The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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Why do we choose partners who reflect our childhood wounds?
If you go with your heart, nature is going to pick the one who's going to cause you the most problems. It pairs the people who need to be paired to repair what was wounded and injured in childhood. In the relationship with caretakers, one parent is usually engaged, but in a controlling way, and the other parent is disengaged in a kind of neglectful way. The child has only one need, to be seen and heard and valued. So when you grow up, you still have that need. When you get to partner selection, you'll pick the person who's similar to the one who was most painful in your childhood. The brain is still looking for survivals. And it says the deepest need not met was with the controlling person.
You need to find somebody to get the need met from a controlling person, which of course you marry that person, you fall in love with them and they don't meet the need. So now they become a problem. Your partner is not your problem. You are your problem. If you take responsibility and you ask the question, this is a fundamental question. Am I safe for my partner? That's very different from is Helen safe for me? Fundamentally and simple marriage, is about survival. And if you create predictable safety, you can have a great marriage. If you have negativity, you're not going to have a great marriage, because the brain's going to keep looking for love in all the wrong places, and it's not going to find it there.
Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast, where today we're going to be talking about why do we attract partners who mirror the childhood wounds that we had. The creators of this theory that has revolutionized relationships since the 80s are here on the podcast today. They're also going to be sharing about how to turn conflict into connection and what some of the biggest destroyers are that silently ruin relationships and what you can do differently because of it. So I first discovered Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt on Oprah. They are the founders of Imago Psychotherapy. I got trained in it. I love this body of work, and it shares practical ways that you can use the Imago dialogue to rebuild trust, to create connection, to move through any difficult relational conversations, whether it be with your kids, whether it be with your partner, your coworkers. It's a really beautiful framework that we're going to dive in today. It is a good one. Enjoy.
Well, first off, I'm just so grateful to have you two. And I want to share some of my story about how I discovered the power of your work. And so I became a licensed psychotherapist and I first discovered your work. I had actually found somebody that was an Imago therapist, your approach, because it was so important to me and it was so transformative. I first found your work when you were on Oprah. I think you guys were on Oprah for a few times. And I was like, this is going to change the game for people relationally. I didn't have any good models. I really wanted to learn how to do relationships in a new way. And so I could feel the power of the work that you did when I first learned about it.
And I want to recognize you guys because you have made something so... common now mainstream because of your work. So this idea that we attract somebody who's going to near the childhood wounds and all of the things that we have with our partner relate back to the parent that we had harder times with growing up, not getting our needs met that came from you guys. And that has changed thousands of people's lives. I want to make sure you guys get credit for that because even just that concept, is remarkable. So it's not like I'm with the wrong person or this is bad. It's like, oh, no, these are things that are looking to be healed inside of me. And so I want to just acknowledge you guys for your body of work, that being one of the things that is now mainstream and has changed the game for so many people internationally. But I would just love to hear from you guys just what like so that I can hear from you. Why do we unconsciously attract a partner that will near the parent or caregiver that we had our unmet needs from most?
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