I hope all of you had a great family day yesterday. Heard from my daughter, their family was camping in Gatineau and on the ski out ran into a 7-foot moose who then tailed them. Nothing like that here in Windsor. In any case, the last two weeks I shared Harville and Helen’s comments on Feb.(the month of love) and Valentine’s Day. In our culture, the focus is often on cards, flowers, a special dinner, or chocolate and that is all good; they, instead, ask, what do couples really want in a relationship, all year round not just on one day? Over the years the answers have been consistent: safety, connection, and joy. And I would have to agree with them.
Doing Imago Relationship Therapy
Today I am going back to their book Doing Imago Relationship Therapy in the Space-Between and specifically chapter 10 on the Imago Therapist and his or her role as the facilitator of connecting. While this chapter is directed at folks like me, as a therapist/coach, the questions they begin the chapter with, apply to us all in one way or another, whether we ever think about them or not. They ask:
- What do you believe about the nature of the universe?
- What do you believe about human nature?
- What is the source and cause of human suffering, which is operative in explaining why marriages fall apart? And lastly
- What constitutes a thriving relationship?
Pretty heavy sledding would you agree? But how you and I answer those questions impacts how we show up every day. I am only speaking for myself but here is how I would briefly answer those four questions starting with number four, because that is what I talked about the last two weeks.
A Thriving Relationship
What constitutes a thriving relationship? I would say: Safety, connection, and joy. My goal is to help couples relate consciously in a relationship marked by those three qualities. Period. If you feel safe, you can connect and when you are connected you can have fun. Remember safety is the confidence that whenever you are in your partner’s presence you can trust WITHOUT A DOUBT, that your partner will be emotionally available, listen accurately and deeply, and withhold judgment.
Number one
What is the nature of the universe? While I don’t understand all of the implications, I would come down on the side of quantum theory – everything is interacting and connecting with everything, all the way up and all the way down. “That means that our interactions impact the field and the interactions of others impact us, since we are all in the field and it is in us.” (p.229) As a coach, I know that what I do does impact the couples I work with for better or for worse, while at the same time, they influence me, one way or the other. Again I’ll quote Lou Holtz the football coach at Notre Dame: I have coached with good players and bad players, I am a better coach with good players. The same goes for me in the office – we play off each other.
Number two
What do I believe about human nature? I will put myself on the side of Matthew Fox, the author of Original Blessing and champion of creation spirituality. As opposed to Original Sin/fall, redemption theology. Our universe is 13.8 billion years old; the notion of original sin is at most two thousand years old. God created the world and it was good. Yesterday, in his Daily Meditations, Fox paraphrases Sister Dorothy Stand who was assassinated in the Amazon (Feb. 12, 2005) where she had worked for 31 years among the poor. “The beauty of the cosmos and her energy and plants, animals and human life living in peace and harmony and displacing greed with joy and trying to live Gospel values – this is creation spirituality in a nutshell. My student becomes my teacher.”
And for sure I agree with Alfred Adler about human nature when he said: It is not what you possess but how you use it.
Number three
Why do marriages fall apart? Here I side with Harville and Helen who maintain that couples (people, tribes, countries, nations) fight because they can’t tolerate difference. Take a look around – you see a lot of that don’t you? 40% divorce rate; black/white; male/female; Jew/Palestinian; Ukrainian/Russian; South Sudan/North Sudan, etc. etc. People are different, but it doesn’t make one right and the other wrong.
How is that for short answers to some heavy questions? But obviously how I answer those questions impacts how I deal with the couples who turn up in my office. “Every couple is looking for one thing: to restore connecting and experience full aliveness, joy, and wonder that accompanies such renewed connecting.” (p. 236) I have been doing this work for 34 years, but still get really excited when I can facilitate that connection when a couple catches the vision, that they can have the safety, connection, and joy they really want.
