NEW FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS

Brigitte Champetier de Ribes
January 2014

Living in a couple relationship is a universal aspiration, to live love in a couple relationship is a recent achievement. Each culture transmits a way of living the couple relationship, and the phenomenological and systemic representation of reality that family constellations offer, open us to new perspectives about life as a couple.

The Foundations of the Couple Relationship

The pillars of the couple relationship are love, giving and receiving, sexuality, intimacy (or emotional exchange), and cohabitation.

Let us always remember that there are no laws, but an observation of the “couple” phenomenon.

Every couple is a different case. There is no standard model. Furthermore, every epoch, every society, has its own disorders, its established disorders, its ways of compensating…

The lack of completeness of our couple experience is the engine of its development, of our desire to improve it and of our creativity for it.

The couple experience is subjected to all the highs and lows of life, and it will mirror all the unresolved conflicts of both members, or the interferences of their family systems.

Not having a partner is the result of a systemic compensation that reveals a serious entanglement the system needs to heal, and it will heal mainly thanks to the single person’s unconditional acceptance of her fate.

Love

Love is a background presence; it is not a feeling but an attitude. It is the unconditional and grateful acceptance of the other person just as she is.

It is “I take you just as you are. Thanks for the gift to me you are. Thanks for being the way you are.”

We learn to love through our parents. Anything that separates us from unconditionally loving our parents will get in the way between us and the others. If there has been an “interrupted movement of love” toward the father or the mother, it will be happen too towards the partner.

Love is learned and restored with our parents. When our love towards our parents flows, it will also flow towards the others.

Falling-in-love, is blind. It doesn’t allow seeing the other person, we can only see what we need, what we project. Falling in love is an impulse outside of our control, which comes from afar, from our family system’s need to heal or to compensate something via that other person we are attracted to.

Later, with the love at second sight, the person finally discovers how the other one is: someone imperfect like herself, someone who does not match in any way the ideal partner she had envisaged. In the end, that ideal is always a projection of the mother, not even the mother we have had, but an ideal mother.

Love at second sight is an adult love that takes the other person just as she is, and my own needs just as they are. Some of those needs will be covered by the relationship, and a great part will not. I will still be responsible for my deprivations and their healing.

The three keywords of couple love are: yes, thanks, please.

Yes, I love you and I take you just as you are.

Thanks for being the way you are, thanks for all what you have given me.

Please, I need you.

What Kills Love

The desire to change our partner, or to wish that our partner changes, is a lack of love and respect. It is the seeds of separation.

To idealise someone is a lack of respect.

‘Isms’ kill love. machoism and feminism have a goal: to exert power over the other. They do not allow love to develop, they persecute it as if it was an enemy. Indeed, if there is love, there is no stance of power.

When we enter into a power struggle with our partner, we are planting the seeds of separation. We have entered into a manipulation game, we are blind and loveless. We do not get to see the other person. We are caught in the past, living a grudge, resentment or revenge from the past, that belongs to our childhood or to our ancestors. We project an old destructive pattern on our partner and we do not see her nor want to love her.

Manipulation and Violence. Releasing Memory Fields.

The past distorts our perception of the present. This is usually the past of our family system, or the past of our childhood.

The couple is a community of fate, which means that the couple is a necessary relationship for both family systems: both members in a couple belong, from now on, to a new systemic community, created by the fusion of their original systems. For this reason, the members of a couple are necessarily complementary: all what they go through in the relationship is shared 50/50 by both, including the manipulation and the violence.

During childhood, the symbiotic relationship with the mother necessarily had deprivations. On growing up, the individual, whether man or woman, now seeks a new symbiotic relationship, an adult and sexual one. He will project, like a pattern, what he experienced during his childhood on this relationship, simultaneously trying to solve what remained unaccomplished in relation to his mother when he was a child. However that attempt is doomed to fail. Being adults requires that we accept ourselves just as we are.

This attempt to resolve the past is the basis of manipulation and takes place in all couple relationships, since it is a constituent part of their space of intimacy.

In a situation of manipulation, we are not in an Adult state anymore, and we let ourselves be driven by the roles of victim and persecutor, making the other responsible for our depravations. Therefore, manipulation is fundamentally dishonest.

As soon as one of the two realises of the ‘game’, it stops.

The maximum degree of manipulation leads to the destruction of both partners: one death and the other in prison, or both dead. Each has been both victim and persecutor at once, taking revenge with a feeling of justice, without ever assuming his or her responsibility.

Besides childhood, every person is linked to an image of the couple relationship that she derives out of her loyalty to the memory fields she is linked to, or entangled with. This image prevents her from living in the present.

Several images are possible: tyrant husband / victim wife. Tyrant husband / spiteful, hateful, despiseful wife. Victim husband / ‘feminist’ , revengeful, tyrant wife. One person ‘couple’: widow, divorcee, etc.

Behind these images, the following destructive beliefs may be found: ‘all men are…’ ‘All women are…’ ‘Love between man and woman is impossible’. ‘For me love is impossible’.

What these ancestors need is to be seen, with love and respect, and that I compensate their failures instead of imitating them.

The man needs to accept that he belongs to the field of men (husbands and fathers), whatever the history of those men has been, returning to them their responsibility regarding the hurt they caused to women, honouring their pain, and being grateful for being a man like them. Then he can honour the field of women, their pain, their suffering and humiliations, their resentment and despise of the male.

The woman needs to accept that she belongs to the field of women (wives and mothers), whatever the history of those women has been, returning their circumstances to them, honouring their suffering and giving them their responsibility back, with gratitude for being a woman like them. Then she can honour the field of men, their high-handedness, their atonement, their loneliness.

Giving and Receiving

Giving allows us to pay a previous debt, therefore it is relieving, making us happier and more alive. Giving allows us to return what our parents gave us.

Receiving puts us in a situation of dependency with he who has given to us, until we return something equivalent to him. Therefore, it is nicer to give than to receive. Receiving makes us feel indebted. Giving allows us to demand.

He who only wants to receive is a child who does not want to grow up. He may be showing an excluded child.

He who only wants to give, is afraid of feeling guilty, indebted. He wants to feel superior. He does not love.

Both members of a couple are equal in relation to rights. Everything tends to balance: what is received wants to be balanced with what is given. The love one gives to the other, the hindrances one brings from before, the hurt that is done, are all automatically balanced unconsciously. When they are not balanced, there is tension in the relationship; the partner who receives more than he can give, gets angry and leaves… unless he is capable of thanking the other. An example is the couple relationships where one of the two partners has a disability meaning that he receives more than he can give.

The hindrances one brings into a relationship are, for instance, the illness of one of the partners, or the children of a previous marriage. These are hindrances in the sense that they demand more from the other, from the partner who is not the father or mother of those children. This partner shall be allowed a form of compensation, or else his unconscious will look for it and it will be worse.

A couple’s projection on a child is a natural need. This is a demand of the family system to ensure its survival. Thus, when one of the partners cannot, or does not want to, have children, the one who cannot have descendants returns his freedom to the other, and the latter will then rethink his commitment, or the other one generally separates in order to have a child with a new partner.

Following and serving.

The woman follows her husband, and the husband puts himself in the service of the family, whose centre is the woman.

Both are in the service of the couple project (the project is generally a family). Both serve. Both look at each other’s eyes as equals and take the decisions jointly.

The man (and the single woman) are tied to their country due to the love debt they contracted with it. Therefore, his work shall serve the compensation between giving and taking with his country. There is where the strength for his professional realisation lies. He offers the economical results of that realisation in the service of his family.

Within the couple, the woman adapts and grows as a person in the husband’s land. On the other hand, the man who goes to live to his wife’s house or land loses his strength.

The condition for the woman to become realised as a wife and a mother, in the man’s land, is that he loves and respects the woman’s family of origin.

Everything is done out of love: out of love for her husband, the woman follows her husband’s country, culture and religion; out of love for his wife, the husband teaches his children his wife’s culture, language or religion.

It may be observed that when the roles are reversed within the couple, even if this happens in mutual agreement, so that the man looks after the children and the woman is the head of the family, the couple as such ceases to exist: the man loses his male strength and becomes a child, compensating unconsciously a frustration from his early childhood. In this scenario, the real children lose their place and their father, the woman becomes very big, her gaze is turned outside the family, and both lose interest and respect for each other as a couple.

Sexuality

A person is attracted to a partner only because he or she finds the other attractive as a man or woman. The man wants the woman as a woman, the woman wants the man as a man. Similarly in the homosexual couple, each partner feels sexually attracted to the other. A relationship motivated by a different drive, such as loneliness, economy, a project or having a child, does not have strength as a couple.

The couple is realised through sexuality.

The instinctive force of sexuality is a sign of its greatness, which goes beyond what is human. It is an impulse that goes through the whole universe, in the service of life. The reunification of what was separated, the fusion of what is complementary, creates more life. It is the force that allows for the survival of humanity. The Hellinger Sciencia considers sexuality to be the ultimate sacred force.

Sexuality has bumps and fluctuations. It is very sensitive to paternal dictates, personal and family beliefs, entanglements and systemic disorders.

Sexual attraction is like the sea, it is a background presence that is manifested through the motion of the waves. The peak of falling-in-love is followed by the valley of an awakening of consciousness, and again a new wave of attraction emerges that will then be followed by its corresponding valley of relaxation and internal distancing, and so on.

What are those peaks and those valleys?

Peaks represent phases of instinctive attraction. After a while, the valley starts, attraction recedes, and this is when the unconditional acceptance of the other may take place, or else rejection or indifference. This recession may be motivated by several causes: conflicts, traumas, an entanglement, a morphic field…

At the valley, profound tenderness, respect, love, are born. Or else, indifference and distance.

After a while, attraction returns again, and so on.

Little by little, valleys increasingly widen, thanks to the knowledge we gradually acquire of ourselves and the other. Blind attraction is followed by the acknowledgement of the other person, tenderness and attraction at second sight, gratitude and the joy of being together, respect for the other person just as she is and for her needs.

At the peak of the waves, only the two of us exist. In the valley, we look at the world together, we look at the couple project and our service to life as determined by each one’s fate.

The partner who systematically rejects giving himself sexually to the other, whether motivated by a trauma or some other unconscious reason, hurts the dignity of the one who requests sex. The relationship between the two deteriorates: the partner who asks for it feels small and guilty because of his need, and the one who rejects feels big and with a clear conscience. This usually ends up in separation: in order to free himself from his feeling of guilt, the partner who requests sex moves on to another person with more life, thus recovering his dignity.

Something important also happens in the valleys: confrontation, conflicts. The couple is the space of greatest intimacy. Intimacy is always under construction, we are afraid of it and we project on it all the depravations and repressions we had as children in relation to our intimacy with our parents, and especially with our mother. And little by little we access this space of communion and respect.

Intimacy

Thanks to the cohabitation and emotional exchange between both partners in a couple, intimacy may develop, which is the most developed state in a relationship between two adults.

For intimacy to happen in a couple, it is necessary that both members are separated from the parents, that they are independent from their parents emotionally so they can have the need for another person. In this way, both will be able to create a bond between them, a more important bond than the one they had with their parents. Each one shall be able to say to his or her parents ‘my partner is now more important for me than you’.

The same is true for siblings; each one shall become independent from the rest in order to create his own family system.

The man renounces his mother and the woman renounces her father, in order to be able to need the other partner.

A man who remains in the mother’s area of influence has no respect for women. A woman who remains in the father’s area of influence has no respect for men. Both remain adolescents, with their feelings of omnipotence and despise for everyone else.

When there are bad relations between a son/daughter in law and his or her mother in law:

The daughter says to her mother: ‘he is my husband. I leave my father and mother and follow him with love.’

The son in law says to his mother in law: ‘now she is my wife: In her, I respect you’.

The son to his mother, or the daughter to her father: ‘now s/he is better for me than you’.

Cohabitation

Cohabitation puts into play:

mutual respect;

respect for the order;

belonging to a new value system created by both partners, and thus different from the system of origin, despite the feeling of guilt this creates;

acceptance of conflict as a tool to release loyalties to the past and to get closer to a greater intimacy between both partners: the resolution of conflict within a couple is the greatest tool for human growth.

Despite the generalisation of women’s access to the work force, the internal order within the couple remains the same. It is observed that in a couple where there is love and respect (and when both are right-handed), the man is physically placed at the right of his wife, except in bed, where it is the opposite.

Being on the left means respecting the one on the right, and being on the right means being in the service of the person who is on the left and respects you. When this order is reversed, equality and mutual respect between the two disappears.

When the woman is on the right, either she dominates and the man becomes a child, or she is the child and the man is the powerful one.

Each partner belongs to a system and has a series of loyalties. Conflicts emerge when my partner does something that is forbidden in my system, or when his behaviour reopens an old wound and I have the internal wish that he takes care of it.

Every conflict is a great opportunity to let go of loyalties and become freer, freer to take care of oneself, releasing ‘child-like’ expectations, becoming more of an adult, more autonomous, allowing the relationship a greater expansion.

Conflicts are growth opportunities. Only cohabitation will make those conflicts emerge. When we get angry it is because the other has touched a loyalty that still ties us to our system of origin, or because she is showing us something of ourselves that we do not accept. The assurance of knowing that we are joined for life, knowing that the other is committed despite the conflicts, allows dealing with, and overcoming, these conflicts, leading to the growth of both partners and to a greater harmony in the cohabitation.

If I am angry with the other, I realise that what I reject in him is in me, even though I do not want to accept it. And I say to the other ‘thanks for being the way you are. In you I find myself’.

When the other one exhibits a difficult behaviour, we honour the excluded to whom he is loyal. And we honour our partner, thanking him/her for being the way s/he is.

MALE-FEMALE UNITY AS A MAIN CONDITION FOR STRENGHT IN THE COUPLE

Man and woman are incomplete, and become complete within the couple relationship, which in turn becomes realised in a third one, a new unity: a son/daughter or a couple project.

The couple strength comes from the fusion of opposed poles: a male-female fusion. In the homosexual couple the strength comes from the fusion of two different people, and the more they have each integrated their male and female sides, the greater the strength of that couple.

Previous to their surrender to a partner, every person is the result of a former fusion: the fruit of the fusion between her father and her mother. And the person lives this fusion as one between their male and their female sides. Every one finds his greatest strength in the internal fusion of the male and the female, which takes place when both the father and the mother are taken unconditionally and in the same measure. When the person loves and respects both of her sides equally, she is at her maximum strength and self-actualisation, and she can also contribute more to the relationship.

The following chart shows the biological difference between men and women and their complementarity. There are no pure types, since we are all linked to ancestors of both sexes, sometimes very strongly, and this influence is reflected in our genetic organisation.

The couple relationship joins its two members. Each one provides the other with what he or she is missing. However, after a certain period of time, the female and the male are blurred and the attraction decreases because they provide less to each other. Therefore it is necessary that each sex reinforces his/her identity, spending time only with those of the same sex once in a while, so that they can provide more to the union.

THE COUPLE AS A COMMUNITY OF FATE.

It is not two people who are together in a couple, it is two systems. Each system has needed that falling-in-love in order to solve something it could not do on its own. In this way, the most burdened system expects the less burdened partner to take care of an entanglement the other cannot resolve.

That community of fate may lead to separation when the burden one carries on behalf of the other is greater than his strength. It may also prevail beyond the separation if the shared burden has not been solved.

The commitment to the couple takes away the freedom, independence is not compatible with bonding.

The couple becomes a new unity, and that unity comprises both members together with their couple project.

ON MANIPULATION

The responsibility of what happens in a lasting relationship is shared 50/50 by each partner.

The couple is a space of intimacy; it is where we appear as we are, with all our depravations and yearnings. What we learned as children in relation to intimacy is reproduced in the couple relationship. If we were not able to leave the fusion with the mother fully, or if we left it too soon, we will take our partner as our mother and will relive the needs that were not covered at that time. All the depravations we experienced will show again within the couple, allowing for awakenings of consciousness and the acceptance of what happened.

However, our ‘child’ part refuses to accept the past just as it was and wants our partner to carry the responsibility of ‘my’ frustrations, of what I haven’t resolved with regards to my childhood. And this is how manipulation is born between the two, since both members of the couple have complementary deprivations.

A ‘manipulation game’ is established when both people complement each other in the exchange and enjoy it ‘bitterly’ and with resentment. They enjoy the secondary benefits of the pain they are causing each other, for which they don’t put an end to it, until the final ‘punishment’ that both were seeking without saying it, arrives.

This exchange is fundamentally dishonest, since the truth is never told, and it serves a silent selfish purpose on the one hand (I am afraid of being alone; I do not want to share you with anyone else, etc.), and has the objective of confirming a prejudice on the other hand, such as that the other is despicable, unable, and that I am unable to be happy in a relationship, I do not deserve being with someone who loves me, etc.

Two do not play if one does not want to.

Everyone is able to choose, at any time, whether to be in their Adult state or in their Tyrant/Victim state.

Manipulation games are learned at a very young age.

Symbiotic couples, those who have fused into a single person, are the most dangerous. When one of the two starts growing, he can only separate, and the other, who has not grown, feels abandoned like a little child, and reacts like a child. Only children kill.

When there is abuse between adults, the first step is to acknowledge the present reality and everyone’s responsibility: ‘I chose you’.

‘Thanks’ allows us to become aware that everyone has obtained what he was looking for in his union with the other.

To the one that has caused hurt, to the aggressor: ‘I assume my part of responsibility in what has happened to us’. ‘I am like you’.

In order to acknowledge the entanglement with the past and each one’s child-like unconscious limitation: ‘I am tied to my past, I chose you for what happened’.

Once the current responsibility has been assumed, the disorder and the entanglement that necessarily exist may be constellated.

And we keep constantly in mind that everything is shared and sought for. The abuse exists on both sides. The man’s killing energy is manifested through his muscles, through physical abuse; the woman’s killing energy is manifested through despise and psychical abuse.

The person that plays the victim, is not a victim, but a hidden perpetrator. His hidden hate is immense.

ON INFIDELITY AND SEPARATION

Sometimes, despite the security or intention of loving each other for life, love suffers. Often the past, a dead, a dictate or fate interfere, making one of the two partners unavailable. Then separation becomes fate for both. It is a new opportunity.

The real cause of a separation comes from the past, by force of fate; it is a compensation movement the understanding of which is completely beyond us. When we are going through it, we do not get to know the reason, only that we have to live it and to allow ourselves grieve without blaming anyone.

Respect for Fate is what shall guide us.

‘I love and respect what guides us together. I love and respect what guides you; I love and respect what guides me, even when this may separate us.’

To be able to separate properly, it is necessary to give up on looking for responsibility. It comes from the past, from unconscious entanglements. Besides, truth is always the opposite of what it seems to be, as we can see in every constellation…

The ex-partners say to each other:

I chose you. I loved you very much. All what I gave you, I did it willingly and with pleasure. You have given me a lot and I honour you. Regarding what happened between us, I assume my part of responsibility and I leave you with yours. And now I leave you, I am free, you are free.

A separation causes great pain. We need to accept going through that pain, to grief the love we shared.

There are many ways of avoiding grieving:

• Looking for someone to blame about the separation, instead of accepting the pain and reality just as it is.
• Getting angry with the one that left of died; common in children.
• Self-pity, where one can see no one but himself.
• The internal decision has been taken but not assumed. Visiting several therapists confirms to us again that things cannot continue in this way, but instead of taking action, the therapy allows the partner to rebel against the therapists instead of against himself.
• To remain together living badly, during a long time, even when the relationship is over.

The person that will decide to separate -because of her entanglement-, will often go through an unconscious process where she will suffer a lot previously in order to be able to feel justified and have a clear conscience at the time of deciding to separate.

What is appropriate is to admit that one of the two moves away, that he has rejected something and assumes his responsibility, recognising at the same time that what he has lived has been beautiful, and saying ‘now I leave you alone, I depart’.

The partner who decides to separate compensates the other one by leaving the children and the house with him/her.

The second relationship is often a transition one. This falling-in-love helps end the separation with the first one when such separation is particularly difficult.

Passionate love usually allows us relive childhood conflicts and blocks that were totally repressed in the previous stage, and which emerge again with force until people realise of the impossibility to satisfy such devastating desires. Indeed, the frame is not that of childhood anymore, the other person is not dad, nor mum. The principle of reality imposes itself again, and so does the opportunity for growth.

Separation ought to be an opportunity for growth for both members, a new opportunity for life, an opportunity for a new happiness so that the suffering was not in vain.

When one has been unfaithful and tells his partner, he releases himself of his responsibility and puts the burden on the other. His excuse is sincerity. That sincerity destroys the relationship; there is no love in that sincerity, but only fear and guilt. Sincerity is not a value in itself. The reality is that the person cannot put up with her guilt and wants the other to take care of it.

When there is reparation, guilt disappears.

Therefore, the criteria is how to compensate the hurt done, it is to look for what will bring more energy to the other person and will make her suffer less. Each person shall take care of, and solve by herself, the problem she has created, and assume the consequences on her own. She can rebalance by doing something good for the other, secretly, without telling anyone.

Often the person that feels a victim of infidelity has caused it herself, trapped by a dead, rejecting life, sex, the joy of life.

Infidelity shows a pressure from the system to solve something. They often show an excluded person, where one of the members of the couple represents a previous partner of one of his parents, reproducing the failed relationship of that excluded person.

In stable triangles, everyone has his role and they all need each other. For instance, a husband and wife where the wife behaves as the husband’s mother, and the husband has a stable relationship with a lover that represents a partner. And each one of them needs this triangle as a result of their history and disorder.

When one becomes the lover of a married partner, this relationship works in this way: the lover needs someone who is not available. And the married person will only be attracted for as long as he cannot cohabit with his lover…

ACKNOWLEDGING AND RESPECTING THE PREVIOUS PARTNER AND THE CHILDREN OF THE PREVIOUS MARRIAGE.

• At an individual level, a former member has a preference over a later member: the current partner owes respect and gratitude to the previous partner (because the previous partner made room for him).

Previous partners are part of the couple’s field until they are acknowledged, honoured and thanked. Each partner arrives at the relationship with all his/her past. Respecting the ‘order’ in the couple is essential for the wellbeing of both and the children’s fate. The current partner is the last one and owes respect to those people who preceded her and left to make room for her. When a previous partner feels respected and thanked by the current partner, she withdraws and is even compassionate towards the new partner that substitutes her.

The children of a previous marriage have a preference over the new partner.

• At the level of a system, it is the opposite: the last created system has a preference. When this order is not respected, the consequences are deathly: someone will be eliminated out of loyalty to the eliminated system. For instance, in a system constituted by a couple and children, when the man creates a new system by having a child with another woman and does not want to separate from the first one, a child usually dies, out of loyalty to the eliminated system.

COUPLE AND ECONOMY

The husband is professionally and economically successful when his wife respects him. The man who has taken his parents falls in love with a woman who has taken her parents and respects men.

For the single man or woman to be prosperous in their job, they need to have taken their mother.

For the couple and its economy to do well, the woman and her economy must thank and honour the husband’s economy, even when the latter is more modest that the woman’s economy. The woman’s economy has a place near the children and the partner considers it like it was a child.

Both partners’ economy serves the couple’s project.

The following order needs to be maintained in a couple’s economy: the man manages the family’s economy, even when he contributes less than his wife. In this way, both continue being equals. When the woman manages the family’s economy, she feels superior to the man, and the harmony in the relationship disappears.

The new system has a preference over the previous systems. When this preference is not respected, consequences are harsh. For example, any son in law who takes care of a family business belonging to the wife’s family, will bring it to ruin.

Between partners in a couple, money may balance an imbalance between giving and receiving. For example, a woman who earns more than her husband may be compensating, without being aware of it, the fact of having had more former relationships, or bringing children from previous relationships.

In a case of divorce, the maintenance support that a divorcee receives from her ex-partner creates a dependency that prevents each person’s autonomy. It is necessary that each person takes care of herself and her economy so that both regain their autonomy and rebuild their lives.

When an ex-husband does not provide his ex-wife with child support for the children, it is because the woman despises him. It is an unconscious systemic compensation. This changes when the person who despises, decides to honour the other, to respect him.

The family system of the most burdened member will use the weakest member, who is systemically at a greater disposal (because he is atoning, for instance), to assume or pay the debts that are outstanding and are not being acknowledged.

**********************************************************************************

This is the first time in the history of humanity that men and women are leaving memory fields behind and are starting to look at each other’s eyes, discovering the other sex just as s/he is, with respect and love.

• See “Healing the heart”: visualisation to heal the causes of manipulation.
• The Male Brain. Louann Brizendine. Transworld Publishers, 2010.
• The Female Brain. Louann Brizendine. Transworld Publishers 2006.
• “El maestro del corazón” Annie MARQUIER, Luciernaga 2010.