood, and become conscious that we have been reacting to painful experiences with the same unconscious patterns that we inherited from our childhood.

The amazing thing about this new theory of relationship is this: our unconscious mind wants us to become whole and healed. So, we are going to pick just the right person, who is going to trigger us in some very specific and concrete ways and wound us in places that we were wounded as a child. In this way, we face the places of old pains and unmet needs and learn to face that pain and respond differently. For example, if you're a "distancer" who tends to back away from your partner's need for togetherness, you are likely to pick someone who clings to you or pursues you for that needed feeling of togetherness. And who better to do that with than someone who's got the opposite coping strategies? This is why your partner can upset you in ways that no one else can. Consciously we want to feel good and be happy, but our unconscious mind understands that we are choosing someone who is going to make us unhappy at times, in the service of becoming the whole and integrated beings Nature intended us to become. We believe the best way to do that is to develop relationship muscles through "resistance" training with a partner who loves us enough to challenge us to grow. We now consider this the deeper purpose of relationships.

Understanding that the power struggle is meant to happen provides us with a context in which to understand the pain we experience with the very same partner who could do no wrong during the romantic phase. When the power struggle emerges, it is all the more shocking when we start thinking that maybe we chose the wrong person-and sadly, many couples break up because they get so distraught by the power struggle, jump into the arms of new partners, only to find the same or similar struggle emerging with a new person. The revolutionary new theory instructs us that the power struggle follows the romantic phase as night follows day. When we use the power struggle as a stepping stone to healing, not a reason for leaving, we get to an even deeper love than we could ever have experienced in the romantic phase. We are meant to learn to heal that struggle. And the beauty of Imago Relationship Theory is that it is much more than a theory-it is also a discipline of counseling and coaching that teaches a set of specific processes designed to bring empathy and healing to those places of pain.

When you consider the love and promise we feel when we make a commit to a beloved, followed by the terrible pain and anguish we experience when we can't heal our own power struggle, then how could we expect healing to take place in the world at large? Somebody once said that there is no difference between couples warring and countries warring, since it is the same energy. Like nation-states in the power struggle we become allies in hostility and in making each other suffer. Rather, we need to begin a journey of becoming allies in creating safety that fosters communion. Learning and applying the communication processes of Imago can, we believe, bring us to that "happily ever after" state we yearn for, and hopefully heal the planet one couple and one person at a time.

* This article is based on the work of Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., and is inspired by an article of our friend and colleague, Evie Schaffner.