Good morning. How are we?

Last year I received training from a sex and relationship therapist called Julie Sale who runs the Contemporary Institute of Clinical Sexology. She taught me some really interesting concepts, one of which I’m going to introduce to you.

The foundations of love are formed in childhood. It is well evidenced that the people we fall in love with as adults are extensions of our childhood attachments.

As children, we develop an understanding of what love looks and feels like. We learn about love through how our caregivers show us affection and how they interact with each other. We create templates for what love is that we carry into our adult lives, and our style of attachment can influence everything from who we are attracted to, how our relationships progress or why they end.

The Imago Relationships Theory (IRT) was developed by Dr Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt. It suggests that the unconscious purpose of our romantic relationships is to repair the wounds from childhood. The theory proposes that we are unconsciously attracted to people who mirror the best and worst traits of our parents/caregivers, and we end up imaging in our romantic relationships that which we most need to heal from.

Here is an exercise Julie uses with clients which I found eye-opening. The exercise says mother and father, but please use any two people who were your primary caregivers (step-parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbours). Your partner can be your current one, an ex, someone you’re seeing or attracted to.

A: List all the positive character traits of your primary caregivers:

Mother -

Father -

Other -

B: List all the negative traits from the same primary caregivers:

Mother -

Father -

Other -

C. What I wanted most as a child and did not get was …..

D. List your partner’s positive traits including what first attracted you to your partner.

Compare with A

E. List your partner’s negative traits.

Compare with B

F. What I want from my partner and don’t get is …..

Compare with C

Did you find any interesting patterns? Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. Whatever the findings, becoming aware of how our experiences have shaped us can be a useful way to view things in a different light when we feel stuck in familiar ruts, and allows us to come away from living life in auto-pilot.

Have a good Tuesday. You deserve so much happiness.

Speak soon,

Adelaide

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On Change

Lessons from a relationship therapist