In many families there is a story that is never spoken about. A love that was not allowed to be chosen. A child no one talked about. A relationship broken off because of what the family or others thought. These stories seem far away, part of a past that no longer has any influence.
Systemic constellations show that this is not so. A love that was not allowed to be fulfilled remains recorded in the family system and continues to act through the descendants, most often through their choices in love. If you tend to fall in love with unavailable people, or your relationships always end the same way, it may be worth looking at this side of your family history too.
This text draws on the book Decoding the Soul and explains how forbidden loves and family secrets affect the following generations.
What forbidden loves are
The book Decoding the Soul calls forbidden loves those relationships that the family, society or culture regard as impermissible or do not approve of. Such relationships often carry a sense of secrecy and guilt, but also of deep attraction. Some of them are never fulfilled, and some last in secret, at a price paid by everyone involved.
What is forbidden does not stop existing. It just passes into silence. And silence in the family system, as constellations show, has a voice that descendants hear even when they do not know what they are listening to.
How descendants feel it
According to the book, descendants from families in which there were forbidden loves may grow up feeling that they are not fully accepted, or as if they were “adopted” in their own family. This feeling comes from secrets and unspoken truths that create insecurity in family bonds. A child feels the unrest even when it does not know its cause.
In partnerships this often shows as insecurity about one’s own ability to be loved or to sustain a stable relationship. The book lists several forms:
- Falling in love with someone who is emotionally unavailable or already in another relationship, which repeats the pattern of unattainable love from the ancestral system.
- Idealising partners or withdrawing from relationships out of fear of betrayal.
- The feeling that love has to be earned, through excessive giving or attempts to change or “save” the partner.
- Exhausting relationships in which far more is invested than is received.
Examples from practice
The book Decoding the Soul describes a man in his forties who felt insecure in every relationship. The constellation showed that his mother had never got over her first love, which had ended tragically. He did not know this story, but he unconsciously carried his mother’s grief, and it made it hard for him to trust and to connect deeply.
In another example, a woman discovered that her grandfather had had a secret child outside marriage. The wider family did not know about it, but a pattern of relationships doomed to fail repeated itself through the generations, as if the descendants were repeating the hiding and secrecy that had never been resolved.
“Now I see you. You have a place in my heart. You have the right to belong. From now on I will honour you in a different way, and not by repeating your destiny.” (from the book Decoding the Soul)
How a forbidden love is resolved
When a constellation shows that a love was not fulfilled because it was forbidden, representatives are brought in for the partners and for those who imposed the prohibition, parents or other circumstances. The aim is to speak the emotions and messages that could not be said for a long time: anger, regret, forgiveness, gratitude for the love that existed.
It is especially important that a child who was not acknowledged, or was born outside marriage, is formally acknowledged and included in the family system. At the end, the descendant expresses acknowledgement of everyone who was part of this story. In this way it is confirmed, not only symbolically but also emotionally, that everyone belongs.
According to the book, by integrating loves that were once forbidden the family gains fewer inner tensions, more openness and stronger bonds. The past is not denied, but becomes a foundation to learn from. The descendants can then live their own loves, and not the loves that remained unfinished before them.
The first step
You do not need to know your whole family history to begin. It is enough to ask yourself: who was never spoken about in my family? Whose love was not allowed to be? Stay with these questions for a few moments and observe what appears in your body. Sometimes it is the first time someone in the family receives attention that has long been theirs.