Sabine Bösel - Lend me your ear and I'll give you my heart

Here’s an example:

Lena came to us for therapy because she and her husband Kurt had drifted apart after two years of marriage and the birth of a daughter. When Kurt slapped her in the face after another recurring quarrel, she drew the line. During a therapy session she said the following: “When I was a child, my mother beat me, and I certainly don’t want to live with a man who also beats me.” Lena and Kurt separated.

Half a year later – Lena was still in therapy – she fell in love with Fabian. “He’s so different,” she gushed. “He’s as soft and kind-hearted as a lamb.” Eight months later, the first love rush was over, first conflicts arose, and during a quarrel, Fabian hit Lena. What does that tell us? One of Lena’s central topics is violence. Her mother beat her, humiliated her, and even locked her in the basement. As an adult, for the second time, she had chosen a man for whom violence was also an issue. Both Kurt and Fabian had experienced beatings in their childhoods.

Lena left Fabian. “I’ve had enough of men,” she said, and stayed single for the next two years. Then Jakob arrived. Here, too, there were conflicts in the relationship, but they could be solved, and there was no violence. Lena became pregnant, and they had a daughter: Lena’s second, Jakob’s first child. When the little daughter was six months old, new conflicts arose. Lena accused Jake of preferring their child to Lena’s first daughter. As a result, Jakob refused to talk to her for a few days, which made Lena so furious, that she yelled at him, and in her despair she hit him.

She came to the therapy session terribly ashamed of herself. “That’s how my mother must have felt,” she said. “I have to resolve this issue with my mother, or I’ll always carry it around with me!” Lena’s mother refused to come to therapy, so Lena and Jakob decided on couples therapy. Both of them were able to resolve the issue of violence, since such assaults were nothing new to Jakob, as it turned out. To this day, ten years later, they stay in touch with us by writing how happy they are to have worked out and resolved this difficult life issue. They argue sometimes, but have found a way to handle the situations constructively.

We can’t escape from our problematic life issues. Even if, in the moment of conflict, breaking up seems like a relief and the most obvious solution, we recommend entering into a dialogue first, and making further decisions only afterward.

The kinship of souls is reflected by the fact that although we have had different childhood experiences, we have retained similar positive and negative emotions. “Then why don’t we pick someone who represents only the positive parts of childhood?” This is a question we’re asked again and again. Well, in a way we do just that. But in the getting-to-know-each-other phase, when we are falling in love, we primarily see the positive things. During this phase, we believe in the Prince Charming or the Dream Girl. We only show our best selves—the “chocolate-coated” side. Negative behavior is blocked out, or at least not perceived as such.

“Sure, I noticed that she was prickly,” one of our clients said once, “but there were so many good sides to her that it didn’t bother me at all. Now that characteristic really bothers me, and I ask myself why I got involved with this woman. Looking back, I can say that the positive energy was so strong that I fell in love, with the hope that she might lose her prickliness.”

Our Imago Trainer, Hedy Schleifer, once told us: “We humans would long be extinct if it weren’t for this infatuation, when we see things through rose-colored glasses.” If we noticed only the aggravating, problematic sides, it would be hard to fall in love.

There are two sides to every story. We have no problem with the positive things we have in common. It’s the negative life issues that bother us, that rob our energy and make life difficult. We often suppress the negative experiences of our childhood or forget them, and it’s uncomfortable when our partner holds up a mirror with their behavior.

To humans, all zebras look the same: like a horse with stripes. However, a baby zebra knows the exact difference between the stripes of its mother and those of other zebras. Why? Because, to ensure its survival, it’s essential for the baby zebra to find its mother immediately. She’s the only one providing protection. Only she will feed it, and only she will risk her life to protect her offspring when a lion attacks. So, the baby zebra has a barcode saved, for which it scans all the other zebras to find its mother.

It’s quite similar with us humans when we grow up. Depending on how we are nurtured, raised, and socialized, a sort of barcode is imprinted on our brains. It consists of many experiences: the way we were loved by our caregivers, or hurt, or neglected by them. Each line of that code is related to an experience. Later on, we subconsciously feel drawn to people with a similar bar code. If there is enough agreement, it will turn into love. If there is too little, the relationship will not outlast the first six months of infatuation.

Human nature demands that we grow and evolve, make discoveries and, if required, change our behavior. This is only possible thanks to the principle of the matching barcodes; it’s the negative atmospheres, experiences, and traumas that want to be resolved and healed. They are stored within us, and only by encountering others can we become aware of them, and it is only what we are aware of that can be changed.

“You cannot heal what you do not feel,” they say, and that’s why our partner is the ideal person to help us learn and evolve. Of all the people around us, they are best able to find our sore points, so that all the old traumas and negative experiences rise to the surface and become perceptible.

We should actually be grateful to our partner for finding the right buttons. They push, and we jump—and at the same time, we start pushing their buttons. Anyone who divorces at that point is throwing away many opportunities. If, however, the partners sit down together and investigate their backgrounds, they help each other to heal.

Maria and Toni came to us for couples therapy. Maria was frustrated because Toni often created a bad mood. “All day long I’m looking forward to the evening together. Then he comes home, is in a bad mood, and it’s all about his fears and aches and pains. That’s not very erotic, is it?” A subsequent Imago Dialogue made it possible for Toni to understand how Maria felt. Maria told him how painful it had been for her that her mother was always so negative. For her as a child, being at home was always connected with a gloomy atmosphere.

So, when Toni comes home from work in a bad mood, he pushes “the right button” for Maria. Without her childhood experience, she could have been much more relaxed about Toni’s behavior. Maria could have laughed it off and gone back to normal. Instead, she reacted and the conflicts took their course.

The power of the kinship of souls helps you to examine, decipher, and resolve your barcodes, step-by-step together. Of course, that’s no guarantee, but in the long run, it can be an efficient way for you to cope with your recurring problems. Once, after couples therapy, a man said to his wife: “Now that I’m free to leave you, because I have become so aware and clear about everything, I’m also free to stay with you. Now I can experience new things with you and don’t have to keep repeating my old paradigms.”

Stick to it even if your conflicts are great ones. Do it for yourself, your children, and your partner. So many sons and daughters would have wished for their parents to have reflected consciously on their relationship! One of our clients once said: “Today I’m glad that my parents split up. I don’t think it would have been possible to stay together. But if they had been willing to look at their issues together and process them, to reflect on what led to the split and to forgive each other, then I know my life would have been different and happier.”