What's Really Going On In Your Relationship?

There are many answers to the question, “What’s really going on in relationships?”, and on this page you’ll be able to read a brief overview of some of the more important secrets of relationships encompassed in the following titles:

• Falling in love and being in love
• Do we really choose our partners?
• The search for the lost self
• The ten characteristics of a conscious marriage

Some of the ideas outlined on this page may seem very new and out of the ordinary, and it may seem difficult to relate these ideas to your own situation. Reading about these new concepts is no substitute however for working with a properly qualified Connect Counsellor. Using these new ideas and many other traditional Counselling methods, a Connect Counsellor will be able to help you make sense of your circumstances in ways that will facilitate the changes needed to fulfill the potential of your relationships.

When two people are attracted to each other, a virtual explosion of adrenaline-like neurochemicals gushes forth. Fireworks explode and we see stars!

Falling in love and being in love

It all starts with “falling in love”. We usually meet many people during the course of our lives; people with whom we work, those with whom we go to schools and colleges, people who socialise with us at parties, pubs and clubs, and those who share our hobbies and interests etc. Frequently we meet people who we are attracted to, and occasionally those for which our attraction is so great, that if possible, we pursue a closer and more intimate relationship.  What is happening at an unconscious level when this process occurs is explained below in the section “Do we really choose our partners”?

After this initial attraction, we begin the journey of “falling in love”, and this is the point where Mother Nature takes over. Imagine a time long ago, before the dawn of civilization as we now know it. As always, Mother Nature wants babies, and she wants those babies to survive. A process of bonding immediately begins to take place between those who are “falling in love”. The stronger the bond between the potential parents of Mother Nature’s babies, the more likely it is that the two will remain together and that therefore any babies will survive.
This bonding process is enhanced by the mind and mood altering chemicals that the body produces to ensure closeness. When two people are attracted to each other, a virtual explosion of adrenaline-like neurochemicals gushes forth. Fireworks explode and we see stars. PEA or phenylethylamine is a chemical that speeds up the flow of information between nerve cells. Also, involved in the chemistry of bonding are dopamine and norepinephrine, chemical cousins of amphetamines. Dopamine makes us feel good and norepinephrine stimulates the production of adrenaline. It makes the heart race!

When people are influenced by this surge of chemicals they often behave in ways that are uncharacteristic, even peculiar, and in this state often do things that they would not otherwise consider as being normal. In the film “Pretty Woman” for example, Richard Gere removes his shoes and socks to enjoy the feeling of the grass beneath his feet.

When people are affected by these chemicals, they are often described as being “madly” in love. They can be overheard saying things such as; “I’m crazy about him/her”. Both statements refer to the mind altering properties of the chemicals flooding the system. When people are influenced by this surge of chemicals they often behave in ways that are uncharacteristic, even peculiar, and in this state often do things that they would not otherwise consider as being normal. In the film “Pretty Woman” for example, Richard Gere removes his shoes and socks to enjoy the feeling of the grass beneath his feet.
These chemicals combine to give us infatuation or “chemistry.” It is why new lovers feel euphoric and energised, and float on air. It is also why new lovers can talk all night for weeks on end, and make love for hours and hours. This is a time when new lovers are aware of sameness rather than difference. They place emphasis on all the things about their relationship that make them compatible rather than paying attention to the difficulties they might encounter due to their incompatibilities. The characteristics of lovers will be redefined. For example, a man who is withdrawn and uncommunicative will often be seen positively by the chemically affected partner as “the strong silent type”, whereas later, when the chemicals have stopped being produced, that same man’s partner complains; “He never speaks to me, I never know what he feels”!
Back to pre-civilization, if “Mother Nature” is successful in creating a strong enough bond, the male will stay around long enough to protect and provide for the female during the pregnancy, birth period and beyond.
On average the chemicals are flooded into the bloodstream of lovers for a period of approximately seven months, although this can range from anywhere between a couple of days to two years or so depending on the individual and the circumstances. As the chemical flow ceases, anticipations become expectations, both partners begin to notice the incompatibilities and tend to withdraw some of the unconditional love and generosity that characterised their early relationship. At this same time both begin to expect, demand, or feel entitled to have their own needs met, and the difficulties that typify most relationships come into being. It is at this point that many people will stay in a relationship that does not ever really satisfy them, longing for the early days when all seemed so wonderful. Others leave their relationships believing that they have picked the “wrong” partner, and the whole cycle begins again.  
However, once we understand what is really happening in relationships, we can make the transition from “falling in love” to “being in love”. We can know how to create unions that fulfill our needs and expectations and finally find the love we seek. To understand more please read on ……

The history of marriage

Many people cling to fantasies about love and marriage. But fantasies are damaging and unhelpful both individually and to society. Single, confused, un­happy people become confused, unhappy married couples, except that two people’s problems are more than double trouble. This is especially true if there are children involved because the damage is passed along to these innocent victims.

Marriages were arranged; wives were bought or traded. Such marriages were typically passionless, but stable; their primary agenda was the continuity of the family, community and the perpetuation of land and property rights. Many people are worried that the social fabric of our country is unraveling before our eyes, and the breakdown of society seems directly traceable to the problems in the family, specifically to the quality of marriages, the nest from which children, and therefore the future, come. Changes in marriage and our expectation of marriage have to do with the evolutionary changes in ourselves as a culture and as a species. In the Western world, most of us believe that love and marriage have always gone together; however, the combination of love and marriage is a phenomenon of very recent history. In times past, it was love and adultery that went together "like a horse and carriage." Marriages were arranged; wives were bought or traded. Such marriages were typically passionless, but stable; their primary agenda was the continuity of the family, community and the perpetuation of land and property rights. Only infrequently, and usually accidentally, was romantic love connected with the marriage partner. With the emergence in the Western world of the democratic system in which the individual had rights, the rights of the individual came

The failure of our society to recognise the problem means serious trouble for our civilisation. Our ignorance has already had drastic consequences. Because we were operating in the dark, not knowing what to expect or hope for, untrained and unprepared for marriage, the intense energy of romantic love began to break apart the structure of marriage, and divorces began to be more commonplace. Yet until the 1950s, after the upheaval of World War II, divorce was not undertaken lightly and was considered essentially an immoral decision. Because of the great shame attached to it, many unhappy marriages stayed together, and romantic love again switched out of marriages and into affairs.

But eventually the widespread frustration with marriage led to divorce becoming a permitted exit from an unhappy marriage. While formerly divorces were granted only on grounds of infidelity or abuse, incompatibility became an accepted exit.

Do we really choose our partners?

There was a further complication to marriage. At the same time that it was recognised that the individual had rights, there came a belief that human beings were inherently rational, could make logical choices, and were in total charge of their destiny. But that assumption was soon challenged by Sigmund Freud who proposed that underneath our apparent rationality was a sea of chaotic instincts that influenced and often undermined our choices. It was quite a shock. We began to understand that choices we thought were made on the basis of logic were in fact swayed by emotion and by the unconscious mind directing us towards a particular partner.

 It seems then that the choice of a love partner, though entirely personal, is in fact made by the unconscious processes of the mind. Even though we now get to choose our partners, there is still some kind of parallel to the arranged marriage, in the sense that as the arranged marriage had a specific purpose, so our unconscious selects a partner to suit its particular needs. The problem is that most of us don't recognise this, and we behave as though we are making a logical, analytical choice, which will lead to a logical, straightforward marriage. How wrong we are!

It is true that we now marry for love, and that we expect romantic fulfillment in marriage. And it is good that we marry for love. But love or marriage, for that matter, is not what we think it is. Whatever we may think, and however careful our checklist, what is going on in mate selection is not love, but need. Love, if it appears at all, appears later in a marriage as a result of our work on ourselves and our commitment to healing our partner.

"I have found that when my relationships work, that everything in my life works" - Alanis Morrisette

Our "free" choice of a mate is, in the end, a product of our unconscious, which has an agenda of its own. And what the unconscious wants is to become whole and to heal the wounds of childhood. To this end, it is carrying around its own detailed picture of a proper match, searching not for the right statistics, but for the right chemistry. And what is that chemistry? Nothing more than our unconscious attraction to someone who we feel will meet our particular emotional needs.

To guide you in your search for the ideal mate, someone who both resembled your caretakers and compensated for the re­pressed parts of yourself, you relied on an unconscious image of the opposite sex that you had been forming since birth. Harville Hendrix Ph.D., has given this inner picture the name “imago,” which is a Latin term for “image” Essentially, your imago is a composite picture of the people who influenced you most strongly at an early age. This may have been your mother and father, one or more siblings, or maybe a babysitter or close relative. But whoever they were, a part of your brain recorded everything about them, the sound of their voices, the amount of time they took to answer your cries, the co lour of their skin when they got angry, the way they smiled when they were happy, the set of their shoulders, the way they moved their bodies, their characteristic moods, their talents and interests. Along with these impressions, your brain recorded all your significant interactions with them. Your brain didn't interpret these data; it simply etched them onto a template.

It may seem improbable that you have such a detailed record of your caretakers somewhere inside your head when you have only a dim recollection of those early years. In fact, many people have a hard time remembering anything that happened to them before the age of five or six, even dramatic events that should have made a deep impression. But scientists report that we have in­credible amounts of hidden information in our brains. Neuro­surgeons discovered this fact while performing brain surgery on patients who were under local anesthesia. They stimulated portions of the patients' brains with weak electrical currents, and the patients were suddenly able to recall hundreds of forgotten episodes from childhood in astonishing detail. Our minds are vast storehouses of forgotten information. There are those who suggest that everything that we have ever experienced resides some­where in the dark, convoluted recesses of our brains.

Not all of these experiences are recorded with equal intensity, however. The most vivid impressions seem to be the ones that we formed of our caretakers early in life. And of all the interactions that we had with these key people, the ones that were most deeply engraved were the ones that were the most wounding, because these were the encounters that seemed to threaten our existence. Gradually, over time, these hundreds of thousands of bits of information about our caretakers merged together to form a single image. The old brain, in its inability to make fine distinctions, simply filed all this information under one heading: the people responsible for our survival. You might think of the imago as a silhouette with few distinguishing physical characteristics but with the combined character traits of all of your primary caretakers.

To a large degree, whether or not you have been romantically attracted to someone depended on the degree to which that per­son matched your imago. A hidden part of your brain ticked and hummed, coolly analyzing that person's traits, and then com­pared them with your rich data bank of information. If there was little correlation, you felt no interest. This person was destined to be one of the thousands of people who come and go in your life with little impact. If there was a high degree of correlation, you found the person highly attractive. When we meet an unconsciously held parental match, that chemical reaction occurs, and love ignites. All other ideas about what we want in a mate are discounted. We feel alive and whole, confident that we have met the person who will make everything all right.

Specifically, there is a need to cover the "shortfall" of childhood unmet needs by having our partners fill in the psychological gaps left by our imperfect childhood caretakers. How do we go about that? By falling madly in love with someone who has the traits of our imperfect parents; someone who fits an image that is a mixture of the character traits of both of our parents or primary caretakers that we carry deep inside us, and for who we are unconsciously searching. What we unconsciously want is to get the love, respect, support, closeness, freedom etc. that we didn't get in childhood from someone who is like the people who didn't give us what we needed in the first place.

As with all aspects of the unconscious mind, you had no awareness of this elaborate sorting mechanism. But when you do the exercise below and have a chance to compare the dominant character traits of your mate with the dominant character traits of your primary caretakers, the parallel that your unconscious mind draws between spouses and caretakers will become unmistakably clear.

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 chance 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.

Many people have a hard time accepting the idea that they have searched for partners who resembled their caretakers. On a conscious level, they were looking for people with only positive traits-people who were, among other things, kind, loving, good-looking, intelligent, and creative. In fact, if they had an unhappy childhood, they may have deliberately searched for people who were radically different from their caretakers. They told themselves, “I'll never marry a drunkard like my father,” or “There's no way I'm going to marry a tyrant like my mother.” But, no matter what their conscious intentions, most people are attracted to mates who have their caretakers' positive and negative traits, and, typically, the negative traits are more influential.

Therapists came to this conclusion only after listening to hundreds of couples talk about their partners. It’s often noticed that at some point during the course of therapy, just about every person would turn angrily to his or her spouse and say, “You treat me just the way my mother did!” Or “You make me feel just as helpless and frustrated as my stepfather did!” This idea gained further validity when therapists such as Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., assigned all his clients an exercise that asked them to compare the personality traits of their spouses with the personality traits of their primary caretakers. In most cases, there was a close correlation between parents and partners, and with few exceptions the traits that matched up the most closely were the negative traits! (When you work with a Connect Counsellor, you will be able to do this exercise yourself).

Why do negative traits have such an appeal? Why don’t people choose mates on a logical sensible basis? Then they would look for partners who compensated for their parents' inadequacies, rather than duplicated them. If your parents wounded you by being unreliable, for ex­ample, the sensible course of action would be to marry a dependable person, someone who would help you overcome your fear of abandonment. If your parents wounded you by being over­protective, the practical solution would be to look for someone who allowed you plenty of psychic space so that you could over­come your fear of absorption. The answer lies in which part of your brain directed your search for a mate.

The Brain

Let's take a brief look at the structure of the brain. For simplicity's sake, let’s use neuroscientist Paul McLean's model and divide the brain into three concentric layers.

Sometimes referred to as the “reptilian brain”, the brain stem, which is the inner and most primitive layer, is the part of the brain that oversees reproduction, self-preservation, and vital functions such as the circulation of blood, breathing, sleeping etc., let's think of the brain stem as the source of physical action. Flaring like a wishbone around the top of the brain stem is the portion of the brain called the limbic system, whose function seems to be the generation of emotions. Throughout this page, the term “old brain” is used to refer to the portion of the brain that includes both the brain stem and the limbic system. Think of the old brain as being hard-wired and determining most of your automatic reactions. The final area of the brain is the cerebral cortex, a large, convoluted mass of brain tissue that surrounds the two inner sections and is itself divided into four regions or lobes. This portion of the brain, which is most highly developed in Homo sapiens, is the site of most of our cognitive functions and referred to as the “new brain” because it appeared most recently in evolutionary history. Your new brain is the part of you that is conscious, alert, and in contact with your daily surroundings. It's the part of you that makes decisions, thinks, observes, plans, anticipates, responds, organizes information, and creates ideas.

The new brain is inherently logical and tries to find a cause for every effect and an effect for every cause. To a degree, it can moderate some of the instinctual reactions of your old brain. By and large, this analytical, probing, questioning part of your mind is the part that you think of as being “you.”

The part of your brain that directed your search for a mate, however, was not your logical, orderly new brain; it was your time-locked, short-sighted old brain. And what your old brain was trying to do was recreate the conditions of your upbringing, in order to correct them. Having received enough nurturing to survive but not enough to feel satisfied, it was attempting to return to the scene of your original frustration so that you could resolve your unfinished business.

The search for the lost self

There are also other unconscious drives, one being the drive to recover your lost self, those thoughts and feelings and behaviours that you had to repress to adapt to your family and to society? Let me explain; imagine a young baby boy living in a family with parents who are strict and controlling. As this boy reaches the age of two to three years he will continue the separation process he started as the umbilical cord was cut at his birth. He will be entering a stage in his development known by many parents as “the terrible two’s”. This is a time when an irresistible urge to make his own choices begins to well up inside him. The difficulty with his making an independent choice is that he must disagree with his controlling parents in order for the choice to be his own. So when asked to do something, he refuses. Nature directs him to be oppositional. This is a very difficult situation for the parents; their wonderful little boy instinctively wants to do exactly the opposite of what they want. They have nice, reasonable expectations and their little boy says, "NO!" or simply dissolves into tears. In an ideal world the parents are able to support the boy’s need for choice and independence, allowing him to have

his triumphs, even though they may feel their way is best. In this story however the parents feel they know best, and through their disapproval of the boy’s choices with well meant comments such as; “There’s a better way of doing that” or “You shouldn’t wear your Wellingtons on such a sunny day”, the boy learns to repress his own ideas and always defers to the need of his parents to have him obey them rather than suffer the rejection of their disapproval. In short, he becomes over adapted, the confident and independent self he once had now becomes lost to him; the lost self. In later life he finds it difficult to make decisions for himself, often referring to the needs of others. It may be for example that when asked if he would like a cup of tea, he will reply; “Are you having one”? He will be unable to have real choice and make a decision without checking with the other first.

So what kind of person would help you regain your sense of wholeness? Would it be someone who actively encouraged you to develop these missing parts? Would it be someone who shared your weaknesses and therefore made you feel less inadequate? Or, on the other hand, would it be someone who complemented your weaknesses?

To find the answer, think for a minute about some part of your being that you feel is deficient. Maybe you feel that you lack artis­tic talent, or strong emotions, or the ability to think clearly and rationally. Years ago, when you were around people who were especially strong in these areas, you probably were even more aware of your shortcomings. But if you managed to form an intimate relationship with one of these “gifted people,” you experienced quite a different reaction. In­stead of feeling awestruck or envious, you suddenly felt more complete. Being emotionally attached to this person, this is “my” boyfriend or “my” girlfriend, made his or her attributes feel like a part of a larger, more fulfilled you. It was as if you had merged with the other person and become whole.

Look around you, and you will find ample evidence that peo­ple choose mates with complementary traits. David is glib and talk­ative; his wife, Christine, is thoughtful and introverted. Janice is an intuitive thinker; her husband, Paul, is very logical. Vicky is a dancer; her boyfriend, Michael, has a stiff and rigid body. What people are doing in these yin-yang matches is trying to reclaim their lost selves by proxy.

We are doomed to failure both in finding and keeping love as long as we fail to really understand why we have picked our particular partner and what’s really going on.

The irony is that it doesn't have to be this way. We have every opportunity, individually and within society, to have powerful, trans­forming marriages, and to have those marriages transform our soci­ety. The modern romantic marriage is an evolutionary gift with unique potential for healing our childhood wounds and facilitating our spiritual growth. Somehow we have the idea that you have to leave a marriage in order to grow, but we are now discovering that powerful healing is possible through marriage. Marriage itself, properly understood, is the therapy we need to grow and become whole, to return to our innate joyful state.
We've just got to learn to get our relationships right. Understanding what’s really going on in our relationships is the first move towards what many therapists have called a “conscious marriage”, as opposed to the “unconscious marriages” that the majority of us struggle with.

The difficulties that we experience within a marriage will trigger our childhood wounds, defences, psychological games and strategies in a powerful way that is only seen in close committed relationships. It is through the commitment to accept, understand and heal the other's wounds, to provide a safe haven for the partner to experience his or her wholeness over a lifetime, that we are able to recapture our original wholeness and finally have our unmet childhood needs realised. We can find the love we’ve always yearned for. We cannot heal our­selves, and we cannot heal in open-ended, precarious relationships. So we must educate, prepare, and train ourselves for the journey of a committed marriage in which we can finally heal ourselves and achieve the love we want.

What are some of the differences when you become conscious? The following list highlights some of the essential differences in attitude and behaviour:

The ten characteristics of a conscious marriage

1. You realise that your love relationship has a hidden purpose - the healing of childhood wounds. Instead of focusing entirely on surface needs and desires, you learn to recognise the unre­solved childhood issues that underlie them. When you look at marriage with this X-ray vision, your daily interactions take on more meaning. Puzzling aspects of your relationship begin to make sense to you, and you have a greater sense of control.

2. You create a more accurate image of your partner. At the very moment of attraction, you began fusing your lover with your primary caretakers. Later you projected your negative traits onto your partner, further obscuring your partner's essential reality. As you move toward a conscious marriage, you gradually let go of these illusions and begin to see more of your partner's truth. You see your partner not as your saviour but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed.

3. You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner. In an unconscious marriage, you cling to the childhood belief that your partner automatically intuits your needs. In a conscious marriage, you accept the fact that, in order to understand each other, you have to develop clear channels of communication.

4. You become more intentional in your interactions. In an uncon­scious marriage, you tend to react without thinking. You allow primitive responses to control your behaviour. In a conscious marriage, you train yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.

5. You learn to value your partner's needs and wishes as highly as you value your own. In an unconscious marriage, you assume that your partner's role in life is to take care of your needs magically. In a conscious marriage, you let go of this nar­cissistic view and divert more and more of your energy to meeting your partner's needs.

6. You embrace the dark side of your personality. In a conscious marriage, you openly acknowledge the fact that you, like everyone else, have negative traits. As you accept responsi­bility for this dark side of your nature, you lessen your ten­dency to project your negative traits onto your mate, which creates a less hostile environment.

7. You learn new techniques to satisfy your basic needs and desires. During the power struggle of relationships, you cajole, harangue, and blame in an attempt to coerce your partner to meet your needs. When you move beyond this stage, you realise that your partner can indeed be a resource for you, once you abandon your self-defeating tactics.

8. You search within yourself for the strengths and abilities you are lacking. One reason you were attracted to your partner is that your partner had strengths and abilities that you lacked. Therefore, being with your partner gave you an illusory sense of wholeness. In a conscious marriage, you learn that the only way you can truly recapture a sense of oneness is to develop the hidden traits within yourself.

9. You become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole and united with the universe. As a part of your spiritual nature, you have the ability to love unconditionally and to experi­ence unity with the world around you. Social conditioning and imperfect parenting made you lose touch with these qualities. In a conscious marriage, you begin to rediscover your original nature.

10. You accept the difficulty of creating a good marriage. In an unconscious marriage, you believe that the way to have a good marriage is to pick the right partner. In a conscious mar­riage you realise you have to be the right partner. As you gain a more realistic view of love relationships, you realise that a good marriage requires commitment, discipline, and the courage to grow and change; marriage is hard work.

Back To The Top Of The Page

Back To The Home Page

Home Page About Connect About Counselling Relationship Problems Relationship Advice Online Counselling

Contact us FAQ Fees Disclaimer Ethics First Appointment

© Copyright 2005 Mindscape Limited