s many of you know, a very deep personal and professional passion of mine is relationships. Specifically, helping two people in a primary relationship see their respective parts in its frustrations and breakdowns  before  they press  the delete  button. The motivation

for this is autobiographical. Firstly, if it were not for somebody doing the same for me, I am absolutely certain that I would have drifted all my life seeking an ever more perfect mate and finding an insurmountable flaw in every last candidate. Second, I am wild about the pleasures and joys of family. If families can be kept from needlessly being torn asunder, I am all for it.

I also know first-hand that taking yourself apart in an unflinchingly responsible and honest way to see where the real barriers lay to your experience of true and lasting intimacy can be difficult and painful. Yet there is only one alternative, and that, over time, proves to be even more difficult and painful. It is blame the other person; project the cause of all the frustrations and breakdowns of the relationship onto them; see yourself as their victim until you’ve had all that you can take; leave them; then begin the pattern all over again with someone new. Could a more foolproof formula exist for lifelong loneliness, alienation, confusion and dismay? I think not. When it comes to explaining the real cause of relationship breakdown this double-entendre maxim holds true: “If you don’t go within, you go without.”

In working with a good many couples over the years, there are very few laws governing the primary love relationship that I can say have applied to every last one. Almost always in working with the psychological and emotional realms of being human, let alone two humans, there is an exception to every rule. Almost all relevant truths are such that the opposite of those truths is also occasionally true. What follows however is one law that has never yet failed to be true nor has it failed to always floor one or both of the protagonists: “In matters of primary relationship you are attracted to somebody who has approximately the same capacity and incapacity for true and lasting intimacy as you do. And it will almost always look to you as if you have the greater capacity.”

What are the ramifications if this law of love is valid? Perhaps the most obvious one, the one which cuts right to the heart of the matter, is that even though you may strenuously reject it, you are as ambivalent, fearful, blocked or disqualified in regards true and lasting intimacy as your partner. No that simply can’t be, you say? You feel that you should get at least a B+ grade in your human relations skills while your mate should deservedly receive a D- ? After all, he is the one who won’t communicate, withdraws emotionally  in any conflict and  puts work far  ahead of his  relationship with