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Extract p 346-349
Love your loneliness
A healthy relationship is one in which both partners spare/value their loneliness.
The desire for fusion is nevertheless at the center of this alliance, but paradoxically, it is to the extent that the two partners learn to resist this vertigo and to spare/value it that they can continue to enjoy its pleasures. Any birth, whether physical, psychic or spiritual, proceeds from an exit from a totalitarian and all-encompassing fusion. A force of attraction and pulling, a savage force pushes the being to continue its expansion, to take the risk of exploration and differentiation. He thus goes more and more towards himself, he confronts his loneliness and his fear of not surviving, he becomes conqueror and exploiter for fear of lacking, unless he gives in and submits always for the same reason(=going back to fusion). The spirit of opposition succeeds the spirit of fusion.
When we are in love, the other’s free spirit, self-assertion, abilities, talents appeal to us.
We feel it in his intrinsic individual freedom. When we want to unite with him it’s like trying to get him into a cage, to domesticate him, to tame him. And, of course, the romantic relationship is a matter of taming. We try, often unconsciously, to match the other with our needs and we more or less sever him from the roots of his power. By castrating the other of his freedom, I castrate him of his capacity for unity, therefore I condemn his capacity to love me. This fundamental revelation is working the consciences of our time which continue to be attached to romantic love and marriage, but who feel more or less clearly that something is wrong in the realm of love.
A woman can thus give up her friends or some of her tastes to please her companion. The man gives up his passion for sport or hunting and becomes dependent on his wife.
These are not minor concessions. Both then lose what they had that was wild, irreducible that made them so attractive to each other. Two overly tamed people risk destroying the mystery and vitality essential to stir up the mystery and promote the development of each.
To protect this wild dimension, everyone must find a way to rejuvenate themselves with the forces of life without going to draw from the other. Only then will two partners become two allies in the journey of awakening into the fullness of being.
Only two free consciousnesses can continue to love each other and offer each other an unlimited framework in union. Two alienated and wounded consciousnesses lock themselves up and sometimes exploit each other until mutual destruction, the famous war of the sexes.
Complementarity is only the first aspect of mutual attraction. In the second aspect, men and women are called to exchange their polarity in order to move towards more personal autonomy and more equality in their face to face. The first part is well known. Most couples meet on a potential for difference that fascinates them and prompts them to unite, with the illusion that the outer couple allows the inner couple to flourish. The time of fusion gives way to a time of differentiation where everyone resumes their individual journey, while keeping a bond of fusion. On this occasion, the balance of power is introduced and the dominant-dominated relationship arises. Each tries to exploit the other, but also to change him, separation or divorce.
If the couple survives this crisis, they begin the second part. The exchange program is underway. Fundamentally, it’s always about learning to combine strength and gentleness, yang and yin, active and receptive, masculine and feminine. Despite the presence of the other and thanks to him, each advances towards the half that is missing. This is the moment when each partner has an ideal of a couple, but needs a space of freedom. Everyone often faces distortions, exaggerations that heckle them from one pole to another.
The woman hardens, the man becomes more vulnerable. This is where we find the puer – the eternal teenager – and the puella – the eternal little girl – who tend to isolate themselves because they are not ripe to enter into a real relationship. They are looking for a safe space to develop their strength. A loving partner cannot replace our unfinished development.
It is a wisdom to know how to be alone at this point in your life or to save a lot of personal time, despite your commitment as a couple. It is by meeting other women who will serve as a model and matrix of transformation that a Puella woman or an Amazon woman can be born to her inner bipolarity, and will rediscover the energies of the Goddess of the Origins. Likewise, a wounded man needs other men to constitute his androgynous being.
Today, many men are at this stage of lifelong teens and lack mentors. Some would like to rise like Peter Pan and skip the course of evolution, not to grow up, not to be like other men. They love their mothers and they love women, but they prove incapable of sustained intimacy. Men who work in a men’s group often find that they are much better able to approach women afterwards.
When a man and a woman begin to achieve fifty percent inner marriage, they also come to the shore of the alter ego relationship. More deeply male and female, they are no longer in need of the other in the screaming sense of the term. In the absence of the other, not only do they survive, but they also flourish, even if their personalities sometimes have a little nostalgia. At this stage of development, no one would want to go back, no one regrets the follies of the initial fusion. The second birth fusional is discovered with deep wonder.
The more we know how to be alone, the more we know how to approach others, and the better we preserve their mystery, even in presence. The realm of the subtle reveals its wonders. The ego, which is no longer entangled in its wounds, releases considerable energy which can be used in the service of Eros. Two people create for each other the conditions for the delicacy of their meeting.
The path to the possible evolution of the couple is already clear for some people. The cause of love is not lost. Consciousness knows and its intelligence prompts it to incarnate. Models are starting to exist. It’s a question of priority, determination and effort. Many couples are still embedded mostly in the fusional and dominant first part, those who are called the new men and the new women engage in the second part with all kinds of adventures that will continue to diversify during the current century. Finally, a smaller number will take the trouble to tackle the third part, testifying to the happiness of the alliance sought for all eternity and long reserved for an elite. It’s the only counterweight we have to the madness of the world.
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