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The Purpose of Marriage: Part II
By David Roche
In my last article, I talked about the real purpose of marriage: completing childhood. I read an article recently in which a priest was being interviewed about marriage. He said when he first started to study marriage many years ago, he felt the purpose of marriage was procreation, education of children, and allowing people to get rid of their sex urge (his words, not mine). He went on to say that, after Vatican II, the Church told couples that they were also creating a community of love. This probably represented the best thinking at the time yet it is insufficient for the success of these very important relationships. I’m not placing blame on the Catholic Church. No one understood the dynamics of marriage back then. I’m hoping that a better understanding of marriage now and in the future, may mean that more than 5% of marriages will be truly successful.*
I ended my last article with the following conclusion:
We enter adulthood with significant childhood wound(s). We have cut out and buried major parts of our true personality (our core self) and we have added personality traits to ensure our survival, some of which are considered so negative that we deny having them. Our unconscious mind enters adulthood with a very specific agenda: to heal the wounds of childhood and become the complete human being we were born to be. The solution lies with the partner we are attracted to and eventually marry.
Consciously, we begin looking for a partner with all the right attributes. These attributes could be physical, they could be likes or dislikes similar to our own, or they could be values or certain skills etc. Unconsciously, we are maniacs with a mission: to find that special someone who will heal our childhood wounds and help us become complete. But our unconscious agenda is more complicated than that. Our childhood wounds were created because certain needs were not met by our parents (or caretakers) and our unconscious is now looking for the same type of person to heal these wounds in our adult life. It’s not good enough to finally get the hugs we need; we have to get these hugs from a non-hugger. It’s not good enough to get the praise and admiration we crave; we have to get this praise from one who is critical. Our unconscious has in mind the exact type of person who must meet our unmet needs and heal our childhood wounds. This person embodies both the negative and the positive attributes of our parents (although the negative attributes are more important because these are the ones that caused the wounding in the first place). Harville Hendrix calls this image of the ideal mate that our unconscious has formed our Imago. So with this Imago in mind, our unconscious begins the search.
Yet something more interesting is taking place. In addition to possessing both the negative and positive traits of our parents, our Imago just happens to possess the parts of our core self that we are missing. Wow, not only does this person present the promise of unmet needs fulfilled, they are going to make us whole again!
So you think the choice of a partner is a conscious one? Have you seen the list of attributes that dating services ask you to fill-out when looking for a future partner? Do you hear yourself when you tell your friends what’s important to you in a mate? It sure sounds like we are in command. The truth is your conscious mind doesn’t have a chance; the unconscious is driving this train! Don’t think that this is a rational, intelligent choice made by a rational, intelligent human being. This choice is being made by an unconscious mind that is stuck in a time warp, still trying to get childhood needs met.
Because we lack the knowledge and understanding of this unconscious agenda, we enter the first of five stages in a relationship ill-equipped to manage the situation. These five critical stages are:
- Romantic Stage
- Power Stage
- Awareness Stage
- Transformation
- Real Love
Most of us enter the first stage of a relationship, the Romantic Stage, unaware of our unconscious agenda. We fly through this stage in a state of euphoria only to hit a wall during the Power Stage. Only 5% of marriages actually get out of the Power Stage (aptly called the power struggle) and move on to Awareness, Transformation, and True Love.
The Romantic Stage
You can thank your unconscious for the overwhelming impact of the Romantic Stage: that feeling in the pit of your stomach as she walks across the room and your eyes meet for the first time, that feeling in your soul that you’ve known this person all your life but you’ve just met them today, that awkward silence as you search for something to say while spilling coffee in your lap. Most of us have been there, some more than once.
Romantic love is the creation of the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind has its own agenda. The unconscious is looking for that person who has the negative and positive traits of both our parents combined. Remember that cute guy in English class that you thought was good-looking but there didn’t seem to be any chemistry. There was no Imago match. How about the first time your unconscious mind found a match? The feeling was truly euphoric, wasn’t it? The stronger the match, the more excitement, the more chemistry, the more lust…the more everything. Your unconscious has found the perfect person to heal your childhood wounds and allow you to finish childhood. It rejoices in the hope that you will become a joyful, fully alive human being once again.
Chemicals are actually released in your body to create this feeling of euphoria and this desire to be with this person forever. Some of them have familiar names: dopamine and norepinephrine (giving us a rosy outlook on life, a rapid pulse, increased energy and a sense of heightened perception) endorphins and enkephalins (enhancing our sense of security and comfort).
You see this person as the potential love of your life. You deny the negative traits that caused such a stir from your unconscious; you actually don’t see them (the chemicals help). Whatever core parts of yourself you buried and your new partner has in spades, excite you and fill you with the sense of completion (remember Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry McGuire saying “you complete me” to Renee Zellweger?).That’s the additional feeling you get from your Imago. If you’re a guy who buried his ability to feel, you can’t get over how wonderful this person is because she expresses her feelings so well (you get this feeling of completion but you don’t consciously know why). If you’re a woman who has buried her ability to think conceptually, you just can’t believe the way this new guy can think strategically and communicate concepts so clearly.
With the promise of need fulfillment and the elimination of our childhood wounds, we focus on the needs of the new love of our life. Their wish becomes our command. We don’t think about ourselves at this stage, we know the meeting of our needs lies just around the corner. We focus on our partner’s needs. We deny their negative traits and we credit them for the euphoric feeling that we have from the new chemicals in our body.
I should mention that the strongest Imago matches go both ways. He has the traits of both her parents and also the core parts that she is missing. She has the traits of his parents and the core parts that he is missing. A match made in heaven…until it turns into hell.
Our Imago match is a perfect hurting machine. We are incredibly, uncontrollably attracted to a person who has the uncanny ability to wound us like our parents once did. They have all the right weapons and will hurt us in our most vulnerable spots. Additionally, you have been taught since childhood that certain core parts of your self are bad and along comes this person who openly flaunts these core parts. This is why our unconscious helps us through this initial stage with some pretty serious chemicals that mask what’s really going on. Without this feeling of euphoria, we would have absolutely no interest in this hurting machine.
The chemicals stick around just long enough for us to totally fall for our Imago and commit the rest of our life to this new partner. The Romantic Stage is not the real love we seek but we think it is because the feeling is so incredible. Real love comes much later and only to the very few who successfully navigate all of the stages of relationship. I am told the Real Love Stage makes the Romantic Stage look like kid stuff. I can’t wait to get there.
Inevitably, the Romantic stage comes to an end. The chemicals wear off and reality sets in. That’s when we begin the Power Stage. And that’s the subject of my next article.
* I’m sure you’ve heard the divorce statistics: 50% of marriages end in divorce, over 60% of second marriages end in divorce. But the reality is that 95% of marriages fail to achieve what we’re all hoping for, to find real love.
David C. Roche is an Imago Educator and is a member of the Board of Directors of Imago Relationships International. David is currently a marketing consultant and lives with his wife Diane in the Chicago area. He has held many sales, marketing and general management positions in his career in the USA, Canada and Mexico. He is an avid golfer and skier and loves to play the guitar and the drums.
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