Introduction

Capital Choice Counselling Group
www.capitalchoicecounselling.com
613-425-4257
© Dr. Martin Rovers
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Healing the Wounds in Couple Relationships
Martin Rovers, Ph.D
2005

613-425-4257
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Introduction
The book is written for people who want to love and be loved; who want to know where
love comes from; how it works; how love can live or die; and especially how to live a fuller
loving life with our partner. Love is one of the most rewarding yet mystifying realities we live.
Love in couple relationships really has its beginnings in one’s family of origin. When older, love
then moves through the ecstasy of falling in love; it wanders and weaves until the honeymoon
stage is over; love spirals down to a low point in the dance of wounds before culminating in the
awareness of how each partner is called to heal the wounds of their own family of origin and
those of their partner and, together, create stronger couple relationship. A couple relationship has
a pattern like a dance, with certain steps and rules built in.
Two people seeking to build a life together face a vast array of challenges and difficulties.
Many people are frustrated in their relationships. Partners who often love each other do not
know how to handle the inevitable couple tensions and conflicts. Couples receive less and less
support from families and society and they seem further divorced from sources of spiritual
encouragement. There are few clear guidelines that can sustain couple relationships. This is all
the more compelling because couple relationships today are based upon the feeling of falling in
love or being in love. Romantic feelings are notoriously fickle and are often built on shaky
ground. When love gets wounded, how does love get re-created? Long term relationships need a
deeper rooted and more profound foundation, a more clear raison d’etre and a better
understanding of how these relationships begin and change and what ingredients are needed to
make them last. Satisfying relationships with a partner are real and possible.

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Fromm (1936), in his famous book, The Art of Loving, writes that loving others is an art,
and in learning the ability to love, we must proceed in mastering this art in the same way as with
any other art like music or medicine. We need some mastery of the theory and some mastery of
the practice. This book is both about the theory of couple development and the skills required to
develop couple relationships. Together, they offer couples the ability to understand themselves
and their partner in deeper ways and present numerous ways of re-creating their relationship in a
secure and loving manner.
When it comes to loving and being loved, people often tend to react in patterns reflective
of the past, specifically attachment patterns and ways of relating learned in one’s family of
origin. These attachment patterns have become interwoven into ways of thinking and being, thus
providing an internal diagram or working model for being in close relationship with others. Over
time, parents’ love integrates the child’s inner experiences in ways that make it possible for the
child to understand, nurture and care for her/himself. This creates a space for his /her private
personal growth and encourages the child to move towards a more secure and mature attachment
pattern. By contrast, in a family with immature attachment patterns, the child tends to function in
reaction to others and is inclined to become either increasingly in need of others approval or
distant and cut-off with other people. Attachment patterns that have been absorbed from family
of origin can become interwoven into our present day relationships with partner and set the stage
for the dance of wounds that all couples enact. Becoming aware of our attachment patterns will
help partners to know themselves in greater depth. They become better equipped to handle some
of their own immature ways of responding. Partners can become more acute observers of their

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attachment pattern. As well, this awareness helps each partner focus on the couple’s own dance
of wounds. Through this knowing of themselves, partners can bring thoughtfulness to bear in
seeking new pathways towards a secure and mature position within the couple relationship.
Although this book is about how couple relationships develop, it is really about a whole
lot more than couples. It is, first and foremost, about our family of origin, the womb where we
developed physically, socially and emotionally. It is the primary place where our gifts and
wounds were born, gathered and practiced. As such, it is about the place and power of family of
origin in our lives and how we deal with the legacy of our family of origin. We can let the
wounds contaminate our lives and especially our love relationships or we can observe, change
and enable our family of origin experiences to contribute to a new awareness and thoughtfulness
of who we really are and how we want to be with our partner.
In brief, I suggest that each of us carries a wound or two, incurred when we were children
in our family of origin, wounds that affect our present relationship with our partner. During the
early stages of falling in love we were probably well blinded to these wounds. When the
honeymoon stage gradually comes to an end, our eyes are opened, but some of our felt needs are
still unfulfilled. The dance of wounds begins in earnest with our partner. Attempts to salvage the
relationship by enmeshment or distance are anti-productive and the feeling of love lost hovers
over our lives. This is the moment when most couples seek help or enter therapy.
It is my goal to take you through the stages of systemic family and couple therapy, adding
a good measure of attachment and emotionally focussed theory with a savoury serving of why we
choose the love partners that we do. It is my intention to be hopeful and to present a positive

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view of love and how it develops within us. For the most part, I believe that we have chosen the
right partner, and we just need to get on with the conscious work of moving from falling in love
to working on loving. As such, couple relationships are emotional and spiritual journeys. Love
depends not so much on whether or not we have found the right partner but rather on our
willingness to know myself and communicate myself so that my partner may get to know me all
over again, and vice versa. Several exercises in the book can help couples engage in renewing
and strengthening their relationship.
This book is not a new theoretical framework for the understanding of love relationships.
Indeed, I borrow richly from my own life experience and the experiences and insights of my
clients in therapy. I owe a great intellectual debt to family of origin theorists like Erich Fromm
and Murray Bowen; to Sue Johnson and emotionally focussed therapy; to authors like Harriet
Goldner Lerner and Harville Hendricks; and to poets like Portia Nelson. What I try to do is bring
these ideas and experiences of love together in a new and more complete manner, a sort of
seamless narrative from birth, through love relationships, to grave.
This book is divided into two parts; “the dance of wounds” and “the dance of re-creating
relationships”. Part One begins, rightly so, with both the role and power of the family of origin.
Chapter One delineates how wounds can be born within one’s family of origin and it describes
different wounds that are often operative in couple relationships. Chapter Two expands the
development of wounds, what they look like and feeling like, and how one might get to become
better aware of one’s wounds. Chapter Three picks up the story where two people meet and fall
in love and undertakes to describe what falling in love is and why we choose the partners that we

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do, especially from the point of view as choosing partners to satisfy unmet childhood needs.
Chapter Four exposes the sad tale of when love seems to be dying and the honeymoon stage is
over. As the eyes of lovers are opened to the other realities of their partner, especially the faults
and follies and wounds, couples enter into a period of careful warfare and the negotiating of
power within the relationship. Sometimes couples can do this successfully: often not. The
challenge is to move from falling in love to working on loving. Chapter Five examines the dance
of wounds, the couple problems and the process and reasons for the fight that brings couples into
therapy.
Part Two deals with and restoring couple relationships. Chapter Six begins with the age
old proverb: “know thyself”. The goal in this chapter is to change from “The problem with you
is....” to “ I have a problem”, or more precisely, “This is my wound: help me”. To know oneself
is an invitation to growth. Chapter Seven continues this theme in terms of the communication
skills needed to heal old family of origin wounds within a couple relationship. It is about how
couples can talk to each other in significant ways to move through wounds onto re-creating their
love relationships in new and deeper ways. The emotional connections needed for a good
relationship to flourish, and the qualities and properties of emotional connectedness are
substantiated in Chapter Eight. And lastly, Chapter Nine encompasses spirituality which research
has shown to have a strong correlation with happy couple relationships. Several aspects of
spirituality are expounded including vulnerability, commitment and forgiveness. A seven step
process is outlined to lead partners through forgiveness to reconciliation.
This book presents an overall picture of interlocking pieces which make better sense when

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they are all put together. Aspects of this book may be of greater interest to particular people,
while chapter exercises may be helpful for everyone. In some ways, this is also a self help book
for people who are contemplating relationships, be it their first love or for those seeking guidance
before entering into a new relationship. This book does not replace the possible need for
counselling and more professional help, but it can help partners understand more clearly the
issues that could be dealt with in therapy. This book will also be very helpful for the marriage and
family counsellor who wants to experience family systemic theory, especially family of origin
theory, within the contexts of couple relationships.

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Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I see it there.
I still fall in ... It’s a habit ...but
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

Introduction

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Introduction