Find Perfect Love with Happiness

Harville Hendrix also identified two main patterns of personality traits Turtles and Lightening Bolts that seem to dominate couple’s interactions.   There  are however, many adaptations becoming personality traits such as “maximizers” or “minimizers,” “rebels,” or “conformist,” “pursuers” or ” avoiders,” “connectors” or “distances,” “chasers” or “runners,” over thinkers,”or over “feelers,” “spenders” or “savers,” “super responsible” or “super irresponsible”  These adaptations or personality traits are actually combinations of shadow parts hidden and/or overcompensated from childhood wounds. 

If we are Turtles, we constrict and withdraw and/or end up completely shut down,  if we are lightening bolts we expand, maximize  and tend to engage in yelling and  blowing  up reactive patterns.  We can be both maximizers and minimizers at different times.   Usually Turtles were controlled in someway and Lightening Bolts were abandoned in someway.  Both are living unconsciously when they continually reinforce their childhood wounds.

I had a couple,  both doctors, who were extreme turtles and lightening bolts with a particular twist.  The woman was raised in a home where her Mother (a turtle) was constantly abused physically and emotionally by the clients Father.  She became her Mothers advocate and constantly stood up to her Father to protect her Mother.  

As an adult, she became an extreme advocate for down trodden and abused women.   Of course she marries a turtle, but what was interesting is that her turtle husband was raised in a home where the Mother was the aggressor against the husband’s Father.  Her husband constantly watched his Father get rejected, shamed and brow beat. The husband as an adult went into a rage whenever he thought men were being discounted.  

What’s interesting is that each them were in constant conflict and a power struggle as over  women’s and men’s being victims and their rights.  They never connected their relationship struggle to their attempts to correct their childhood wounds.  

Our defensive patterns only increase our power struggle until we understand our Imago (unconscious images) as part of our soul contract and become conscious enough to assist it in the healing process.  ( See Healing Soul Contracts and The Imago )  Without understanding of our Imago and soul contracts, we continue to have the same feelings we did in childhood and end up isolated, disconnected and building heart walls instead bridges toward better understanding, healing and intimacy with our partner.

According to Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.   The purpose of relationships is the healing of childhood wounds. He states these negative patterns get triggered and activated in new relationships soon after the honey moon period wears off.  If you had core shame beliefs in childhood, your ad”adaptations will result in the beliefs you had in childhood  such as “I’m not safe and my needs don’t matter.  They operate in the unconscious with fear, anger and unresolved grief intensifying them as driving forces  until brought to the light of  consciousness and healed and resolved.

Decisions like “No one’s there for me.” “I’m always alone” ” I’m never good enough,” “I can’t do anything right” and “I can’t trust,”  become mantras written on relationship heart walls that soon become the pounding points of attack and defense that only strengthen the walls and keep couples separated, locked in and in despair.

I did not understand this in my first marriage.   I grew up in a home with two alcoholic abusive violent parents and certainly did not feel safe, understood, seen or appreciated.  I became a turtle and adapted by distancing and closing  off.   My wife grew up in a home self centered parents and did not feel cared for or supported.  She became opposite from me and adaptive by becoming a lightening bolt and aggressive.  The more I distanced the more she pursued me.   Consequently her mantra was “you don’t care about me”  “My mantra was “You don’t understand.” 

Once the wound becomes instilled in our unconscious Imago, we make decisions to adapt to protect ourselves from repeated hurt.  We unconsciously react and act out those decisions with each successive relationship.