The New Couple: The Ten New Laws of Love
An interview with Maurice Taylor & Seana McGee
by Raz Ingrasci, President (Edited
by Shawn McAndrew)
 Maurice
Taylor (MT) and Seana McGee (SM) are relationship educators and psychotherapists
who specialize in couples. Married and together for twelve years,
they've just co-authored The
New Couple: Why the Old Rules Don't Work and What Does, which
is now at stores. Of course, they are also HQP graduates.
Raz Ingrasci: In the Process, people experience
their need for unconditional love in childhood. However, it's not
so obvious that we really need love as adults, too.
Maurice Taylor: Yes. We identify three 'higher-order'
needs. One is the need for true emotional intimacy with another
person; two, for raising our self-love; and three, for discovering
and fulfilling our missions in life. All of these need to be actively
embraced as part of our couple life-style. The Hoffman Process deals
deeply with the issue of self-love. And, when we come out of the
Process, we still need connection with another - and that's where
The New Couple comes in.
SM: It's our premise that we've evolved as a species
and as love partners, but the traditional model of marriage doesn't
acknowledge this. It's mainly concerned with survival. We need a
new model of love to satisfy this need for true emotional intimacy
with another person, one that incorporates both education and healing
- because that's what it takes to keep love alive today.
MT: The old model needs to be unlearned —
actually replaced — because it's deeply ingrained, and we can't
help but unconsciously default to it at certain key points in our
couple's journey. This shows up as the maddening patterns, and clusters
of patterns, that threaten love.
RI: Something must be undermining marriage because
if everyone were in love when they got married, why do only 50 percent
of marriages last? And probably only one-half of those remaining
married are actually happy.
MT: Again, it's the traditional model of relationship.
When the intoxication or first stage of a relationship ends, couples
move into the power struggle. That's when our unmet childhood needs
surface, and we unconsciously look to our partner to meet them.
We go into what we call the 'trance of tradition.'
SM: This trance has us convinced that we can get
hitched and go off into the sunset on auto-pilot without addressing
our higher-order needs or learning even the most basic relationship
skills. So many marriages end in divorce today not because we're
devolving as a species, but rather because we're evolving, yet the
traditional model of relationship is buried within us like an obsolete
software program and wreaking havoc.
RI: I can see that. Over the past 40 years, people
have rebelled against the traditional marriage model but this rebellion
hasn't necessarily brought more happiness because the old model
has not yet been replaced with one that's based on love.
MT: It's actually a healthy reactionary swing
away from something that doesn't work anymore, but we still haven't
gotten the new information or done the healing we need. And deep
healing is key; in fact, many of us aren't able to master the three
basic relationship skills — emotional literacy, conflict resolution,
and deep listening — until we've started deep healing. Old
emotions, especially unresolved trauma, get in the way. This is
where the Hoffman Process and our work dovetail so beautifully.
And we do believe that the Process is the best way to accomplish
the deep healing necessary to integrate a new model of love.
RI: I've often thought that when people are falling
in love, they're still moving away from their parents. But when
they get married, then they're emulating their parents. That's when
the old marriage tapes get plugged in and then we become unconsciously
committed to replicating our parent's marriage.
SM: Very often we consider ourselves conscious
and very spiritually evolved, even highly individualistic. And yet
no sooner do we get hooked up with another person than we find ourselves
falling back into the trance of tradition! That's why we need solid
new guidelines to hold on to, ones that will help us stay true to
ourselves and stay in love, which is where the ten new laws of love
come in. They put partners on the same page.
RI: Bob Hoffman said, 'Everyone's guilty and no
one's to blame,' and that seems true for relationships as well.
We've inherited a model that simply doesn't meet our contemporary
needs. And because the model is programmed inside of us, we need
to do depth healing as well as education.
MT: Exactly. Depth healing is about removing the
charge, dealing with our buttons and blind spots. Any place we are
over-reactive, overly sensitive, or out of control is a result of
emotional trauma that happened to us as kids. These charges need
to be defused so they don't get continually triggered in our love
relationships.
SM: There's something we call the 80/20 Principle:
Hoffman grads would recognize it as the transference that happens
in romantic relationships. We say that 80 percent of the negative
emotional juice in any conflict has to do with unhealed, family-of-origin
issues, and 20 percent actually has to do with our partner now.
Sometimes we get confused, we think, 'The emotional child part of
me feels neglected by my mate, but the pain must really be all about
my father.' Although we need to address the 80 percent which has
to do with the parent, if our partner forgets our birthday that's
a real-time issue. That's the 20 percent. We need to look at both.
RI: Everyone who has done the Hoffman Process
has, I think, been humbled by the power of transference. We've seen
how it can sweep us along. What you're saying is that the 20 percent
which is occurring in real time cannot be dealt with effectively
unless we're also willing to deal with the other 80 percent, which
is transference?
MT: The deep charge needs to be dealt with. In
our book we link the all-important raising of self-love with the
withdrawal of transference. They go hand-in-hand. Chapter seven,
called self-love, offers a simple way for couples to disconnect
transference. Of course, in some cases it does require facilitation;
still, we present the method in the book. Learning relationship
skills is also essential — that is, how to deeply listen, be
emotionally literate and resolve conflict. Unless partners know
these, we can't truly resolve transference.
SM: Each chapter represents a new law of love
where we ask couples to look at their parents' marriage in light
of that law. Be it the law of priority, equality or walking, the
questions are the same: 'How did they express this law in their
relationship? How did they deny it?' Then, more specifically, 'How
did it impact their emotional intimacy? Self love? Mission in life?'
In every case, we unconsciously internalize aspects of our parents'
marriage and this shows up in our own relationships. These inherited
relationship patterns need to be made conscious, just as the Hoffman
Process makes conscious our other ones.
RI: How can your book help singles?
MT: We have a big vision for singles. Our first
new law of love, "Chemistry" strongly suggests that singles make
sure the person they choose is someone with whom they have the full
battery of chemistries. That includes not only sexual passion but
also something we call best-friendship chemistry. Personalities
have to vibrate on multiple levels. This gives us the synergy we
need to do the sometimes demanding work of relationship. So, when
we find that special person, we can show him or her the book and
say: 'This makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think? Are we
on the same page?'
SM: And, 'Would you be willing to embrace this
as a guideline for our relationship?' The traditional model is so
ingrained and unconscious, it's eventually going to sabotage our
relationships. But if we embrace the same principles from the get-go,
we can avoid many of the traditional dilemmas.
So The New Couple works both as a road map for a new kind of relationship
and as a diagnostic tool as well. People can use it to perform post-mortems
on former relationships. So many of us today are 'scared single.'
Why? We're afraid of replicating our parent's relationships and
the heartbreak we've already experienced in our own. Who can blame
some singles for not wanting to get involved again? Bolstered by
the ten new laws of love, they can now say, 'Okay, since I know
what happened, I'm at far less risk to do it next time.'
RI: The first law is chemistry — and everything
proceeds from that. So your book is for people who believe in love
and believe that love is their destiny.
MT: Absolutely. We encourage people not to settle
for someone with whom they don't have that soul connection. The
only reason we would ever accept someone who's not is because of
a dearth of self-love.
SM: More and more we think it important that partners
choose others with whom they have psycho-spiritual compatibility.
There's a recent phenomenon we call the 'new mixed marriage': This
is when someone 'on the path' of personal development is married
to — or in a relationship with — someone who is not. Sometimes
we start out with this imbalance and sometimes one partner 'turns
on' as time unfolds. This represents a kind of 'spiritual emergency'
within the couple. The 'new mixed marriage' is one of the most daunting
problems in modern relationships today. This is why we encourage
singles not to settle for someone with whom they don't have psycho-spiritual
compatibility. We're going to enjoy life much more if we agree on
what is important from the start. ø
The Ten New Laws of Love
- Chemistry: Insisting on passion and best friendship, the raw
materials for success
- Priority: Committing to the health of your couple by doing the
work of relationship and facing self-destructive behaviors
- Emotional Integrity: Creating an "emotional safe zone" by taking
responsibility for your emotional blind spots, buttons and issues
- Deep Listening: Hearing each others words and feelings with
compassion
- Equality: Insisting on fairness and respect in your couple
- Peacemaking: Maintaining your emotional safe zone and giving
peace a real chance
- Self Love: Falling for You Know Who while healing transferences
- Mission in Life: Discovering and fulfilling the purpose you
were put here for and supporting your partner to do the same
- Walking: Facing down emotional and financial dependencies and
developing genuine interdependence
- Transformational Education: Having the courage to learn, and
heal, in order to stay in love
Maurice Taylor and Seana McGee are currently touring the country.
Check out their
dates nearest to your location.
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