Table of Contents Title Page Foreword to the Twentieth-Anniversary Edition of Getting the Love You Want Preface to the 2001 Edition Introduction to the 1988 Edition part I - THE UNCONSCIOUS PARTNERSHIP 1 - THE MYSTERY OF ATTRACTION UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF ROMANTIC ATTRACTION PLUMBING THE DEPTHS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND OLD-BRAIN LOGIC NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT 2 - CHILDHOOD WOUNDS ORIGINAL WHOLENESS YOU AND I ARE ONE THE PERILOUS PILGRIMAGE USERS AND ISOLATERS THE LOST SELF BODY TABOOS FORBIDDEN FEELINGS TOOLS OF REPRESSION THE FALSE SELF THE DISOWNED SELF PLATO’S ALLEGORY 3 - YOUR IMAGO SEARCH FOR THE LOST SELF THE IMAGO THE IMAGO AND ROMANTIC LOVE 4 - ROMANTIC LOVE THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF LOVE A BRIEF INTERLUDE FOSTERING AN ILLUSION DENIAL HOME MOVIES ROMANTIC LOVE DEFINED PSYCHE AND EROS 5 - THE POWER STRUGGLE WHY HAVE YOU CHANGED? A GLIMPSE AT A PAINFUL REALITY HOME MOVIES, PART II WEAPONS OF LOVE STAGES OF THE POWER STRUGGLE part II - THE CONSCIOUS PARTNERSHIP 6 - BECOMING CONSCIOUS NEW BRAIN-OLD BRAIN MERGER BECOMING A LOVER THE FEAR OF CHANGE THE PROMISED LAND WHAT LIES AHEAD 7 - COMMITMENT THE NEED FOR COMMITMENT THE COMMITMENT AGREEMENT FUSER-ISOLATER DYNAMICS NONCATASTROPHIC EXITS THE INVISIBLE DIVORCE NARROWING YOUR EXITS TIL DEATH DO US PART 8 - CREATING A ZONE OF SAFETY INSIGHT AND BEHAVIORAL CHANGE CARING BEHAVIORS WHY DOES IT WORK? THE SURPRISE LIST THE FUN LIST THE FEAR OF PLEASURE INSIGHT AND BEHAVIORAL CHANGE 9 - INCREASING YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOURSELF AND YOUR PARTNER HIDDEN SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE UNDERSTANDING YOUR PARTNER’S INNER WORLD DENIAL THE IMAGO DIALOGUE THE THREE STEPS OF THE IMAGO DIALOGUE VALIDATION ADDING VALIDATION TO MIRRORING EMPATHY SENDER RESPONSIBILITY BUT! ISN’T DIALOGUING WITH YOUR PARTNER TEDIOUS? THE IMAGO WORKUP THE PARENT-CHILD DIALOGUE 10 - DEFINING YOUR CURRICULUM WHY SELF-LOVE DOESN’T WORK THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP TURNING THE THEORY INTO PRACTICE DEFINING THE CURRICULUM COMPLEX CHANGE SET IN MOTION REWARDS AND RESISTANCE RESISTANCE AGAPE 11 - CREATING A SACRED SPACE MY STORY AN EXERCISE THAT FAILED WHY ANGER BREEDS ANGER THE HOLDING EXERCISE REMOVING ALL NEGATIVITY WHAT IS NEGATIVITY? COLD TURKEY SAM AND AMELIA CORE SCENE REVISION POSITIVE FLOODING 12 - PORTRAIT OF TWO RELATIONSHIPS INTEGRATION ANNE AND GREG KENNETH AND GRACE part III - THE EXERCISES 13 - TEN STEPS TOWARD A CONSCIOUS PARTNERSHIP DOING THE EXERCISES EXERCISE 1: YOUR RELATIONSHIP VISION EXERCISE 2: CHILDHOOD WOUNDS EXERCISE 3: IMAGO WORKUP EXERCISE 4: CHILDHOOD FRUSTRATIONS EXERCISE 5: PARENT-CHILD DIALOGUE EXERCISE 6: PARTNER PROFILE EXERCISE 7: UNFINISHED BUSINESS EXERCISE 8: THE IMAGO DIALOGUE EXERCISE 9: THE COMMITMENT DECISION EXERCISE 10: REROMANTICIZING EXERCISE 11: THE SURPRISE LIST EXERCISE 12: THE FUN LIST EXERCISE 13: POSITIVE FLOODING EXERCISE 14: THE BEHAVIOR CHANGE REQUEST DIALOGUE EXERCISE 15: THE HOLDING EXERCISE EXERCISE 16: OWNING AND ELIMINATING YOUR NEGATIVITY EXERCISE 17: SELF-INTEGRATION EXERCISE 18: VISUALIZATION OF LOVE Acknowledgments In Appreciation of Jo Robinson GETTING THE ALSO BY HARVILLE HENDRIX Seeking Professional Help Notes Bibliography About Imago Relationship Therapy Imago Contacts Meetings with Harville - Living a Life of Dialogue Index About the Authors Copyright Page Foreword to the Twentieth-Anniversary Edition of Getting the Love You Want With Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings. —MARTIN BUBER I BEGAN AN intense exploration of love relationships in 1975 in response to a question from a student in a marriage and family therapy class that I then taught. I remember the day clearly. It was a Tuesday morning, and I was twenty minutes late. I had just come from the county courthouse where I had been granted a divorce. I was hoping the students would have wandered off by the time I arrived, but when I opened the door I saw that they were all there. I had no choice but to stand in front of them, a living testimony to all that I did not know about marriage. As it turned out, the students knew where I had been, and they greeted me with a surprising amount of compassion. I learned they had spent the last twenty minutes talking about their own relationships, something they had never done before in class. Three of them had already married and divorced, three had never had a serious love relationship, and the remaining six were in troubled relationships. At the end of the class, a recently divorced student asked me this question: “Dr. Hendrix, why do couples have such a hard time staying together?” I thought for a moment and then responded. “I don’t have the foggiest notion. That is a great question and I think I’ll spend the rest of my career trying to find out.” Two years later I met Helen, and we began a conversation about this question that has lasted to this day. After thirty years of being immersed together in the study of relationship dynamics, we have learned a great deal. Many of our insights can be found in this Twentieth-Anniversary Edition of Getting the Love You Want. These pages summarize what we have gleaned from our collaboration, intensive reading, work with thousands of couples in private practice and workshops, and conversation with other psychologists and Imago therapists. Although this edition brings some very significant additions to the book, which I will discuss later in this essay, much of the basic text is the same as the 2001 revised edition. On the whole, our ongoing research has supported rather than challenged the book’s main premises. We have also amassed plentiful evidence that the book “works” in the real world. To date, several millions of couples worldwide have read Getting the Love You Want, and thousands of them have taken the time to share their experiences with Helen and me. Recently, a couple told us that they had been edging toward divorce, but decided to give their marriage one last chance. They rented a remote beach cabin, took along enough food and supplies for seven days, and packed a copy of Getting the Love You Want. They vowed to read the entire book to each other and practice all the exercises. By the end of the week, they felt closer to each other than they had in ten years. Ultimately, they decided to stay together and create a conscious partnership. Five years later, they continue to enjoy a mutually satisfying relationship. They said, “Your book was exactly what we needed. It saved our marriage and turned our lives around.” WHAT WE CHANGED WHILE MUCH OF the 2001 text remains, we have made some important revisions. The first revision was to use more inclusive language. Momentous changes in women’s rights and same-sex relationships have taken place in the last twenty years. Just as it now seems inappropriate to use the pronoun “he” to describe both men and women, it is outdated to describe all committed love relationships as “marriages” and the two individuals involved as “spouses” or “husbands and wives.” The last comprehensive census revealed that the United States has at least 5.5 million households headed by unmarried couples, a seventy-two percent increase from 1990.1 An estimated one in eight of today’s unmarried couples is a same-sex partnership. To reflect these societal changes, we now use the generic terms “partners” and “couples.” Second, we’ve made Helen’s seminal role in developing Imago Relationship Therapy more apparent. The original book reads like a one-man odyssey. In truth, Helen and I have been on a two-person mission to understand love relationships since our first date. In fact, we forged many of the key ideas in Imago Relationship Therapy in the crucible of our own marriage. Without Helen, there would be no book. Third, the most substantive revision is replacing the original chapter 11 with an entirely new chapter. This chapter used to be titled “Containing Rage,” and it was designed to help couples express the anger and frustration they had carried over from childhood. The chapter described an exercise called the “Full Container” that guided each partner in venting his or her anger, while helping the other listen with more compassion. At the time, we believed that this catharsis would reduce the amount of tension in their day-to-day interactions. The opposite proved to be true. We discovered that the more couples practiced the exercise, the angrier they became with each other in their daily lives. The entirely new chapter 11, now titled “Creating a Sacred Space,” presents our new and highly effective strategies for defusing childhood anger left over from childhood—anger than can undermine an otherwise successful relationship. But the intent of this chapter goes far beyond helping couples reduce angry outbursts. It describes a process that helps couples eliminate all forms of negativity from their interactions—everything from physical abuse and loud yelling to snide remarks—and thereby cuts anger off at its roots. As I explain at length in the chapter, we now believe that eliminating negativity is the most powerful way to transform a love relationship. Indeed, it is the foundation for lasting love. Finally, we made numerous smaller additions and deletions throughout the book. In places where we had not described a concept in enough depth, we added more information. When we discovered an idea that had become inconsistent with current IRT theory, we made the appropriate changes. We added four new exercises, making the book an even more useful tool for self- help. All in all, we believe that the readers of this Twentieth-Anniversary Edition will be highly successful at getting the love they want, and that even readers of the earlier editions will find much beneficial new material. CONNECTION AS WE THOUGHT about writing this foreword, we realized that we want to do more than simply explain the changes we made to the book. We decided to use this opportunity to talk about some of our overall conclusions about love relationships, conclusions that underlie every word of the text. Helen and I have reached the stage in our lives and our work with couples when a summing up seems appropriate. At the end of his career, Freud asked the now famous question: “What do women want?” We, too, have been struggling to answer a question: “What do