The Primary Selves In Relationship

Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual
by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone

(Page 5 of 9)

In every relationship there is a dance between the Primary and Disowned Selves. The understanding of this dance is critical to understanding the kind of parent/child bonding patterns that are with us constantly in relationship. These bonding patterns occur between the parental self of one partner and the child self of the other. Let us look at how this operates.

George and Sue have been married for three years. George is a successful professional man, identified with a strong Protector/Controller System, Pusher, Perfectionist and and generally Ambitious Self. Sue, naturally enough, is identified with his Disowned Selves. She is artistic, creative, highly sensual, not organized -- in short, she is identified with everything that he is not. In the falling in love process, the Primary Selves tend to dissipate for a period of time. Her lack of order in the house is seen as cute and he adores her for her flakiness. His more uptight behavior is simply a challenge for her and makes seducing him even more fun.

As time passes they begin to feel more vulnerable. The pressures increase. They may have a child or buy a home and matters begin to change. They are both feeling more vulnerable and when we are more vulnerable we revert back to our primary selves ever more strongly. George comes home one day and the house is a mess. Suddenly things are not cute anymore. He reverts to his Primary Selves in a very negative form and he criticizes Sue for being so messy. "Why don't you get the maid for another day? I can't stand this place. It's like a pig sty!"

At first Sue becomes the Guilty, Apologetic daughter. They bond to one another as parent and child, with George's Negative Father bonding into her Guilty, Apologetic Daughter. Sue is not one to be uncomfortable for very long, however, and soon she comes out fighting. "Who the hell are you to complain? If you weren't so goddam compulsive and if you knew how to have some fun, things would be different around here!" She now has flipped into Rebellious Daughter and it is not far from there to the attacking Negative Mother. We have all seen these bonding patterns develop and know how powerful and destructive to relationship these fights can become if one never learns how to deal with the underlying issues. What, then, are the underlying issues?

The bottom line issue for both George and Sue is vulnerability. Falling in love had put the Primary Selves to sleep for awhile and made some level of vulnerability acceptable, but the stress of a child and new financial burdens began to throw George back into his Primary Self system. Under stress, the Vulnerable Child is threatened, perhaps even terrorized. There may be financial fears or the fear of abandonment by Sue because of the new child. One must talk with George's Vulnerable Child to find out. When George walks into the house and feels the mess, he becomes even more vulnerable. Creating order was always his way of handling the chaotic feelings of his early life. His Orderly Self (or Perfectionist) comes back in now in an attempt to help him. If George does not learn about his Vulnerable Child as a disowned self and about his Primary and Disowned Self systems in general, he is very limited in his options as to how he can work on his relationship. He might expand his options by learning that the disorder he hates is related to a disowned self in him. He might learn that the time Sue spends with friends and on the phone is also connected to a disowned self within him, his own social side. He would then view his marriage relationship as a teacher, and see that Sue is his teacher as well. All of his strong reactions could be re-examined in this new light to learn about his disowned selves. This does not make his reactions invalid. It just means that there is another way to view them.

Sue, on her part, is quite overwhelmed with the new child. She returns to her primary selves as her main defense system. She becomes more laid back, more social, more creative and begins to spend more time painting. She loses her disciplined eating habits and begins to eat cakes and candies. The more George becomes the Negative or Critical Father, the more she eats and the less she takes charge of the house. This is actually a fairly typical pattern. In order for Sue to extricate herself from this bonding pattern, she would need to see her own Vulnerable Child and how overwhelmed it feels at the task of being a mother. She would then need to examine her reactions to George's need for control and structure, his perfectionism. Instead of hating them, she would begin to see them as disowned aspects of her own nature. She, too, could then begin to view the marriage as a teacher and she would be able to see how George can be a teacher for her as well.

In every negative bonding pattern in relationship there are two kinds of fuels available for burning. The primary fuel is always disowned or not-fully-owned vulnerability. The secondary fuel system encompasses the disowned selves that the two individuals involved carry for one another, like George's Perfectionist and Sue's Relaxed Self. This knowledge of Primary and Disowned Selves, and of Voice Dialogue, gives the therapist some excellent options in working with couples and with relationship in general.

We have included this one example in order to give you a feeling of how the understanding of the Primary and Disowned Self systems can be applied to relationship issues. Bonding patterns are perfectly normal and natural happenings in all relationship. All of us will always have them. We will never grow out of them. We can become aware of them, however. With awareness, we can begin to examine the selves that are operating in us and in the other person and what it is we need to embrace that the other person is carrying. This presents some truly exciting possibilities of enhancing the growth process, or, as we like to call it, the consciousness process.

About the Author

Hal Stone, Ph.D. and Sidra Stone, Ph.D. are the co-creators of Voice Dialogue. They are hopeless romantics and, as clinical psychologists with a combined experience of about 80 years, they are committed to keeping the magic and vitality in relationships. They have co-authored five books. Their latest book, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship, sums up a lifetime of wisdom. Their books are available at local bookstores or from Amazon.com. www.delos-inc.com