Bert Hellinger’s text on men and women in relationships and sexuality is not comforting, nor does it seek to be.
It is a text that explores deep orders that operate within relationships, highlighting their importance in understanding relationship dynamics, even when we are not aware of them.
It does not describe how we would like the relationship to feel, but rather what conditions allow it to last over time, encouraging a deeper awareness of relationship stability.
For people who grew up without a supportive family backing, reading these things may evoke strong reactions.
sometimes resistance, sometimes 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 is possible in a relationship when each person stands in their place, understanding their systemic role, and what becomes complicated when the relationship is required to bear more than it was intended to, offering practical insights for therapy and personal growth.
To fulfill a couple’s relationship, three components are required. Each is necessary, and none can replace the others.
The first component is the sexual relationship; its achievement is a necessary condition for the couple’s relationship to align with it. In fact, everything depends on it, since life cannot continue except through the sexual relationship.
In a 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 and has the most immense power known to us.
Life is directed towards that transfer, and it reaches its peak when it is realized. For this reason, the power behind that true life force is the highest, most sublime spiritual power. It is the most similar to God, and it reveals, in the most visible way, the greatest thing in the world: the divine.
The fact that we give ourselves to that power by instinct shows it as coming from the outside and surpassing us.
Therefore, in a couple relationship, sexual love must first be realized.
Then another component is added: love of the heart.
Sexual love is better realized if it stems from love of the heart.
If sexual love also means the realization of love of the heart, then love of the heart requires personal work.
Sexuality may exist without love,
and this form of love may exist without sexuality.
Both sexual love and love of the heart are personal achievements.
Now a third component is added: shared life.
Shared life can exist without sexuality.
Sometimes, it may also exist without love.
For example, we see couples who stay together even though they no longer truly love each other in their hearts, but who value their shared life.
This also requires learning how this shared life is maintained.
When these three components-sexual love, love of the heart, and shared life-come gradually, with ongoing effort and understanding, the couple’s relationship succeeds, and we can grow with it.
Achievable love is human love, and it is 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 good.
This love begins in the man-woman relationship.
Other relationships will grow from this love.
Human love is the basis of all human relationships, and we are inevitably drawn to it because the man, to be complete, needs the woman, and the woman, to be complete, needs the man.
This strong desire is what brings them together.
This desire, which is sometimes scornfully called “instinct”, is the strongest movement of life.
It is what continues life.
For this reason, 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 lets this love guide them feels enthusiasm.
From this longing, from this love grows the greatest happiness and also the deepest pain.
With it, we grow.
Whoever throws themselves 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.
This love that the children receive returns to the parents.
Thus, the children grow until they themselves seek 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. It is a strong and stable love.
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 whole system.
I have an image: the whole system that stands 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 whole system!
This system is waiting for the man.
The two systems are waiting for the opportunity to finish what was left open in the past.
For this reason, the man’s system does not only look at the woman; it
also looks at her and want to solve something specific through it, and want to solve something specific through this partnership.
Therefore, a relationship between two people is not as we often imagine.
A relationship between only two is an illusion!
We are all connected to the field, to a larger family.
If someone in the family of the man or woman was excluded/expelled/ostracized,
like a 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 feel free in their relationship.
Love and order – what is most valuable and important? What comes first?
Many believe that if they love enough, everything will fall into place.
For example, many parents 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, which provides a foundation of stability and clarity for the relationship.
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 is that the man and woman should 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 has 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 at the same time.
The need for compensation also applies to the negative.
When one in the couple hurts the other, the need to return the hurt 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 they have the right to do the same to others.
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 hurt, 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 assess the quality of the relationship by whether the exchange of giis on the negative or positive sideison the negative or positive.
If so, what is the solution? The solution would be to move from a negative exchange to a positive exchange.
How can this be achieved?
Here is the secret: One takes revenge on the other in love. That is, one hurts the other, but a little less than he received, and then the exchange of negatives stops. Thus giving and receiving can begin again in a positive way.
This is an important component in the order of love.
If we know and implement this, many things in families can change for the better.
A third order of love needs attention, because if you forget it, there will be far-reaching consequences.
A woman who feels superior to her mother cannot appreciate men.
She also cannot understand them, and eventually 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 can 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 believes he is superior to him, and therefore a better partner for his mother, cannot 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 a man becomes a man who can appreciate a woman and commit to her?
By aligning himself with his father, and recognizing himself as the younger of the 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?
A man who is 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 first to 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 particularly significant for people who grew up without a supportive family. Recognizing these systemic influences can inspire hope for stable closeness, leaning, and a sense of belonging.
Bert Hellinger’s text invites broad contemplation:
He suggests seeing a couple’s relationship not only as a meeting between two people but also as a movement within a field of lineages, previous connections, and deep orders seeking recognition.
When looking at a couple’s relationship through this lens, it becomes clear that the connection is not only personal – it also holds intergenerational movements, silent loyalties, and expectations that were born long before the couple’s meeting. Recognizing these can empower couples to choose their path forward consciously.
When each partner returns to the place from which he came and stabilizes there, out of recognition and self-awareness, a new emotional order becomes possible.
This order clarifies things, reduces the burden, and lets the connection organize from a stable internal position.
The couple relationship is freed from the need to assume roles that do not belong to it and is again a living space of meeting 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 places itself on a foundation of seeing reality as it is, and allows us to meet each other as present, out of personal and systemic responsibility together.
If this reading touched you, here are four questions for self-reflection or a couple’s conversation.
The questions 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 opened up a thought or movement for you, this is an invitation to continue exploring them together.
A couple working in a systemic approach allows us to see what is operating below the surface and restore order to the connection – out of respect and worthiness, not guilturface and restore order to the connection – not out of guilt, but out of worthiness.
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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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