Why Couples Fight For Love And Then Love To Fight
The primary purpose for our committed love relationships is to find someone who will trigger and piss us off the most.
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If there’s one thing I’ve discovered, it’s that the primary purpose for our committed love relationships is to find someone who will trigger and piss us off the most. As Harville Hendrix said, “We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.”
Hendrix was the originator of what’s known as the imago, a concept he developed whose basic premise is when you go searching for a mate, you do so on two levels: your conscious mind looks for all the wonderful qualities you want, while your unconscious mind searches for all the challenging qualities you need.
This intricate unconscious pattern helps explain why we are attracted to the perfect person who later will activate our unresolvedness. These triggers of our inner world gives us the opportunity to either point the finger at ourselves and do our work, or at our partner, leading to negativity, obstruction, turmoil and conflict.
Your unconscious mind wants someone with uniquely similar negative traits, states, or patterns that form a composite of those who neurologically wounded you the most (caregivers, siblings, grandparents, or anyone who was of significance to you at an early age), and then acts like radar searching for the one who has these qualities. Within the first month or two of dating the one, you say things like, “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life!” or “I can’t imagine not spending my life with you.” The initial burst of chemistry is undeniable, and you walk around glowing under the influence of oxytocin.
But then something happens. You and your partner decide to move in together, get engaged, or get married. This is when the attachment bond activates, and you go, “Oh . . . there you are.” Suddenly, Mr. or Miss Wonderful is no longer the apple of your eye. Now, when you see the qualities you used to find endearing, they make you feel like someone is dragging fingernails across a chalkboard. You can’t stand them — you get triggered and want them to change. The problem is, your partner has no idea you had any agendas, expectations, and obligations assigned to them (and neither do you).
When this inner unresolvedness is awakened, and your protective patterns come out to play, then the cycle of negativity, obstruction, turmoil, and conflict begins to spin.
As far as attachment styles go, the universe loves opposites. In the selection process, a person with an insecure anxious style of attachment will often select a person with an insecure avoidant or disorganized style, and vice versa. Imagine what happens when the anxious person tries to get their needs and wants met in a disempowered way. Usually, the avoidant partner feels overwhelmed by their clinginess. The more one acts out their insecurities, the more the other reacts in their own style. And away they go as this series of reactions morphs into a ping-pong match that perpetuates and escalates as each partner pokes the other’s unresolvedness.
Couples continue this cycle until one partner chooses to set their paddle down or end the relationship. Those who leave, hope the next partner will be better; unfortunately, they often repeat the same patterns with successive partners rather than looking at the reflection in the mirror and using their triggers as catalysts for inner healing and growth.
It is not your partner’s job to heal you! It is their responsibility to hold up a mirror nonjudgmentally, with compassion and love, so you can bend your finger back at yourself. The best way to evolve a relationship, especially at the outset, is to stop trying to knock the mirror out of your partner’s hand, and allow yourself to see what needs to be seen.
If you are not currently in a relationship, you may have other people of significance who act as mirrors and trigger your unresolvedness. These people are usually within your nuclear family or your closest circle of confidants. You can choose to let these mirrors in your life help you resolve your unresolvedness and create a secure attachment with yourself. In this way, when you choose to open the door of opportunity for a new relationship, you will attract that which you want rather than validating the disempowered patterns that have caused you to suffer in the past.
Excerpted from Neurological Intelligence: Volume 1: An Owner’s Manual for the Human Operating System by Glenn S. Cohen.
Glenn S. Cohen is a master neurological life coach and the founder of the Center for Neurological Intelligence. He has helped thousands of individuals and couples by guiding them to heal their unresolved neurological wounding and grow into the highest version of themselves. He lives and practices in South Carolina, and you may find him at www.centerforni.com.
