This week, we’re exploring What Conscious Partners Know: 24 and 25
- They need to acknowledge each other’s “otherness”, accept each other’s differences, affirm each other’s reality, adore each other’s traits, and advocate for each other’s reality and potential.
- They must differentiate before they can connect, so they accept each other as an “other” and accept each other’s differences.
These are the last two of the 25 statements about what conscious partners know taken from Harville and Helen’s book Doing Imago Relationship Therapy in the Space-Between (pp. 167-169).
Relationships
I would characterize most relationships, certainly mine was before we started doing the Imago work, as unconscious, old brain and reactive. My whole goal in the office and with these blogs, is to help couples become more conscious, use their new brain and become more intentional. I’ll take these last two together as they speak to the same issue.
Major Cause of Conflict
Harville and Helen have long held that the major cause of conflict in the world is “objection to difference”. Obviously, we can see it out in the world: male/female, gay/straight, black/white, Christian/non-Christian, etc., but they contend it is one of the major causes of disruption in relationships. Number 25 states: “They must differentiate before they can connect”. Earlier in statement number 13, they made the statement: Couples need to differentiate so they can move from symbiosis to connecting. And as I explained back then:
“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.”
In a Conscious Relationship
In humans, symbiosis most often 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.
Differentiated Relationship
In a differentiated relationship, (#25) tells us: “couples can accept each other as an “other” and accept each other’s differences”. The way this will show up in the relationship is stated in # 24: they ”accept each other’s differences, affirm each other’s reality, adore each other’s traits, and advocate each other’s reality and potential.”
Here is how I understand #24. I am my partner’s biggest cheerleader. I want her to become the best person she can be, knowing that she has talents, abilities and traits that I don’t have and she advocates for my reality in the same way. It is not a competition. Again, we don’t need each other in order to survive, but we have chosen to go in the same direction together.
