Scanning the first five chapters, it would be easy to get the impression that the old brain is the cause of most of our marriage problems.  It's the old brain that causes us to choose partners who resemble our caretakers.  I's the old brain that is the source of all our elaborate defenses - the projections, transferences, and introjections - that obscure the reality of ourselves and our partners.  And it's the old brain that is responsible for our infantile response to frustration, the "cry-or-criticize" response that only results in further alienation.
     But the old brain also plays a positive role in marriage.  Although some of the tactics of the old brain may be self-defeating, its fundamental drives are essential to our well-being.  Our unconscious drive to repair the emotional damage of childhood is what allows us to realize our spiritual potential as human beings, to become complete and loving people capable of nurturing others.  And even though our projections and transferences may temporarily blind us to our partners' reality, they're also what binds us to them, setting up the preconditions for future growth.
     The problem with the old brain is that it's unguided;  it's like a blind animal trying to find its way to the watering hole.  To achieve the valid and important objectives of the old brain, we need to enlist the aid of the new brain - the part of us that makes choices, exerts will, knows that our partners are not our parents, that today is not always, and that yesterday is not today.  We need to take the rational skills that we use in other parts of our lives and bring them to bear on our love relationships.  Once we forge a working alliance between the powerful, instinctual drives of the old brain and the discriminating, cognitive powers of the new brain, we can begin to realize our unconscious goals.  Through the marriage of old-brain instincts and new-brain savvy, we can gradually leave the frustrations of the power struggle behind us.
 

New Brain/Old Brain Merger

How would married life be different if the new brain played a more active role?  Here's an example of a typical interaction between a husband and wife and how it might be handled in an unconscious marriage, a typical love relationship dominated by old-brain reactivity, and in a conscious marriage, a relationship where the old brain is tempered by reason.
     Imagine that you are happily eating breakfast, and your spouse suddenly criticizes you for burning the waffles.  Your old brain, the perpetual guardian of your safety, instantly prompts you to fight or flee.  It cares not that the person who criticized you is your spouse; all it cares about is that you're under attack.  Unless you interfere with your automatic old-brain response, you will immediately return your partner's critical remark with a scathing rejoinder - "Well, I may have burned the waffles, but you spilled the syrup!" Or, on the other hand, you might attempt to flee the encounter altogether by leaving the room or burying your head in the newspaper.  Depending on your approach, your partner will feel either attacked or abandoned and will most likely lash out again.  A perpetual-emotion machine will be set in gear, and you will have defeated the desired outcome, which is to have a pleasant, intimate breakfast together.
     This is precisely the kind of situation in which the new brain could be pressed into service to come up with a less provocative response.  One approach (an approach that we will explore in detail in a later chapter) might be to paraphrase your partner's statement in a neutral tone of voice, acknowledging the anger but not rushing to your own defense.  For example, you might say something like this: "You're really upset that I burned the waffles again." Your partner might then respond: '@s, I am!  I'm tired of all the wasted food around here.  Next time be more careful!" And, still relying on new-brain tact, you could respond once again in the same non defensive manner: "You're right.  Food does get wasted around here.  I'll get an extension cord and bring the waffle iron into the dining room, where we can keep a closer eye on it." Your partner, disarmed by your rational tone of voice and your ability to think of an alternative solution, will probably calm down and become more tractable: "Good idea.  And thanks for not getting upset.  I guess I'm a little edgy this morning.  I'm behind at work and I don't know how I'm going to manage." Because you were willing to risk a creative response to anchor, you have suddenly become a trusted confidant, not a sparring partner.
     Once you become skilled in this non defensive approach to criticism, you will make an 'important discovery: in most interactions with your spouse, you are actually safer -when you lower your defenses than when you keep them engaged, because your partner becomes an ally, not an enemy.  By relying on your new brain, which, unlike your old brain, recognizes that being criticized for burning the waffles is not the same thing as being attacked with the bread knife, you learn to moderate your instinctual fight/flight response.  Paradoxically, you do an even better job of satisfying the underlain purpose of this automatic defense, which is to keep yourself safe and unharmed.
     This is only one example of how greater reliance on the flexibility and discriminating powers of the conscious brain can help you achieve your unconscious goals.  Lees move on to the larger picture and get a comprehensive view of what I mean by "a conscious marriage." Lees start with a definition: a conscious marriage is a marriage that fosters maximum psychological and spiritual growth; it's a marriage created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind: to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole.
     What are some of the differences when you become conscious?  The following list highlights some
of the essential differences in attitude and behavior:

             TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF A CONSCIOUS MARRIAGE

1. You realize that your love relationship has a hidden purpose - the healing of childhood wounds. Instead of focusing entirely on surface needs and desires, you learn to recognize the unresolved childhood issues that underlie them.  When you look at marriage with this X-ray vision, your daily interactions take on more meaning.  Puzzling aspects of your relationship begin to make sense to you, and you have a greater sense of control.

2. You create a more accurate image of your partner. At the very moment of attraction, you began fusing your lover with your primary caretakers.  Later you projected your negative traits onto your partner, further obscuring your partner's essential reality.  As you move toward a conscious marriage,
you gradually let go of these illusions and begin to see more of your partner's truth.  You see your partner not as your savior but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed.

3. You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner.  In an unconscious marriage, you cling to the childhood belief that your partner automatically intuits your needs.  In a conscious marriage, you accept the fact that, in order to understand each other, you have
to develop clear channels of communication.

4. You become more intentional in your interactions.  In an unconscious marriage, you tend to react without thinking.  You allow the primitive response of your old brain to control your behavior.  In a conscious marriage, you train yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.

5. You learn to value your partner's needs and wishes as highly as you value your own.  In an unconscious marriage, you assume that your partner's role in life is to take care of your needs magically.  In a conscious marriage you let go of this narcissistic view and divert more and more of your energy to meeting your partner's needs.

6. You embrace the dark side of your personality.  In a conscious marriage, you openly acknowledge the fact that you, like everyone else, have negative traits.  As you accept responsibility for this dark side of your nature, you lessen your tendency to project your negative traits onto your mate, which
creates a less hostile environment.

7. You learn new techniques to satisfy your basic  needs and desires.  During the power struggle, you cajole, harangue, and blame in an attempt to coerce your partner to meet your needs.  When you move beyond this stage, you realize that your partner can indeed be a resource for you - once you
abandon your self-defeating tactics.

8. You search within yourself the strengths and abilities you are lacking.  One reason you were attracted to your partner is that your partner had strengths and abilities that you lacked.  Therefore, being with your partner gave you an illusory sense of wholeness.  In a conscious marriage, you learn that the only  way you can truly recapture a sense of oneness is to develop the hidden traits within yourself.

9. You become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole and united with the universe.  As a part of your God-given nature, you have the ability to love unconditionally and to experience unity with the world around you.  Social conditioning and imperfect parenting made you lose touch with these qualities.  In a conscious marriage, you begin to rediscover your original nature.

10. You accept the difficulty of creating a good marriage.  In an unconscious marriage, you believe that the way to have a good marriage is to pick the right partner.  In a conscious marriage you realize you have to be the right partner.  As you gain a more realistic view of love relationships, you realize that a good marriage requires commitment, discipline, and the courage to grow and change; marriage is hard work.

Let's take a closer look at number ten, the need to accept the difficulty involved in creating a good
marriage, because none of the other nine ideas will come to fruition unless you first cultivate your
willingness to grow and change.
 

Becoming a Lover

We all have an understandable desire to live life as children.  We don't want to go to the trouble of raising a cow and milking it; we want to sit down at the table and have someone hand us a cool glass of milk.  We don't want to plant seeds and tend a grapevine; we want to walk out the back door and pluck a handful of grapes.  This wishful thinking finds its ultimate expression in marriage.  We don't want to accept responsibility for getting our needs met; we want to "fall in love" with a superhuman mate and live happily ever after.  The psychological term for this tendency to put the source of our frustrations and the solutions to our problems outside ourselves is "externalization," and it is the cause of much of the world's unhappiness.
     I remember the day when a client whom I will call Walter came in for his appointment with slumped
shoulders and a sad expression.
     "What's the matter?" I asked Walter.  "You look very unhappy today."
     "Harville," he said to me as he slumped into the chair, "I feel really terrible.  I just don't have any friends."
     I was sympathetic with him.  "You must be very sad. It's lonely not having any friends."
     "Yeah.  I can't seem to ... I don't know.  There are just no friends in my life.  I keep looking and looking, and I can't find any."
     He continued in a morose, complaining voice for some time, and I had to suppress a growing annoyance with his regressed, childlike state.  He was locked into a view of the world that went something like this: wandering around the world were people on whose foreheads were stamped the words "Friend of Walter," and his job was merely to search until he found them.
     "Walter," I said with a sigh, "do you understand why you don't have any friends?"
     He perked up.  "No.  Tell me!"
     "The reason you don't have any friends is that there aren't any friends out there."
     His shoulders slumped.
     I was relentless.  "That's right," I told him.  "There are no friends out there.  What you want does not exist." I let him stew in this sad state of affairs for a few seconds.  Then I leaned forward in my chair and said, "Walter - listen to me!  All people in the world are strangers.  If you want a friend, you're going to have to go out and make one!"
     Walter was resisting the idea that creating a lasting friendship takes time and energy.  Even though he was responsible and energetic in his job, he retained the childlike notion that all he had to do to establish intimacy was to bump up against the right person.  Because he hadn't acknowledged that a friendship evolves slowly over time and requires thoughtfulness, sensitivity, and patience, he had been living a lonely life.
     The passive attitude Walter brought to his friendships was even more pronounced in his love life: he couldn't seem to find the ideal woman.  Recovering from a painful divorce (in a bitter legal battle, his wife had gotten custody of their son), he was desperately trying to find a new lover.
     The specific problem that had plagued Walter in his marriage was that he was caught up in concepts and ideas, not feelings.  He hid his vulnerability behind his formidable intellect, which prevented any genuine intimacy.  He had been coming to group therapy sessions for about six months, and at each session he would hear from the group the same message that he had been hearing from his wife that he "wasn't sharing his feelings, that he was emotionally distant.  One evening a member of the group finally broke through to him.  "When you talk about your pain," she said, "I can't see any suffering.  When you hug me, I can't feel your hugs." Walter finally realized that there was some basis to his ex-wife's complaints.  "I thought she was just being bitchy and critical," he confessed.  "It never occurred to me that maybe she was right.  That I could learn something about myself from listening to her."
     When Walter had time to absorb this awareness, he developed more enthusiasm for the therapeutic process and was able to work on dismantling his emotional barriers.  As he became more alive emotionally, he was finally able to have a satisfying relationship with a new woman friend.  During his last session with me, he shared his feelings about therapy.  "You know," he said, "it took me two years to learn one simple fact: that, in order to have a good relationship, you have to be willing to grow and change.  If I had know this ten years ago, I would still be living with my wife and son."
     Walter can't be blamed for wanting to believe that marriage should be easy and 'natural." it's human nature to want a life without effort.  When we were infants, the world withheld and we were frustrated; the world gave and we were satisfied.  Out of thousands of these early transactions, we fashioned a model of the world, and we cling to this outdated model even at the expense of our marriages.  We are slow to comprehend that, in order to be loved, we must first become lovers.  And I don't mean this 'in sentimental terms.  I don't mean sending flowers, writing love notes, or learning new lovemaking techniques - although any one of these activities might be a welcome part of a loving relationship.  To become a lover, we must first abandon the self­defeating tactics and beliefs that we discussed in the first five chapters and replace them with more constructive ones.  We must change our ideas about marriage, about our partners, and, ultimately, about ourselves.
 

The Fear of Change

Standing in the way of the changes we need to make in order to have a more satisfying relationship is our fear of change.  A fear of change is also basic to human nature.  We can feel anxious even when we're undergoing a positive change, such as getting promoted, moving into a new home, or going on vacation.  Anything that breaks us out of our comfortable or, not-so­comfortable routines sets off an alarm in our old brain.  The old brain is alerting us to the fact that we are entering territory that has not, been mapped or surveyed, and that danger may lurk around every comer.
     I see a wish to cling to well worn paths even in young children.  When our daughter Leah was two and a half years old, her younger brother, Hunter, had outgrown the bassinet, and Helen and I decided it was time to move her into a youth bed so that the baby could have the crib.  The youth bed had a six-inch rail going half­way down the bed to keep her from rolling off in the middle of the night.  The bottom half had no rail.  The first morning that Leah awoke in her new bed, I heard her familiar wake-up cry: "Daddy!  Daddy!" I went into her room, and there she was, on her knees, with her hands on the little rail, saying, "Daddy, pick me up!" - just as she had done in her old crib with the two-foot sides.  I was taken aback by her helplessness.  She could easily have climbed over the bar or scooted down a few feet to the part of the bed that had no rail at all.  "Leah," I said with enthusiasm, "you can get out of your new bed all by yourseIf"
     "I can't," she said, sticking out her lower lip.  "I'm stuck." "Leah, look down here," I implored, patting the part of the bed without rails.  "You can climb down right here!" She knelt frozen in place.  Finally I had to get up on the bed with her and show her how to do it. With my encouragement, she was able to follow close behind me, overcome her resistance to change, and get out of bed.
     I saw a more dramatic demonstration of paralysis in the face of change the other evening while watching die news.  A local TV station carried a story about a little boy who was born in 1982 with severe immune deficiency, and from the moment of birth had to spend his life encased in a plastic bubble, seated off from life-threatening germs.  His devoted mother and father were by his side every day of his life, but they were separated from him by the plastic, and the only way they could touch him was by putting on long sterile gloves that were permanently 'inserted' into the bubble.
     Shortly after the boy's fifth birthday, he was given a successful bone-marrow transplant, and after elaborate testing. the doctors decided that his immune system was sufficiently developed to allow him to leave his sterile world.  On the day he was scheduled to come out, the bubble was slit open, and his overjoyed  mother and father held out their arms to him.  This was the first time in their lives that they would be able to kiss and hug their son.  But, to ever-yone's surprise, the boy cowered in the back of the bubble.  His parents called to him, but he wouldn't budge.  Finally his father had to crawl inside and carry him out.  As the little boy looked around the room, he started to cry.  Since he had lived all his life 'in a ten-by-eight-foot enclosure, the room must have looked enormous to him.  His parents hugged him and kissed him to reassure him, but he wasn't used to any physical contact, and he arched backward to escape their embraces.
     The closing segment of the story, filmed a few days later, showed that the child was growing more comfortable with life outside the bubble.  But on the day of his emancipation it was clear that his fear of confronting the unfamiliar was stronger than his desire to explore the world.
     That little boy lived for five years inside his bubble.  The couples that come to me have been living for two, ten, twenty - as many as forty years inside a restrictive, growth-inhibiting relationship.  With so many years invested in habituated behaviors, it's only natural that they should experience a great reluctance to change.  After all, I am asking them not only to risk the anxiety of learning a new style of relating, but also to confront the pain and fear that have been bottled up inside them for decades - the reason for their dysfunctional behavior in the first place.
 

The Promised Land

To give you some insight into the difficulties of creating a conscious marriage, I want to recount my highly abridged version of the story of Moses and the Promised Land, which I view as a parable of the human psyche. It goes like this:
     Many centuries ago, the Israelites were a great tribe of people living in a country near the Mediterranean Sea.  There came a drought to their land, and, in order to survive, the Israelites migrated south to Egypt, where the bins were full of grain.  But in exchange for the grain they were forced to become slaves to the Egyptians and were subjected to cruel treatment and the dreary labor of making bricks without straw.  After more than four hundred fears of this meager existence, along came a man named Moses, who said to the Israelites, "Good grief You're going through p@, repetitive behavior that is getting you nowhere.  You've forgotten your heritage.  You're not slaves of the house of Egypt, you are the children of the great God Yahweh!  The God of all gods is your creator, and you are his special people."
     Moses' words stirred a sense of recognition 'in the Israelites, and they became aware of their mental imprisonment.  This made them restless and unhappy - not unlike many of the couples that come to me for counseling.
     Lured by a vision of the Promised Land, the Israelites followed Moses.  But the Israelites were not prepared for the hardships of the journey, and they had little faith in God's protection.  When they came to the first obstacle, the Red Sea, they complained bitterly to Moses: 'You got us out of our comfortable huts with a promise of a better way of life.  Now our way is blocked by an enormous sea!  Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?  What arc we to do?"
     Moses himself wasn't sure what to do, but he believed that if he had faith a way would appear.  While he was pondering their fate, a huge dust cloud appeared on the horizon.  To the Israelites' horror, they realized it was a cloud kicked up by thousands of rapidly approaching Egyptian soldiers coming to capture them and return them to their chains.
     At this moment Moses lifted his hand and a strong east wind miraculously parted the Red Sea.  Awed by this great miracle, the Israelites summoned their courage, took one last look back at Egypt - the only home they had known - and followed Moses fearfully into the watery chasm.  There were walls of water to their right and to their left.  When they were safely across the sea, Moses raised his hand once more, and the great sea walls collapsed, drowning all the Egyptians in a rushing torrent of water.
     The Israelites had only moments to celebrate their safe passage.  As they looked at the new land, they were dismayed to learn that they had arrived on the edge of a barren, trackless desert.  Once again they cried out in anguish.  "You disrupted our secure lives.  You urged us to follow you on a long journey.  We were almost captured bv the Egyptians.  We were nearly drowned in the Red Sea.  And now we are lost in a barren land with no food or water!  "
     Despite their fears, the Israelites had no choice but to continue.  They wandered for many months in the foreign land, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and by a pillar of fire by might.  They encountered great hardships, but God was merciful and made their burden fighter by performing miracles.  Finally the Israelites arrived at the end of the desert.  Just over the ridge, said Moses, was the Promised Land.  Scouts were sent ahead to survey the territory.  But when the scouts returned, they brought more bad news: "The Promised Land really does flow with milk and honey, but it is already occupied!  This is the home of the Canaanites, gigantic creatures seven feet tall!" The listening crowd cried out in terror and once again yearned for the safety and security of their life in Egypt.
     At this point God spoke to them: 'Because you have no faith, and because you keep remembering Egypt, you have to wander in the desert for forty years, until a new generation arises that does not remember the old ways.  Only then can you go into the Promised Land." So for forty more years the Israelites camped out in the desert.  Children were born, and old people died.  Finally a new leader arose to take them into Israel to begin the hard work of wresting the land from the Canaanites.

What can we learn from this familiar story that will help us in our exploration of marriage?  One of the first truths we can learn is the fact that most of us go through married life as if we were asleep, engaging in routine 'interactions that give us little pleasure.  Like the Israelites in their four hundred years of servitude to the Egyptians, we have forgotten who we a-re.  In the words of Wordsworth, we come into the world "trailing clouds of glory," but the fire is soon extinguished, and we lose sight of the fact that we are whole, spiritual beings.  We live impoverished, repetitious, unrewarding lives and blame our partners for our unhappiness.
     The story also teaches us that we are prisoners of the fear of change.  When I ask couples to risk new behaviors, the), become angry with me.  There is a part of them that would rather divorce, break up the family, and divide up all their possessions than acquire a new style of relating.  Like the Israelites, they tremble in front of the Red Sea   even though the way lies open to them.  Later, when they are in a difficult stretch of the journey, their emotional difficulties seem like hordes of pursuing Egyptians and seven-foot-tall monsters.  But, unlike the case of the Israelites, the enemy is within; it's the denied and repressed parts of their being threatening to come to awareness.
     The final truth in the story of Moses is that we expect life's rewards to come to us easily and without sacrifice. just as the Israelites wanted the Promised Land to be the Garden of Eden, God's ready-made gift to Adam and Eve, we want the simple act of getting married to cure all our ills.  We want to live in a fairy tale where the beautiful princess meets the handsome prince and lives happily ever after.  But it was only when the Israelites saw the Promised Land as an opportunity, as a chance to create a new reality, that they were allowed to enter.  And it is only when we see marriage as a vehicle for change and self-growth that we can begin to satisfy our unconscious yearnings.
 

What Lies Ahead

This chapter marks a turning point in the book.  Up until now, I've been describing the unconscious marriage a marriage characterized by old-brain reactivity.  In the rest of the book, I will explain how to transform your marriage into a more conscious, growth-producing relationship.  Here's an overview of what lies ahead.  Chapter Seven explores an old-fashioned idea, commitment, and explains why it is a necessary precondition for emotional growth.  Chapter Eight shows you how to turn your marriage into a zone of safety - a safe and secure environment that rekindles the intimacy of romantic love.  Chapter Nine gives you some techniques for gathering more information about yourself and your spouse.  Chapter Ten explores the paradoxical idea that the only way to satisfy your childhood needs is to commit yourself wholeheartedly to the satisfaction of your partner's needs.  Chapter Eleven talks about ways you can contain your anger so that it can be safely expressed within your relationship.  Chapter Twelve is an interview with two couples who are well on the way to creating a conscious marriage.  Part III contains a series of exercises that will help you translate these insights into practical growth-producing behaviors. (It is important that you finish Parts I and II before you do the exercises.  They will be more meaningful to you once you read the text and understand the theories behind them.)