The Conscious Marriage for the 21st Century
Heal the Wounds of the Past
By Liz Sterling

If you are teetering on the brink of a failed relationship or marriage.hang in there-and if you're working it out, welcome to the new evolution of relationships.

A New Way to Love
According to Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen Hunt, we are now birthing "The Equity Partnership", the marriage of the 21st century and the marriage of the future. We are leaving behind thousands of years of arranged marriages that were male dominated and gender structured and have moved into a time of choice, a time period of deep healing. In unison, Harville and Helen report, "We think nature has set out to heal itself and we believe nature is helping us heal through intimate partnerships."

Approximately 300 years ago with the advent of democracy, we began to select our mates. And wait till you hear the criteria for our selections. Imago, a Latin term for image, is essentially a composite picture of the people who most influenced you at an early age with positive and negative traits similar to your parents. According to Imago Relationship Therapy founder Dr. Hendrix, "You unconsciously choose a partner, an Imago match. This partner has the potential to help you heal unresolved pain from childhood, can help you understand the hidden reason you picked your partner and show you how to heal your relationship and yourself."

He continues, "When we fall in love, it's supposed to be forever. We meet the person of our dreams and a magical transformation takes place within us. We feel alive, whole, connected to the world and the people in it. Then, before we know it, that magical feeling disappears. Disillusioned, our dreams shattered, we begin to feel angry and betrayed. We try to coerce our partners into giving us what we need. We criticize, withdraw, shame, intimidate and we cry. Some of us continue locked in this painful power struggle for years, until we either break up seek help, or live with it. When we remain unaware of the hidden agenda of romantic love, we keep on making the same mistakes. We need to understand that conflict is actually growth trying to happen. By resolving our problems through the Imago dialogue, the emotional bond initially created by romantic love can evolve into the powerful bond that is real love."

Three Basic Steps
Harville and Helen share the three basic steps to achieving healthy communication, and an extra "gift" that will really strengthen your dialogue. This is the crucial communication technique that helps couples move beyond painful arguments and power struggles.

Step One-Mirroring
Learn to listen to your partner without judgment or distorting their thoughts and feelings...as if you are a flat mirror.

Step Two-Validating
It's not enough just to listen. You must learn to pay close attention and listen deep enough to "understand their truth."

Step Three-Empathizing
Once the feeling is expressed, it's time to put yourself in their shoes.

The Gift
Learn how to transform something painful into a "gift".

Techniques For Using Imago Dialogue
Replace reactivity with intentionality. It's so simple to say to your mate: Let me see if I'm getting this. I can imagine you must be feeling________.

A Forgotten Connection
They continue, sharing their wellspring of information and modeling how a very healthy couple converse. "The way we look at it is fundamental, human beings are connected to the whole, to everything in themselves, to the environment, to the cosmos and this connectivity is our essence. The human problem is our essence gets ruptured and we lose awareness of our connection. We don't loose the connection. We forget our connection. When babies are born they live in that field of connectedness. The rupture comes because parents don't know how to hold the babies, how to truly care for them and all of human life is a search for an attempt to repair this ruptured connection."

Childhood Issues
"True enlightenment is awareness of our connectivity. Marriage invites us to connect but doesn't always get us there. We believe we are all chronological ages-at all times, and the purpose of marriage is to move into a partnership where issues from our childhood become revealed. Traditional therapy says forget the past, let go and move on. Imago Therapy is radical because we say the healing occurs by picking a person in romantic love-that is a facsimile of the image made of the parents. The injury that occurred with your parents can only be healed by an Imago match."

A Way to Reconnect
"When two people come together in a romantic relationship, the attraction to the person will always be incompatibility. You wouldn't marry someone if you were conscious of what you were doing, but our Imago match is nature's way of helping us to connect again. Culture says compatibility is the grounds for marriage, but that is a myth. You will marry someone who has different defenses, and their energy will be dissimilar, but the wounds will be similar. That produces the tension, and when worked with, it produces a new marriage, a conscious marriage based on equity. As this is now beginning to emerge in our culture, we believe it is the marriage of the future."

I finally understand. I've been struggling in my marriage and that is what I am supposed to be doing. It feels good for me to know the roller coaster ride I've been on for eleven years, with my own husband, is part of nature's evolution. We are the pioneers of the future of partnership. According to Hendrix and Hunt, both partners have equally important needs. Both have equal responsibility in becoming healing agents for their partners. There has been a shift from hierarchy to shared partnership.

A Healing of Ourselves
"Partnership marriage is an operative word," Hendrix reflects, "For a longtime, I was thinking the divorce rate was a terrible thing. Then Helen and I realized the marriages that are breaking up, are marriages that are unequal. Women have gotten their voice and the men don't know how to listen and don't know how to voice their needs. Traditional marriage supported gender roles where men were dominant and women were living the cultural neurosis in male-dominant societies for centuries. Forced to give up their identity to be in relationship with others, women relinquished their authentic selves. As people have moved into their authenticity, beyond their roles, they are experiencing healing in their core.

"He continues, "Many people who have gone the way of divorce, rather than divorce their projections, have gotten rid of the person who carried those projections, their Imago match-the one who could help them heal the past and restore true partnership. Divorce, we believe is an aborted growth process.but some people must choose this path. To be the person in your partner's life their parents failed to be, takes a lot of hard work."

And might I add, a willingness to ride the stormy seas. Dr. Hendrix says that intense and reoccurring arguments are a good indicator that one or both partners have unresolved childhood pain such as abandonment, rejection, smothering, shame or helplessness. When you stay with your partner, you create the intention to heal the wounds of the past, and by giving each other equal importance, we create gender equality.

Harville and Helen conclude, "A lot of focus has been on personal growth and we believe that relationship growth produces and restores personal healing and world healing. Each time two people create real love, God is born anew in the world and our inimitable connection is restored. It is happening.one relationship at a time.

Imago therapy creates a sacred space for healing and growth that can lead you to the relationship of your dreams."

Dr. Harville Hendrix, is co-founder with Helen Hunt and President of The Institute for Imago Relationship Therapy. In addition, they have partnered in developing Imago Relationship Therapy, and are co-creators of the concept of the "conscious marriage." Log on to www.imagotherapy.com to learn more.

Liz Sterling - Southeast Feature Editor
liz@balancemagazine.com

© 2004 Balance Magazine