Harville Hendrix

his wife was not a devoted mother hovering over his crib. She was an equal, with—much to his surprise—needs and expectations of her own. And although she wanted very much to make him happy, she didn’t know what to do. Lacking this information, she was forced to play a grown-up version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey: “Is this what you want? Is this?”

Hendrix, why do couples have such a hard time staying together?” I thought for a m

primary reason couples fail at creating an I-Thou relationship is that they did not experience it in childhood

the poet Rumi said: “Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

The only thing your old brain seems to care about is whether a particular person is someone to: (1) nurture, (2) be nurtured by, (3) have sex with, (4) run away from, (5) submit to, or (6) attack.5

important principle about the old brain: it has no sense of linear time. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday do not exist; everything that was, still is. Understanding this basic fact about the nature of your unconscious may help explain why you sometimes have feelings within your relationship that seem alarmingly out of proportion to the events that triggered them.

Our old brain, trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

You fell in love because your old brain had your partner confused with your parents!

from the very moment you were born you were a complex, dependent creature with a never-ending cycle of needs.

no parents, no matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all of these changing needs.