We think we’re not enough. It’s why we don’t ask for what we want in marriage.

And within the not enough script inside of us, subtle psychological mechanisms are at work– in how we repeat old relational patterns, how we sabotage ourselves, and how we neglect our most precious relationships.

Freud called it the thanatos “death drive,” the opposing force to one’s creative life force. Coyote trickster is the analogy in native cultures.

In The King Within, Accessing The King In The Male Psyche, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette called it “repetition compulsion.”

“By a psychological mechanism termed ‘repetition compulsion,’ our unconscious compels us, even in adulthood, to repeat the childhood traumas we suffered at the hands of our parents. We recapitulate the same relational patterns imprinted on us when we were young, before we had any Ego structure to speak of and before we had developed any defensible psychological boundaries.”

We repeat the hard stuff from childhood. The brother who beat us up, the mother who yelled at us, the teacher who shamed us in front of the class.

We rehash these experiences- the shame, the guilt, and fear – in our most primary relationship where it’s safe and familiar.

Four times a man marries and divorces essentially the same woman, a version of his raging mother.

A woman never develops a significant intimate relationship with a male partner. No man can compare to the amazing love her father gave her when she was a little girl.

A man constantly complains about his wife. She’s this. She’s that. He’s really beating up on his absent mother. It sounds crazy and yet it happens all the time.

This dynamic is described in detail in Harville Hendrix’s book Getting the Love You Want as well as Matt Kahn’s YouTube video “Twin Flames or Soulmates.”

Buddhists call it Samsara, repeating the cycle of suffering. Consider it your soul’s contract with your spouse.

A way of completing the unfinished business of childhood; to heal in adulthood what was broken in us as children.

It is why we come together in partnership –for growth—but only if we are willing to become conscious of the pattern. And when we don’t, our relationship blows up on us.

If you were abandoned as a child, you will likely choose an emotionally absent partner. 

If you grew up with a domineering parent, you may choose an overly assertive partner, or, conversely, take on the dominating role and seek out a partner as a doormat.

We unconsciously choose a partner who will do these old replays with us. And then we wonder why we have the same fights with our partners over and over.

This is our soul’s attempt to get whole. Until we see our patterns, we hurt the way we’ve been hurt and project the way we were once projected on.

Unconscious to this dynamic, to survive, we put on masks and armor our hearts with shields of complacency, apathy and even cynicism.

We resign ourselves to stories like: He’ll never change, I’ll never be happy, or That’s just how he is. And our hearts feel the cost in diminished love, sparse connection, and sometimes estrangement.

A man wakes up panicked at 3am, staring at his wife of 20 years, wondering, who is this woman I’ve been married to forever? What he’s not asking is – Who have I become with this person?

Is this you waking up at 3am?
Or someone you know?
Get help today.

Dig this? Check out my book from which it’s an excerpt.

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