LOVE IS A JOURNEY

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"Imago" is the Latin word for image. Each of us has an "image" or "template" of love that is familiar and based on the care we receive from our parents or caretakers. This image developed a birth and throughout childhood. Our Imago can be described as a perception we carry with us internally of what love feels and looks like. It is based on how the people who love us when we were children interacted with us both positively and negatively. The significant people who help formed our Imago could be our parents but also our siblings, our grandparents, or anyone else who was a parental figure when we grew up. For example, our Imago could be someone with personality traits resembling those of our father who is charismatic, enthusiastic, joyful, creative, but also short-tempered, impulsive, and punishing, and/or our mother who is nurturing, dependable, reliable, loving but also critical, anxious and shaming.

In the Romantic stage, the feeling of love is an unconscious process where a chemical reaction is released in the part of the brain causing Euphoria. When we are in love, we experience a heightened awareness of our five senses and everything looks better and feels better.  As Dr. Hendrix puts it:" Romantic love is nature anesthesia  to get two people together who during their individual development, have been emotionally wounded and are vulnerable in the same way.  During this phase we are somehow numbed to the faults of the person with whom we establish a love relationship. Nature does this in order to fulfill its purpose: to give us the opportunity to heal the wounded experiences of our childhood through relationship and to provide us with what we need to finish our development.

The power struggle happens because since we are married or in partnership with our Imago, we will start to have our buttons pushed. As our buttons are pushed we will react in the same ways we learn to react as children when we felt hurt by our parents or our caretakers. Harville Hendrix describes 2 universals and different styles we react under stress: We either expand our energy outward (Maximizing it) or inward (Minimizing it)  

For example as a minimizer, our partner would tend to keep feelings in, diminish emotions, deny dependency, exclude others from his or her personal space, and tend to alternate between passive-aggressive and dominant controlling.  

As a maximizer, our partners would tend to exaggerate emotions, depend on others, exaggerate needs, be compulsively open and subjective, and tend to alternate between aggressiveness and passivity.  

When couples are conflicting about the issues where their buttons get pushed they naturally and unconsciously behave by either maximizing or minimizing their energy. Hostage of the unintentional minimizing/maximizing dance, they deprive themselves of 2 gifts: 1) learning deeper truth about each other and 2) growing their relationship toward mature Love.  

This does not mean that people should never get divorced, but it does mean that most divorce do not need to happen and if you do not work on your buttons and underdeveloped parts of yourself, you are setting yourself up for repetitive disappointments in life partnerships.

• It is characterized by a giving, based on knowing the self and the other.
• Partners in a mature relationship recognize love as a daily discipline and practice behaviors that keep their hearts and minds supple and strong.
• They feel appreciated and supported by one another.
• They are not afraid of being vulnerable as they know it creates more closeness between them.
• They recognize that conflicts are not about their differences but their expectations of sameness.
• They recognize that conflicts provide opportunity for growth and healing of the relationship.
• They are capable of fully hearing and understand each other about an argument.
• They enjoy socializing together and apart.
• They are physically, emotionally and spiritually intimate.
• They understand that it is not love that sustains their couple relationship but the quality of the relationship that sustains love.
• They know to give each other caring response when one is triggered.
• They know as author Cokie Roberts wrote that sustaining a pleasurable long term marriage takes effort, deliberateness and intention to learn about one another.