Why Do I Long for Her?
© 2006 Richard, 21CP Author and Publisher

_http://tearsandhealing.com/_ (http://tearsandhealing.com/)


[Many of us in (or formerly in) relationships with abusive partners have
observed a tendency to fall back into the same patterns in succeeding
relationships. For many of us, we wonder if this is the equivalent of a
“relationship
death sentence”. I’m happy to say that for me it has not been so.
Awareness,
though, is key. One part of this awareness is recognizing the tendency toward
partners with specific traits. This section, from the chapter on Dealing
with Love, explains one piece of that puzzle. I explain this much more
completely in my second book, In Love and Loving It – Or Not!

As time progresses, my offering continues to grow to address the different
challenges that we face in dealing with abusive partners and setting a future
path to something better. Let me take a few lines and outline the three books
I now have for this audience:

Tears and Healing, my first book, deals with the emotional challenges of
recognizing an abusive situation and building a new emotional and moral
foundation that can allow to escape from the crush of abuse. This book is about
you
and your thoughts and feelings about your life situation.

In Love and Loving It - Or Not!, my second book, goes into much more depth
in explaining how and why we fall in love, and how that relates to a loving
relationship, which is different. Since most of us got into our abusive
situations by falling in love, and stayed there partly because of that, this is
a
key issue for us. It isn't just important in dealing with our current or past
relationship, but also for the future. This book can help you take concrete
steps to make this aspect of your emotional life work better for you.

Meaning from Madness is my new mini-book. It addresses the issues I spend so
much time on in personal consultation: what drives a disordered person to do
what they do? Personality disordered people have a psychological dynamic that
makes them think and act in ways that are totally different from us, and
totally puzzling until we start to learn what makes them tick. Part of
understanding is also knowing what are the possibilities for improvement with
treatment. This book offers factual insight rather than emotional insight, and
really
is an essential addition to Tears and Healing.

And the first book I ever wrote (thought not the first I published) is my
favorite: The Way of Respect, which presents the ancient eastern Taoist
philosophy in modern language.

You can also get the first three or all four in one stroke.]


Why Do I Long for Her (or Him)? - Imago Theory

I hear this question a lot, and since I worked hard to get a plausible
explanation of this for myself, I want to offer this short discourse on Imago
Relationship Theory, attributable to Hendrix.

Imago - Each of us forms an Image (called an imago – pronunciation: i mah
go) based on the characteristics of our primary caregivers as young children.
This subconscious image includes the shortcomings in those people, including
how we were hurt or neglected. It determines who we will fall in love with.
When we meet an imago match, we quickly feel like we’ve always known him, we
can’
t remember being without him. We fee that we aren’t complete without him,
that we must have him. Our subconscious is overjoyed at finding the person who
once had cared for us, and will now resume and make everything right.

Romantic love overwhelms us and makes us behave in unselfish ways, and see
only the good in the person. Invariably this peters out (usually soon after
engagement or marriage) and the person hurts us in the same way as our childhood
caregivers (this is why they match our image), and we are ill prepared to
deal with this. The relationship falters, and if both partners cannot grow to
overcome the weaknesses that they have, the relationship will fail. By this
time, our subconscious has caught on that this person isn’t going to make
everything right, and we are ready to go find another imago match. This is
commonly called falling out of love.

The bad news is that these feelings of necessity are very strong early in
the relationship. The good news: there are lots of imago matches in the world,
and you can find others if you work at it. More bad news: since you failed in
your first relationship, and didn’t overcome your weaknesses, you’ll do it
all over again.

If you’re not used to thinking about how your mind and feelings work
together, this might sound like psycho-babble. But it is a very powerful model
that
fits with real life experience. It really helped me to move on when my
subconscious went out and found a near-clone of my BPW and flattened me into
love
with her. So theories like this can help you see what’s happening in a
different way, makes better choices about how you react, and move on to feeling
better.

Hendrix has at least two books: Getting the Love You Want (for couples) and
Keeping the Love You Find (for singles) (p. 163). They’re wordy but well worth
the time and effort if you are struggling to understand why you are so in
love with someone, or how to get out of love with someone who is bad for you.

© 2006 Richard, 21CP Author and Publisher

_http://tearsandhealing.com/_ (http://tearsandhealing.com/)


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