Mom and dad enter the relationship with us. Even when they’re not in the room at all
Mom and dad enter the relationship with us. Even when they’re not in the room at all
We arrive at a relationship as adults, with an entire history of relationships already living within us. The influence of parents on relationships begins long before we met the person we chose to live with. We saw what love looked like in the home where we grew up, what happened between mom and dad, how they drew close and how they distanced, who took up space and who gave it up. We learned something about men, about women, about relationships and about ourselves long before we knew we were learning.
Bert Hellinger looks at this movement in the distilled and sharp way that characterizes him. For him, mom and dad do not remain only in the family we came from. Both are present within us, and the way we hold them within us also touches the way we meet masculinity, femininity, and the couple relationship.
I read his words from within the constellative language in which they were spoken. Hellinger writes in a sharp and sometimes absolute manner, and I do not need to turn every sentence of his into law in order to let it meet me. I am interested in the question he opens: Who do I become within the relationship when something in the person facing me meets what I have already learned about love in the home I came from?
This question allows me to hold the past and the present in the same gaze. To see where I came from, what I received from mom and dad and what I learned within my family, and in the same breath to see the person who is facing me now. He arrives with his story. I arrive with mine. And from the meeting between the two of us, our relationship is created.
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The following text was delivered by Bert Hellinger at a constellation seminar in Germany in November 2011. I bring it here in my translation, as it is.
Bert Hellinger on the man and woman within us
The fundamental movement between man and woman
When people turn to help, it is almost always about relationships.
At the heart of every such difficulty lies the dynamic between man and woman.
Where does the fundamental movement between man and woman take place?
The essence of the connection between them already lives within us.
When our parents gave us life, they united in us. In our body they became one.
Thus we became a mixture of mother and father.
This mixture is indivisible.
From the beginning of our existence we carry both of them within us.
And yet, we often behave as if we belong only to one side. As if we are more of a man or more of a woman.
Where does that fundamental movement take place?
In our body.
In each of us live both a father and a mother.
Within us they are one unit.
From the moment life begins, each of us is both a man and a woman.
Sometimes we identify more with one side.
And yet, a man is perfected through a woman and a woman is perfected through a man.
The man seeks the woman because he needs her, and the woman seeks the man because she needs him.
The basic union between man and woman must first take place within us.
Sometimes difficulties and even diseases stem from this internal rift.
Meditation
Imagine you are standing firmly on two legs.
Try standing on only one leg and you will discover how quickly you will need the second.
Two legs create stability and movement.
They work together so that we can walk.
Imagine that one leg represents masculinity and the other represents femininity.
Both are different and yet need each other.
Their meeting point is in the genitals.
There the masculine and feminine meet.
In relationships it is easy to forget that the movement to the other must also take place within us.
Look at the right hand and the left hand.
Pay attention to the differences.
Combine them.
Allow both sides to be equal.
One side represents the father and one side the mother.
When they meet within us, a union is made possible.
Relationships
The connection between man and woman is the foundation of life.
Through it life continues.
When a man and a woman fall in love, they do not know what they are getting into. It’s a good thing. Otherwise no one would dare.
The relationship serves life, and to the same extent also death.
Through it we meet both.
Women have a particularly deep connection to life and death.
They experience creation and loss in their bodies.
The feminine within us brings us closer to the essence in which life and death meet.
Guilt
Guilt plays a significant role in our lives, especially in the face of death.
When we feel guilty we ask to get rid of it.
Atonement becomes a movement against life.
Guilt and atonement do not serve life.
They oppose them.
When a person takes upon himself absolute guilt, he places himself in the place of God, as if he decides on life and death.
Healing comes when we accept things as they are.
Open to life and love.
Abortions
The issue of abortions also raises questions of guilt, arrogance and forces operating beyond our understanding.
Forces greater than us are operating here.
When we let go of the arrogance of guilt, a direct encounter with life itself is made possible.
Turning to life without atonement. Open to great love.
Male and female
The masculine and feminine are reflected in our body.
Right and left represent father and mother.
Up and down represent spirit and body.
When one part controls and the other retreats, an imbalance is created.
When everything meets in the heart, wholeness awakens.
When the heart holds the mother and the father, the masculine and the feminine equally, a complete love awakens.
Man and woman live in us.
One inseparable.
The Helping Professional and the Mother
When we look at therapists and those engaged in helping professions, an unconscious movement to save the mother is sometimes revealed.
The therapist is not the mother.
He is the son.
When the order is confused, a connection is created that does not allow freedom.
When each one takes his place, healing is made possible.
Bert Hellinger
What do I take from Hellinger’s words into the relationship?
The thought that mom and dad continue to live within us does not mean, in my view, that we are doomed to recreate their relationship or what we experienced with them. It invites me to be curious about what I already bring with me when I meet my partner. A very strong reaction, fear, longing, a need for validation, or difficulty bearing distance can gain additional context when I ask myself what about this feeling is already familiar to me.
When I think about the influence of parents on relationships, I am especially interested in the possibility of identifying what I bring from the past, and at the same time seeing the person who is facing me now. My partner is not my father. My partner is not my mother. The person facing me now is a real person, with desires, boundaries, pain, and a history of their own, and it is important to me to meet them as well, as they are.
The past can help me understand the intensity of my reaction, and it does not have to decide what I do with it. I can identify that something very familiar has been stirred in me, feel it, and check what is actually happening between us now. Within this space, the possibility is created to choose a response that suits the woman or man I am today, and the relationship I want to create.
The view of mom and dad can also change. I can give them their place in my story, with what I received from them and with what was missing, without demanding that my partner complete for me everything I did not receive there. They are part of the roots I came from. The relationship I am building today already exists between two adults who choose how they want to be together.
This is the movement I take with me from Hellinger’s text: to look back in order to see where I came from, and then to return and gaze at the person who is with me now.
Mom and dad are part of my story. The relationship I live is today.
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