Bert Hellinger’s text on men and women in relationships and sexuality is not a comforting text, nor does it seek to be.
It is a text that deals with deep orders operating in relationships, even when we are not aware of them.
It does not describe how we would like the relationship to feel, but what are the conditions that allow it to last.
For people who grew up without a supportive family background, reading these things may evoke strong reactions;
sometimes resistance, sometimes a sense of alienation, and sometimes clarity.
Hellinger speaks of a relationship as a space where two people meet from their place in the lineage from which they came – not to fill each other’s void, but to allow life to continue through them.
I recommend reading this text as an invitation to observe.
To examine what becomes possible in a relationship when each person stands in their place, and what becomes complicated when the relationship is required to bear more than it was intended to.
To fulfill a couple relationship, three components are required. Each of them is necessary, and none of them can replace the others.
The first component is the sexual relationship, the achievement of which is a necessary condition for the couple relationship to be attuned to the sexual relationship. In fact, everything depends on it, since life cannot continue except through the sexual relationship.
In the sexual relationship, love and life reach their peak. This is the final stage of our development.
The love expressed in the sexual relationship is natural in nature and has the most immense power known to us. Life is directed to that transfer, and it reaches its peak when it is realized. For this reason, the power behind that true life force is, of course, the highest spiritual power, the most sublime – I tell you this as a metaphor – it is the most similar to God and it is revealed, in the most visible form, the greatest thing in the world: the divine.
Well, the fact that we give ourselves to that power by instinct shows it as coming from the outside, and rising above us. Therefore, in a couple relationship, sexual love must first be fulfilled.
Then, another component is added; this is heart love. Sexual love is better realized if it stems from heart love, if sexual love also means the realization of heart love. Heart love requires personal work. There may be sexuality without love, and this form of love may exist without sexuality. Both sexual love and heart love are personal achievements.
Now another component is added: shared life. Shared life can exist without sexuality. Sometimes, it may also exist without love.
We see, for example, couples who stay together even though they really no longer love each other in the depths of their hearts.
But shared life is precious. This also requires learning – how this shared life is maintained.
When these three components, sexual love, heart love, and shared life, come together, with all that they include (giving and receiving, mutual help and support), the couple relationship succeeds, and we can grow with this relationship.
The love that can be achieved is human love, close to ordinary love. This love recognizes that we need other people, and that without them we wither. When we recognize this mutually, we give something to the other and take something from them. We are happy to receive and happy to give, continuing the exchange of giving and receiving out of mutual respect, with kindness that wishes the other, like us, to be well.
We have understood what human love means, this love begins in the man-woman relationship. Other relationships will grow from this love. It is the basis for all human relationships and we are inevitably driven to it, because the man, in order to be complete, needs the woman, and the woman, in order to be complete, needs the man. This strong desire is what brings them together. This strong desire, which is sometimes contemptuously called “instinct,” is the strongest movement of life. It is what continues life. For this reason, that attraction and longing are deeply connected to the source of life.
When we recognize this and when we feel such love, we become one with the source of life. This love and attraction unite us with the fullness of life. A person who allows this love to guide them feels enthusiasm. From this longing, from this love, also grows the greatest happiness, and also the deepest pain. With it we grow. Whoever throws himself into this love, overflows with it after a while.
This love goes beyond the couple relationship, for example, when children are born from it. This love is a continuation of the love that parents have for their children. And this love that the children receive returns to the parents. Thus the children grow, until they themselves look for a man or a woman, and the stream of life continues to flow through them.
From there it goes and encompasses more and more; it also reaches others, but only if we have experienced it within us in a human way and recognized it. In this sense, the great love is ordinary. This love is strong and remains.
When a man and a woman meet for the first time, they often feel an uncontrollable attraction to each other. They see each other as individuals: “You and I.” But behind the man also stand his mother, his father, his grandfathers and grandmothers, his brothers and sisters, and everything that happened in his family – a complete system. I have an image: the entire system behind the man is waiting for the woman, not just him. The same is true for the woman. When he looks at a woman, he must know that behind her stand her father, her mother, her grandfathers and grandmothers, her brothers and sisters, a complete system! This system is waiting for the man.
The two systems expect the possibility of ending something that remained open in the past. For this reason, the man’s system does not only look at the woman; it also looks at her family system.
The two systems merge into a partnership of fate, and want to solve perhaps something specific in this partnership, to finally solve it. Therefore, there is no relationship between two people as we often imagine. A relationship only between two is an illusion! We are all connected to the field, to a larger family. If someone in the man’s or woman’s family was excluded / removed / ostracized, such as former partners or a disabled child, or if there is someone the family was ashamed of, the excluded family member will be present in the new relationship and in the new family. For this reason, both the man and the woman will again include the excluded family member in the new family. Only then will they be able to feel free in their relationship.
From love and order, what is most precious and important? What comes before what?
Many believe that if they love enough, everything will fall into place. Many parents, for example, think that if they love their children enough, the children will develop as they imagine. However, they are often disappointed despite their love. It seems that love alone is not enough. Love needs to be integrated into some order. Order comes before love.
This is what we see in nature: a tree grows according to the order inherent in it. It is impossible to change this. Only within that order can the tree grow. The same thing happens with love and human relationships: love can only flourish within some order. This order is a prerequisite, a prerequisite for love.
When we know something about the orders of love, our relationships and love have a greater chance of developing fully.
The first order of love in a couple needs the man and woman to consider each other as equals, even though they are different. When they recognize this, their love has a better chance of succeeding.
The second order consists of a balance between giving and receiving. When one of the two needs to give more, the relationship changes. It needs this balance.
When this condition of balance between giving and receiving happens in love, one in the couple, when receiving from the other, gives back a little more than the equivalent. Thus the giving and receiving grow between them, and with them the happiness for both of them simultaneously. The need for compensation also applies to the negative; when one in the couple hurts the other, the need to return the injury arises in the other, she feels hurt. Hence her belief that she has the right to hurt him in return. This need is uncontrollable. Many of those who have suffered injustice feel that they have the right to cause the same thing.
Something else joins the need for compensation: the feeling that since I was hurt, I have special rights. Then one gives himself the authority not only to return the injury, but to increase it. Whoever receives it, in the same way, will return it with a little more. Thus the exchange of injury grows in the relationship. In such a relationship, instead of happiness, misery grows. We may know the quality of the relationship by whether the exchange of giving and receiving is placed on the negative or positive side.
What is the solution here? -The solution would be to move from exchange in the negative to exchange in the positive again.
How can this be achieved? – There is a secret: one avenges the other with love. This means that one hurts the other, but a little less than what he received. Then the exchange of the negative stops and thus giving and receiving can start again in a positive way. This is an important component in the orders of love. If we know this, and then implement it, many things in families can change for the better.
A third order of love needs attention, because if you forget about it there will be far-reaching consequences. A woman who feels superior to her mother cannot appreciate men. She also cannot understand them, and ultimately does not need them. Usually, when she feels superior to her mother, it means: “I am the best woman for my father”. That is, she already has her man, so she does not need anyone else. How does a ‘little girl’ become a woman who is able to appreciate a man and take him? – By placing herself next to her mother, as the younger of the two.
This principle also applies to men: a man who does not respect his father and thinks he is superior to him as a better partner for his mother, is not able to truly appreciate a woman. He has already found his significant partner and does not feel the need for another. The question that arises is, how does a man become a man, who is able to appreciate a woman and commit to her? – By aligning himself with his father, and recognizing himself as the younger in their pair. Through this relationship, a man inherits the ability to respect women, just as a woman, guided by her mother, learns to respect men.
What happens when a man, who is overly attached to his mother, unites in marriage with a woman, who is overly attached to her father? – The man, preoccupied with his mother, fails to be present for his wife, and the woman, similarly preoccupied with her father, fails to be there for her husband.
Their mutual respect is minimal. Therefore, it is essential for them to first resolve their family adjustments, and allow the man to fully embrace the role of the father and the woman, the role of her mother.
In a relationship, a space is sometimes created that feels larger than two people. A space where early stories, emotional memories, and a deep movement of searching for a home arise.
The couple’s connection becomes a particularly significant place for people who grew up without a supportive family backing – a place where hope for stable closeness, leaning, and a sense of belonging awakens.
Bert Hellinger’s text invites broad observation: it suggests seeing the relationship not only as a meeting between two people but as a movement within a field of lineages, previous connections, and deep orders that seek recognition.
When looking at a relationship through this lens, it becomes clear that the connection is not only personal. It also holds intergenerational movements, quiet loyalties, and expectations that were born long before the couple’s meeting.
When each of the partners meets the place from which they came and stands in it with recognition, a new emotional order is enabled. This order creates clarity, reduces burden, and allows the connection to organize from internal stability.
The relationship is freed from the need to bear roles that do not belong to it and is freed to be again a living space of encounter between two present people. From this position, another closeness is born – a closeness that has choice, that has intimacy, passion, and self-possession. A connection that lays itself on a foundation of seeing reality as it is and allows meeting each other not as lacking, but as present, from personal and systemic responsibility together.
If this reading touched you, here are four questions for quiet contemplation or perhaps for opening a couple’s conversation.
Questions that may reveal something to you about yourself, about the hidden orders that operate in your life, and about the possibility of moving with them – without getting lost in them:
What of the dynamics described here also exist with you – but until today you called them by another name?
Is it possible that your connection carries a role that does not belong to it?
What would change if you stood fully in the place from which you came – without guilt, and without apology?
Are you now ready to stop trying to fix the relationship and start seeing it as it is: a living field of connections, loyalties, and hopes?
If these questions have sparked a thought or movement in you – this is an invitation to continue exploring them together.
Couple work in a systemic and differentiated approach allows to see what is operating beneath the surface and restore order to the relationship – not out of guilt, but out of worthiness.
I am here to accompany this process.
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Expert in couples therapy for relationships without a supportive family safety net.
Developer of the Couples Constellation approach: a systemic-emotional therapy that brings the couple’s relational dynamics into contact with unspoken family patterns, alongside practical tools that enable movement, connection, and the creation of a deep partnership.
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