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An Interview With Two Of The World’s Most Famous Relationship Therapists
Learn about “Safe Conversations” and why they are so important.
Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt are proper elders in the world of relationship coaching. They’re respectively 85 and 72 years old, and have dedicated decades of their lives to helping people communicate with love. The married couple is most known for being the authors of Getting The Love You Want, a guide to transforming an intimate relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship.
The relational dialogue method that’s described in the book is known as “imago dialogue,” and is popular with couples counselors. Yet Harville and Helen believe that the knowledge shared in Getting The Love You Want is helpful to everyone, not just romantic partners. “I basically felt myself done with couples therapy,” Harville told me in an interview via Zoom. “I had been doing it for 35 years and was 70 years old. So we were thinking about what to do with the rest of our lives.”
Enter: Safe Conversations. This new form of healthy relating is applicable to anyone who talks to other people. (So, everyone.) Their lofty goal is to teach the dialogue process to 3.8 billion people within the next 30 years.