for the curious minded, addendum to the last post

[threeplusfire]

The books she wanted me to read are Getting the Love You Want and Keeping the Love you Find by Harville Hendrix. I suddenly see where she picked up a good chunk of her preconcieved notions about my life.

For the record, I'm sure childhood experiences and our parents go a long way towards shaping what we are. But I absolutely do not believe that we are fated to seek out people like our parents, and that it is some inviolable law of relationships. That's just absurd. We are more complex than that.

Also, not all single people are single because they are immature. I flipped through these books in the store, and I'm not impressed. I dislike books like this for the most part. I would rather read an academic text ont he nature of communication than perform doofy exercises under someone's supervision for $200/hr.

Comments

You don't strike me as particularly immature...

[geoectomy.livejournal.com]

I don't know bout Hendirx, but this sounds a little like Family Systems Theory. I'd read a little bit of John Bradshaw's work, which apparently has a bit of a cult following... The basis there wasn't so much set on finding parental replacements, as finding people or situations that allow you to continue playing a role or performing a function that you played/performed in the "family" you grew up with.

I like the idea but, like you, I also suspect it's a bit more complicated than that.

I think that as we grow through major life-experiences (both traumatic and epiphanic), we calcify the emotions these experiences embody, into experiential anchors that help to define who we are. People that help to solidify these anchors tend to bring out a supportive streak, possibly even an attraction. People who help to break down those anchors evoke a defensive reaction...

I'm uncertain as to whether those anchors are a good or bad thing in themselves and uncertain whether we want to calcify them or destroy them... Probably it's better to pick and choose, but it's not like we have half the understanding of ourselves necessary to pick and choose which ones we want to do what with, nor even how to do it...

Wow. I'm not sure if that made any sense or not.

When the blonde (ancient history. I don't even write about her anymore) and I were shopping around for a relationship counsellor, she was big on Bradshaw's take on FST. We used it as a guidepost for interviewing folks. There's nothing wrong with checking out a number of counsellors... If you don't feel right about one's approach, it might be best ot move on or continue shopping...

Re: You don't strike me as particularly immature...

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt that a lot of people have unvoiced expectations of their partners and relationships that stem from the way their family lived. I was a pretty responsible little kid with an overinflated sense of importance attached to those responsibilities. I'm definitely the more responsible on in my marriage in a lot of respects.

What really turns me off of these books and my therapist is this attitude that you have no real say in the matter. Okay, it would be impossible for me to find a person who didn't possess some of the traits of my parents. That doesn't mean though that my husband is my mother, or whatever line of nonsense I was fed today.

Yargh. Therapist shopping is worse than car shopping.