Why is it that we seem only to be attracted to someone who at some point is going to make us nuts, trigger us in some very specific and concrete ways like nobody else can?! And not only that, it seems that the things that attracted us the most are the things that make us the most nuts later on.

What on earth would be the purpose of that? Well, if you buy the idea that life seems to be about growing, learning, bettering ourselves in all kinds of ways then that means psychologically as well. And what that means is, growing up, no fault of our parents, they did the best with whatever they had. Some of us had it easy, some of us much harder. But regardless, life can do it’s thing. There could be illness, or divorce, or sibling issues or lack of money. So we all developed ways to cope, which helped us grow up and do life. 

But what we don’t realize when we meet our partner, we are actually attracted to someone who has the positive and negative characteristics of our parents or caretakers. Why out of the 50 million people we come into contact with, many of whom are equally intelligent, equally attractive, equally talented, we really only feel that buzz of romantic love with so few? Very few people, if you stop and think about it, that you feel like, “I could go the distance with this person.”

Harville Hendrix used the word Imago to name the couples therapy he created. The word Imago is the Latin word for image and it means that growing up we watched a movie and internalized what love is supposed to look like, feel like, sound like etc. And when we meet that reasonable facsimile, that buzz of romantic love pulls us in. But at a certain point, after that amazing romantic phase, our partner is going to do something that is reminiscent of things that were painful, or lacking, or upsetting growing up. And when they do, we go into our defense mechanisms we cultivated.

Some of us text and call all day long, we can’t let it go until connection is restored; some of us withdraw, we don’t want to talk. Some of us get loud, critical, some of us ice our partner out. 

Basically what this means is that we are attracted to someone who can’t tolerate the way we talk and act when we are upset, and we can’t tolerate their way. So hidden in this place of getting attracted to the very person who can activate our childhood wounds the most, is that we all have the opportunity to grow up and heal.

Many of us have a longing to heal old wounds, so we are attracted to the person who is a reasonable facsimile of the person who created those wounds.

There is a caveat - it needs to be a workable version, someone who wants to be on that journey with you. If you grew up with a lot of abuse, and are in an untenable, abusive relationship, your work is to change your “imago” picture of what love is supposed to look like, and not tolerate what shouldn’t be tolerated.

But if we can wrap our minds around the idea that the very things that trigger us with our partner are the things being sent to us to help us heal and grow, we can be grateful that we have the just right Imago match!