How to Envision Your Ideal Relationship

Thanks to a comment by David on my last post, I was moved to dig out the “Vision of Our Relationship” that my partner I co-created about 3 years ago. Prominently posted to the bathroom mirror for a couple of years, it was more recently lost in the shuffle of back-to-back household moves. Anyway, I just made three new copies – one for the bathroom mirror, again, and one for each of our computer areas, where we both tend to spend a lot of time. Ideally, being the most-sane-with-structure kind of person that I am, my partner and I would revisit this vision, together, over a cup of tea each year on some momentous occasion such as our anniversary. Luckily, for me, my partner responds well to these types of suggestions, but, I have to admit, I haven’t suggested it lately. I guess I’ve been in too much disarray with all this moving. Visioning (or is it Envisioning) Really Works!Anyway, in looking at the relationship vision we put together three years ago, I’m happy to say that most of our vision is becoming reality — even some parts that we thought were pretty far-fetched have come to fruition… WAY COOL! This makes me realize that even though I have issues with the highly materialistic parts of The Secret, I have to say that this Law of Attraction stuff really works!

How Do You Create a Relationship Vision?

There are several different approaches that can be used to envision your ideal relationship. Others will be covered in future posts, but for now, since the Imago approach is what my partner and I used, I’ll share that one. First of all, at least in the edition of the book that I have (Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.) “Your Relationship Vision” is Exercise 1 in the back of the book. These are the steps, paraphrased (you and your partner do this exercise together).

Working separately, each of you will write down on a piece of paper short sentences that capture your ideal vision of a deeply satisfying love relationship.

Each sentence should be written in the present tense, as if it is already happening, and should be stated positively– i.e. don’t use words like “We don’t” or “We won’t”. Some of the visions we wrote down were:

• We laugh a lot with each other!
• We are freely affectionate with each other
• We fight fairly

Get together and share your sentences, noting the ones that you have in common. If your partner has written statements that you also would like to see in your relationship, add them to your list.

Separately, again, each of you will rank each item on your list with a number from 1 to 5–1 being “very important” and 5 being “not so important.”

Together again, design a mutual relationship vision with input from both of your lists, starting (obviously) with items you both have ranked as most important. Hendrix also suggested that you put check marks next to items that either of you feel would be difficult to achieve. (I found this eye-opening when, looking at our list years later, we saw that we had definitely achieved those — it made us both feel that more was possible).

This last step is to bring the list into your life! Post it somewhere that you can see it daily. Hendrix even recommends that you read it aloud to each other weekly. For us, that wasn’t necessary, but some people may find it helpful.

Here is an example vision, given in the book (I would question the autonomy of the last item, but this is Hendrix’ example).

If you haven’t already done this type of exercise, or if its been awhile, get together with your partner and take a crack at it. And….. VERY IMPORTANT~ if you are single, this is a great approach to envision the relationship that you want to attract into your life! Have You Created a Relationship Vision? I’d be interested in hearing from others who do this exercise, and from those of you who have already done it. Please share, at the level of disclosure you are comfortable with:

• The immediate benefits, if any, of doing the exercise, itself
• Whether or not any issue came up for you and your partner while doing the exercise
• How often you talk about the vision with your partner
• What the results have been

Looking forward to supporting all of our relationships through sharing insights,

Becky

Why Do We Marry Our Mothers (or Fathers)? – Part 2 and What Do We Do Then?

This is Part 2 of a series. Click here to read Part 1.

Imago Theory

No wonder Oprah was so impacted by Imago Theory! It gives us hope that we can find what we’re looking for in romantic love. We can replace our sense of failure with hope. Most of my clients, when their relationships are struggling (or over), beat themselves up, mercilessly, for their mistakes in choosing. This might sound egotistical in a way — like they’re blaming it all on the other person. But more than anything, they feel a deep sense of defectiveness — as if they must be severely psychologically impaired because they keep seeking salvation in people that can’t give it to them.

What is this Salvation We Seek, Anyway?

“… when we fall in love, when bells ring and the world seems altogether a better place, our old [primitive] brain is telling us that we’ve found someone with whom we can complete our unfinished childhood business.”
- Harville Hendrix

The Imago has Shown Itself

According to Hendrix (and many other theorists), the Imago or the Internal Romantic Image as Ayala Malach Pines calls it (in her book Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose), are the collective impressions sketched in our minds based on all of the painful experiences of our childhood. We seek to complete something – to get our needs met where we couldn’t before. And our instincts draw us to people that resemble those aspects of our caretakers that didn’t give us what we needed.

If Only I Were Better…

What do we do, as young children, when we don’t get our needs met? We internalize this. We tell ourselves that it was because we weren’t good enough. If only we had been better… then mom wouldn’t have drank so much, dad wouldn’t have beat me, mom would have paid attention to me. In order to finally triumph… in order to prove (to the world, to ourselves) that we are good enough, we unconsciously seek out the same kind of situations (people) so that we can make things turn out differently this time. We can finally get our needs met and in so doing, we can feel good about ourselves. In the worst cases, this “drive to triumph” explains why so many kids who grow up with addicted parents go on to marry addicts, and why kids who grow up in abusive homes marry abusers.

Do We Have Free Choice?

We think we have free choice in finding our mates; afterall, we don’t have arranged marriages anymore. And most of us are somewhat savvy and know, by now, that there are pitfalls to avoid. My friend Sherri, in the previous post, for instance, thought she was choosing Ed because he was different than her dad. Ed was good-looking, he was smart. When they met in college, he was studying engineering and she knew he’d make a decent living. He was athletic, he was social. So, so different than her dad (and her mom, for that matter).

The truth is, however, that as long as we are unconscious of what else may be driving us, we are driven more strongly by our unconscious agenda. We are desperately seeking someone with the same characteristics that led to our caretakers not meeting our needs.

We Find Our Shadows, Too

Hendrix (and Pines, and others) also believe that another criteria we use in seeking a mate is that our mate must have a certain amount of those characteristics that we never express. For instance, if I have suppressed my own anger because this was unacceptable when I was growing up, I will find someone who readily expresses anger. Part of me is relieved — my mate can do it for both of us. If I am an introvert, I will most likely join with an extrovert. This explains why opposites attract. We are seeking to round ourselves out. Eventually, however, most of us get sick of this behavior in our mate. My ex-husband used to go off the handle all the time. I wasn’t consciously attracted to this aspect of his personality, but I do have to own my choice! I guess I thought that I could tame him. I could give him what he needed, so that he wouldn’t be so frustrated anymore. Ultimately, I really resented his outbursts. In hindsight, it was because he was breaking my rules that still bound me. My anger was still trapped inside, so it didn’t seem fair for him to let his fly so freely!
As Dismal As This May Seem, Hendrix Says It’s Good News

And I agree with him, but for different reasons than he thinks its good. First, let’s talk about why he and I would both agree that its good: When we get to the point of banging our heads on the wall again and again, frustrated the our mate is this way or that way, our issues become known. Basically, the world has held up a mirror to us so that we can see who we really are. It is jarring, for sure, but we can see what we need to address to really be happy, healthy adults. We may think that we were done growing up, and that the problem is really all in our partner, but we actually have work to do, ourselves. Our wounds are oozing and visible, and we can’t ignore them.

Share Your Wounds and Get Your Needs Met?

Hendrix proposes that we can heal our childhood wounds through his approach, Imago Therapy, presented in his book Getting the Love You Want. With an Imago therapist, we can follow a structured approach that will allow us to safely share our wounds with our partner, and then ask them to meet our needs that were never met in childhood. Hendrix, speaking of the partner responding to this sharing, says:

“In Imago, we change to give our partners what they need, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how much it goes against the grain of our personality and temperament. We stretch to become the person our partner needs us to be in order to heal.”
- Harville Hendrix

I do agree that becoming vulnerable enough to share our wounds with our partner is a good thing, provided that our partner can listen to us and be supportive of us in our pain (the Imago therapist would help to increase the odds of this happening).

Where I differ from Hendrix, however, is that I don’t believe that my partner can necessarily heal all of my childhood wounds, nor do I think that it’s my partner’s job to do so.

Don’t get me wrong. If I am starving for affection because that was lacking in my childhood, and my partner is an affectionate person who can authentically express affection, then, by all means, bring it on!

However, what about these scenarios?

• What if my partner isn’t authentically an affectionate person? Do they have to fake it for me to heal? Can they fake it without me knowing? Do they really have to go against the grain of who they are for me to heal my wounds?

• What if my partner does try to give me affection, and suppose they even do a good job of it, but I haven’t changed my internal script about receiving affection? I may have some kind of belief, stemming from my childhood experiences, such as: “I don’t deserve affection.” If I do, then is my partner’s affection really going to make a difference for me? Don’t I need to work on myself?

… and getting even more complex….

• Maybe I never got affection as a kid, and to deal with it, I developed a defensive belief, such as: “I don’t need affection. People who need affection are wimps!” If my partner is affectionate with me, I may resent them for it, because I’ll assume they see me as needy.

Maybe We Need to Take Responsibility for Our Own Healing

Could it be that our needs become known to us not so that our partners can change who they are and meet our needs, but so that we can change who we are and get our own needs met? Granted, some of them may be met through asking for help and support from our partner. Some of our needs may be met by us being more proactive in the world, in general. Some can simply be met by inquiring and changing our confused beliefs about ourselves. There are several approaches to self-growth and relationship healing that stem from awakening to our needs and childhood wounds.

There’s More Than One Path Up This Mountain

In upcoming posts, we’ll talk about David Schnarch and the approach he proposes in his book, Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. Bryon Katie’s approach, The Work, presented in her book, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, focuses on inquiring into the beliefs that we’re living by, and facilitates significant shifts in people’s lives and relationships. Non-Violent Communication has become highly popular in some circles. An approach called Divorce Busting, developed by Michele Weiner-Davis and based on Solution Focused Therapy is apparently quite successful for couples on the brink of divorce. We will explore these approaches, and many more as time goes on.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your experiences with Imago Therapy, your take on Imago Theory, and anything else you would like to share.

Until next time,

Becky