
Why We Fall for the Wrong Person with Couples Therapist Dr. Harville Hendrix
From A Bit of Optimism by Simon Sinek
July 7, 2026 · 54 min · Season 6 · Episode 20
About this episode
Dr. Harville Hendrix discusses the unconscious factors that influence our romantic choices and the challenges of relationships.
Maybe this sounds familiar: you fall hard for someone, and over a year later you're fighting about the very things that drew you to them in the first place. And you can't figure out how the person who felt so right suddenly feels so wrong. Dr. Harville Hendrix has spent 50 years studying love. And he’s also lived through its hardest challenges: one divorce, two near-misses in his current marriage, and a couple’s therapist who fired him and his wife, calling them "the couple from hell." That marriage is now 45 years strong. Harville is a couples therapist, and alongside his wife and creative partner Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt, they creator Imago Relationship Therapy. They’ve also written 10 books, including the bestseller Getting the Love You Want, the book that made him a fixture on Oprah for nearly two decades. Harville’s theory is this: we don't consciously choose who we fall for, rather our unconscious does. And it has an agenda. In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why you keep falling for the same person ➡️ What your childhood has to do with who you swipe right on ➡️ Why the "power struggle" phase might mean you picked the right person ➡️ The shift that saved Harville's own marriage…
People in this episode
Host: Simon Sinek
Guest: Dr. Harville Hendrix
Topics covered
- relationships
- love
- couples therapy
- childhood influence
- marriage
- commitment
Keywords
- falling in love
- couples therapy
- relationship patterns
- childhood impact
- power struggle
- commitment
- Imago Relationship Therapy
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Getting the Love You Want
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