The First Chapter in Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt’s book Making Marriage Simple 10 Relationship Saving Truths is entitled Romantic Love is a Trick. They take turns writing the chapters – this first chapter, Romantic Love is a Trick, is by Helen and I would dare say, is the key insight of Imago Relationship Therapy.
Western culture tends to see romantic love as the epitome of love – what real love is all about. Helen takes a completely different view, declaring that Romantic Love is really a trick. From an Imago perspective, the purpose of an intimate relationship is to finish childhood. The solution is to find someone similar enough to the original caretakers to do the job.
If you think about it, none of us had all of our needs met as children. This is not about blaming our parents, as all parents do the best they can do, but we humans just haven’t figured out yet, how to meet all of our children’s needs all of the time. Helen goes on to say:
“Our unconscious mind is set up so that the only way to heal these wounds (the needs that weren’t met in childhood) is to have someone with traits like our caregivers learn how to give us what we needed – and missed out on – in childhood. Though frustrating to endure, this design of relationship has a wondrous plan: to heal each other’s childhood wounds.”(p.16)
More Love
Other writers, philosophers, and theologians also see the universe evolving towards more wholeness and, ultimately more love. Looking around the world today, with the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, and with the impact of climate change and so much else that is going on, it might be hard to see how evolution is moving the universe in the direction of wholeness, but we have made some strides over the centuries.
The abolition of slavery, the women’s movement, the creation of child labor laws, etc. I think, show we are moving in the direction of a kinder, more loving universe.
Imago and Love
Imago theory puts intimate relationships on that same evolutionary trajectory towards wholeness and ultimately, love.
Let me play the devil’s advocate a bit for you doubters. Here are a couple of questions for you.
- Those of you with children – would you agree that kids see everything; they are very observant little creatures.
- Would you also agree, those of you who are parents, that you did not meet all of your children’s needs all the time?
OK, I think most of you would say yes to those two items. Imago’s great insight is that children, observant little creatures that they are, are busy creating a picture, an image, an imprint (the Imago) of the person who loves me, who takes care of me, who meets all my needs.
Because parents aren’t perfect, just as you are not perfect and I am not perfect, inevitably kids will see both sides of the picture, the good and the not-so-good. Their imprint (their Imago) will have both positive and negative characteristics, just as their caretakers had both positive and negative traits.
Tricky Part of Romantic Love
The tricky part of Romantic Love then is to find someone, among the 8 billion people on planet Earth, similar enough to the original caretaker to finish childhood, to get the needs met that weren’t met that well when we were children.
The Romantic Love Phase
In the Romantic Love phase of a relationship, it is the positive traits that attract two people to each other, and that is what Western culture proclaims love is all about. From an Imago perspective, the romantic love phase of the relationship is a stage; it is supposed to happen but also supposed to end. Its job is to get two basically incompatible people together. It does that by putting all the focus on the positive traits of the person we are wooing. That is the trick of romantic love and we get hooked. Eventually, though the negative traits show up and then the real work begins – fixing the negative stuff from childhood.
Here are two more questions for you, especially the doubters.
- Those of you in a committed relationship, why are you with the person you are with? Most men will have met other women by the time they get into a serious relationship and most women will have met other men. So why the one you are with rather than 15 others? and
- Can you remember the first time you met? Everyone I ask that question to can! I can’t remember what I did yesterday but I can remember 50 years ago when I first met Crystal.
So what is going on? I think that on an unconscious level, we recognize someone familiar – someone who has some, or many, of both the positive but also the negative traits of our family of origin. And we fall in love!!
Falling in Love
As Helen says:
“Now this ‘falling love’ business might not be so intense for everyone. For some, it’s more gradual. But either way, you begin to think about each other a lot. Being apart feels unbearable. So you text and call each other frequently. When together, you seem to know each other’s thoughts. You complete each other’s sentences. You know exactly what the other one wants because, well, it’s exactly what you want too! … It is a mysterious attraction: you feel moments of absolute ecstasy!”(p.12)
And any of you who have fallen in love could probably agree with that assessment of Romantic Love. You, like me, have fallen for the trick, and now, comes the harder part – dealing with the negative traits that inevitably will show up in any committed relationship. I’ll look at that next week in Chapter 2 Incompatibility is Grounds for Marriage.
