As a couples therapist for over 35 years, I've found that good communication is the building block of intimacy between partners. Without it, there is a lack of safety and a ruptured connection. This is a heartbreaking situation when people love one another and are longing to be closer.
Dr. Harville Hendrix, the founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and best-selling author, states that “talking is one of the most dangerous things we people do.” Indeed, when left to our own devices, we frequently pollute the relational space between us and our partners, creating conflict or deadness.
As a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist, I am grateful for the Intentional Dialogue process that Dr. Hendrix and his wife, Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt teach couples. Image relationship therapy is a seemingly simple, yet deeply profound, model for helping couples to communicate and move through their challenges in connection.
One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Hendrix is this: “We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.” This, then, is the essence of couples therapy — guiding couples toward greater healing in their primary, intimate relationship.
Imago Relationship Therapy is the iconic therapy that bonds couples for life — and here are the three phases:
1. Mirroring
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Once we are aware of our desire to save our relationship from these dangers, we can consciously learn the tools that will help. I teach couples to sit across from one another, gazing softly into each other’s eyes to establish what neuroscientists call the “brain bridge."
When we gaze at one another, our faces relax, our defenses settle, and we can connect with the part of our brain where our Wise Adult remembers our love and best intentions. We can hold hands, releasing the bonding hormone, oxytocin.
We can breathe as our bodies calm and we connect biologically with one another. Then, and only then, do we begin to talk.
In Imago Relationship Therapy, the Dialogue consists of one person speaking and one person listening. The speaker, or Sender, is the person who invites the other into their world. They speak in short sentences so that the listener, or Receiver, can hear, take in, and repeat back what they’ve heard. In that way, the process is slow and fully attuned.
At this point, most couples cry as they realize how long it’s been since anyone saw or heard them at this level. This first step is called Mirroring. Most of us were not adequately mirrored in childhood and so having our partner take us in in this way is a deeply touching experience.
Once the Receiver has heard and mirrored back everything their partner has to say, they move to Step Two.
2. Validation
It is important to note that Validation is not the same as agreement. You may completely disagree with your partner’s point of view, but it’s important to let them know that you hear them and that they make sense to you.
In other words, in your world, the issue being discussed most likely looks completely different. Here, you are letting your partner know that you are now in their world and seeing it through their eyes—you make sense to me.
3. Empathy
The third Step in the Imago Dialogue Process is empathy. This is deeper than Step Two because it drops you down into your feeling state. Not only does your partner make sense, but you can also experience empathy for the emotions that they are experiencing. Of course, all along the way partners are checking in and making sure that the speaker feels that they are getting it right.
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Most ongoing issues in relationships have deep roots and old stories attached. With Imago Relationship Therapy, we are able to go to the heart of the matter and heal old wounds that keep showing up in various ways.
Through mirroring, validating, and empathizing, they were able to explore their vulnerabilities and get to know each other on a deeper level. They began to do more of what all animals who feel safe do: play, nurture, and mate!
Imago Relationship Therapy is a very useful structure through which the couple’s relationship can be transformed from their worst nightmare to their wildest dream. The Dialogue Process serves to bring the couple back from disconnection, through repair, and back to their love and connection.
These three steps — Mirroring, Validating, and Empathizing — do indeed create the kind of conversational safety that bonds couples forever.
By learning to “come over the bridge” of the space between them, couples learn to visit their partner’s world and develop an understanding and empathy of what it means to be “the other." This is a sacred process that leads individuals and couples alike to experience “communion” with all that is healthy and beautiful in their lives and their relationships.
Here are the benefits for a couple in Imago Relationship Therapy:
- Learning to create passion and safety in your relationship
- Creating deeper intimacy
- Communicating to be heard and to understand
- Creating a conscious relationship
- Resolving conflict
- Approaching your relationship with a loving and empathetic lens
The first step for couples is to acknowledge that between them there is a space, and this space is where their relationship lives. It is each of their responsibility to nurture that space and to fill it with sacred practices.
When we are not aware of that space, we can fill it with words and behaviors that make it feel unsafe for our partner. As humans, we become emotionally reactive to protect ourselves when threatened.
Some of us have learned to expand our energy — we raise our voices, talk a lot, demand attention, or fight. Some of us have learned to constrict our energy—we get quiet, withdraw, retreat, avoid, or run away.
Whenever we are in these reactive behaviors, the space between us becomes dangerous, polluted, or toxic and we are definitely not feeling close or connected. We are wired for survival, so we’ll do almost anything to survive, even if it means slaying our partners or icing them out.
Mary Kay Cocharo is a licensed marriage and family therapist in a private practice in West Los Angeles, California.
