8. Couple relationships are designed to provide mutual healing

By Tom O'Connell

Often I am turned off by popular books that claim to have all the answers about  how to achieve healthy relationships. Their writers seldom impress me. But best-selling author Dr. Harville Hendrix strikes me differently. He doesn't oversimplify the difficulties of intimate relating, and he bases his theories on actual experience with numerous couples. He is one of America's leading couples' therapists, and he makes sense.

At a recent Cape Cod Institute workshop sponsored by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he told the audience of therapists that before entering adult life and moving toward life as a couple, we have been wounded to some degree in our family setting.

Some are wounded severely by being abandoned or rejected during the first years  of life. And they tend to become avoiders or clingers. Others who are smothered or neglected usually become smotherers and neglecters in close relationships.

Then there is the child with loving parents who provide the freedom to try on different personalities. Even then, if the identity becomes rigid the person will attract the opposite in later relationships. Also, by the time we reach school age many of us become competitors or manipulators to get our way. And what happens later on? We connect with someone who is out to win and we try to manipulate...or vice versa.

It makes sense that we will attract someone who challenges us and complements us with the qualities that we lack. This gives us a chance to heal and become whole. But, according to Hendrix, if we have been severely wounded in childhood we will have some unconscious self-hatred that will get in our way in relationships.

"The earlier the wound the more self-hatred," he reports. "So a part of me has to be put underground." What's underneath it all? He describes it as the "fear of death" and the belief that "if I take what I need I will die."

Yet having a wish granted may help a person to see that it doesn't mean death.  "Having what I want makes me feel alive," says Hendrix. But there's a catch. I may become addicted to this. And then I will erect defenses to justify my addiction.

Hendrix says we build defenses to protect us. Examples might be isolation and over activity. "The defense is always against something more terrible than the life I'm living." And he suggests that honoring a defense will permit it to go away. 

Obviously, achieving a healthy relationship can be very complicated, but Hendrix contends that the whole idea of getting together in couples is a healing process. It begins by getting in touch with our early wounding, realizing what has harmed us and what terrifies us, and then becoming healers of each other's wounds.

This is easier said than done, because healing each other's wounds involves that four-letter word "w-o-r-k." But this challenging mutual effort certainly beats acting out in destructive ways, or retreating into a depressive shell.

"Amplify your positive energy," says Hendrix. "Affirm life and put as much positive energy into affirming your partner as you do into fighting." He says we should train our partners to be our lovers and also say to them, "What could I do to make you feel cared about and loved?"

"No negative responses to this question," he cautions. "And choose positive specific tasks. It's all healing stuff, and the partner knows what he or she needs to be healed." Hendrix also suggests surprising one's partner at least once a month with something special that will make the person feel cared for. And to do this he suggests exchanging wish lists.

Why not take his advice seriously? It certainly couldn't do any harm. Even a small effort may make a large difference. "Honey, I wish....".

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