I have written frequently about how your first 10 years of childhood has a direct effect on your marriage. I’ve written thousands of words in an attempt to get people to wake up and realize that everything that’s happening in their marriage is the results of those original instructions in the brains of both spouses.
In this article, I will reveal a way to help you realize not only what those instructions are in a general sense, but how they form what we might call a separate “brain machine” that runs your behavior when you are in any weakened condition. This is the cause of all your fights, separation and tension. In other words, this is the machine that destroys your ability to love each other.
My intention in this article is to help you find the generational roots lodged in that “brain machine” that is driving your separation. I have conducted hundreds of interviews with people in troubled marriages, interviewing them about their two childhoods. All these interviews have left me with no doubt…
Childhood Pain is Guaranteed to Lower the Quality of Your Marriage and End it Sooner than You Would Ever Expect.
There is an energy that travels through generations. It is transferred right through the reproduction process and grows up into the person you become. There are positive energies that transfer through families and there are also negative energies as well. I have created a kind of map so you can measure how much of this negative or positive energy has been passed on to become today’s real-time hidden “brain machines” in each of you.
I want to help you answer the question that I have asked myself; “How did I end up here?” Another way to say it is “How did I end up reacting the way I react, taking interest in what I’m interested in and being irritated by the things I’m irritated by?”
These are important questions because they directly address the choices that determine the quality of your intimate relationship. In my hundreds of interviews over the years with people about their childhoods, it was very clear that they made choices they did not realize they were making. The more troubled their childhood, the more these choices were made FOR THEM because that machine in their brain forced the choice. While these choices were being made for them, they were in a daze, not clearly realizing what they were doing.
Here’s the way they typically expressed this sudden ‘takeover’; “I knew what I was doing was wrong…I really wished I could stop…but I had no idea how.”
So Why Should You Know Your Energy Roots? What can it do for you?
By working with people and their intimate marriage for years, I discovered that being able to simplify the story about your family history makes you more calm and secure by simplifying the mass complexities involved in attempting to answer the question; “How Did I End the Up Here?”
In order to do this exercise yourself and get a simple but clear understanding of your own answer, I have given you a diagram that allows you to see the 30,000 foot view of why we all end up where we do.
The Family Energy System
This exercise helps you visualize that every one of us begin our life by entering into a family energy system. This family system would typically include two sets of great-grandparents, two sets of grandparents and two sets of parents. Together, these generations and the energies they pass on will create the home you are “dropped into”.
Discover Your Generational Energy Roots
On the exercise at the end of this article, you’ll see I have identified five energy roots systems. Three of these systems are destructive to human beings and two are constructive. The three destructive energy roots that travel through families are fear, selfishness and meanness. The two constructive energy roots are success and goodness. From these main roots, come smaller roots, or characteristics, that expand on the way the main roots drive your real-time behavior.
This energy drives your behavior because it ultimately controls you in your intimate relationship…your marriage. By looking at the graphic, it’s easy to see that depending on the strongest root energy that travels primarily through your most influential parent, you will see specifically how you ended up here, in this your marriage, acting in these specific ways.
Finding the Energy from Your Most Influential Parent
So let’s get to the experience of finding your energy roots using this diagram. In order to complete the exercise, first think about how you will approach this. It will NOT be scientific in any way. Instead, you will be using the words in the roots to “emotionally sense” what kind of energy entered your parents from the previous generation, and thus, what energy entered you.
The “emotional sense” I’m talking about is not a clear black and white type of thing. Instead, it’s an energy recipe with a percent of this energy and a percent of that energy. By calculating a total percentage for each root, you can compare the strength of your top two family root systems and get a visual sense of what energy has entered your brain in your first 10 years. Your most influential energy system WILL drive your behavior toward your mate. It is the energy you are either failing under or succeeding through.
When you assign your maximum score of 10 or less to each of the characteristics in the five roots, think about your most influential parent. If that parent gave you negative energy, or positive energy, you’re going to be measuring to what degree it got into you.
Since life in this world tends to lean toward the negative side, there are three main negative energy roots and two positive energy roots. The graphic is illustrating that it’s easy to be negative but it’s hard to be positive. In fact, there are a lot more variety of ways to be negative than positive.
How these Generational Roots “Sink their Way into You”
Notice the graphic in the center of the page that shows a baby being dropped into a home because that is, in effect, what happens to you in this life. You do not get to choose the home you are dropped into. Then, for the next 10 years, your synaptic connections in your brain are being imprinted with permanent instructions from these five roots in some combination. By the time you are 10 years old, the job is done and a machine has been built that will, under certain conditions, control your reactions and desires inside your intimate relationship with that one woman or one man.
Who Should Complete this Exercise?
It’s easy to complete this page for yourself and your spouse. If your spouse is interested, let him or her complete the page personally. If your spouse is not interested, complete your spouse’s page based on what you know about his or her childhood. In my case, I know a great deal about my wife Marsha’s childhood because we have talked about it for years. The knowledge of her stories gives me the ability to look at each characteristic in the roots and measure them on a 10 to 0 scale.
So take some time now and complete two pages of “How Did I End up Here? Be sure to complete one for you and one for your spouse. Once you are done, read my explanations on the conclusions you can draw based on how I completed the pages for Marsha and I.
How to Get Started
- Step 1: Print the Exercise and Completed Sample
Print the next page so you can complete this exercise for yourself and your spouse. Also print the sample I have completed for my wife Marsha and I. This sample will serve as your guide and reference as you complete the exercise. - Step 2: Rate Your Most Influential Parent
In each of the 5 roots, rate each characteristic on a 10 to 1 scale, with 10 being “Very Strong” meaning this characteristic was true for the most influential parent in your childhood, to 0 being “Not present in my family”).
NOTE: You should rate each characteristic based on the most influential parent. If mom was most influential for some characteristics, but dad was for others, rate each characteristic based on the strongest influence, no matter who it was. - Step 3: Add Up Your Combined Score for Each of the 5 Energy Roots
Beginning with the Selfishness root, total up each of the 5 characteristics to generate your score for that particular energy root. After you’ve written down your score for the first energy root, move on to the remaining 4 roots. - Step 4: Record Your Final Scores
Total up your scores by taking each score and dividing it by 50.
DOWNLOAD THE EXERCISE HERE
LARRY’S SAMPLE GENERATIONAL ROOTS
MARSHA’S SAMPLE GENERATIONAL ROOTS
Evaluating Your Results
Let’s take a look at the sample pages. You might remember my story that I lived 27 years in a marriage made in hell but in the 28th year I fell in love with my wife. That wife I’m talking about is Marsha. We’re still married over 36 years together today. If you look at the sample I provided, you’ll see both of our completed exercises. You’ll also see that her top two root scores are success, 88% and meanness 80%.
But look at mine:
Success 88% and selfishness 66%. What does this tell Marsha and I at a glance? It tells us that if we were to marry, together we would be very ambitious people (Success both above 80%). Why would we be ambitious? It’s because both of our programmers were driven with strong work ethics, self-confidence, service orientation and responsibility. So where will our trouble come from? That’s easy to see as well! Marsha’s second largest root score is meanness. While her meanness root is 80%, my meanness root is 0%.
But my selfishness root is 66%. So treat me mean and I’ll get selfish. I did not have the anger to go head to head with her. So our top two scoring roots predicted our future intimate relationship. And what that meant for us is that the meaner she got, the more selfish I became. (This was a situation of a high meanness root energy against a high selfishness root energy)
The Power of these Root Systems
Now Marsha intended to love me but it didn’t matter what she intended. Her parents programmed her with a high level of energy from that meanness root so if I did not cooperate in supporting her, she was going to make me pay. See how easy it is once you identify the family energy root system? You can easily find out your future by simply comparing the top two highest scoring roots for each of you.
You must understand that an energy root system has a life of its own. When you are in any weakened condition, that generational pattern of energy will knock you out and take you over for some period of time (a minute, an hour, a day, a week). When you are under the influence of your highest scoring or second highest scoring root system, it doesn’t matter if you love your mate or not. Love will have nothing to do with what action you take next. These instructions are here to force you to handle the next situation exactly the way your mother or father did it. You have no choice, that is, unless you become aware now.
Your Life is Not Always Your Own
Because these brain machines, these energy root systems, do not function all the time, you are confused into thinking that your life is always your own. When you are well rested, not hungry, not sick, not stressed, not fatigued, not irritated, then you are truly yourself. But if any of these conditions I’ve listed occur in you, your spouse is at risk of being treated exactly the way your top scoring energy root system requires. If I can warn you of anything, I am warning you of this.
I am also urging you to talk to your spouse about his or her highest scoring root system because that is the one that will come for you when he or she is in a weakened state. Go ahead and look back at your history together and you will see this is exactly how it worked.
By taking the time to do this exercise and then talking about how these two highest scoring family energy root systems can take you over, you will realize that you cannot love each other as long as these roots are in control. Your mission is to make sure that you do in the moment what you vowed to do at your wedding…Love and be loved. That’s it. That’s why you married. To love and be loved. If any of the three negative energy roots systems are involved in your marriage, the end of your marriage is not far away.
If Marsha and I would have had this diagram back in the 1970s when we were first starting out, we could’ve posted these pictures on our refrigerator and swore to each other that we would not let these roots, the negative ones, take control of us when we least expect it. We would have to promise ourselves that when a situation became difficult, we would not let these negative energy roots from our childhood come to “solve” the problem at hand. These negative roots never solve anything!
Don’t Wait until You Are too Scarred, Too Damaged and Too Emotionally Dead to Care
The only thing these negative energy roots do is divide us over and over until we finally have no love left to the point where we are too scarred, too damaged and too emotionally dead to care. And do we blame the negative roots from our childhoods that did the deed? No we don’t. We blame the person we marry. We blame the person who would say “I know what I’m doing is wrong. I really wish I could stop. But I don’t have any idea how.” That’s what divorce is. It is the result of our two families’ negative energy root systems that we never even know existed.
But here’s the real tragedy
The two of you will produce children and pour all of these negative energy roots into their brains and then you will divorce, further tearing these little people apart emotionally as you force them to live in two separate worlds, with two separate new spouses, two separate sets of new grandparents, different schools, different bedrooms, different everything.
Two very different worlds, LOTS of unfamiliarity – the very things a child does NOT want. And what is the worst part? You never taught them that they are being programmed right now with the same negative energy root system you were given which will destroy their marriages as it did yours.
And why has all this happened to you and your children? How did you end up here?
Look at each of your scored graphic pages, notice your two highest scoring roots and you’ll finally know!