Working with couples as a specialty, I could never understand why, after couples fell in love and professed their lives to each other, that very person turned out to be someone they would end up in a power struggle with, at least some of the time, and that their partner could feel like their enemy instead of their best friend.

In 1994 I discovered Imago, and everything started to make sense: That the power struggle is meant to happen, you can count on it happening. Why? Why is it that our partner is able to trigger us in ways no one else can, and not only that, the very things that attracted us are the things that make us most nuts later on?

If you resonate with the idea that things happen FOR us, not TO us - you can see your partner as your gift-they are holding up a mirror to show you where you are unconscious and reactive in your communication.

Some of us, when we are upset with our partner, follow them from room to room; we can’t let it rest until connection is restored; some of us withdraw and don’t want to talk about it; some of us amp up, get loud, critical, use a lot of words; some of us ice our partner out. Whichever way we have is very painful to our partner, and vice versa.

The theory of Imago starts to make sense of the power struggle - as we say in Imago, if you are in a struggle with your partner, you are probably with the just RIGHT person - the person sent to you to help you grow up and heal. And working with these very places of upset in the Imago process is what will create the bridge back to that place of safe, joyful connection with your partner.