Couples: Minimizers and Maximizers



Couples: Minimizers and Maximizers

Is your relationship in trouble? Are you wondering how the person you fell in love with became a stranger behind a mask? Or perhaps you are a couple preparing for marriage. You want your marriage to be one of the 50% who make it. It could be that you're single and tired of dead end relationships that don't meet your needs.

Couples Therapy helps people to understand the unconscious factors (the Image/Imago) in their selection of each other. It reveals the emotional dynamics that are being replayed from childhood. And it teaches couples how to relate to each other, and themselves, in a more nurturing, loving way.

We are taught that when we fall in love, the feeling is supposed to last forever. We meet the person of our dreams and a magical transformation takes place within us. We feel alive, whole, connected to the world and the people in it. Then, before we know it, that magical feeling disappears. Disillusioned, our dreams shattered, we begin to feel angry and betrayed.

We try to coerce our partners into giving us what we need. We criticize, we withdraw, we shame, we intimidate, we cry. Or sometimes just the opposite. We enter into a dead zone, where it seems like there are no emotions at all.

We feel entitled to wait for our partner to come alive first. Some of us go on locked in this painful power struggle for years until we either break up or seek help, desperate to regain the magic we once had.

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The Power Struggle

One of the reasons for the power struggle is that nature has a way of attracting “Maximizers” and “Minimizers” to each other. Most of us can easily identify parts of ourselves on the following Imago chart:

|Minimizers |Maximizers |

|Implode feelings inward |Explode feelings outward |

|Diminish feelings |Exaggerate feelings |

|Deny dependency |Depend on others |

|Mostly deny their needs |Mostly exaggerate needs |

|Share little of inner world |Are compulsively open |

|Withhold feelings, thoughts, behaviors |Are excessively generous |

|Take direction from themselves |Ask direction of others |

|Think mainly about themselves |Think mainly of others |

|Act and think compulsively |Act impulsively |

|Try to dominate others |Are usually submissive |

How could there not be an inherent power struggle?

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We stop listening to each other. We no longer try to really hear each other. And we certainly don’t take any responsibility for trying to make ourselves understood. We expect our partners to be mind readers.

We unintentionally trigger each other into emotional reactions that really have very little to do with the issue at hand. Then the issue gets out of hand and everyone ends up feeling confused and hurt. And very lonely.

Out of fear, we run from the very intimacy and feeling of safety we most yearn for. We exit into careers, affairs, computers, hobbies, drinking, drugging, friends, and the kids. Not to mention the whole extended family.

*** If our primary connection in life shifts away from our partner, it is likely to prove a problem to the relationship.

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