Ahhh…Romantic love! It sells millions of roses, cards, bottles of wine, and sexy underwear :) What else do you think of? Being barefoot in the Park? Making love under the soft glow of the moon on a balmy tropical beach?
Whatever it is…Romantic love means something different to all of us; it’s totally personal, just like that sexy underwear :) What we all experience though are these three things; Relaxed joyfulness, full aliveness, and flowing energy. These three things…we’ve experienced them before-but when? Think about it…before we were born, we lived in a perfect environment where these states fully existed. So, since we experienced those states before we were exposed to the artificial world, they must BE our natural state, or at least part of it, right?
Whatever it is…Romantic love means something different to all of us; it’s totally personal, just like that sexy underwear :) What we all experience though are these three things; Relaxed joyfulness, full aliveness, and flowing energy. These three things…we’ve experienced them before-but when? Think about it…before we were born, we lived in a perfect environment where these states fully existed. So, since we experienced those states before we were exposed to the artificial world, they must BE our natural state, or at least part of it, right?
So what does any of that have to do with romantic love?
How could a person we’ve only known for a few days possibly create these feelings in us and make us feel so good??
There are lots of explanations, but the one that makes the most sense to me is the Imago Relationship Theory. In a tiny inadequate nutshell, we believe that we all have an image (or Imago because latin is fancier) of what love looks like. Now I know next to nothing about neuroscience, but I do know that human beings are pattern monkeys. We are drawn to the familiar regardless of merit. The familiar-the known is always safer than the unknown and our old cavepeople brains yank us toward it every time.
So we’re born-literally ripped from that place of what…? Relaxed joyfulness, full aliveness, and flowing energy. We’re handed to our parents and we immediately (hopefully anyway) learn the first thing about love and relationships.
Connection equals survival.
We’re not giraffes or horsies that can walk 12 minutes after they’re born. It’s years and years before we’re physically self-sufficient, so we’re absolutely dependent on these bigger people that we usually call mom and dad…(caregivers can be anyone) Whoever it is, they are imprinting on our baby brain. When a baby zebra is born, the mother walks in circles around the baby until that baby recognizes it’s mother’s stripes. In this same way, we internalize everything we’re surrounded by. If our parents were loving and attentive, we learn that the object of our attachment should be loving and attentive. Maybe mom was really anxious and depressed and couldn’t quite attune to us…what do we learn about relationship then?
We’ve all known people, maybe we’re even some of those people who grew up with an alcoholic, addicted, or otherwise abusive parent. It’s almost surreal to watch this person (or ourselves) be inexplicably drawn toward the same type of person in romantic relationships. Now, we’re not saying to ourselves, “WOW! This very attractive human who is an alcoholic (or addict or abusive) is JUST like my dad (who was also an addict or an alcoholic or abusive), I would just LOVE to relive all of that! Or maybe, “the way she makes me coffee in the morning creates the same kind of safety I felt when my grandma cooked me pancakes in the morning.” Ridiculous, right? This is all happening on an unconscious, energetic level.
Other than that, I don’t have any explanation for you. All we need to know is that it happens, because you remember that we’re drawn to the familiar whether it’s good or bad.
So while we’re thinking that the romantic pull is because this person is so hot, or self assured or funny, it’s really because that Imago imprint that we’re carrying around is starting to make itself known. In your brain is a really powerful imago detector that has spotted familiar love. When you meet this person, the imago detector alerts your little self inside and your subconscious is yelling “Mom! Dad!I'm home!!!” How many times do we hear romantic love being described as “coming home” or “feeling like you’ve known each other a million years?” This is why. So assuming that the other person is attracted to you, too, the magic starts to happen. (the magic could happen anyway, but that’s called stalking and it’s a felony). Once we hook up, that’s when those mystical hormones start to kick in. Oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and others create this amazing cocktail. It floods our bloodstream and makes us feel amazing. We feel so good and because these feelings corresponded to meeting this person and because our brains love patterns, we attribute the feelings of amazingness to our new person and all of our defenses drop. We can be vulnerable and open and when we’re vulnerable and open, we feel alive. So that experience of music being sweeter and colors being brighter, sure it comes from being in love, but it can’t possibly be that we’re in love with the other person because remember, we’ve only known them a few days…we’re in love with BEING ALIVE.
Now with all of this being said, I want you to deeply and truly hear me; those feelings of romantic love are NOT an illusion or just “chemicals” or “just a phase”. That is who we are at our CORE, when we put down all of our defenses and our protective behaviors. It’s what we feel when we are the genuine and authentic person we were always meant to be. Our NATURAL STATE
So what the hell happens then? Why Is my office full of desperate couples if love and relationships feel SO good?
Well, those chemicals can’t keep up that rush forever. Our bodies can’t naturally up the dose, so we “crash”. That’s only part of it though. Since we stop feeling all of those wonderful ooey gooey feelings, it doesn’t feel as safe to be so open and our hearts start to put their armor back on. Now this is happening with both partners, but we’re not talking about it, are we? Nope, we’re just assuming that this is the way relationships go. Romance and then comfort and then commitment and then complacency and then boredom. Ugh. Awful, right? But if we understand what’s happening, it doesn’t have to be this way! See, once we get comfortable with each other, we usually decide it’s time to do what?..COMMITT! That’s right.
We make promises and move in together and poop in front of each other and all of a sudden the hot sexy answer to all of our prayers is just somebody who leaves their dirty underwear on the floor and forgets about Thursday night’s dinner plans. All of those wonderful qualities that were so exciting and even mysterious start to bother the hell out of us. I worked with a couple a few years ago.
Wonderful people, one was a sweet little guy with a messy man bun who played the acoustic guitar and spent ten years living out of a backpack in a van. He’d traveled the world, and just worked odd jobs, even though he had a graduate degree in some philosophical thing. He met a girl in undergrad and they fell madly in love. She was studying something called actuarial science. (I had to look it up). She was interested in financial analysis and risk management and statistics and other dirty words like that. She was steady, consistent, and rock solid. She’d grown up in the same house, her parents were still married and they had pretty high expectations of her. He was born to a mom named Rainbow and wasn’t sure who his dad was. He liked to say that what he couldn’t have in fatherly quality, he had in quantity. They lived in tents and RVs. He remembered having a great time as a kid, never thinking anything about the way he grew up. So when they met, they were drawn to the lost parts of themselves that were shining so bright in the other. She thought he was adventurous and free, kind, and sensitive. She loved his spirit and softness. To him, she was consistent and reliable. She knew where she was going and what she wanted. They were so happy right up until they weren’t. Well, right up until they got married, anyway. There’s nothing like a little commitment to kick start the power struggle! Once we’re committed, we’re more connected. We forget the fact that we are two different people! Suddenly those things that looked so interesting and attractive to us look a little off. Our old “Parent Police” show up and instead of learning and growing from our partner’s wonderful differences, we behave like judgmental parents and start shaming, blaming, and criticizing them.
For the couple we’re talking about, the struggle sounded like, “You’re so irresponsible! Can’t you just get a job?
Why are you SO sensitive?” and for his part, sounded like,
“You are so boring! It’s like living with a rock–there’s no emotion; no excitement!”
Lara and I did this at the beginning, too. (quick story/recap) We didn’t realize that we needed each other to live our way into our lost parts. In my own relationship, I needed to learn that sometimes, it was ok to put on pants and leave the house after 8 pm. Lara’s lost part was her ability to be alone, to get over that fear of missing something social…to understand that if she wasn’t a part of everything, she wouldn’t cease to exist. Make sense?
This is where it starts to happen. (Shock (Denial), Anger, Bargaining, Despair) What do these words kind of remind you of? That’s right…Grief. When we lose something important to us, we grieve. When we feel like we’re losing SOMEONE, we really grieve. It’s like our entire idea of who this person was is dying. When we start to acknowledge that this is happening, we get pissed off and we get pissed, we get desperate. So not only are we irrationally mad at our partners, we’re also desperate to get what we want back. Since we’re angry, irrational, and desperate, we tend to act like crazy people.
We think that if we use power tactics and play “parent”, they’ll get back in line. So, not that any of you would do this, but IF you were to imagine yourself getting angry and desperate enough to behave really poorly, what would it look like? For instance, if I were (and I’m not saying I ever have) to resort to power tactics, I’d probably be really condescending and nasty. I might consider a little sarcasm, too. Wouldn’t that be awful for poor Lara? Who, incidentally, would probably be completely ignoring me until she snapped and yelled. Think about your own stuff—if you were going to choose to be monstrous-how would you behave (or just ask your partner. I promise they know)
Well this all makes no sense at all. We want something from someone so we scream, yell, pout, tantrum, shut down, roll our eyes. First of all, what does this sound like? Who tends to behave this way? (CHILDREN) So now it starts to make a little sense. If we’re trying to get unmet needs met and complete the growing up process, we’ll use the same or similar tactics that we used as kids. When the tantrums stop working, we might try the slightly more grown up bargaining…remember as a kid…”Please let me stay up late tonight and I promise to go to bed early tomorrow!” Well this tactic wound up as the primary method of couple’s counseling for years (still is, really). The problem with a transactional approach like this is that we’re constantly keeping score.
It’s way too easy for one of us to feel cheated and very easy to see how the power struggle ends up in full on misery mode. So here we are in the middle of despair; living every day with this other person who was supposed to really “get us” and who is most likely feeling pretty miserable themselves. The problem is, we don’t know how to talk about it and when we’re in the middle of the power struggle, we don’t see the gold in each other. We only see the conflict, the fighting, and the anger. So what do we do? Usually one of three things. We throw in the towel and leave (probably heading on to another relationship where we find ourselves in exactly the same spot). We might stay in the relationship, but shut down, close off and live in cold, silent loneliness. This makes sure they won’t ever be hurt again. And some others will stay in the relationship, but protect themselves with hostility; fighting forever.
Thank goodness there’s another option–we have the capacity to build a conscious and mature love. It’s not as sexy as underwear or a night under the stars, but it can give us half a chance at getting that back. Hidden inside all of our frustrations with each other, we hold the blueprint for each others’ healing. We can be whole and THAT is the gold in the power struggle.
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