You Are the One You've Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships

by Richard C. Schwartz

This kind of head-above-water happiness is unstable and easily disturbed. Our partner will buckle under the strain of holding us up, and big waves (such as failures at work or criticism from parents) will wash over us no matter how hard our partner works to save us. Our culture offers many other life preservers—television, social media, shopping, working, smoking, legal and illegal drugs, alcohol, pornography, prostitution, plastic surgery, diets and exercise, fatty and sweet foods—all the common addictions.

Your Vulnerability, in Its Natural, Innocent State, Bothered Your Caretakers or Peers This happened if your caregivers were: depressed or in conflict with each other such that there was no room for your neediness and, instead, you had to worry about and care for them; neglectfully preoccupied such that you had to raise yourself and/or your siblings; using you as a surrogate spouse or living vicariously through your achievements; convinced that you had to be tough to survive or highly competitive to succeed; or afraid or disdainful of their own neediness and, consequently, were verbally or physically abusive.

Your Natural Vitality Disturbed Your Caretakers or Peers This happened if one or both of your parents were: adherents of a rigid religious tradition that viewed various natural expressions as sinful; afraid to let you grow up and leave them because of being highly dependent on you; survivors of sexual or physical abuse such that any sexuality or aggression in you was threatening; violent with each other or sexually acting out such that you became afraid of assertiveness or sexuality; afraid of their own vitality and, consequently, were verbally or physically abusive when you showed liveliness; or convinced that in order to attract a partner, you needed to be submissive or nonthreatening.

of the Hurt, and Then Triggered Other People or Disturbed You This happened when you were (to give a few examples from my clinical work): displaced by the birth of a sibling, so you pouted and tantrummed and then were severely scolded; secretly sexually molested by a family member, so you began acting out sexually with other children and were harshly punished; attacked by a bully at school, felt as though you never wanted to leave the house, and locked up the fear so you could return to school; or shocked by the sudden death of a parent, wanted to collapse with grief and never get out of bed, and locked away the grief so you could function.

When exiling happens for the first two reasons, exiles will feel rejected and unlovable.

exiles carry a variety of extreme beliefs about what love is,

By stepping on your land mines, your partner becomes your valued tor-mentor—they mentor you by tormenting you. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to find many of the exiles you need to heal.

During conflict: the Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—a.k.a. cannonballs, missiles, and domes) intimidation attempts, including threats of abandonment or violence ignoring or refusing to make repair attempts feeling emotionally flooded feeling numb and an absence of love for your partner self-loathing and the urge to twist yourself into a pretzel to please or placate your partner

During daily interactions: ignoring, rejecting, or not initiating bids for connection

chronic absence of sexual desire, affection, interest in being together, or intimate disclosure chronic presence of urges such as bingeing, having an affair, shopping, sleeping, rage and desire for revenge, leaving your partner viewing partner as unattractive and chronically focusing on partner’s physical flaws chronic presence of inner chatter, including: self-criticism and fear of upsetting partner overly caretaking of partner feeling criticized or embarrassed by partner strong and constant negative judgment toward partner jealousy and distrust desire to control partner fear of being engulfed or controlled by partner ruminating over previous hurts from partner and anticipating more sense of being trapped and powerless unless partner changes fear of being abandoned by partner

When you ask a protector what it wants you to know, initially it may continue to rant about your partner or about you.

when parts feel shut out, they become extreme and make inner demands that often don’t reflect their deepest desires.

Suppose you are able to enter a difficult discussion in this spacious state of Self-leadership. If you are like most people, it won’t take long before you lose it and a part of you jumps up.

Once I notice that I’m not very embodied, I know that my parts have hijacked me and that continuing to talk is not likely to be productive.

While in a conflict, trying to be your partner’s parts detector is a good way to fan the flames.

Patriarchy equates apologizing with submitting or losing.

You know that you will trigger each other, but you also know that you will repair and reconnect.

The fact that our partner triggers us is not a bad thing—we are here to learn lessons, and our partner is a great tor-mentor. When either of us is upset and extreme, it is just temporary hijacking by a part; our loving Selves are still in there and will return soon. The hijacking is useful because it will lead each of us to heal key exiles that are driving the protectors, if we follow through. Neither of us has to react in kind and can instead remain the “I” in the storm in the face of the other’s hijacking. If both of us are hijacked, we can comfort our own exiles, even during the dark times. It is our individual responsibility to be the primary caretaker of our own parts, and we can do that no matter what our partner does. It is also our responsibility, later, to initiate a repair and to apologize for the parts of us that were extreme, regardless of what our partner did.

Try not to overreact internally; remind your parts that you’re still there with them and that there’s pain behind her rage. Either remain the “I” in the storm, or when you can’t and your own protectors hijack as well, separate from them enough to know it’s a parts attack and not your true feelings. Later, do a U-turn—get curious about what was happening inside you during the episode, go inside to find out, and invite your partner to do the same. Once you each discover the parts involved, disclose that information—especially the exiles that were driving the protectiveness—to the other as part of the repair. Apologize for the extremes and commit to working with the parts you found. Do that inner work when you have a chance and tell your partner about it later.

So much communication between couples is contained in the energy from which they speak.

connectedness that forms when each partner has a part that takes over and interacts with a similar or complementary part of the other.

The final form of intimacy is what I’ll call the secondary caretaker kind.

Each of these four forms of intimacy—describing parts to each other, Self-to-Self relating, part-to-part relating, and secondary caretaking (a.k.a. Self-to-part relating)—is powerful by itself.

The second prerequisite is safety. Two of the four kinds of intimacy require high levels of vulnerability because you are exposing your exiles to your partner, which, for most people, is terrifying even in a very safe relationship.