Quotes from Harville Hendrix

Nature does not care that you are comfortable, only that you evolve.

We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.

We always marry someone for the purpose of finishing our childhood.

The depth of our love can be measured by our efforts. We demonstrate our love when we take that extra step.

and hurtful comments and replace them with respectful, safe interactions. You must move from self-care to caring for this Space Between.

Imago match, that chemical reaction occurs, and love ignites. All other bets, all other ideas about what we want in a mate, are off. We feel alive and whole, confident that we have met the person who will make everything all right. Unfortunately, since we've almost surely chosen someone with negative traits similar to those of the parents who wounded us in the first place, the chance of a more positive outcome this time around are slim indeed.

envision to be our birthright. Stubbornly, we want what we need without having to change who we are, but that is impossible, for what we need is ourselves—our lost wholeness— which is attainable only through changing what we have become.

In a healthy relationship, two people gradually transition from moving within a single orbit to moving in two separate, but overlapping, orbits. They are able to have their own friends, their own interests, their own schedules, and—most important—their own opinions, feelings, and thoughts, while still enjoying and preferring each other's company.

As we know, human memory is notoriously unreliable when it comes to recalling facts. But when it comes to matters of the psyche, the way we feel about what happened can be as significant as the facts of the case.

But we can only be evolved in the same context in which we were lost—that is, in relationship. We are born into relationship. Our personalities are formed by relationship. And, we are healed in relationship. Relationship holds both the evidence of our injuries and the means of our salvation. It's the way we become who we are.

We embrace the knowledge that affirmations and negativity cannot travel the same neural pathways at the same time.

Self-rejection is the most universal and least recognized problem in our lives. It is the source of all our difficulties in giving and receiving love.

Because you were willing to risk a creative response to anger, you have suddenly become a trusted confidant, not a sparring partner. Once you become skilled in this non-defensive approach to criticism, you will make an important discovery: in most interactions with your spouse, you are actually safer when you lower your defenses than when you keep them engaged, because your partner becomes and ally, not an enemy.

A conscious partnership is a relationship that fosters maximum psychological and spiritual growth; it's a relationship created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind: to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole.

It is often the case, as I have mentioned before, that isolators unwittingly recreate the struggle of their childhood by marrying fusers, people who have an unsatisfied need for intimacy. This way, they perpetuate the conflict that consumed them as children, not as an idle replay of the past or as a neurotic addiction to pain, but as an unconscious act aimed at the resolution of fundamental human needs.

The fact of the matter is that both individuals (fusers and isolators) have the identical need to be loved and cared for. It's just that one of them happens to be more in touch with those feelings than the other.

To the casual observer, it appears that the isolator is a self-sufficient individual with few needs, and the fuser has limitless desires. The fact of the matter is that both individuals have the identical need to be loved and cared for. It's just that one of them happens to be more in touch with those feelings than the other.

I have witnessed this phenomenon of two-way healing so many times in my work with couples that I can now say with confidence that most husbands and wives have identical needs, but what is openly acknowledged in one is denied in the other. When the partners with the denied need are able to overcome their resistance and satisfy the other partners' overt need, a part of the unconscious mind interprets the caring behavior as self-directed. Love of the self is achieved through love of the other.

Not allowing ourselves to be congratulated, celebrated, appreciated, nourished, or loved by people and events outside ourselves is a defense designed to protect us from psychic pain. Barriers to love are erected in our unconscious as it acts on behalf of our own survival. In fact, a barrier to receiving is often the capstone of all our defenses. Connecting

is easier to go without love than to accept a form of love that reawakens our fears of loss. In fact, to receive love feels far more dangerous than to be without it.

In fact, you chose him or her, in part, because he or she recreated the same difficulties you had in childhood.

Your partner may not look like your parents, and on the surface they may not act like your parents. But you will end up feeling the same feelings you had as a child when you were with your parents. This includes the sense of belonging and the love you felt. But it also includes the experience and upset of not getting all your needs met.

The partners have learned how to balance the requirements of closeness and separateness, how to create a sexual life that satisfies them both, how to solve problems effectively together, and how to talk and listen to each other so their differing points of view are understood and honored.

For the purposes of my work with couples, I was keenly interested in the fact that changing your thoughts can change your brain. In a type of therapy called Behavior Change Therapy, or BCT, people are trained in how to use their rational minds to challenge the thoughts and beliefs that can cause depression.