You can love, want to stay together, build a home and family, and still find yourselves again and again in the same struggle. Love does not guarantee a living sexuality, it does not create mutuality by itself, and it does not resolve what each of us brings from the family we came from.
Bert Hellinger did not try to soften these things. He wrote about relationships sharply, at times almost mercilessly. For him, there were things that stood above our wish for love to be enough: order, belonging, giving and receiving, our place in relation to our parents, and the recognition that when two people become a couple, two family systems meet with them.
I am not as piercing as Hellinger. I see more nuance in places where he saw clear order, and more possibilities in places where he formulated one truth. I also work today with understandings of relationship, gender, sexuality, and personal responsibility that have developed greatly since these things were written.
And still, there is a magic for me in his distilled gaze. Hellinger knew how to take a very complex human system, remove layer after layer from it, and place before us a sentence it is hard to remain indifferent to. He does not always leave us a comfortable place to stand. He forces us to look.
That is why I chose to bring his words here as they are. I translated them and did not try to adapt them to what I think today. After you read him, I will return to the text and conduct my own conversation with it: where I go with him, where I see more nuance, and where I part from him.
Let us begin with Hellinger.
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 align with 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 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; this is 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 shared life is precious to them.
This also requires learning – how this shared life is maintained.
When these three components, sexual love, love of the heart, 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.
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 for all human relationships and we are inevitably drawn 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 desire, which is sometimes scornfully 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 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 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 in a partnership of fate, and want to solve something specific through this partnership.
Therefore, a relationship between two people is not 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 family of the man or woman was excluded / expelled / ostracized,
like 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.
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.
Order comes before love.
This is what we see in nature: a tree grows according to the order inherent in it. This cannot be changed.
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 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 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 know the quality of the relationship by whether the exchange of giving and receiving is located on the negative or positive.
If so, what is the solution? The solution would be to move from an exchange in the negative to an exchange in the positive again.
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 what he received, and then the exchange of the negative stops. Thus giving and receiving can begin again in a positive way.
This is an important component in the orders 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 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 believes 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 of 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?
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 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.
Hellinger leaves very little room for gray. He has man and woman, there is order, there is a place for mother and a place for father, there is balance between giving and receiving, and there is a price when the order he describes is violated. Some of his sentences make me nod. In response to others, I immediately begin to argue.
This is exactly what I love about reading him. I do not need Hellinger to be right about everything for him to help me think. I also do not want to soften him until the text loses its power. I want to place his sharp gaze alongside my own: less absolute, more curious, holding more nuance and giving space to the person before me and the choices they are making today.
For me, this is also a good way to read Hellinger in 2026. Not to seek operating instructions for relationships from him, and not to rush to dismiss what does not fit our worldview. We can let his sentences meet us and examine what we see from within them.
One of the strongest distinctions in the text, in my view, is Hellinger’s division between sexuality, love of the heart, and shared life. I meet couples in the therapy room where these three components are in completely different places. There is deep love and sexuality has almost disappeared, there is shared life that functions excellently and closeness has eroded, and there is strong attraction alongside difficulty building together a life both partners want to live.
This distinction allows me to ask a much more interesting question than “Do you still love each other?” I want to know what is alive between you today. What is happening to sexuality, what is happening to love of the heart, and how do you feel about the life you have built together.
Relationship is not one thing with one score. Two people can feel very connected in one dimension and very distant in another. When we separate the components for a moment, it becomes possible to see more precisely what is asking for attention.
I also love the place Hellinger gives to shared life itself. Home, children, routine, commitments, memories, and shared history are not just scenery within which love takes place. They are a real part of the bond the partners have built over the years.
Hellinger gives central place to balance between giving and receiving. I know well the pain he describes. It comes into the therapy room in sentences like “I give much more,” “I’m the only one holding the relationship,” “I’ve been asking for years,” “If I don’t do it, nothing will happen.”
I read Hellinger’s balance as mutuality. I am not looking for accounting equality where every gesture immediately receives an equivalent gesture. Couple life does not operate that way. There will be periods when one partner holds more: illness, birth, loss, professional overload, or crisis can greatly change the distribution of forces.
The question that interests me is what happens between us within the imbalance? Do we still see each other? Has one person’s giving become taken for granted? Am I giving from choice, or has a hidden ledger already formed inside me where everything I gave and everything you still owe me is recorded?
A couple debt that one partner does not know they owe is an excellent recipe for resentment.
Mutuality also requires the ability to ask. To say what I need, to hear what you can and want to give, and to meet the possibility that our needs are not always identical. This way we remain two people in relationship, not one giver and one receiver who have been assigned fixed roles.
It is hard to pass quietly by Hellinger’s phrase, “to take revenge in love.” It is provocative, almost jarring. And beneath its sharpness lies a couple dynamic I know well: You hurt me, and I want you to feel something of the pain you caused me. I sting back, distance myself, remind you of something old, or hurt you in a place I know is sensitive for you. Now you are hurt too, and from your perspective justification has already been created for the next response. Within a short time we are no longer reacting to what started the fight, but to everything that accumulated after it.
Hellinger suggests that the response to hurt should be smaller than the hurt we received, and thus the escalation will stop. I use different language. I was hurt by you, and I am responsible for what I do now with my hurt.
I can be very angry. I can say a boundary was crossed, ask for repair, distance myself for a moment, take a position, and even decide I am not willing to continue this way. My pain is worthy of recognition, and my response remains my responsibility. For me, this is the place where it is possible to stop the cycle of hurt without canceling what happened.
Here Hellinger continues to interest me greatly. We like to think that two people fell in love. You and I met, chose each other, and built a bond. Hellinger reminds us that behind each of us stands an entire system: parents, siblings, grandparents, relationships, losses, separations, secrets, ways we learned to love, and ways we learned to protect ourselves.
I do not know if the two systems “expect to resolve something” through the relationship, as Hellinger writes. That is a more definitive statement than I am willing to make. I do see again and again how much the couple meeting can touch places that existed within us long before we met our partner. That is why I ask. Is something in what is happening between you familiar from one of the homes you grew up in? What did you learn there about love, anger, silence, dependency, sexuality, separation, or loyalty? What happens to you today when your partner touches a place that was sensitive even before you met?
The past gives us context. The present is the place where we choose what to do with what we brought with us.
My partner is not a representative of the family I came from. He is a real person standing before me now. The more I succeed in identifying what was stirred from within me, the greater my possibility to see him as well.
“Order comes before love” is one of those distilled sentences of Hellinger’s. A sentence you can object to immediately, and then find yourself thinking about it for a long time. I go with him part of the way. Love truly is not enough. Two people can love deeply and hurt each other. They can love and enter again and again into the same power struggle, take responsibility for the other’s life, give up themselves in the name of the relationship, or demand that their partner be responsible for their emotional security.
The word “order” is the place where I begin to see more nuance than Hellinger. I am not looking to fit a couple into one template of correct relationship. What interests me is the possibility of each partner to be a whole person within the relationship: to take responsibility for themselves, to see the other, to recognize the boundaries between them, and to be affected by their partner without disappearing into them. In this sense I continue to correspond with Hellinger. Love needs conditions that allow it to live. For me, those conditions include responsibility, mutuality, boundaries, respect for separateness, and the ability to meet the reality of the relationship even when it does not match the story we wanted to tell about it.
Here Hellinger is very sharp. A woman, according to his description, needs to position herself alongside her mother in order to be available to a man; a man needs to position himself alongside his father in order to be available to a woman. He links our ability to be partners to our place in relation to the parent of the same gender.
I do see great importance in our place in relation to our parents. A child who became a parent’s emotional partner, was required to hold them, was brought into the parents’ couple conflict, or carried responsibility that did not fit their age can arrive at relationship with bonding patterns that were formed long before. Identifying this movement can be very significant.
From here I see a broader picture than Hellinger describes. Human beings build identity, sexuality, relationship, and the ability to love in diverse ways. I do not need the assertion that a woman can appreciate a man only through her mother, or that a man can appreciate a woman only through his father, in order to see the importance of our positioning in relation to our parents. What I take from him is the question: What place did I occupy in the family I came from, and what from that place am I still bringing to my relationship? This is a question I can work with.
After all my argument with Hellinger, I return precisely to the title of this article: Love is not enough. I can love you and struggle to see you. I can love you and expect you to fix for me something that did not begin with you. I can love you and accumulate resentment over things I never asked for in words. I can love you and discover that the life we built together no longer fits the person I have become.
Love is very important, I simply do not place all the work on it. Relationship also needs curiosity, responsibility, mutuality, the ability to bear difference, sexuality as the partners choose to live it, conversation about shared life, and willingness to see what each of us brings with us into the bond. It needs two people who are capable of meeting each other without demanding that the other become exactly the person they need in order to feel safe.
This is perhaps the thing I love most about Hellinger, even when I argue with him. He does not let love become an excuse. He reminds us to look at what is actually happening: who gives and who receives, who stands before whom, what we brought with us, what we do with our hurt, what is the state of sexuality, what is the state of the heart, and what happened to the life we built together.
I will formulate some of the answers differently from him. I will leave more room for nuance, for choice, and for human complexity, and still there is something in his distilled gaze that brings me back again and again to the simple and uncomfortable question: We know we love. How are we living that love?
+
For people without a supportive family network.
We will reveal how the lack of a family network challenges and strengthens the couple's relationship, the high prices it exacts from you and your relationship.
Couples therapy will strengthen your sense of security and belonging, so you can be close without losing yourselves along the way.
Online / In-person clinic
+
Individual therapy is a safe space where you will rediscover your strengths, build inner confidence, and create a whole and meaningful life for yourself, just as you dream.
Online / In-person clinic
+
You are invited to enter a unique space: an interactive conversation with special GPTs I created – a first-of-its-kind tool that looks inward with you in the language and frequency of the systemic constellation.
If there is something unresolved in your relationship, family, or heart – the chat will gently meet you without trying to fix it, inviting a different, slow, precise, and quiet perspective. There is no need to understand, just to see and let it work.
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.
Let’s start with a brief introductory call, free of charge and commitment.
Sometimes, this small step changes everything.
The sessions take place
online via Zoom / face-to-face in Tivon, according to your choice
