Attraction
or Lasting Love?
by Dr. Bonnie
Eaker Weil
"To some
extent, each of us marries to make up for his own
deficiencies. In order to survive as children, we have
all had to exaggerate those aspects of ourselves that
pleased those on whom we depended and to disown those
attitudes and behaviors that were unacceptable to them.
What we lack, we seek and then struggle against in
those whom we select as mates." -- Sheldon Kopp
 Across a crowded room
you will be attracted to a stranger because he seems
familiar. The attraction is based on unconscious images
of your parents, siblings, or even an aunt or uncle. It
can be a mustache, a smile, the color of his eyes, a
certain height or weight that triggers your attraction.
(My husband, Jeff, wears a cologne similar to my
father's and has a "candy drawer" just like
Dad, even though he's a periodontist. I share a striking
resemblance to his mother when she was my age.)
This image is what
Dr. Hendrix calls the "Imago". It's an
unconscious composite of your parents' positive and
negative traits. When you meet your Imago, you
unconsciously sense an opportunity to "fix"
some of the "wrongs" of your childhood. It's
the positive traits that make your knees weak, but the
negative traits are actually more magnetic on an
unconscious level. The chemistry that turns you on is
reminiscent of someone in your childhood whose love and
affection you are still trying to recreate. Your
unconscious mind says, "Here's a man who can make
all my troubles go away. He can make up for all the
things that went 'wrong' in my childhood and previous
relationships and recapture what went right!"
Everything goes
smoothly until about the third date or shortly
thereafter, which is when you begin to notice his
negative traits. Your Imago's negative traits are
powerful triggers that bring back unpleasant memories
from your childhood and set off a cascade of painful
emotions. What initially attracted you begins to repel
you. The image of the partner who is most attractive to
you is buried deep within your unconscious mind. You
began sketching this picture soon after your birth and
before you were a teenager the composite was nearly
complete. Your Imago has a dominant influence over the
type of partner you seek, the way you relate to him, and
how happy you will be together. The relationship script
you wrote as a child is based on both the Imago you
created and the childhood wounds you suffered.
Many people break up
because they think their partner should only display
positive character traits, and they don't want to accept
the negative traits. When I say we pick the one who
gives us the most I mean that the love of our life is
also our crucible -- meaning a test or trial that will
challenge us. (The term crucible was coined by David
Schnarch.) Your crucible will be the one who will push
your most tender emotional buttons and force you to
stretch your comfort zone and grow. Guess what? That's
the way it's supposed to work. Choosing the partner who
gives you the most trouble is Mother Nature's way of
giving you a second chance to go back and heal your
early wounds from childhood. Your partner is your
crucible because he brings you face to face with your
old, and often buried, heartaches. The partners who
sometimes make us want to pull our hair out (or theirs)
are actually the ones who teach us the most. This may
sound hard to believe, but it's one of the few things
that is certain and predictable about relationships.
If your relationship
history is filled with carbon copies of the same man in
different packages, it's because these men are precisely
what you need most for your own development. They may
not be the "ones" you want to live happily
ever after with, but they are sure to be important
stepping stones. Plus they give you a chance to practice
the skills you're learning, so you are more confident
when the "love of your life" enters the
picture.
According to Dr.
Harville Hendrix, bestselling author of Getting the Love
You Want, relationships are created and should be
nurtured and maintained so we can "finish our
childhood with our partner, instead of running from our
partner."
Certain needs must be
met in each developmental stage of infancy and
childhood. Needs that were not met -- or that you
perceived were not met -- come out in frustrations with
your partner. Since your perception of the world as an
infant and child was so narrow, the occasions when your
parents didn't understand or meet your needs became
exaggerated and imprinted in your mind. From these
experiences you formulated an unconscious picture of a
"perfect parent or attachment figure."
As an adult, you project this unrealistic image of your
"perfect parent" on to your partner or
potential partner. Your hidden hope is that this person
will meet your earlier unmet needs and somehow magically
"complete you".
Trouble
in Heaven
The trouble begins
when you get angry with your partner or date for having
the negative traits you associate with your parents and
are trying to avoid. Ironically, since the negative
traits create a stronger attraction, if your partner
didn't have them, you wouldn't have been drawn to him in
the first place. Fritz
Perls, founder of Gestalt
Therapy, suggests we all have "unfinished
business" with our parents because all of our needs
were not met all of the time. He suggests this
unfinished business becomes "frozen" at some
point in our childhood, and begins to "thaw"
in adulthood when we enter a relationship with someone
who fits our Imago.
For example, my
patient Judy was attracted to one elusive man after
another because her mother was overbearing and she was
afraid of being smothered in a relationship. I was
attracted to my first husband because he reminded me of
my friend Barbara's father whom I considered
"trustworthy, reliable, and nurturing". I was
trying to avoid a man like my father because he was
unfaithful to my mother when I was a child. I hadn't
done family of origin work with my father yet and my
first husband was an "over-correction". He
ended up being just as distant as my father because I
unconsciously picked someone who was not very interested
in having a sexual relationship. If you objectively look
at your date or partner's traits you can easily see them
in your parents.
The majority of
relationships (married and single) stop before they
start. People stop relationships for many reasons, but
one of the biggest ones is that we're disappointed in
our mates when they begin to display some of the very
same traits we dislike in our own parents, or in
ourselves. When our real life relationship doesn't live
up to our fantasy ideas of what a relationship is
"supposed" to be, we mistakenly believe the
"love is gone". Married and single couples
emotionally "check out" of the relationship
(often resorting to affairs) and singles walk away
before the plot thickens.
Another roadblock
that we place in a relationship is the belief that it
won't or can't work, or that it's too good to be true.
Married couples give up on their partners and singles
give up before they have a chance to really get going.
We do this because of our early scripts that say we will
eventually be abandoned or suffocated. It's this fear
that permeates our hearts and propels us to predict the
outcome, or the end, of a relationship before we live
out the beginning and the middle. Singles are
particularly notorious for this sort of self-fulfilling
prophecy, but married couples do it, too, especially
when they're having problems.
We're so afraid of
breaking up that we stop relationships before they
start. Break-ups rule our lives. We fear we will break
up, we actually break up, or we fear the other person
will break up with us. My book Make Up, Don't Break Up
will teach you how to triumph over the fear of breaking up
and stop sabotaging your own efforts.
A relationship can
stop before it starts at any point -- from the first date
(or even before) up until you reach the Real and Lasting
Love Stage. If you want your relationship to last, you
must make it number one and nurture it. The most amazing
stage of a relationship begins when you reach real and
lasting love, but you can't get there if you keep
stopping relationships before they start.
If you want to
"talk about the relationship" it means you
think there's a problem, or you're trying to jump ahead
and predict the outcome, rather than living and
experiencing it. Frankly, many relationships that could
be strong and exciting get talked to death. I say talk
less and enjoy each other more. It's action, not talking
about action, that makes a relationship move forward.
There is an effective way to resolve conflicts,
fact-find, and learn what you need or want to know, but
it requires special dialogue skills not just dumping all
your feelings on your date or partner to "get
things off your chest".
It's ironic that we
can accept our friends' flaws and yet are often
unwilling to accept the weaknesses of our partner. If we
chose friends with the same rigid requirements we expect
dates and partners to live up to, we would have very few
friendships, if any. Look at your date or spouse through
the same eyes you look at your close friends -- with
understanding, compassion, gratitude for what they bring
to the friendship, and acceptance of the traits you may not he so crazy about.
Don't Predict
the Outcome
How many times have
you said, "I knew he wouldn't keep his
promise," or "I knew she wasn't right for
me." Too many times our fears turn into self-fulfilling
prophecies. If you think it's not going
to work, how hard are you going to be willing to try?
Relationships stop before they start because we predict
a negative outcome and then help to make it come true
with thoughts and words like, "Why bother? It's not
going to happen anyway."
No matter how good a
relationship is, when a couple hits difficult times, one
or both of them is often tempted to give up -- allowing
negative thoughts and fears to wash away their hopes for
the future. One of them has to show confidence.
People often think
they have only two choices:
1. To stay in a bad relationship.
2. To be alone.
We have many more
choices than two! We can choose to learn about each
other, really get to know each other's hearts and fears,
and have fun in a relationship. Partners can learn how
to play together and how to connect, disconnect, and
reconnect without hurting each other. You've got to go
beyond your comfort zone. Life is about risks and
putting yourself into greater levels of closeness and
intimacy so you can learn to enjoy the journey.
 This
article was
excerpted with permission from
Make Up, Don't Break Up - Finding
and Keeping Love for Singles and Couples
by
Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil.
Published by Adams Media Corporation, www.adamsmedia.com
Info/Order
this book
About The
Author
Bonnie Eaker
Weil, Ph.D. is one of
America's best-known relationship experts. She has appeared on the Today
show, Oprah!, A Current Affair, The View, Sally, Ricki Lake, Montel, Maury
Povich, and Extra. New York magazine has named Dr. Weil one of the city's
top therapists, and her work has been featured in Good Housekeeping, The
New York Times, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, and New
Woman. She is also the author of Adultery: The Forgivable Sin. The
author can be reached at 212-606-3787 for information regarding
sessions, lectures, and seminars; or through her websites www.doctorbonnie.com
www.makeupdontbreakup.com
www.smarthearttherapy.com.
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