The Trouble with Sex
Relationship & Sex Therapist Dr. Tammy Nelson gets up close and personal with leading, sex-positive experts and influencers to examine hot topics and answer your questions about pleasure, sexuality, relationships and the most forbidden aspects of the human experience.
The Trouble with Sex
The Love Story Behind IMAGO Relationship Therapy
In this confessional interview with the renowned creators of Imago Relationship Therapy and authors of the bestselling book Getting the Love You Want, Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt reveal intimate details about their sex life for the first time, and Dr. Tammy shares her own personal and professional transformation after discovering Imago.
Imago Relationship Therapy is a form of relationship and couples therapy that focuses on transforming conflict into healing and growth through relational connection.
Harville Hendrix Ph.D. and Helen LaKelly Hunt Ph.D. are internationally-respected couple's therapists, educators, speakers, and New York Times bestselling authors. Together, they have written over 10 books with more than 4 million copies sold, including the timeless classic, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples - celebrating it's 30th anniversary in print. In addition, Harville has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey television program 17 times.
Harville and Helen are co-founders of Imago Relationships International, a non-profit organization that has trained over 2,000 therapists and educators in 51 countries around the world.
RESOURCES & INFORMATION
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LEARN MORE about Imago Relationship Therapy
o WATCH: Oprah Talks Imago
o ARTICLE: Oprah’s Guide to Imago
o ARTICLE: An Inside look into an Imago Workshop
BOOKS TO READ
CONNECT
o Imago Relationship Therapy
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Hi, sexy listeners. Let me tell you about Uber loop. I'm a sex therapist and I recommend Uber lube to everyone, whether you're a man, a woman, post-menopausal, or a new mom, this is a silicone-based lubricant that is not gonna mess with your natural pH, and I know because I use it myself, it's got this amazing silky feel and it blends into your skin really easily and it doesn't leave you with that tacky feeling. You know what I'm talking about? If you go to Uber lube.com and use promo code dr Tami, you'll get 10% off. It's D, R, T, a, M, M, Y, dr Tami, and they'll ship anywhere for free in the United States. It's a beautiful glass bottle, very discreet and luxurious Uber lube. It's the best. Today's guests are two people who I really respect and who have actually changed my life. I wouldn't be here today on this episode with you if it hadn't been for Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt. The authors of getting the love you want this year is the 30th anniversary of the book. Getting the love you want, and if you don't know the book, it's time that you got it. A Margo therapy has been around for a while now and actually Oprah describes her episode with Harville Hendrix as one of the top 20 episodes, one of the episodes that changed her life as well. He introduced her to a Margo theory and she says, in essence, he says, it's not a coincidence that you're attracted to your partner, that that person's there to help you do the work of recovering from your old wounds.[inaudible] says, that show changed me. I saw our relationships not solely as the kind of romantic pursuit our society celebrates, but as a spiritual partnership that's meant to change how you see yourself and the world.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:welcome to the trouble with sex where we get up close and personal with leading experts to expose the naked truth about sex, love and relationships. I'm dr Tammy
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:[inaudible].
Speaker 1:Before I introduce you to Harville and Helen, I want to share a little more my personal background and connection to a Mago relationship therapy. I met Harvel Hendrix at a getting the love you want workshop in the nineties the early 1990s when I went with my first husband because our relationship was stressed and not doing well and there was I think 90 couples in that room and Harville Hendrix held our attention for two and a half days, which for me I have a little 80 days is not easy. Plus I was the therapist and I was very intolerant of any kind of workshop or anyone teaching me anything. Um, because when you're a therapist it's hard to learn from other therapists. And I was also at a point in my career when I was seeing couples where I thought, I don't know what to tell you. Like I, I don't know, get divorced couples therapy is tough because couples come in when they feel hopeless and helpless and I didn't really have the tools to deal with it at the time. And most likely because I was going through a lot of stuff in my marriage as well and I was in that room with those 90 couples, that's 180 people. And somehow I felt like my husband and I were the only people in the room with horrible and Helen and I felt like he was talking directly to me and suddenly I realized that it made sense that relationships were not coincidental, that there was no accident that you chose the partner you chose, that everyone in that room had a relationship with their spouse or their partner for a reason, and I realized after that weekend, first that I wanted to be a couples therapist and I wanted to help people who were in partnerships too. I knew then how to do it like I got it. I knew I wanted to pursue training and being a Margot therapist and number three, I also knew that I wanted to have this kind of relationship with my husband. Now, I'll talk more later about what happened with my husband at the time. But I realized in that workshop with Harville Hendrix that amigo therapy was really about choosing the person that you choose because they are destined to help you heal from your childhood wounds. That there is something about the person that you're attracted to that will enable you to grow up. They mirror back all your stuff and that there's a reason that they do that because you need to heal that stuff. And as much as they might drive you crazy, there's a reason that they drive you crazy because that's the part of you that you don't like in yourself. And you know, Margot therapy, there's things that you go through in dialogues to heal that, to be able to work through your conflicts so that you know what you need to change in yourself and how you can use the relationship with your partner to help you grow. Now, that's not easy and I might sound easy, but it's not easy. But at least now I understood why it happened and how to make it work. Um, so I've known Harvil and Helen for 25 years. And I went through my first marriage with a Maga therapy. I left that workshop and I immediately signed up for training to get trained as an a Mongo therapist, which took a couple of years and a bunch of training and a bunch of supervision. And I learned all about my family of origin and grew up with a group of therapists who taught me about myself and my issues around my father. And I realized I wanted to keep going and I got trained to be a workshop presenter and an advanced Tomago therapist. I had kinda just drank the Koolaid like I just totally loved it. And I remember during that training, after I'd been like crying on the floor, which, you know, therapists love this. It's not like that was torture for us. We'd love to talk about our childhood and all our old pain and we sort of bonded as a group. And I remember calling my husband from my hotel room and saying, you know, this is really the kind of relationship I think we could have. Like this would be awesome. This is great. And I remember him saying to me, why just, why can't you just be a dental hygienist? Like why do we have to work this hard? Why do we always have to be working on our relationship? Can you just come home at four o'clock and like make cookies? And I remember thinking, yeah, no, I, that's not gonna work for me. I really understood the importance and depth of growing as a person in a relationship and sort of what Oprah found by meeting horrible Hendrick's that pursuing a spiritual partnership in a relationship was really what it was at. Like you're in a relationship to help your partner grow, to be the person they're meant to be. And with my second husband who I've been in a relationship now for 15 years, I feel like we do live this practice of a Mago therapy. And with the couples that I see, I've been doing this now, I've been a therapist for 30 years, but I've been in an a Mago therapist for years and I've never ever seen a couple in my office where I thought, gee, I don't know why you're together. Like this must be a mistake. Never, ever. That doesn't mean that everyone should stay together or that we can always work it out, but it's clear to me why people are attracted to each other and what they're trying to heal from their childhood. And so to interview Harville and Helen, I was an assistant at their getting the love you want workshop at 1440 Multiversity in Santa Cruz, California. And now I've done a lot of a Mago therapy and I have taught my own Tomago workshops for years. I wrote the book getting the sex you want, which is based on a Mago therapy, but using a Mago theory to talk about sex, to improve people's sexual relationship. And yet I haven't assisted Harville and Helen ever at their workshops. So all these years later, my husband and I were assistants at their workshop where all these years later we were in a room with all these couples who are coming to the workshop for the first time to experience a Mago therapy. All these years later, and Harvel had the same energy. He and Helen had the same enthusiasm. It was still enlightening. I still learned from them and when I asked them to be guests on my podcast, they enthusiastically agreed. One thing I learned from them than I really didn't know is how hot they were for each other when they first met, and that made me like them all the more, and I think it'll make you appreciate what it takes to make a relationship.
Speaker 4:We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1:I want to invite you to our trouble with sex community. Go to patrion.com/the trouble with sex to get exclusive access and invitation to special events, discounts, resources, and more. Join us@thetroublewithsexcommunityandsupportusatourpatrononpagepatrion.com slash the trouble with sex. That's patrion.com/[inaudible]
Speaker 4:the trouble with sucks.
Speaker 1:I love first of all, your passion and excitement for your work, but also for each other. And I wonder if you could share with our listeners a little bit of how you met and what it was like when you first met each other.[inaudible] Parker,
Speaker 5:sorry. Which has a lot of truth to it is that we were both invited to the same party that neither one of us wanted to go to and we were a single, had been, uh, divorced. Uh, Helen, I think you were divorced about a year. I had been divorced about two and a half years at the time and we met there. Actually, I was on my way out of the party when Helen approached me and we began a conversation.[inaudible]
Speaker 4:my first husband, um, was a businessman. And when that marriage failed my interest for psychology and religion, I was getting a master's in counseling psych and I thought, I need to marry someone who I had things in common with and at this party, some women in the room where I was said, Hey Helen, go introduce yourself to Harville Hendrix next door. He teaches psychology and religion.
Speaker 5:So we met and started a conversation that has been going on now for 43 years, 43 years. That's a long 30 us seminar, actually 44 years because it's now 38 years married.
Speaker 1:Were you attracted to each other when you first met? More than just intellectually? Was he hot?
Speaker 4:Um, my answer to that question is yes. Uh, he was very hot. Uh, it, he wasn't taught I, he wasn't hot as much. Something about me today, you weren't as hot, um, until you started touching me. And that is look at his face when you say that's when he just knows what to do. I was a woman. So we had an argument on our first date. Yes. And we had an argument on our second day and we argued a great deal of our dating life, including the night before we got married. Yes. But when he looks me in the eye and gently starts touching my face and my shoulders and whenever he, we just, our bodies always loved each other, even if our personalities didn't like, we really polarized about a lot of things, but our bodies were always in love with each other.
Speaker 1:I love that. And that's probably not what a lot of people know about you, that you had this physical love for each other, that attraction, that energy, they real intense central connection for each other and it's powerful.
Speaker 5:Well, sometimes I think that the fact that we were constantly in conflict with was each other was to regulate our, our sexual passion for each other. That goes, those two things kind of don't go together. And uh, we fought a lot in order to regulate of, in order to regulate that because we really did fight a lot. And we've often said, how in the world did we wind up married when on the night before we got married? Actually you got out of the car. Oh. And walked away from close to her house and had stopped and yeah,
Speaker 4:I don't know what we argued about, but we were always arguing
Speaker 5:and it was like, shall I go over tomorrow to the a wedding or not? Um, and um, and we did and went on a honeymoon. We fought all during the honeymoon, but, uh, uh, made love enough that we had our first child, uh, who was born one year exactly one year after the honeymoon. So, but I think we fought probably every day on the honeymoon as well and made love probably every night. And so that's been a kind of polarity that we've had for a long time until I think maybe 20 years ago, we finally resolved our conflict. The emotional conflict.
Speaker 1:That's a passionate relationship though. I mean, you guys were fighting, but you're also making glove and you had this intense attraction for each other. That's an incredibly passionate relationship. Plus, the other part of the
Speaker 5:[inaudible] was intellectual that we have engaged in this intellectual conversation that gave birth to a whole, uh, couples therapy system that could not have come into being without the conversation. Helen has been indispensable to the development of your Margo and uh, and that in a very active way, not bringing something to it, but engaged in the conversation itself of um, bringing her own ideas which were incorporated into the system, the responding to my ideas so that the passion has been, uh, as intellectual as it's been emotional and sexual. So it's a pretty, I guess we're kind of answering the question, why did we get married as a coach? We were so entangled now in quantum field theory, there's an entanglement thing. We got so entangled, there was no way, no way out we can get out of that. And in fact, we almost got divorced about 20 years into our marriage, but we couldn't divorce. So we figured out a way to stay together to stay married and developed. As a result of that, we developed another level of understanding of couples, the dynamics of couplehood and also couples therapy. I think some of the things that we now do in couples therapy have been all developed as sort of reflections on and research on how we got through our own impasse,
Speaker 1:which is amazing. I mean, when I think about the two of you as cofounders of a Margot relationships international, which is more than just a construct of psychotherapy or couples therapy, it is a movement. It has changed the way that thousands of people think about relationship and the way that couples connect and heal their conflicts. Yeah. And it's changed the way that psychotherapy thinks about couples therapy and how to work with relationships. When I first learned about a Mago therapy, it was at your workshop 25 years ago, and I remember thinking, Oh, now I get it. And suddenly it made so much sense to me why people were attracted to each other and what to do about it. Um, it's exciting to be on this podcast to talk about the importance of our body connection, which we've not told other people about. Uh,
Speaker 4:but it was very powerful and dynamic and strong and what many people have said to both of us. You need to include the body in a Mongo therapy and theory and we don't. And Tammy you have. And I think everyone that buys any Amargosa book by us must buy yours to complete that theory because you've done the research. You can speak so eloquently about it because body was very, very important to us.
Speaker 5:Well, and also your book mirrors our book getting love you. One is mirrored by getting the sexy one so that you in a sense kind of completed that conversation. So we don't have to deal with sex because we have this great Imago therapist who has made it our Lifework and made it visible. So thank you very much. So we don't have to do that work.
Speaker 1:Um, taking in the love there and the appreciation you, and isn't it interesting that I intuitively knew this part about you, that you, you are passionate for each other. And that, that it is a big core of who you are as people and about your relationship. And I, I really believe that, uh, Margot is. I'm curious for the two of you, when you, u m, are working with couples and you feel that longing that people have for the passion that you guys have, what you do around this idea. When you talk about pleasure, you have such a great sort of conceptual idea in the workshop around pleasure and that people have a right to pleasure in their, in their relationship and in their lives and how s hut d own they get. Do you feel like they get shut down from it because they're disconnected from each other or, u m, because they are afraid or how do you feel about pleasure? W ell, my, m y
Speaker 5:view of pleasure is that it has been denigrated in our culture for over 2000 years. That it began with early Greek philosophy, went through a period of what we would call S asceticism, which was namely shutdown the pleasures of the body and amplified the pleasures of the mind. So that we have, I can't think of the philosopher's name who is not famous, but who was just as smart as Plato and Aristotle who focused on the mind. And the philosophers who focused on pleasure in the body did not become famous. That they did survive in the, in the literature, but they were not as famous. So that's split between the body and the mind has a 2,500 year history and was transferred into Western civilization because veterans civilization is built on Greek philosophy. So we adopted that. Asceticism became a part of our religious ideology or religious practice and religious doctrines so that to have pleasure was bad. But to deny yourself was good. And that's, I mean, it's that simple to deny yourself and you're spiritual and if you have pleasure than you sinful, that you're sinful. And so it's then very hard to enjoy your body, uh, at the same time knowing that the enjoyment of your body was bad and that, uh, interferes with our, the relationship to one's body into one sexuality. And then if you have some negative experience, sexuality attached to a negative program about sexuality, it's very hard to engage in erotic sexuality. And, and in my mind, that is the source of the rise of pornography. That pornography would have no interest to anybody who felt comfortable in their sexuality and who had a culture that supported it. And uh, and had the ability to, are sustain the natural human passions all the time. Who would want to go look at a movie? Who would want to read a book? When you can engage in what is natural and normal and wonderful. So pornography, like, uh, addictions are all connected to the denial of the body, which is a denial of sexuality. And then sex becomes a symptom. So we treat sexuality, the, the field of sexual therapy I've done. Then my judgment, um, sorta does not do sexuality of service by treating sexuality, without treating the relationship. And that when you move into the relationship and it becomes safe so that the energies can flow, one of the primary energies is sexual, that that energy will flow as well. But if you're not safe, then sexuality often becomes a transaction or something that we do on Sunday or we wish we did more of or that you ask the problematic attached to it. So what, what we hope that we can contribute to the emergence of a positive acceptance of the body, which includes, uh, the, uh, permission to enjoy our sexuality. So that's sort of what I think about all that intellectual level reduction
Speaker 1:of shame around sex and to take away the idea that there's a shame is a dysfunction. Yes. And that there is something relational that we can be, it can be focusing on around our sexuality. Yeah. This is part of women's empowerment. This is part of Roman's a power. Absolutely. Totally agree. And it's about the rise of women's power in the world to bring this idea of being in their pleasure is a form of power in that, you know, we've, we're in this mode in our culture now that it's all about success and work. If the harder we work, the more successful we'll be. And we'll just take our pleasure, you know, on vacation when we binge and then we'll come back and suffer and get back to work. And so this culture has become so competitive and sort of patriarchal and rising to the top of the pyramid and climbing over everybody else. And if you get rich enough, you can have some pleasure, but everybody else has to work. And I think as we become more empowered as women, and we share this with our partners, um, we bring that that really receptive, empowered feminine idea of pleasure is power because it's the opposite of trauma. Trauma is really rigid and pleasure is the opposite of that is really receptive and loving. Yes. One of the most brilliant things I've ever heard the two of you say is, can you ever envision a couple as president? And that has stuck with me as a paradigm that I think would change the world. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Oh absolutely. And, and I don't know how long it'll take us to do that and we have to have a new, um, we have to have a new model of couplehood for that to work, which is based on equity rather than a vertical model. But a co presidents as husband and wife, I think would be absolutely revolutionary and it would produce a new way of thinking and a new set of values and it would produce a new view of children. It would produce a new view of culture itself because then the culture would be explicitly relational culture rather than a culture of competitive individuals. Because relationship is foundational. It's like relationship is essential as oxygen as the air we breathe. But Western civilization has no concept that relationship is foundational. The individual is foundational. But when we moved to this new understanding, which we think is showing up in quantum field theory, that we will eventually have a new view of the human story and then we'll have to embody that story in its natural form rather than its unnatural form, which we think it is now.
Speaker 1:And I can't agree more. I think that would just heal the trauma that we're in now. So beautifully. And so Helen, when are you gonna run for[inaudible]?
Speaker 4:Oh, we really are relational creatures and, uh, the people ruling our country really need to have head thinking and heart thinking and, um, that there is something doable about nature. Nature is dual nature is dyadic and people are couples are dyadic. And that's a powerful idea.
Speaker 5:And I think that the, um, um, the priest saging of that, uh, in my mind comes with the fact we have had two presidents whose wives were sort of co equals with them, even though not co presidents. Totally. And that was the first time in history that that has happened with Clinton and Hillary and with Barack and then Michelle. So something happened there. And the culture like tent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was beginning to shift things. We could feel the shift
Speaker 5:and then you shift away from it. But that all, all that means I think is it was too scary and there was shift away from it so that we can recoup and come back to it. And who knows? It may come faster than any of us can imagine.
Speaker 1:Let's hope that was the boomerang effect. Yes to society. Got a little scared and they were pulling back so that we can shoot into the future, into the future. Well I want to thank both of you so much for being here today with us and with me here on the trouble with sex Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly hunt coauthors of getting the love you want. Get it now and it's 30th year. The new edition has so many beautiful things to say that will change the way you think about relationship. And for those of you who want to do a workshop with Harville and Helen, go to Harville and helen.com this episode was brought to you by Uber lube, the luxury lubricant.
Speaker 6:To find out more, go to the trouble with sex.com or email me@drtammyatthetroublewithsex.com join our mailing list. Follow us on social media. Sign up for our newsletter or send me a question. The trouble was sex is produced by Brandy sabot and Jane Applegate. Our audio is by flavor lab, New York city. This episode is recorded on location by Bethany null productions and mixed by Eric stern music by Bruce Hershfield.