Let’s explore what conscious partners know.
I would characterize most relationships, certainly ours was before we knew about Imago Relationship Therapy. It is described as unconscious, old brain, and reactive. For example, if my partner came on too strong, my reactive response was to shut down. If I step back and look at that response, it was pretty counter-productive. This behaviour is usually done for a long time. What I try to do with couples in the office is to help them
- become more conscious
- use their new brain and…
- become more intentional.
In their book Doing Imago Relationship Therapy in the Space-Between (2019), Harville Hendrix and his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, list 25 statements that would characterize a “conscious” relationship. Below are the first 5. See how they apply to your relationship.
Conscious Partners Know…
- Safety is nonnegotiable for thriving in their relationship.
- Imago Dialogue creates equality and safety and facilitates connecting.
- Negativity arouses anxiety and disconnects them from each other. They keep all negativity and judgment out of their transactions.
- Both of them have an original innocence that was lost in their childhood challenges, which occurred at approximately the same developmental stage.
- The conscious agenda of their relationship is to meet the unmet childhood needs they each brought into their relationship.
One, two and three we have talked about a lot in these blogs, four and five not so much.
Safety
- Safety is nonnegotiable for thriving in their relationship.
Our old reptilian brain’s job is to keep us alive. When it senses danger it goes into the fight, flight or freeze mode. Our old brain has a five hundred million year old track record, you are not going to change it. Safety is nonnegotiable
Imago Dialogue Between Conscious Partners
- Imago Dialogue creates equality and safety and facilitates connecting.
The structure of the Imago Dialogue takes issues out of the power struggle and thus makes it safe for two people to communicate. When safety happens, connection can happen.
- Negativity arouses anxiety and disconnects them from each other. They keep all negativity and judgment out of their transactions.
Your relationship consists of the two of you plus the Space-Between you. In our quantum universe, you want connection. Negativity causes disconnect, and if the Space-Between becomes too negative, then people avoid. Why would they go into a toxic space? In a conscious relationship there is no blame, shame or criticism in the Space-Between.
- Both of them have an original innocence that was lost in their childhood challenges, which occurred at approximately the same developmental stage.
Childhood and Developmental Stages
All children go through certain developmental stages. There are different theories about these stages but agreement about the concept. Because our parents weren’t perfect, as we are not perfect, we all went through various challenges as children. Harville’s experience is that typically, couples who connect in adulthood were challenged in the same developmental stage or the one adjacent.
If my biggest challenges came at the Attachment/Connection stage (the first developmental stage – 0-18 months) typically I would connect with another adult who had challenges in that same stage or the adjacent Exploration stage (18 months to 3 years), rather than someone whose main challenges happened as a teen.
Meeting Childhood Needs
- The conscious agenda of their relationship is to meet the unmet childhood needs they each brought into their relationship.
This is an important one, and it is not what you would typically find in the popular literature on romantic love. In a conscious relationship, you recognize that you are each bent out of shape a bit (all of your needs and all of your partner’s needs were not met 100% growing up). This is not about blaming parents; all parents do the best they can, but we have not yet figured out how to meet all of our children’s needs all of the time. In a conscious relationship, the purpose, then, of your relationship is to meet, as best you can, the needs of your partner that weren’t met the first time around. The added bonus of this one is, that as I stretch to meet my partner’s needs, I am often healing a part of myself that was stunted growing up. It really is a win-win.
