What Conscious Partners Know (con’t)
Back from England and Ireland, where we celebrated our 50th anniversary. This stuff works! We certainly wouldn’t have made it to 50 without Imago. Before going away, I had started working my way through the 25 statements Harville and Helen have written in their book Doing Imago Relationship Therapy in the Space-Between about What Conscious Partners Know. I am up to statements 12 and 13.
- To prevent episodes of unnecessary pain, suffering, and damage to their relationship, they need to be intentional and think before they speak.
- They need to differentiate so they can move from symbiosis to connecting.
Conscious Partners Being Intentional
- To prevent episodes of unnecessary pain, suffering and damage to their relationship, they need to be intentional and think before they speak.
We have probably all heard the admonition “think before you speak” from kindergarten on out, and it holds as true now as it did when we were kids. I tell couples that half of what I do in the office is to help them become more aware and more conscious. I would characterize most relationships, certainly ours was before we started using Imago Relationship Therapy, as unconscious, old brain, and reactive.
If my partner came on too strong, my reactive response was to shut down. Well, when I stepped back and looked at that response, it was pretty counter-productive, but I had done it for a long time. What I am trying to help folks do in the office is to become more conscious, use their new, thinking brain, and become more intentional. Being in a conscious relationship takes intentionality, which shows up as thinking before speaking.
Differentiate
- They need to differentiate so they can move from symbiosis to connecting.
The Webster dictionary defines symbiosis as: ”in biology, the living together of two dissimilar organisms in close association or union, especially where this is advantageous to both, as distinguished from parasitism.”
The term originally comes from the world of biology, where different plants can benefit from their close relationship. In humans, most often it describes the relationship between a mother and her baby, where the two need each other. In a conscious relationship, partners need to differentiate themselves in order to connect. The way I understand that is, for example,
I am perfectly capable of living without my partner and she is very capable of living without me, but we have chosen to go in the same direction together. Hence, our relationship is not a symbiotic one where we need each other to exist the way a mother and child need each other. We have differentiated as two separate individuals who have chosen to connect and go in the same direction together.
