Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Second Edition

positive and the negative qualities of the people who raised us, and (2) they compensate for positive parts of our being that were cut off in childhood. We enter the relationship with the unconscious assumption that our partner will become a surrogate parent and make up for all the deprivation of our childhood. All we have to do to be healed is to

“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

Unfortunately, most people experience their first “relationship difficulty” in the first eighteen months of life. Experts in child development call this critical period the “Attachment Stage.” Having a close bond with one or more caregivers is important throughout childhood, but it is essential in those earliest months.

at

You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner.

Not surprisingly, when her partner acts in a similar manner, she is filled with the same fears she had as a child. Buried in her criticism of her partner, therefore, is a plaintive cry from childhood: “Why can’t someone take care of me?”

she might be able to gain some valuable information about her own childhood wounds. She could do this by following a simple procedure. First, she could write her criticism of her partner on a piece of paper: “You are always so disorganized!” Then she could answer the following questions: How do I feel when my partner acts this way?

The psychological term for this tendency to put the source of our frustrations and the solutions to our problems outside ourselves is “externalization,” and it is the cause of much of the world’s unhappiness.

We subject everyone to the same intense scrutiny: is this someone who will nurture me and help me recover my lost self? When we meet someone who appears to meet these needs, the old brain registers instant interest.