Getting the Love You Want, 20th An. Ed. (33 page)

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Authors: Ph.D Harville Hendrix

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CHAPTER 4: ROMANTIC LOVE
1
The experience of romantic love, an intensely passionate and often sexual relationship between a man and a woman, is among the oldest recorded experiences of mankind. It inflames the relationship between the ancient gods and goddesses (Zeus and Hera), sometimes between gods and humans (Cupid and Psyche), often between famous persons (Dante and Beatrice, Isaac and Rebekah, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer), and surely among many ordinary mortals, although history shows little interest in lesser persons. Some of these relationships inspired by the fires of eros have changed the course of history (Antony and Cleopatra, Paris and Helen of Troy); others have inspired great literature (Dante and Beatrice, Tristan and Isolde); all constitute the most endearing and enduring stories of humankind, most of which end in tragedy and death (Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah, Lancelot and Guinevere). (
See Love Through the Ages
, by Robert Lynd.) Explanations of the source of this energy have ranged from the “infusion of the gods” or a “demon” to the result of a disease. People fell in love because they were struck by Cupid’s arrow, were tricked into drinking a magic potion, or happened to be born under favorable stars. In every case, something external, even extraterrestrial, was involved. Today, with the decline in the belief of the supernatural, explanations tend to be more psychological and subjective, with the energy believed to be arising from within the persons.
The forms of romantic love seem to have undergone three changes in history, each reflecting changes in the male/female relationship, and its fate has been determined by social structure and cultural practices. Prior to the eleventh century, the dominant form of romantic love was
called “heroic love.” The major theme in heroic love is the pursuit and capture of the woman by the man. The societies in which this form of love existed were feudal aristocracies in which romantic love was sought and mainly existed either in passionate or extramarital love or in romanticized nonsexual relationships. Contributing factors to this situation were the existence of slavery, the bias of free-born men against labor, the association of slavery with the functions of the home, and the consequent difficulty of associating love with home. Thus the fulfillment of love was sought outside the home and outside marriage.
A radical reversal in male-female relationships occurred in the eleventh century with the appearance of the troubadours and their love ballads in southern France. In a short time, heroic love was replaced with what is known as “courtly love,” in which the theme of pursuit and capture gave way to the image of male supplication and entreaty of the female. Images of force and rape were replaced with refinements of courtship. This led to the formation of “courts of love,” where the merits of love were debated and where judgments were usually rendered that true love was attainable only outside of marriage and often only if there was no sexual communion. The form of modern love relationships was influenced and developed against this background.
Romantic love as the door to marriage had to await the evolving freedom and rights of individuals to choose their fate and to determine their own forms of government. That and the emerging freedom and equality of women were the forces that led to modern marriage, and its attendant psychological baggage. (See Morton Hunt,
The Natural History of Love,
and Isidor Schneider, ed.,
The World of Love, vol.
1.)
2
Quoted in Jane Lahr and Lena Tabori,
Love,
p. 189.
3
Michael R. Liebowitz, M.D.,
The Chemistry of Love,
pp. 37ff.
4
In contrast to classical views of romantic love, which attribute its source to external forces, modern psychologies of love locate its origin in the human mind. In this book, love is viewed as a single energy that is directed to outside persons or to the self, depending upon need and motivation. Although it is a singular phenomenon, its distinctive forms are represented as stages. However, since the experience of romantic love seems to us to be stimulated by an outside source, namely the loved one, the ancients’ belief in the external origins of love can be understood as the objectification of our inner sensations. Now, however, we understand that the external person has no power to activate such passions, but instead is endowed by the unconscious with attributes that appear to give him or her that power. The passions are
self-activated by the association of an internal need-gratifying image with the character makeup of the loved other.
5
Lucius Apuleius,
The Golden Ass,
in Robert Lynd,
Love Through the Ages,
pp. 1165ff.
CHAPTER 5: THE POWER STRUGGLE
1
My first encounter with a full discussion of the unconscious expectations couples bring to marriage was in
Marriage Contracts
by Clifford Sager. Sager has worked out a very detailed analysis of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious contracts.
2
Early-childhood experience also seems to be the source of other beliefs that characterize the power struggle. The intuitive response of parents to childhood stress, especially in the preverbal stage, leads to the belief in the omniscience of spouses: they know what we need without having to ask. We resent our needs not being responded to automatically. Having to ask breaks the illusion that our partners know what we need. Another belief is that they have what we need and can satisfy us if they would. This is called the “illusion of partner omnipotence.” Finally, we believe they should always be available to meet our needs and have no needs of their own. This is the belief in partner omnipresence. Their failure to meet our needs creates emotional pain and leads eventually to the belief in the partner as evil and therefore the enemy.
3
The stages of grief in a dying person were worked out by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and described in her book
On Death and Dying.
4
The bargaining stage in the power struggle, an expression of the quid pro quo that most couples naturally evolve in their attempt to negotiate their needs, is the stage most couples present to the therapist when they enter therapy. In my opinion, this is the source of earlier methods in marital counseling that attempted to help couples develop contracts and negotiate their conflicts. Therapists responded to what couples were trying to do and sought to help them do it better. They did not recognize it as a stage in the power struggle and unwittingly helped couples stay in it, rather than help them move to the next stage, despair, and to the surrender of their illusions. The surrender of illusions is a precondition for the conscious marriage and precedes the final step of acceptance.
5
This estimate is attributed to Virginia Satir, a well-known family therapist.
CHAPTER 6: BECOMING CONSCIOUS
1
The idea of “becoming conscious” refers to processes common to psychology and the spiritual traditions. Long before Freud’s development of his theory of the unconscious, which states that our lives are directed largely by forces not in our consciousness nor under its control, the ancient mystical traditions of the East and the West perceived our ordinary, everyday consciousness as an illusion, a state of “waking sleep.” While there are important technical distinctions between the “unconscious” and “waking sleep,” both views are in agreement in perceiving that things are not the way they appear and that a fundamental change in mental life is necessary if we are to know the “truth.” These changes consist of “insight” and “awakening,” respectively.
Insight brings unconscious contents into consciousness, and awakening gives us direct experience of “reality” that has been hidden behind our symbolic constructions. I use the phrase “becoming conscious” to combine these two processes as they apply to marriage.
2
The Bible, Exodus 12:37ff.
CHAPTER 7: CLOSING YOUR EXITS
1
The no-exist decision is an adaptation of the “escape-hatch” concept developed by Frank Ernst, a transaction analyst, who conceived the idea of the OK Corral (see bibliography). The purpose of this exercise is to engage the rational mind, the new brain, which can make cognitive decisions not to act on impulses and emotions that would be destructive to therapy, to the self, or to a relationship. My experience that couples will make this decision and still not improve led to the discovery that they use many noncatastrophic exits to avoid positive involvement with each other.
2
I first learned about the concepts of graduated change from Kurt Lewin, an analytically oriented social psychologist who pioneered in the area of the social psychology of group process and group change. Graduated change is also commonly used in behavioral psychology and social-learning theory.
CHAPTER 8: CREATING A ZONE OF SAFETY
1
Richard Stuart,
Helping Couples Change
, p. 17.
2
I am greatly indebted to Stuart and to behaviorism in general for the idea of a structured therapeutic change process. I was also influenced
by Transactional Analysis (which talks about giving people permission to want) and by John Whitaker, a Dallas psychiatrist and transactional analyst, who developed the idea of the “want” list.
One key difference between the Reromanticizing exercise and Stuart’s Caring Days exercise is that I ask couples to generate their list of caring behaviors by writing down three different kinds of pleasurable transactions: ones they experienced during the romantic stage of their relationship, ones they are currently experiencing in their relationships, and ones that they would like to experience but have never asked for, because of fear of being criticized or rejected. All three kinds of pleasurable transactions tap into unmet childhood needs. The enactment of these behaviors touches childhood issues in the unconscious and creates an environment in which the deeper conflicted issues can later be addressed.
CHAPTER 10: DEFINING YOUR CURRICULUM
1
In earlier versions of this exercise, I did not ask couples like Melanie and Stewart to try to figure out what childhood wounds they were reinjuring. It did not seem necessary in order to benefit from the exercise. All they had to do was identify a chronic criticism, convert it into a fear, then into a desire, and then describe a positive, specific behavior that would satisfy that desire. It seemed very straightforward.
Now I see it quite differently. I believe that it is important to attach the current frustration to a childhood memory for two reasons. First, it helps the sender know that his or her frustrations have their roots in childhood, not in the relationship. I use the ninety percent formula. Ninety percent of a person’s frustrations are repetitions of childhood wounds and ten percent are from the current relationship. The partner’s behaviors trigger the memories, but do not create them. Second, linking the present frustrations with the past helps the listening partner know that he or she is not the ultimate cause of the frustrations, but instead the occasion for it. Knowing that the frustrations come from the sender’s childhood, the listener can develop compassion and even empathy for his or her partner’s pain.
2
Agape is the second word in the Greek language for “love.” It is used to express human love, the love of humans for God, and the love of God for humans. It also refers to a love feast that expresses brotherly love. In every case it seems to mean a love for another without regard for conditions—unconditional love. It is not dependent upon the worth or
value of the other, and when it is expressed it carries no obligation. It is an unconditional gift. (See Bauer,
A Greek-English Lexicon,
p. 6.)
In Greek philosophy, agape is one of the forms of love on a continuum with eros and philia. Therefore, it is not another kind of love, but a special way in which love is expressed. In this book, I view agape as the act of directing eros, the life energy, away from oneself and toward the welfare of the other. In that sense it is sacrificial, but what is sacrificed is not the self but preoccupation with the self. Although it is used as a noun, and thus denotes an attitude, it is also used as a verb, and thus denotes the way one acts toward another. The merger of these two senses means that agape can be understood as an attitude that is expressed in behaviors. On this basis, I call it the “power of transformation” that directs eros to the other, thus creating a new quality in relationships, called “philia.”
CHAPTER 12: PORTRAIT OF TWO RELATIONSHIPS
1
The focus of this book has been on the power of love for psychological and spiritual healing. Evidence is now being accumulated by research psychologists and physicians on the positive effects of altruistic love on the immune system (McClelland) and on the healing process in general (Siegel). This means that love influences body functions as well as psychological processes such as depression (Weissman). Evidence that marital stress results in psychosomatic symptoms by depressing the immune system (Kiecolt-Glaser) and influences psychological stress such as adolescent suicide, high blood pressure, depression (Folkenberg), and possibly cancer (Levenson) is correlated with evidence that an altruistic lifestyle, a life of loving energy directed to others, improves physical and emotional health (McClelland). The implications emerging from this research indicate the significance of a positive marriage, or the idea of marriage as a passionate friendship, for a general sense of well-being and health. Safety is posited as the invariant and essential component behind mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
2
“Philia” is the root of the English word “filial.” Its basic meaning has to do with brotherly love. But in Greek “brotherly” is not limited to and does not necessarily refer to kinship. It also refers to an attitude and a quality of relating in which the feelings of care that are experienced between people who are connected by blood are experienced between people who are not blood-related. Such bonding is a desirable
human condition, because it would remove the reality of the other as strange and therewith all attendant threats from the outside or the other. Philia is thus the basis of friendship and refers to love among equals (see Bauer, p. 866).
To distinguish friend from foe is essential for personal and group survival. This polarity is the basis of personal and group conflict, violence, and war. True peace—that is, peace without fear—exists only among friends. Peace with fear can exist between foes, but it is always unstable. Again, this appears to be an old-brain function—to respond to this perceived distinction in the service of organismic survival. The admonition by Jesus in the New Testament to “love your enemies” collides with this old-brain directive, but it is the highest concept humans have been able to develop to deal with the animal residues of evolution.
It is interesting that, in a research project of “happy” couples, the item ranked first by all couples was “we are each other’s best friend” (Lauer and Lauer, “Marriages Made to Last”). This form of love between friends is a love among equals that is created through agape, a new quality of relating.

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