Creating a Conscious Marriage

In order to arrive at this stage, which Hendrix calls the ‘conscious marriage’, you need to first acquire knowledge and awareness to become more conscious. Whether we like it or not, we enter the romantic phase and the power struggle on automatic pilot. In order to create the ‘conscious marriage’, we must learn and understand exactly what triggers us, what pushes our buttons, what those things are that in a moment turn us into small wounded children. Then we must learn how to help each other becoming a healing person for each other.

The Getting the Love You Want Workshop

And this is exactly the purpose of the workshop. With the facilitators explaining the theory and process, demonstrating the skills and with participants using the worksheets in their manual and practicing the skills with each other, the workshop becomes a safe place where you can begin a new level of your journey in discovering yourself and your partner. There is no group interaction in exercises. Although anyone who wants to share an insight or a comment can do so, no one is required to say anything to the group. The work is done alone and with your partner. At first glance, the exercises in the manual, and even the skills you learn, seem very artificial and awkward. But their structure turns out to be exactly what creates safety. They work.

The work you do in the workshop, together with the written exercises in the manual, is built like a puzzle. At the end, you understand why you chose your partner, why you have the difficulties that you have, what you really want to get from your partner and don’t get ­­ all without necessarily feeling the pieces of the puzzle come completely together. Each partner starts seeing the other’s childhood wounds, and the work is done so that, at the end, each partner sees, in self and other, the needs of the old brain to feel safe and some of the things that can make that happen. As the sense of safety increases, there is less need for one or both partners to seek ‘exits’ from the relationship.

Exits Escape from Distress

And what is an ‘exit’ from the relationship? Exits are all those things that we do in order to escape from intimacy. They are not limited to affairs. Exits can also be working excessively, focusing all your attention and time on the children, watching television, spending all your time in community service, using alcohol or other drugs, jogging, hobbies ­­ anything that you use to avoid dealing with your partner and the issues in your relationship. When you identify what you do to avoid the relationship, each partner must commit to closing these escape routes, slowly, but definitely.

Working To Become Safe and Conscious

The workshop, says Hendrix, is only the first stage in the process. In the manual you receive, there is a program designed for 27 weeks after the workshop, and the process continues for 3 or more years. Although it seems like a long time, creating the relationship you long for and healing the wounds that fuel conflict take time. It is not magic ­­ it is a process and it’s worth it. Of course, the healing begins with these first steps and each frustration becomes an opportunity to deepen that healing. While in the beginning it can feel like a rollercoaster of frustration/pain, and safety/love, the process gradually moves more and more into the area of safety. You experience the process of co-creating the relationship of your dreams.

Who Comes to a Workshop?

The workshops are intended for anyone in a committed pri -mary relationship: those who have a good marriage and want to make it even better, those who are having problems in their relationship and want to work toward healing them, and also those who are faced with what seems to be the end of a relationship and want to know if there is any chance of saving it.

Real Love

Through this process, you come to real love, a solid, lasting love,” say Hedy and Yumi. “You know who you are, you know who your partner is, and you choose to be together, not because you have to, but because you want to.”

Israeli Therapists Attend the Workshop

The first workshops held here in Israel (June 1993) by the Schleifers was aimed at therapists and their partners. They wanted to introduce therapists to an effective model to use with their clients, and to give therapists a personal experience of the model. Therapists are human beings that have their own frustrations and pains in relationships like everyone else. The three couples I interviewed, related to the workshop, not as mental health professionals, but as married couples living their life.

The Yanays: Diving Deeper and Finding Gifts in the Garbage

I can’t say that I discovered any thing brand new, but this presented some things from another perspective than what I had known before,” said Oraniya Yanay, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who heads, with her husband, the ADAM Institute for diagnosis and consultation. “It’s as if this brought another layer, a different level in the depth of touching the pain I have brought into my relationship. As a small girl, I had the sense of being someone who was invisible in my family, so it is obvious that this was the point at which I would be attracted to my husband, Dov. That is the peak of my pain and the peak of closeness between us. I knew this, but the level of sensing it, feeling it, and diving in to that whole issue was deeper. And it was possible because of the sense of safety. The climate and the techniques of the workshop are very protecting. They keep boundaries and provide safety. You do the exercise or work with the skill, and then there is someone who stops it so that you don’t stay stuck in it. In every skill or exercise, the workshop leaders pay attention and are available to help at all times.”

“When people express some of their problems, it is obvious that your problem is another version of ones that most people have,” says Dov Yanay. “Oraniya had the feeling of being abandoned, and I am a ‘space cadet.’ One of the things that drives her crazy is when I forget to arrive on time. It touches those feelings of abandonment.” “And the more I have asked him not to disappear, the more he has done it,” interjected Oraniya. “In the past I would tell him I need him not to disappear. I asked him to tell me when he is going to be late. But the more I told and asked, the more he seemed to run away.”

Both of them agreed that the workshop touched them most strongly in exactly those places, the pain of their childhood wounds. “Although we were accessing those wounds,” said Dov, “the workshop was not a crying and pain party. There is a nice blend of both the head and the heart. There is alot of transfer from the unconscious to the conscious, alot of thinking, and a sense that you are moving and putting things in order.”

One of the most exciting experiences for the Yanays was an exercise that is very positive and joyful. Oraniya described it; “This was an exercise where you ‘flood’ your partner with your admiration and love. Dov was sitting and I was walking around him, almost like in a Polish wedding, and I told him things that I love about him. I started with ‘I love your eyes’ and proceeded to tell him what I loved about his body and physical appearance. Then I went on to what I love about his character and about his behavior. I told him only those things I love. Other people in the room were also doing it with their partners at the same time. There were people who cried and people who laughed. I became very emotional, both when I was giving and receiving. It was a very special experience that I had never done before.”

Dov and Oraniya left the workshop optimistic because of one its claims; “the part of your marriage that is most messed up can also become your greatest healing and your greatest gift, on one condition­­that you learn how to change it from atomic energy that destroys your partner and your relationship into solar energy that provides new light and warmth for you both.” Dov said that his sense of optimism came from the fact that “you learn practical tools that help you find love and to transform even the junk into a positive source of change and healing. It’s as if I need to say ‘thanks that I have an SOB that pushes my buttons, because through that person maybe I will reach something better ­­ my healing and my whole self.”

Now, a few weeks after the workshop, the Yanays aren’t rushing to commit yet to the process. Dov said, “I am not ready yet to make the commitment to the entire process. I’ve bought into the system at the idea level, because I can see the pluses of doing it. It’s as if somebody tells me that if I lose 20 pounds and exercise, I’ll feel great. I know that is true, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve started the diet yet, or that I’ve committed to a program of exercise!”

Oraniya said, “I’m ready to make the commitment, but being ‘ready’ isn’t actually making it. It is difficult. I’m not giving up on it, and I’m also not completely willing to give up on the junk in myself and my relationship. I’m used to it! However, it is not as easy as it was before to come home and start fighting. Now, I really want to sit down and do a dialogue. A good partnership is an investment of time and energy and the way to freedom is often much more difficult than the way to slavery! We are trying to use this method. Many years ago, I committed to work on my marriage and my relationship with my children, and even with my friends. To me, it is very important for me to be more open, more receiving, more caring, and more willing to be cared for, but this is very difficult for me. It is not difficult to find an exit! We both have careers, we both love our work, and it is so easy to plunge right into it instead of doing the work of our relationship.