<\/p>\n
“When a wrong is committed against someone, they suffer helplessly. The more helpless the victim, the more severely we judge the offender. But the injured partner is rarely completely helpless after the harm has been done. They usually have the opportunity to act\u2014either to end the relationship or to demand atonement from their partner, and by doing so, to end the guilt and create the possibility for a new beginning.<\/em><\/p>\n When victims do not take the opportunity to act, then others act for them\u2014with the difference that the wound and the injustice coming from those who act on their behalf are often worse than if the victims themselves had acted. In human systems of relationships, suppressed feelings of hatred emerge later in those who are least able to defend themselves; most often, these are the children and grandchildren who experience earlier anger as their own.”*\u00a0\u2014 Bert Hellinger, “Love\u2019s Hidden Symmetry”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I continue with quotations and examples from B. Hellinger\u2019s book Love\u2019s Hidden Symmetry<\/em><\/a>, because it offers a different perspective on understanding the invisible dynamics within family systems.<\/p>\n In this case, Hellinger gives the example of a woman who attends a seminar together with her husband, yet behaves toward him in an extremely rude and contemptuous manner \u2014 the complete opposite of how she behaves toward the other participants. She also very demonstratively announces in front of everyone that she has spent the previous night with her lover.<\/p>\n The other participants cannot explain this until the woman\u2019s theme is worked with and it becomes clear that when she was a child, she, her mother, and her siblings were sent to the countryside during the summer. During that time, the father remained in the city, where he lived with his mistress. He and his lover would sometimes even visit them in the countryside, and the mother behaved kindly and politely toward them, as if everything were fine. Inwardly, however, she was furious, and although she did not show it, her children sensed it.<\/p>\n *”We might be tempted to call the mother’s behavior praiseworthy, but it was a false innocence<\/b>, and its effect was destructive.<\/em><\/p>\n The daughter reacts to the injustice done to her mother by punishing her husband for what her father did, but she also demonstrates her love for her father by acting in exactly the same way he did… A better solution would have been if this woman’s mother had confronted her husband with her anger. Then they would have had to make a decision\u2014they could have reached a mutual agreement or made a clean break.<\/em><\/p>\n Whenever the innocent continues to suffer despite appropriate action being possible, more innocent victims and offenders will soon follow. It is an illusion that we avoid participating in evil by clinging to innocence instead of doing what we must do to confront the offenders… Love requires the courage to also become guilty to the corresponding degree<\/b>.”* \u2013Bert Hellinger<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n