In this episode, husband and wife team and co-creators of Imago Relationship Therapy, Drs. Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, discuss their acclaimed book Getting the Love You Want. They tackle the complex question of how couples can deal with and heal from old childhood wounds that may be affecting their marriage. Drs. Hendrix and Hunt teach listeners to dive deep into the subconscious childhood pain and bring it out into the light. By doing so, couples can begin to build healthy neuropathways, or healthy roads, alongside the pain-giving neuropathways in the brain.

As Drs. Hendrix and Hunt say, “We are all drawn to people we are incompatible with, but if we grow to heal each other’s wounds, we become compatible.” Perhaps your marriage is suffering from unhealed childhood wounds—you will learn how to communicate about the wounds and the steps it takes to move past them and on to a healthy marriage. For those struggling with old wounds, seemingly small confrontations can feel like an emotional avalanche. Drs. Hendrix and Hunt teach couples to, instead of make demands, make “behavior change requests,” which preserve the sacred safe space in their marriage.