Harville Hendrix

Such a relationship is often less passionate and less troubled than those characterized by a closer match. The reason it is less passionate

passionate is that the old brain is still looking for the ideal “gratifying object,” and the reason it tends to be less troubled is that there isn’t the repetition of so many childhood struggles. When couples with weak imago matches terminate their relationships, it’s often because they feel little interest in each other, not because they are in great pain. “There wasn’t all that much going on,” they say. Or “I just felt restless. I knew that there was something better out there.”

“I know we’ve just met, but somehow I feel as though I already know you.” This isn’t just a line lovers hand each other. For some unaccountable reason, they feel at ease with each other. They feel a comfortable resonance, almost as if they had known each other for years. I call this

feel alone; I feel whole, complete.” One of my clients, Patrick, expressed the feeling in these words: “Before I knew Diane, I felt as though I had been spending all of my life wandering around in a big house with empty rooms. When we met, it was like opening a door and finding someone home.” Being together seemed to put an end to his relentless search for completion. He felt fulfilled, filled up. I call this the “phenomenon of reunification.”

Finally, at some point, lovers utter a fourth and final declaration of love. They tell each other: “I love you so much, I can’t live without you.” They have become so involved with each other that they can’t imagine a separate existence. I call this the “phenomenon of necessity.”

At some point in their relationships, most people discover that some aspect of their partners’ character, a personality trait they once thought highly desirable, is beginning to annoy them. A man finds that his wife’s conservative nature—one of the primary

his wife was not a devoted mother hovering over his crib. She was an equal, with—much to his surprise—needs and expectations of her own. And although she wanted very much to make him happy, she didn’t know what to do. Lacking this information, she was forced to play a grown-up version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey: “Is this what you want? Is this?”

The only thing your old brain seems to care about is whether a particular person is someone to: (1) nurture, (2) be nurtured by, (3) have sex with, (4) run away from, (5) submit to, or (6) attack.5

important principle about the old brain: it has no sense of linear time. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday do not exist; everything that was, still is. Understanding this basic fact about the nature of your unconscious may help explain why you sometimes have feelings within your relationship that seem alarmingly out of proportion to the events that triggered them.

Our old brain, trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

You fell in love because your old brain had your partner confused with your parents!