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couples and the shadow
Just as a person develops from childhood to adulthood, so too our couple relationship has a developmental edge. When we journey personally into adulthood the road can be rocky, fraught with emotional extremes, doubt, conflict and contradictions; it can be quite a painful road discovering our “new selves”.
In a sense, this replicates in our couple relationship, too. Our couple relationship can be said to go through three distinct stages (which can be broken down further still) and these stages can be experienced as a breakdown in the connection between couples, but if worked through may be a breakthrough into a deeper, more connected relationship.
These 3 stages can be thought of as:
It’s true that opposites attract, but the “truth inside the truth” is not so widely known. When we meet and fall in love it’s usually not the conscious part of us that is the driver, but our unconscious and disowned parts that run the show. These are the parts of us we were told to, or we learned to, repress in our upbringing, often due to parental or societal conditioning. Another word for this disowning is our shadow, the part of us we suppressed and yet still exists, wanting, needing and desiring. Often it is full of childhood wounding, and expresses itself in the way we can’t or won’t do certain things, our taboos, preferences or beliefs. Meeting and falling in love is essentially a game of me and my shadow, where we seek and find our wholeness from and in our lovers who embody what we have disowned. This is one of reasons why, in common parlance, we call our partners our “other” or “better” half.
So, we project onto others our needs, and they identify with these needs (the same is happening from them to us) and a deal is struck between lovers. And it feels like love. Why not? In this unspoken deal, this unconscious fit, here is the greatest love we have ever found, often far beyond what our parents offered us since our lovers plug the gap that our parents left open: we now feel complete, whole and wholly cared for, for the first time in our life.
Inherent in all of this is a huge, catastrophising problem: once our needs are met, what use is our partner now? The dynamic unconscious is called dynamic because it changes, rapidly and without care or ethical code, it just gets its needs met and then new needs emerge. The issue is, our partners may not be prepared or acceptant of these changes in us (or we in them) and it can feel as the deal is broken between us; we didn’t sign up for this and we don’t actually have the capacity or inclination to fulfil these new, complex and more multi-layered needs and challenges as they emerge. Of course, both of us are now horrifyingly aware of this, so we might go elsewhere to get our needs met, often into the arms (and bed) of another.
We’ve come to a great discovery but a terrible loss, and we might say “this is not the person I married or fell in love with” or “this is not the deal, things have changed and I don’t want this change to happen. I feel rejected and useless. And you, you are a stranger to me”
The deal’s over, the relationship has broken down and all of our projections have fallen away; our partners who were the promised land have let us down and we have fallen out of Eden. There is no going back. The very thing that brought us together now seems to breaking us up.
But, this is the deal, it’s just the other side of the deal, the shadow side that actually ran the show from day one.
It is at this point, at this crisis of commitment, when couples who cannot live with or who resist facing the painful truth of their relationship, that version 1 is over and a new relationship requires forging or refitting, that they often bail out and seek to find a new lover. Those of us who do bail out at this stage are often unwilling to explore the shadow side, preferring to seek out Eden Mark 2, only to repeat the same cycle with a new lover, falling again.
But if the painful truth can be met and accepted, that there is no going back and that this in fact holds the possibility of a new version of the relationship, then we can create a more conscious, more mature and reflective-perhaps even more soulful relationship, finding new meaning and purpose in the bond.
First, we need to stop the “blame game” and acknowledge our contribution to the difficult patterns we are part of and recognise that our partners are, in fact, our finest mirror. These contributions and patterns are often our judgments of our partners. Next, we need to examine where these judgements came from (often our upbringing) and how we have allowed them to virtually hitch a ride from the past into our present. We see how we have projected all our losses and wounds onto the other and how the relationship has buckled under this expectation and pressure.
This is not an overnight job-of if it is, it’s a long, long night. Nor is it a “one shot deal”, it is what we are required to return to, time and again to ennoble and liberate us.
This is a time for refit, this is a time to appreciate what’s happening not as a breakdown but the opportunity for a breakthrough into Version 2 of the relationship, where we come out of our shadows. We now can own our needs as they emerge, and though still our partners may not be able to meet every one of them (that would be merely a continuation of Version 1), it is now a more realistic relationship without getting snared up in idealisation, great and naïve expectations or projections.
And it’s getting real love.
Ellen and Tony
Ellen and Tony were in their mid-20s when they first met. Ellen, bright and confident, was the public face of a marketing company; Tony was completing his doctorate in health research and spent most of his days online or in the University library. They met via a dating site and had their first date in a local restaurant at Ellen’s instigation. When the first course arrived-soup-it was cold. Tony did not want to make a fuss and when Ellen asked him if his was cold too, he said yes but continued with it. Ellen frowned and clicked her fingers for the waiter’s attention, gently asserted herself and asked for the soup to be warmed through. Tony was impressed, and let Ellen know this; Ellen replied by saying that she would not let anything stand in the way of them having a good night out.
Tony felt cared for, and Ellen liked this feeling-a man she could look after, it was so different from the relationship she had with her father, who never seemed to want for anything and as such was distant and cold. For Tony, this was a breakthrough; he had always been told to look after women and be the strong one, his own mother was both passive and moody; here was a woman who could be strong for him without him looking weak.
A year later, very much in love, Ellen and Tony decided to celebrate their anniversary by going to the same restaurant again. The soup came; again, it was cold. Tony clicked his fingers and called out for the waiter. They laughed at the turnaround, but Tony wondered now why he was with Ellen, and Ellen was beginning to find Tony a bit too bossy at times.
They both agreed it would be useful to do some couple therapy, and were able to renegotiate their relationship across more complex and more conscious needs, understanding how the unconscious patterns of their childhood had been, but were no more, the original drivers in their relationship, literally coming out of their shadows.
“running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged”
-Parker Palmer Let your Life Speak
Perhaps, in the dynamic mix and alchemy of our couple relationships our partner projections give us an opportunity to meet and engage with the “One we call The One” or our shadow, in the context of and fullness of a loving bond. This offers us safety, security, promises hope and certainty. But that’s only its overt aspect, falling in love, getting a home and making a family, sharing a life.
Covertly, the relationship, which was held hostage to an unlived past, can offer us so much more, at times lovingly, at times brutally, it will offer what might be the single best context to allow the One to emerge: the you behind you and the relational life previously cast aside.
