22: Essential Skills for Conscious Relationship with Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

Today’s guests are none other than Harville Hendrix and Helen Lakelly Hunt, authors of “Getting the Love You Want” - which offers a step-by-step path for you and your partner to attain a more loving, supportive, and satisfying relationship. In this conversation, you’re going to get to hear exactly how their system of conscious relationship works, and come to a deeper understanding of what’s possible in relationship. You’ll also learn about their “Imago Dialogue” - also known as “safe conversations” - which is a process that you can use in your partnership - or in any dialogue, really - to ensure clear communication that actually GETS you somewhere.
An essential part of being in relationship is the path that it offers to you to become more fully who you are meant to be in the world. And to do the healing required - both the inner healing as well as what’s only possible in partnership with another person. On today’s show we’re going to cover some essential skills so that you and your partner can create a solid foundation for this healing journey into conscious relationship together.
Harville Hendrix, Helen LaKelly Hunt, and I talk about the following:

Imago Match - Combine the best traits and the worst traits of your childhood caretakers, and you come up with a list of the qualities that you are most attracted to as an adult. In particular, your unmet needs are calling out to be met by someone who also matches your childhood caretakers’ negative traits. Wouldn’t it be easy if you could just find someone who will naturally meet those needs? Of course! However, that’s not the way that our unconscious mind works - in order for the healing to actually occur, those needs must be met by someone who shares the same difficulty with actually meeting them! It’s a potential recipe for disaster (and why so many relationships don’t work in the end). And - if you’re aware, also a potential recipe for great healing and transformation through your relationship.
Couldn’t you just try to hack your way around it, and find someone to meet those needs directly? Isn’t that what’s at work as we’re looking for the “right” partner? We’re looking for someone who fits an ideal list of traits - and usually when we first decide we’ve found a match - ZING - they’re perfect in every way. Nearly all relationships lead to a time when suddenly you see that along with all of those positive qualities come a host of negative traits that were also there all along. So as much as we think that a hack could be possible, there seems to be no way around actually having to create a container for growth and change in your relationship - to handle the inevitable challenges that come with the easeful moments.
Is conflict a sign of trouble in a relationship? No - in fact conflict is usually a sign of a place where you and your partner can actually grow. Your partner actually contains a “blueprint” for your own growth and healing.
It’s easy to look to your partner to see where you might want them to change and grow...and yet the first place that you should look is within yourself. Helen LaKelly Hunt offers the example of how she might have really wanted to foster Harville’s latent emotional exuberance, she actually learned a lot and facilitated growth in her relationship by learning how to contain her energy. And this created space in her relationship with Harville for him to learn more about being expressive.
Why is this all a good idea? Now you are able to develop parts of yourself that were probably not encouraged within you as you were growing up. Harville and Helen even suggest potentially developing the parts of yourself that you are least attracted to in your partner, as a way of pulling yourself up the growth curve and getting in touch with the parts of you that are within you, waiting for their chance to shine in a healthy way.
So if conflict is OK - then how do you know whether or not you’re in the wrong relationship? While Helen says that essentially if the attraction is there then ANY relationship could be the material for a lifelong, growth-oriented partnership (that has the power to overcome some big things, like chemical dependency, or infidelity). That being said - if you’re in a situation where your partner literally cannot take responsibility for ANYTHING - i.e. everything is your fault - then that relationship is unlikely to succeed.
A suggestion: If you’re in a relationship that you think is in trouble (or even if you’re in a relationship that’s ok, but you want it to grow even more) - go on a couples retreat for a holiday or birthday. In a retreat-like environment even a partner who’s not inclined to do “growth” work might see unhealthy patterns that they’ve been contributing...