Harville Hendrix Quotes

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be in relationship?” Because you can’t always have both. You can’t cuddle up and relax with “being right” after a long day.

Romantic Love delivers us into the passionate arms of someone who will ultimately trigger the same frustrations we had with our parents, but for the best possible reason! Doing so brings our childhood wounds to the surface so they can be healed.

When we were babies, we didn’t smile sweetly at our mothers to get them to take care of us. We didn’t pinpoint our discomfort by putting it into words. We simply opened our mouths and screamed. And it didn’t take us long to learn that, the louder we screamed, the quicker they came. The success of this tactic was turned into an “imprint,” a part of our stored memory about how to get the world to respond to our needs: “When you are frustrated, provoke the people around you.

In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others. —ANDRÉ MAUROIS

FROM ECSTASY TO AGONY Romantic Love sticks around long enough to bind two people together. Then it rides off into the sunset. And seemingly overnight, your dream marriage can turn into your biggest nightmare.

Helen and I like to think of two people in a conscious love relationship as companion stars. Each person is a unique individual ablaze with potential. One is just as important as the other, and each has a unique and equally valid view of the universe. Yet, together, they form a greater whole, kept connected by the pull of mutual love and respect. They mirror the interconnected universe.     New

In the words of Wordsworth, we come into the world “trailing clouds of glory,” but the fire is soon extinguished, and we lose sight of the fact that we are whole, spiritual beings. We live impoverished, repetitious, unrewarding lives and blame our partners for our unhappiness.

He thought he was in love with a person, when in fact he was in love with an image projected upon that person. Cheryl was not a real person with needs and desires of her own; she was a resource for the satisfaction of his unconscious childhood longings. He was in love with the idea of wish fulfillment and--like Narcissus--with a reflected part of himself.

Dr. Hendrix, why do couples have such a hard time staying together?” I thought for a moment and then responded. “I don’t have the foggiest notion. That is a great question and I think I’ll spend the rest of my career trying to find out.

Is this who I married?! Something is terribly wrong. Let us reassure you, nothing has gone wrong. Romantic Love is just the first stage of couplehood. It’s supposed to fade. Romantic Love is the powerful force that draws you to someone who has the positive and negative qualities of your parents or caregiver (this includes anyone responsible for your care as a child, for example: a parent, older sibling, grandparent, or babysitters.).

A man who attended a recent workshop said that “falling in love with my wife made me feel loved and accepted for who I was for the very first time. It was intoxicating.

Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D.   The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings. —MARTIN BUBER

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Ironically, for reasons we will explore in later chapters, fusers (who experienced neglectful caretaking) and isolators (who experienced intrusive parenting) tend to grow up and marry each other, thus beginning an infuriating game of push and pull that leaves neither partner satisfied.

People believe that separation opens their eyes to their self-defeating behaviors and gives them an opportunity to resolve those problems with a new partner. But unless they under- stand the unconscious desires that motivated their dysfunctional behavior in the first relationship and learn how to satisfy those desires with the new partner, the second relationship is destined to run aground on the same submerged rocks.

Experiencing empathy, the freedom to explore, trust, and insight can reset your default reactions to a more curious, tolerant, and confident stance. Because our brains are plastic, consistently positive experiences do stimulate existing neurons to adapt and connect in different pathways. Nurturing relationships help us grow psychologically and neurally in ways that are not possible in nonnurturing relationships. As adults, our most important opportunity for a nurturing relationship comes through committed partnership. It’s a breakthrough to realize that the purpose of committed relationship is not to be happy, but to heal. And then you will be happy!

We have learned over the years of helping couples that just spending quality time talking about each other’s pasts can be very helpful. We’ve seen how effective this can be in our couples’ workshops. Years ago, we devoted half the workshop time to helping couples learn more about each other’s pasts. Now, we spend a fraction of that time and get the same results. There is a concept informally called woundology, where couples spend too much time dwelling on the past, which should be avoided. Nonetheless, spending some time sharing your childhood experiences is vital because it gives you a better understanding of your partner’s inner reality and helps you shift from judgment to curiosity and empathy.

All this may seem like a terrible tangle. But since partnership is designed to resurface feelings from childhood, it means that most of the upset that gets triggered in us during our relationship is from our past. Yes! About 90 percent of the frustrations your partner has with you are really about their issues from childhood. That means only 10 percent or so is about each of you right now. Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Negativity is any thought, word, or deed that tells your partner, “You’re not OK when you think what you think or act the way that you act.” In essence, you are rejecting your partner’s “otherness.” We sometimes feel the need to negate our partners when they do or say something that makes us uncomfortable. Usually, they are just being themselves. But from our point of view, they are threatening an image that we have of them, or they are failing to meet an unspoken need of our own.

the unconscious is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

From our view, these scars are very active in adult intimate relationships and show up constantly when a partner turns away or shows a still face when the other is trying to engage.

LOVE HEALS ALL” is a well-known sentiment. And it can. It can even heal the deepest emotional wound of all—the ruptured connection between you and your parents. But it needs to be a specific kind of love. It needs to be a mature, patient love that is free of manipulation and distortion, and it needs to take place within the context of an intimate relationship. Receiving empathy from a friend may be very moving, but it does not reach all the way down into your psyche. In order to heal the painful experiences of the past, you need to receive love from a person whom your unconscious mind has merged with your childhood caregivers.

One minute you’re involved in your life as you know it, when suddenly you see the one. Your eyes meet (perhaps across a crowded room). Heart palpitations start. And the fairy tale of romance begins. Flowers, batting eyelashes, shared meals, laughter. Sunset walks and little love gifts to each other. You spend hours looking forward to your next time together. Maybe you’ll see a movie or simply hang out—talking about everything and nothing.

When rudely awakened from the dazzling dream of compatibility, people can get very grumpy. Desperate to end the pain and disappointment Romantic Love leaves behind, many couples get divorced. Others who decide not to do the mind-numbing work of dividing up the stuff may stay together. But they wind up living parallel lives, without any true connection. They assume this is as good as it gets. But secretly they think something must be terribly wrong.

Whoa! The idea that your partner is really a composite of your parents can be a bit upsetting at first. Though we love our parents, most of us got over (consciously) wanting to marry them when we turned five or six. Then, when we hit our teenage years, all we wanted was our freedom. But the fact is, we’re unconsciously drawn to that special someone with the best and worst character traits of all of our caregivers combined. We call this our “Imago”—the template of positive and negative qualities of your primary caregivers.

People believe that separation opens their eyes to their self-defeating behaviors and gives them an opportunity to resolve those problems with a new partner. But unless they under- stand the unconscious desires that motivated their dysfunctional behavior in the first relationship and learn how to satisfy those desires with the new partner, the second relationship is destined to run aground on the same submerged rocks.

There are times in most relationships when one partner is mystified by the other’s behavior: “You’re crazy. You keep doing the same things over and over, and it’s totally unproductive!” Or, “I am totally confused by you. You make no sense.” “I’m surprised that you’re going to accept that promotion. You are far too busy already.” There are also times when you are triggered by something your partner does or by your partner’s repetitive behavior. Knowing something about your childhoods will help you understand that.

generally speaking, there are two simplified categories that parenting falls into: intrusive or neglectful caretaking. Parents were either overinvolved—telling us what to do, think, and feel—or they were underinvolved—physically or emotionally absent. These challenges are across the spectrum from subtle to severe. As a response, we become anxious and self-absorbed, losing our capacity for empathy. We become the walking wounded in a battlefield of injured soldiers. For the child who experienced intrusive parents, in later years, she becomes an isolator, a person who unconsciously pushes others away. She keeps people at a distance because she needs to have “a lot of space” around her; she wants the freedom to come and go as she pleases; she thinks independently, speaks freely, processes her emotions internally, and proudly dons her self-reliant attitude. All the while underneath this cool exterior is a two-year-old girl who was not allowed to satisfy her natural need for independence. When she marries, her need to be a distinct “self” will be on the top of her hidden agenda.

When Harville awakened, he looked at the same scene with a loud and appreciative exclamation. I was tempted to explain to him that I had already seen the beautiful view and was now working on an important email. But I recalled the “Still Face” video and moved to the window to join Harville’s enthusiasm for the rising sun and shining beach, rather than be a still face. If I had not joined him, his excitement would have had no echo. The power of this experience led us to include it as a technique we recommend to couples in our workshops and therapy, to cultivate curiosity and wonder by echoing the joy (or the sadness) in their partners. THE

Helen’s research in the field of epistemology, the science of “how we know what we know,” helps explain why. There are two different types of knowing: “Separate Knowing” and “Connected Knowing.” Here’s an illustration of the differences between the two. You have a “separate” or intellectual knowing of an apple if you can recognize a picture of the fruit, understand that it contains the seeds of the plant, or talk about its health benefits. You have a “connected” or more experiential knowing of an apple when you hold one in your hand, feel the waxy texture of the skin, smell it, and taste it. Separate knowing is abstract. Connected knowing is concrete. Combining these two ways of knowing can give you a more comprehensive level of understanding. You learn about the apple and you taste it.

The couples counselor Harville Hendrix has written that the entire experience of falling in love can be distilled down to just four characteristic emotions. The first, he says, is a feeling of recognition—the thing that makes you say to your newfound love (the quotes are his), “I know we’ve just met, but somehow I feel as though I already know you.” The second is a feeling of timelessness: “Even though we’ve only been seeing each other for a short time, I can’t remember when I didn’t know you.” The third is a feeling of reunification: “When I’m with you, I no longer feel alone; I feel whole, complete.” The fourth is a feeling of necessity: “I can’t live without you.” This is Aristophanes all over again. We speak of our partners as if they were a long-lost part of ourselves—and, accordingly, we are certain that they will be with us forever. We know they will never cheat on us. We know that we will never cheat on them. We say that we have never felt so understood; we say that nothing has ever felt so right. What is remarkable about this idea of love is how deeply entrenched it is—in our hearts as well as our culture—even as it utterly fails to correspond to reality. We fall out of love left and right. We question whether we were really in it in the first place. We cheat and are cheated on. We leave and are left. We come to believe that we never truly knew our lover after all. We look back on our passion in the chilly dawn of disenchantment—in the after-afterglow—and are so baffled by our conduct that we chalk it up to something like temporary insanity.

Self-rejection is the most universal and least recognized problem in our lives. It is the source of all our difficulties in giving and receiving love.

In a healthy relationship, two people gradually transition from moving within a single orbit to moving in two separate, but overlapping, orbits. They are able to have their own friends, their own interests, their own schedules, and—most important—their own opinions, feelings, and thoughts, while still enjoying and preferring each other’s company.

As we know, human memory is notoriously unreliable when it comes to recalling facts. But when it comes to matters of the psyche, the way we feel about what happened can be as significant as the facts of the case.

For the sake of clarity, I would like to reduce the discussion in these first five chapters to its simplest form. First of all, we choose our partners for two basic reasons: 1. They have both the positive and the negative qualities of the people who raised us. 2. They compensate for positive parts of our being that were cut off in childhood. We enter the relationship with the unconscious assumption that our partner will become a surrogate parent and make up for all the deprivation of our childhood. All we have to do to be healed is to form a close, lasting relationship. After a time we realize that our strategy is not working. We are “in love,” but not whole. We decide that the reason our plan is not working is that our partners are deliberately ignoring our needs. They know exactly what we want, and when and how we want it, but for some reason they are deliberately withholding it from us. This makes us angry, and for the first time we begin to see our partners’ negative traits. We then compound the problem by projecting our own denied negative traits onto them. As conditions deteriorate, we decide that the best way to force our partners to satisfy our needs is to be unpleasant and irritable, just as we were in the cradle. If we yell loud enough and long enough, we believe, our partners will come to our rescue. And, finally, what gives the power struggle its toxicity is the underling unconscious belief that, if we cannot entice, coerce, or seduce our partners into taking care of us, we will face the fear greater than all other fears – the fear of the death.

[T]here is really very little difference between romantic love and the power struggle. On the surface, these first two stages of the love relationship appear to be worlds apart. A couple’s delight in each other has turned to hatred, and their goodwill has degenerated into a battle of wills. But what’s important to note is that the underlying themes remain the same. Both individuals are still searching for a way to regain their original wholeness, and they are still holding on to the belief that their partners have the power to make them healthy and whole. The main difference is that now the partner is perceived as withholding love. This requires a switch in tactics, and husbands and wives begin to hurt each other, or deny each other pleasure and intimacy, in hopes of having their partners respond with warmth and love.

Because you were willing to risk a creative response to anger, you have suddenly become a trusted confidant, not a sparring partner. Once you become skilled in this non-defensive approach to criticism, you will make an important discovery: in most interactions with your spouse, you are actually safer when you lower your defenses than when you keep them engaged, because your partner becomes and ally, not an enemy.

A conscious partnership is a relationship that fosters maximum psychological and spiritual growth; it’s a relationship created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind: to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole.

A conscious partnership is a relationship that fosters maximum psychological and spiritual growth; it’s a relationship created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind: to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole.

Isolators often have a difficult time which this exercise. ... What they are really doing is hiding behind the psychic shield they erected as children to protect themselves from overbearing parents. They discovered early in life that one way to maintain a feeling of autonomy around their intrusive parents was to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. When they deprived their parents of this information, their parents were less able to invade their space. After a while, many isolators do the ultimate disappearing act and hide their feelings from themselves. In the end, it is safest not to know.

It is often the case, as I have mentioned before, that isolators unwittingly recreate the struggle of their childhood by marrying fusers, people who have an unsatisfied need for intimacy. This way, they perpetuate the conflict that consumed them as children, not as an idle replay of the past or as a neurotic addiction to pain, but as an unconscious act aimed at the resolution of fundamental human needs.

The fact of the matter is that both individuals (fusers and isolators) have the identical need to be loved and cared for. It’s just that one of them happens to be more in touch with those feelings than the other.

To the casual observer, it appears that the isolator is a self-sufficient individual with few needs, and the fuser has limitless desires. The fact of the matter is that both individuals have the identical need to be loved and cared for. It’s just that one of them happens to be more in touch with those feelings than the other.

I have witnessed this phenomenon of two-way healing so many times in my work with couples that I can now say with confidence that most husbands and wives have identical needs, but what is openly acknowledged in one is denied in the other. When the partners with the denied need are able to overcome their resistance and satisfy the other partners' overt need, a part of the unconscious mind interprets the caring behavior as self-directed. Love of the self is achieved through love of the other.

Not allowing ourselves to be congratulated, celebrated, appreciated, nourished, or loved by people and events outside ourselves is a defense designed to protect us from psychic pain. Barriers to love are erected in our unconscious as it acts on behalf of our own survival. In fact, a barrier to receiving is often the capstone of all our defenses. Connecting

is easier to go without love than to accept a form of love that reawakens our fears of loss. In fact, to receive love feels far more dangerous than to be without it.

For the purposes of my work with couples, I was keenly interested in the fact that changing your thoughts can change your brain. In a type of therapy called Behavior Change Therapy, or BCT, people are trained in how to use their rational minds to challenge the thoughts and beliefs that can cause depression.

When people use their rational minds to defeat depression, the part of the brain that is linked with rumination and excessive thinking calms down. ... Once again, thinking, alone, has been shown to alter the physiology of the brain.

The new research shows that dwelling on anger has the potential to enhance the anger, not diffuse it. I used to think that venting anger was like blowing the foam off a glass of beer; a few puffs and you're done with it. Instead, it's like blowing on a fire; the more you blow, the hotter the flame. On a physiological level, expressing anger on a regular basis enlarges the part of the brain devoted to negative emotions. What you do is what you get. With so much cerebral real estate devoted to anger, an angry response can become a conditioned response. Another fact about the brain is that the unconscious brain experiences all anger as dangerous to the self. It cannot determine whether the anger is directed at itself, or at someone else.

We are formed from every important relationship we’ve ever had. Look into the Between of any marriage, and you will find ghosts from each partner’s past. Mothers, fathers, former lovers, best friends, coaches, and special teachers occupy the Between of every marriage and influence the way individuals become partners. These old ghosts are remnants from both positive and negative experiences—times you were truly loved and times you were hurt, times you were empathically understood and times you were grossly misjudged. All have left their mark.

But we can only be evolved in the same context in which we were lost—that is, in relationship. We are born into relationship. Our personalities are formed by relationship. And, we are healed in relationship. Relationship holds both the evidence of our injuries and the means of our salvation. It’s the way we become who we are.

We embrace the knowledge that affirmations and negativity cannot travel the same neural pathways at the same time.

Instead, you will begin to see that you are partners suffering from past hurts and also partners in the project of helping each other create safety in your relationship and respond to each other’s needs.

People enter relationships with varying degrees of self-awareness. Everyone is aware to some extent of the important people and events that have made them who they are. But most of us do not know the extent to which we continue to be influenced by our previous experiences. We are formed from every important relationship we’ve ever had. Look into the Between of any marriage, and you will find ghosts from each partner’s past. Mothers, fathers, former lovers, best friends, coaches, and special teachers occupy the Between of every marriage and influence the way individuals become partners.

These old ghosts are remnants from both positive and negative experiences—times you were truly loved and times you were hurt, times you were empathically understood and times you were grossly misjudged. All have left their mark.

During the day, I have conversations in my mind about what a wonderful husband and father he is, and then he comes home. He walks through the door and something happens. I feel a physical shift happen inside of me, and I either get quiet or I sometimes get irritable or angry or distant.

Each of us comes into the world whole and able to receive love and nurturing from our parents as naturally as we breathe. We are connected to our social context, to all parts of ourselves, to the universe, and to the Divine.

If the need is met—the parents attend to it, support it, and help the child be successful at integrating it—then it will become a natural and wholesome part of the child’s self. If the need is not met, then the child’s frustration will lead to pain. In human beings, including children, our primitive, or “old,” brains interpret this pain as a sign of danger. The perception of danger causes fear, and fear results in resistance to whatever is seen as dangerous.

When we say or do things that other people don’t approve of, we learn to hide certain parts of ourselves in order to avoid negative feedback.

Symbiosis is the unconscious assumption that other people share your subjective states, thoughts, and feelings. When two people are symbiotic, they have an inability to function on their own as individuals and still be in a relationship. They cannot operate with clear boundaries and be connected. Their connected knowing is so overly emphasized that it has become fused knowing. They think, or act as if they think, that when you love someone and that person loves you back, you must think, feel, and act alike.

One clue that it’s a projection rather than an objective assessment is if it’s veracity is asserted repeatedly with intense emotion.

Unfortunately, a child often has the experience of being injured when one or both parents do not support her normal developmental needs and impulses. When we talk about needs, what are we talking about? An important example would be the need to stay connected or attached to the caretaker. Besides all the impulses a child has to make to maintain this attachment, the child also has impulses toward exploring, creating an identity, and becoming competent in the world. When these needs and impulses develop, our caretakers can support them or they can not support them, totally or partially.

You can see how symbiosis is related to projection. Projection is the means by which symbiosis is achieved: I ascribe to you things that are true about me, and that makes you an extension of me.

The infant is born with many million more neurons than she can use. Gradually, she loses the brain connections she doesn’t need and begins to strengthen those that will help her survive and thrive in her particular environment. In a parallel process, the infant soon learns which of her actions are greeted with smiles and which cause frowns or, equally frightening, indifference.

Our personal relationships are tainted by our own self-hatred, and our social attitudes are formed by it. Our private wounds produce ripples of dis-ease all around us.

A good relationship also has four distinct stages: attraction, romance, power struggle, and mature love.

The person we are most attracted to will very likely share some significant traits or characteristics with the parent who gave us the most trouble in childhood.

As a result, not all of our inborn traits, tendencies, and talents cross into adulthood with us. Parts of ourselves are left behind on the road to maturity. What is left is a joylessness and emptiness we try to fill with things that can’t possibly give us what we’re looking for.

In fact, you chose him or her, in part, because he or she recreated the same difficulties you had in childhood.

The partners have learned how to balance the requirements of closeness and separateness, how to create a sexual life that satisfies them both, how to solve problems effectively together, and how to talk and listen to each other so their differing points of view are understood and honored.

Whenever their partner’s behavior looks or sounds like the real threats they’ve experienced in the past, they activate the defenses they used back then. Their defensive arsenal is ready to be deployed at the slightest provocation. An unsuspecting or well-intentioned partner can stumble over a tripwire and never know what they did to set off the attack.

one partner’s defense quickly becomes the source of the other partner’s wound. Wounds don’t cause damage; defenses cause damage. When defensive partners lash out or retreat in an effort to protect themselves from pain or intrusion, they wound the other partner, who responds with a defense, which, in turn, wounds the partner who was defensive in the first place. A cycle of unconscious wounding and defending gets established that is hard to break.

As you work your way step by step through Imago Therapy, you will be creating a zone of safety between you—a sacred space we call the Space Between—that is essential for getting the love you want. You might liken this zone to a river that runs between you. You both drink from the river and bathe in it, so it’s important that it be free from garbage and toxins. Your interactions in the Space Between determines what you experience inside. To keep the water running clean and pure, you must stop filling it with criticisms

and hurtful comments and replace them with respectful, safe interactions. You must move from self-care to caring for this Space Between.

Imago match, that chemical reaction occurs, and love ignites. All other bets, all other ideas about what we want in a mate, are off. We feel alive and whole, confident that we have met the person who will make everything all right. 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.

envision to be our birthright. Stubbornly, we want what we need without having to change who we are, but that is impossible, for what we need is ourselves—our lost wholeness— which is attainable only through changing what we have become.

Your partner may not look like your parents, and on the surface they may not act like your parents. But you will end up feeling the same feelings you had as a child when you were with your parents. This includes the sense of belonging and the love you felt. But it also includes the experience and upset of not getting all your needs met.

The outside shapes the inside

FOR THE SAKE of clarity, I would like to reduce the discussion in these first five chapters to its simplest form. First of all, we choose our partners for two basic reasons: (1) they have both the positive and the negative qualities of the people who raised us, and (2) they compensate for positive parts of our being that were cut off in childhood. We enter the relationship with the unconscious assumption that our partner will become a surrogate parent and make up for all the deprivation of our childhood. All we have to do to be healed is to form a close, lasting relationship. After a time we realize that our strategy is not working. We are “in love,” but not whole. We decide that the reason our plan is not working is that our partners are deliberately ignoring our needs. They know exactly what we want, and when and how we want it, but for some reason they are deliberately withholding it from us. This makes us angry, and for the first time we begin to see our partners’ negative traits. We then compound the problem by projecting our own denied negative traits onto them. As conditions deteriorate, we decide that the best way to force our partners to satisfy our needs is to be unpleasant and irritable, just as we were in the cradle. If we yell loud enough and long enough, we believe, our partners will come to our rescue. And, finally, what gives the power struggle its toxicity is the underlying unconscious belief that, if we cannot entice, coerce, or seduce our partners into taking care of us, we will face the fear greater than all other fears—the fear of death.

Tvrdim da, kako bismo se osjećali cjelovitima, potpuno živima, ljudskim bićima, i zato da zaliječimo rane koje nosimo iz djetinjstva, moramo ostvariti vezu. To zvuči prilično dramatično, ali vjerujem da je duboko istinito. Naša ljudska priroda potrebe, bez obzira kako mi to racionalizirali ili prilagođavali, ne može biti zanijekana.

When we look at love relationships in more detail, it is clear that the simple word love cannot adequately describe the wide variety of feelings two individuals can have for each other. In the first two stages of a love relationship, romantic love and the power struggle, love is reactive; it is an unconscious response to the expectation of need fulfillment. Love is best described as eros, life energy seeking union with a gratifying object. When both partners in an intimate relationship make a decision to create a more satisfying relationship, they enter a stage of transfor- mation, and love becomes infused with consciousness and will; love is best de- fined as agape, the life energy directed toward the partner in an intentional act of healing. Now, in the final stage of a conscious partnership, reality love, love takes on the quality of spontaneous oscillation, words that come from quantum physics and describe the way energy moves back and forth between particles. When part- ners learn to see each other without distortion, to value each other as highly as they value themselves, to give without expecting anything in return, to commit themselves fully to each other’s welfare, love moves freely between them without apparent effort. The word that best describes this mature kind of love is not eros, not agape, but yet another Greek word, philia,² which means “love between friends.” The partner is no longer perceived as a surrogate parent or as an enemy but as a passionate friend. It is where we experience the original connecting, when the initial rupture is repaired, and we feel fully safe, relaxed, loved, joyful, and pro- foundly connected. When couples are able to love in this selfless manner, they experience a release of energy. They cease to be consumed by the details of their relationship or to need to operate within the artificial structure of exercises; they spontaneously treat each other with love and respect. What feels unnatural to them is not their new way of relating but the self-centered, wounding interactions of the past. Love becomes automatic, much as it was in the earliest stage of the relationship, but now it is based on the truth of the partner, not on illusion. One characteristic of couples who have reached this advanced stage of con- sciousness is that they begin to turn their energy away from each other toward the woundedness of the world. They develop a greater concern for the environment, for people in need, for important causes. The capacity to love and heal that they have created within the relationship is now available for others.