You practice a type of couple’s therapy known as Imago Relationship Therapy. How would you summarize this kind of therapy?
Imago Relationship Therapy is a process to help couples understand the deeper reasons they fell in love with each other (“Romantic Love”), the “real” reasons they have difficulty with each other (“Power Struggle”), and how they can move to a deeper experience of “Real Love” or “Vintage Love” with each other.
Do you know how people fall in love? It’s a wonderful relationship stage where you feel that warm golden glow whenever you’re in the presence of your loved one. You complete each other’s sentences, and you feel like you have found your soulmate. But after about 6 months, and especially after you are married or have made a commitment to each other, this warm feeling begins to fade and the reality of living with another person who is really very different from you begins to set in. The relationship of your dreams becomes the relationship of conflict and disappointment. The statistics say that you are either on the road toward divorce (51% of all first marriages) or a parallel relationship, where your lives become filled with children, friends, hobbies, work and the daily tasks of life. You no longer have a close relationship, but a more distant one. Couples in this phase often characterize themselves as being like roommates.
Imago is the Latin word for “image” or “likeness”. It refers to the “image” of love people carry inside them that consists of the positive and negative characteristics of all their childhood caretakers. This explains our ability to walk into a roomful of people and react with “not attracted, not attracted, not attracted….attracted!” We find ourselves drawn to one particular person, who is likely to have a significant number of the positive and negative characteristics of all of our caretakers. Then we play through all of the courtship rituals to see if there is a mutual attraction. If we both click with each other, we call that an “Imago Match” which can lead to romantic love and the beginning of the commitment cycle which changes into what we call the “power struggle”. We will either be blind to the negatives, or we will rationalize the negatives into positives during the initial romantic phase. When the bloom fades and the power struggle sets in, we are left with someone who both loves us in the ways we were loved in our family of origin, and also hurts us in ways that we were hurt in our families.
Imago Relationship Therapy is a psycho-educational process to help us become aware of the unconscious dynamics from our childhood patterns that are played out in our adult intimate relationships. Imago also teaches skills that help couples move from conflict rooted in unconscious patterns into a new understanding of conflict, its purpose, and how to handle it. Harmony, disharmony, harmony, disharmony prevail in a relationship until we are simply worn out. Imago changes the pattern into harmony, disharmony, repair. Couples who learn to do the work of repair find intimacy and real love. Imago moves couples from unconscious relating into conscious relating. Conscious relating is seeing what is really going on instead of focusing on what the other partner got wrong.
How did you become interested in Imago Therapy?
I’m in my second marriage. In my first marriage I saw four different marital therapists in an eight year period and still felt stuck. I was in the process of a divorce when I heard Harville Hendrix present a summation of Imago Relationship Therapy in my graduate school. As he spoke light bulbs went off and I realized why I married her. For the first time I realized why it didn’t work, and more importantly, how it could work. After the pain of that first marriage’s failure, I was determined to learn to do something different. In the courtship stage leading to my second marriage, my relationship became rooted in the principles and skills that I learned through Imago.
I am now married to Jane, and together we have found ways to embrace conflict and to grow our love and understanding of each other. Growing ourselves as individuals has brought us to a place of deep intimacy and connection. My work with couples continues to help me make sense out of my own relationships and interpersonal conflicts of all kinds.
Why do you think Imago works?
The Imago system synthesizes the big picture into an understandable approach with specific skills. When couples realize that they unconsciously picked each other (falling in love) and then understand that an inevitable power struggle follows, they can learn to use Imago tools to resolve differences. Imago works because it helps us love our partner simply for who they are, not who we want them to be.
You’re on the board of Attachment Parenting International, how did you first learn about Attachment Parenting?
In 1993 when our first son Will was born, Jane wanted help with nursing and co-sleeping. The local hospital referred us to Barbara Nicholson with the La Leche League. As your readers know, Barbara was a cofounder of API. It was Barbara’s openness and helpfulness that got us interested in API. I found that API’s principles were very much in line with everything I understood about Attachment Theory and Imago Therapy. I had the privilege of working with Barbara and Lisa as they launched API. I feel privileged to be a part of the work and mission of API which are vital to building a more conscious and peaceful society.
What appeals to you as a father, minister, and therapist about Attachment Parenting?
What I learned as a therapist is that an infant needs reliable warmth and reliable availability in order to form a secure bond or attachment to her parents. When the caretakers aren’t reliably available but are reliably warm, the infant is left with pursuing energy trying to cling to the attachments that simply aren’t enough. On the other hand, if the caretakers aren’t reliably warm from the infant’s perspective, it doesn’t really matter if the availability is there or not. The infant reacts with avoidant energy in order to protect himself. We know that we take energy expressions developed in childhood into our adult relationships. A child that is securely attached moves developmentally into future stages with less wounding and a greater sense of connectedness to her caregivers, environment, and the world.
It was this knowledge base that motivated me to follow Jane’s leadership in wanting to provide a secure attachment for our children. So, nursing, using a sling, and the family bed were easy decisions for us, and it was helpful to have the rationale and guidance of Attachment Parenting. As both a minister and a therapist I have observed adults who are highly reactive, so it’s easy to postulate the insecure attachments beneath their power struggles and frustrations. These are acted out often both in marriages and with authority figures in communities of faith.
How does Attachment Parenting fit with Imago Therapy?
Imago sees the inevitable power struggle in which couples engage as rooted in the developmental arrest that happened in each person’s childhood. So, individuals are wounded usually in one of four stages: attachment, exploration, identity, or competency. Those who lack secure attachments experience greater difficulty in navigating the later stages. There is profound truth in the statement “the first 3 years last forever.” How we navigate attachment issues and make a secure bond with authority figures affects how we navigate the exploration stage. The exploration stage is about intimacy and closeness on one pole, and the other pole is about distance and freedom. These early navigations have profound impacts on our adult relationships. So, I see Imago and API sharing a similar goal; it is through secure attachments that we can truly change the world.
What would you say is the most common example of conflict between Attachment
Parents and spouses who prefer a different parenting style?
I hope readers will understand that my goal is for these concepts to be understood by as many people as possible, but in order to do that, I’m generalizing this discussion to normative male/female roles and mindsets.
When most couples have babies, they are already in a power struggle stage and are often unconscious of the dynamics underneath their impass. When the baby arrives they enter into the mission phase of the relationship. I’m guessing that at least 90% of the time the mother (more than the father) wants to adopt attachment parenting principles. She is under the influence of the bonding chemical oxytocin and has a natural innate urge to “nest”. The husband, on the other hand, often feels left out of this bond and, instead of having a direct relationship with his wife, he is now in a triangularized relationship. Men connect sexually and then emotionally; women connect emotionally and then sexually. On average, women don’t desire sexual intimacy for six months after giving birth which is often experienced by men as rejection. A husband’s disagreement with attachment parenting principles is usually not a philosophical disagreement, but is rooted in his feeling left out and disconnected from his wife.
When couples enter into the mission stage more consciously, they: 1) are aware of their power struggle and its underlying dynamics, and have already mastered tools for embracing and understanding conflict, 2) understand the inevitable separations of the mission stage and devise strategies to navigate feelings of rejection and isolation, 3) find ways for the husband to play an active role in the infant’s attachment phase. For me this included lots of time carrying the baby in a sling or backpack, being the chief diaper changer, and co-creating with Jane my active participation in the baby’s life.
What can we do to help create a harmonious home life when one parent is an Attachment Parent and the other is not?
First, I would suggest being curious about the possibility that the father’s lack of participation is rooted in not feeling needed, and feeling criticized for not caring for the infant as well as (the same as) mom. I would also challenge this couple to become aware of their power struggle and underlying dynamics that surround other relationship issues. If these issues are unconscious, not addressed, and unresolved they may be creating an oppositional parenting relationship.
Another idea is to listen to each other’s childhood stories and memories to see if their experiences of attachment might be influencing their parenting style. An insecurely attached adult with clinging energy can use attachment parenting to compensate for her unmet childhood needs in ways that use the baby in unhealthy ways, and promote hyper-dependency. Often her husband, who also grew up insecurely attached and has an avoidance attachment style, would be fostering a hyper-independence. It is easy to see how a couple, both of whom come from insecure attachments, could be fighting in the present over how they are going to parent their child, when in reality the energy of this fight is rooted in their own insecure childhood attachments. Becoming conscious of their childhood patterns could help them listen, understand each other, and co-create a joint parenting plan, providing a healthy, stable environment for their child.
What can parents do to promote a good foundation for children’s healthy future relationships?
Provide a secure attachment!
According to Imago Relationship Therapy, our choice of mate is driven by unmet childhood needs, could the same be said of our choice of parenting style?
Right on. A clinger will be attracted to an avoider. The clinger will naturally gravitate to a parenting style that is more aligned with API principles, while the avoider will be less comfortable with attachment principles. The clinger might use the child to meet her own unmet needs by not truly being attuned to the baby and making decisions based on her own needs while the avoider feels left out and rejected and/or avoided both personally and sexually.
Is it an accident when an Attachment Parent chooses a mate with a different parenting preference?
No, it’s natural! Every couple is made up of someone who embodies more the clinger pole and someone who embodies more the avoider pole. No matter how securely attached we were as children, we all fall off the midline toward one of these poles. Usually the woman moves toward wanting intimacy and closeness, becoming a clinger and pursuer; and usually the man falls toward avoiding or isolating, wanting distance and freedom.
What does it mean when a couple has a great relationship—Is it luck, secure childhoods, good communication, outwitting an inner drive? ☺
I think it means they’ve done hard work. In my world, all couples are in one of four modes: denial, power struggle, parallel relationship, or they have done the challenging work of moving out of unconscious ways of relating into mature and conscious ways that have to be learned.
What’s the most important concept an Attachment Parent can learn from Imago Therapy?
That the best attachment parents are first securely attached to each other. The coupleship comes first. If we learn to stay connected to our mate, we will be a more connected parent.
Sometimes I think couples involved in API make the mistake of thinking that the child comes first. If this is the case I would challenge that couple to examine their relationship for possible trianglarization and power struggle dynamics that are blocking the couple from embracing a deep and passionate connection. Learning to stay connected to your partner will help you be the best parent and you will parent with connection during attachment and beyond as your child grows into adulthood. Odds are if you are not connected to your partner you will not parent out of connection and you will eventually end up in a power struggle with your child as your child approaches adolescents if not before.
How can we learn more about Imago Therapy?
I have four suggestions: read the book Getting the Love You Want, A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, make an appointment with one of over 1500 Imago therapists throughout the world, participate in a Getting the Love You Want Workshop for Couples offered in almost every state and in 15 other countries, and learn more at www.ImagoTherapy.com.
And a few questions for a sidebar:
What can an Attachment Parent do to help prepare a child for overnight visits with a parent with a different parenting style?
Every situation is different and I’m hesitant to offer advice that could fit some situations but certainly not others. Jane and I felt comfortable having our six month old sons stay overnight with their adoring grandparents even though the grandparents’ parenting style was very different from ours. We trusted that our sons’ experiences of their grandparents’ caregiving would only enrich and not harm. Children above 2 or 3 years of age are capable of talking about their experience; I think the most important thing we can do as parents is listen. The child knows we are listening when we repeat back or “mirror” what she has said.
What advice do you have for divorced parents with differing parenting styles?
When divorced parents have different parenting styles, it is important that they are never critical of each other. This is where listening to the experience of the child and validating his reality, even when it is different from your own, and then empathizing with him can help. My advice to divorced parents is to realize that even though you are divorced, you will be in relationship with each other for 20 years or so as you co-parent children and then for decades more as you develop relationships with your adult children and move through weddings, births, crises, deaths, etc. Your relationship is in one sense “forever” even if you divorce. By learning to listen and understand one another, and not react, you will be more effective co-parents “forever”.
Learn to respect differences and not make your partner wrong. This is probably one of the hardest things we do. You can either be right, or you can be in relationship. As long as we insist that our parenting style is right, we are forcing the other parent to be wrong. You are becoming conscious when you understand that you are still in relationship, when you stand by your truth without shaming, blaming, accusing, or making the other parent wrong. On the other hand, it is possible one parent is being abusive and that is an entirely different context.
Can Imago Therapy help a divorced parent?
Harville Hendrix’s second book, Keeping the Love You Find, a Guide for Individuals, helps parents and partners to get clear about their own relational agenda. There is also a workshop for individuals called “Keeping the Love You Find” that is also offered and you can find information about these workshops at www.ImagoTherapy.com.
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