Harville Hendrix
Appearances
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
I had to go hide in the barn and read. But, you know, she helped me become an academic because I ran from her a lot and read to her. Take up my time. And finally, I became an intellectual. So anyway, we're talking too much. You have a question.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Right. You attract the polarity to maximizers who are controlling that they kill each other. And the neglectful ones, I mean, they would never get together. So and I think occasionally some people seem to have seen some in my 40 years of practice. I've seen them get together like that.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And it's kind of a little bit off of the theory, but they really are two maximizer people married are really toxic for each other. So we have to do a little different kind of twist there that they have to sort of develop that. But I would say 95, 99% of the people married their polarity.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
If you go with your heart, i.e., you fall in love, your nature is going to pick the one who's going to cause you the most problems. And that's the one you should go with. Go with the one because that's where the growth is, growth for you and the growth for that person. For instance, with Helen and me, my growth edge is to move, is to push myself out of my isolation into connection with Helen.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
If she weren't asking for that and causing me problems because I kind of avoid her, I wouldn't grow, because you gotta have somebody say, where are you, in order to do that. So nature will lead you to the person who is just right for you, don't worry about that. The selection process, that's already set up. Just don't try to manage it, and don't try to make it logical.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Like, you know, if I date somebody and it looks like we would be, you know, difficult, I'm not going to do that person. I'm going to get somebody with whom things always go well. Well, there'll be no growth there. which means there'll be no passion there. The passion is in the tension of the opposites.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And that passion becomes sexual passion, can become creative passion, but you've got to have the tension. Nature seems to have set it up that way. So often this question comes up that you just said, which is just don't worry about that. What you need to worry about is what are you going to do once you say I do, When you have to say, how do I make that work?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And that's where Helen was just talking about dialogue. You have to learn how to talk so you don't worry.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So let's, just for the sake of the big, I'd like, as you can tell, like to start with a 90,000 view. The bottom line is how couples talk to each other is way more important than what they talk about. And I know I spent before we developed dialogue in the early 80s. Prior to that, I had about a 10-year venue as a couples therapist that we – Work don't help couples solve their problems.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So what is a problem? Well, they come in, well, we're not having sex. Or we can't decide whether to go on vacations. Or we don't know who's got to control this money stuff. So I'm a logical and analytical person, so I would help them create a solution to this problem. And so we decide, well, you can have two bank accounts or decide how many times you want sex if you want it.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
four times a week and you want it one time a week maybe three or two or something like that make compromises none of that ever worked but it was but it was the content of the discipline i was teaching that at the graduate level in a university and i did not know that it was pointless there was a like 35% success rate. And that was with people who didn't have difficult marriages.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
They did need to kind of, you know, think a little bit better and communicate a little better and they would do better, but they didn't have a big deep wound and they weren't dealing with what, you know, about 95% of couples deal with. So we had to move out of that into it occurred to me one day while listening to them.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Couples is, you know, the problem here is that whenever George talks to Mary, he's got this authoritarian tone and like he knows everything. And then she kind of she adapted in childhood to this over controlling father. So she kind of slumbers down and then becomes fussy and or quiet. So the way he's talking to her is impacting her at the body level.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So I began to change that as a result of discovering that that was true with Helen and me. In 1979, Helen and I had started dating. No, it was in 77 we started dating and ran into this, that we had fights. I mean, we were really a polarity, that we had fights on the first date.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
She is a wealthy Dallas socialite. And I grew up on a subsistence farm in South Georgia. And I'm dating this person who is out of my social and economic class. Am I going to take her to a cafe?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
But I was trying to impress you. And I didn't think I could impress you by taking you to Kentucky Fried Chicken. I know. That would just not work. I mean, I couldn't even imagine. But you had already impressed me.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
I was not impressed with what you were impressed with. No, that was just my intellectual work.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So I'm the only person in the world who's created a marriage history stages.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
is talking monologues is I talk, then you talk, then I talk, then you talk.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And I'll, well, I'll try to get you to agree with me or I'll agree with you and what you said. So what got clear in, in mine and Helen's work together, we had this huge fight early in our relationship. Um, In which Helen yelled out and in the fight, well, stop. One of us talk and then the other one talk because we were talking over each other. So we stopped and did that.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And I noticed that when we took turns, this is where the taking turns suddenly started, that I calmed down. and Helen come down. So we still did monologue, but it was parallel monologue, not combative monologue. I noticed as a clinician that that changed us. Just that little shift. So I took it to the clinic and started and put couples.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
I turned them from talking to me like they would do psychotherapy to talk to each other, which was, I think, the invention of couples therapy. Couples therapy is not when you talk to the therapist. It's when you talk to each other with the therapist's help.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So I went to that and I started that with couples and I found that it calmed them down. So I said, well, I have no more problem solving here. We're going to talk to each other. And then I asked them, and they taught me, couples taught me the dialogue process. What do you want next? And to a couple, I'd like to hear back if my partner heard what I said. Oh, so listening?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
We've never done that in therapy. I would listen to the couple, but listening was not a part of the therapeutic process. So we added listening to that. And listening meant you have to mirror, you have to say back. word to word. And what I noticed as I learned each of those steps from asking couples, what do you want next?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Well, I'd like to know whether or not I got my mirror, whether it was accurate. Did I get it? So I said, oh, so you got to do a checkout of accuracy. And then somewhere along the way, somebody came up with this radical idea. I like the person, I like my partner to ask me, am I done? Do I have anything else to say?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Is there more about that? That became, is there more about that, which is adding curiosity to the process. So instead of just listening and mirroring, you say, let me see if I got it. Did I get it? Is there more? And what happened with that emergence over, it was probably five to seven years. As I look back, it was a long time.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Because when Getting came out in 1988, and we started playing around with this in 1979, I'd only developed the mirroring process. It was the second edition, 10 years later, that we had finally figured out mirroring, validating, and empathizing, the three stages there.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So dialogue means that you move from a vertical talking, I'm talking to you, and usually means I'm talking down to you because I am the one who knows what the truth is, And you'll talk back and say, well, I'm the one who knows what the truth is. And that produces the conflict. And then we just raise our voices or come up with better arguments or whatever there is. But there's no listening.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So we added listening to the parallel monologue formula. So if you're doing this and one person starts mirroring back, then you've changed the dynamic. This person now is not in a defensive mode anymore. They're saying, oh, well, yeah, you're listening to me. You're getting that. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm feeling heard. I'm feeling seen.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And then, of course, if you're in the therapy session, we say, okay, so now would you be willing to do that for your partner? And so they began to do that. So I monitored this in minute detail and wrote about it for about seven years. Each of those pieces finally came in that couples wanted to be heard. They wanted to know if they were getting it right. They wanted to be asked, is there more?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And most of them would like to have a summary to see if they got it all. And then we finally evolved something that was very complex, which was validation. They want to know, And I remember the couple, I'll never forget this couple, because of the poignancy of this thing. I want to know, she said to him, do I make sense? And he said, no, you don't make sense.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And she said, well, I think, let me see if I can make that clearer. Do you see how I'm thinking about this? That's what I'd like to know. And he said, well, yeah, I see how you could arrive at that conclusion given your premise.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
But you don't see. You have a logical brain. I have a logical brain. There are different logics. So I can make sense about something that makes no sense to you. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means you see it differently. And you can imagine the tectonic shift that was, is that we don't have to agree to have a happy marriage. We have to see each other without judgment.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And those words were very dynamic. And then so I can, you make sense? I can see how you would see that. And then they wanted empathy. And can you imagine how I might feel with that? And so the couple would then move to, well, and I can imagine that really scares you or makes you happy or you feel anxious or whatever. So then move into a feeling. So that's the how part.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And what I found after that was they had very few problems. Those problems kind of dissolved because they were now feeling safe enough that they didn't need to protect themselves from each other. So, and you probably remember this in your own work, is that things change. What would take 18 months to help a couple with would take maybe three because they learned this. It's a skill.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
It's basically a skill. Nothing profound at all about it. However, it's new in the history of the world. You know, Martin Buber is a Jewish mystical theologian who wrote the book, The I Vowel, came up with the concept of dialogue in 1925.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Prior to that, except for Socrates, which was not dialectical dialogue, except for Socrates, the word dialogue was something characters did in plays ever since Socrates. So dialogue came into that, and not quite knowing about that, When we developed in the 80s, we developed what we call sentence stems. It was really clear that you have to learn to say, did I get it? Is there more? You make sense.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And it has to be a short sentence. and not full of bunch of words like, if I'm listening to you accurately, I think I'm getting. That doesn't work. If I got it, and so forth, that we had to do that. That once we got that down, The whole, to me, that became the engine then of therapy. It's interesting to explore your childhood, interesting to look at your patterns.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Okay, so let me start with that.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
But then I began to learn something fascinating. Every time we went back and looked at your past conflicts, those conflicts materialized again. in the relationship so it's like you can't bring something from the past into the present without it affecting the present so it became less and less interesting for and helpful for couples to have thriving relationships to explore in depth their um
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
you know, unresolved childhood issues. What really became important was they in the present would relate to each other in such a way that those childhood needs were met in the relationship. Then those memories lost their activation power.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
The first thing, I want to share a thought that went through my mind while you were setting us up, which was about that connection between the caregiver and your partner. And the thought that went through my mind was kind of humorous. Nature doesn't make any mistakes. So it pairs the people who need to be paired
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
in order for nature to repair what was wounded and injured in childhood in the relationship with the caretakers.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And you have a better brain.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
The space between becomes the content that goes inside. Here's where we focus our attention.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Oh, yeah. The second thing that comes up is that it's all about survival, that to get down to the bottom tier, the brain has only one agenda, and that's to keep us alive. And if it can secure safety, that is that we stay alive, then the brain says, okay, now we can look around and play and enjoy the trip. But if we are not safe, then you can't enjoy the trip because the brain feels a threat.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Well, I think that the only thing that kills a relationship is negativity. Well, and monologue. Well, and negativity and monologue is the way you deliver negativity. And the reason negativity means is negation. So when I say that didn't make any sense, where did you get that? I am negating Helen and her brain is going to go into a defense.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
She may not say anything, but her brain has now said dangerous person. So if people don't have a structured way to talk so that they can deal with their differences, you got differences, they're not going to go away. You deal with them, they enrich the relationship because every difference is a resource for the relationship. And by couples see differences as a problem, that misses it.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So see your differences as a resource to enrich your relationship. And just a brief comment to make sense out of that. Ellen and I had for years the problem of vacations. I'm a wanderer, so I like to go places. Ellen is a nester. She likes to stay home.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Yeah, she's fine with documentary on Italy or on the Alps. Or Alaska. I want to rent a motorhome and go to Alaska or go to Italy. So I'm a wanderer. So we talked about this for a long time, in fact, and finally came up with, well, why don't we, we started off with rent a motorhome. Then I'll be a wanderer. I'll drive. And you can sit in the back of the motorhome and watch documentaries.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And then once we get to the campground, we'll cook dinner together and I'll share my day and you share your day. You went to Italy and I went up the road. But we had a relationship like that. So that's just a sort of superficial way. But if you bring difference together, you create something new that neither one would ever come up with by yourself.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And usually it's kind of a collaborative process in which you collaborate on your differences. And then you begin to co-create something that would satisfy those differences for both of you. But it would be different from what you started with. Oh, and we also we were told by our staff today to say to you. that we have now made a documentary of our life.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And at the end of it is an avatar so that on our website, now harvilleandhelen.com, if you go there, the documentary will be put up in March, I think. and they'll have an avatar so that you can go there for the rest of whatever and talk to us and we will talk back to you. And this company is called Eternus. They're creating, making people eternal.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So this avatar will answer questions about Imago and about marriage and about relationships after we're long gone.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
I love your model about the kids climbing the stairs and taking responsibility for what they brought to the relationship. So this is the major step that we help couples understand is your partner is not your problem. You are your problem.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So if you take responsibility and you ask the question, this is a fundamental question, am I safe for Helen? Am I safe for my partner? And I ask that sincerely. Then that's very different from is Helen safe for me? Because if I ask that question, I've already answered it. She's not. So the question I have to ask is, am I safe for her? And I have to check it out. How am I doing with your safety?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And it really is. I've not believed this. I've done a lot of research on the brain. brain researchers' view of what the brain is doing. And I'm now pretty convinced that the field probably would say that that's the fundamental agenda of the brain. And then it will play after that.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And I can do some things on a regular basis. One is when she talks, I need to say, hey, Helen, let me see if I got that. And also during the day, I need to walk in, and especially at night when we're together, but also during the day and say, hey, beautiful, I can't believe I'm married to you. And do that and walk out of the room. Her brain is going to have a memory of me coming in and doing that.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So this is the other thing that's sort of obvious, but nobody says it. I didn't say it. We didn't say it for decades. You created all the memories your partner has in their brain about you. So some of the memories that your partner has about you, your partner doesn't feel comfortable with. So you created all they have. If you want your partner to see you differently, create new memories.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Yeah. And probably that's the real answer is if you want a great relationship, become dialogical. Learn the process. Do it all the time. Not just when you have troubles. Yeah. Do it all the time.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
You're a wonderful person and I've loved being with you. Thank you.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Thank you. You make me look good.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
But surviving is first, thriving then is second, which is one of the reasons why, with that being so clearly a part of nature, Not like that's a that's not a psychological state. That's a natural state. That's the state of nature, which is one of the reasons why our work using the dialogue process, which we kind of began to create in the 1980s, early 1980s.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
The goal of that is to create safety so that the first thing you have to do is figure out how to help couples experience safety. And fundamentally, this is almost a full version of the whole system. Fundamentally, you have to get rid of negativity because all negative statements trigger the brain survival directive. If a person is negative, they could be dangerous. And if they're dangerous,
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
They could kill you. And the brain doesn't sit around waiting. It's going to go into a defense immediately.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And you want me to do something different from what I did.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Because I want you to be happy. I want to compromise so we'll both be happy.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Convert the frustration. And the request is a behavior, not something abstract, like be nice. The brain is not interested in being nice. It wants to see you, how your eyes look, how your face looks, what your energy is. And so you can't fool the brain. It knows when you're thinking. It wants only authenticity and meaning. So now let me back up and say, why is this so connected to childhood?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
That's the piece that it took years to tease that out. of listening to couples because you can't find it in the research literature because it's hard to research this. So I teased it out over the years and listening, Helen and I listening to couples and talking about our own relationship. I want to say our relationship has been a laboratory. So let's talk about what that is.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And then, oh, that makes sense now for Mary and George and the therapy. then go and check out with them and say, oh, what I'm learning here makes sense for Helen and me.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
We can go into that later. Let me just get this foundation, because you ask a foundational question that I haven't gotten to yet. So here, most kids have two parents. But even if you have only one parent, you still get the same thing. And the two parents, you get one parent is usually engaged, but in a controlling way. And the other parent is disengaged in a kind of neglectful way.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And so if you grow up with a single parent, they will be controlling on the one hand. And then they'll switch and be neglectful on the other.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Yeah. You've got this caretaker. Now, so there's the controller and the neglectful one, either in two people or in one, because there's so many single parents nowadays because of so many divorces that one wonders what happens to the other polarity. Well, the partner with the kid adopts it. So the question then is, Which one of those behaviors, neglectful or controlling, is most painful?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And the one that's the most painful is the one that triggers the brain's survival directive. Because the most painful one means they're not meeting the need. The child has only one need, to be seen and heard and valued. And if you're engaged with controlling, you're not seeing or hearing. or valuing, you're telling them what to do.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And if you're neglectful, you're not seeing, hearing, and valuing, you're ignoring them. So is it more painful to be controlled or painful to be neglected? And I think that what I don't know, and I haven't seen in any literature to help me this, which one is most painful? And I think, so I just say that's a subjective experience.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
I know I grew up because of my parents dying, both before I was five. I grew up with three sisters at different times. And the sister that was most painful for me was the one who was most controlling. The ones who were neglectful, that wasn't very painful because I had a lot of private time. And so I developed that private side of myself.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
because nobody was controlling me or telling me what to do. I could go hide somewhere and read. And so it was less painful for me to be ignored or neglected or just left alone than this other thing, which was, did you do your chores? When are you going to get them done? You got to go milk a cow and all that sort of stuff. So in any case, your psyche picks one of those as the most dangerous.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And then that means the need was not met. to be seen, heard, and valued. So when you grow up, you still have that need. And if that doesn't change, then when you get to adult partner selection, you'll pick the person who's similar to the one who was most painful in your childhood, because that's where the most of the need wasn't met. So
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
For instance, in Helen's case, Helen's caretakers were pretty neglectful as she grew up.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
But when we got together, I was the neglectful one because I'm the isolator. I don't initiate. I respond. And so if Helen doesn't ask for something, I don't think of anything. So it took years for us to work out that dynamic is that I have to come out of my privacy and my shell. And Helen has to sort of back off from going after me because I'll go back in my shell.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
Then she gets more of what she doesn't want, which is me being gone. And so forth. So anyway, so that's the dynamic. So you grow up, the brain is still looking for survival. And it says the deepest need not met was with the controlling person.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
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. But you didn't have this conversation, you know, while you were dating or whatever. On the way to the wedding, your unconscious is having the problem, having the conversation.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
So then that need will show up in the relationship with, you know, we didn't talk about this, but where are you? Or why are you so interactive? Helen is what we call a maximizer. I'm a minimizer. So I put out very little energy. She puts out a whole lot of energy. And it's like, back off. And she says, where are you? And so that was fun. And it's that fundamental. Where are you?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
And how come you're in my face, you know, controlling me? Why didn't you show up so that I know I'm living with somebody? But it's all, this is the thing that was so almost sad to figure this out. It's that simple. It's about survival. So all these behaviors make sense when you're trying to get a need met so that you won't die. And so since the need is connected to early childhood memories,
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
when it was the fact the baby had no options, except if I don't find that parent, I'm not gonna make it. But the baby doesn't have that conversation. It just goes, ah, where are you, you know? Or if you cry and nobody comes, then you stop crying and then somebody will come. Because the baby who's crying and stops crying, parents ignore their crying. Isn't that amazing?
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
The baby stops crying and they go, what's wrong with the baby? Now the baby's got parents' attention. So the baby now knows it has to make noise to get needs, and all that. Marriage is about survival. And if you create predictable safety, you can have a great marriage.
Healing + Human Potential
The Hidden Reason You Fall for People Who Hurt You | Helen Hunt & Harville Hendrix | EP 76
If you have negativity, you're not going to have a great marriage because the brain is going to keep looking for love in all the wrong places, and it's not going to find it there.