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

by Richard C. Schwartz

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you have ignored for another . . .

“The American marriage . . . is one of the most difficult marriage forms that the human race has ever attempted.”

Couples were once surrounded by communities of relatives and friends, by people who shared their values and helped them out. Today, couples are frequently isolated, mobile units that are expected to survive on their own. Not only is the couple isolated from its community but each partner is often cut off from the other by the outrageous requirements of work or by the excessive demands of raising children far from the help of kin networks.

The consequent striving for money and exhausting workweeks, whether motivated by the need to stay alive financially or to join the wealthy, leave an ever-larger emotional gulf between ourselves and our families and friends.

The not-unrealistic fear of sudden financial impoverishment also drives the anxiety and work pace of most people in the United States

When you don’t fear drowning because there’s no longer a dark body of water threatening to swallow you up, and when your inner world is one of abiding love, you don’t grasp for the life preservers our culture constantly throws at you.

social support, generosity to one another, and honesty in government are crucial for well-being.8

There is something magical about trusting that all of you is welcomed in a relationship.