Why is intimate relationship so complicated?
Of all the relationships in our lives, intimate relationship is one of most fraught. It favours us with the greatest capacity for attachment, connection and care for another and at the same time, it plunges us into our primal wounds and our complexes. Darkness, despair, fear and heartbreak are often the result.
This is the first of a two part blog series on the challenges of intimate relationship.
Holding the love and the pain
Maya Angelou in her exquisite poem “Touched by an Angel” captures the highs and lows so beautifully when she writes:
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
In conscious intimate relationship, we are called to be brave and vulnerable. We must trust that we can hold the ecstasy of love with the ancient histories of childhood pain. We can’t avoid the risk of being hurt or hurting the other. The challenge is to face the hurt, the anger, and the shadow in ourselves and in the other while remaining in relationship.
Shadow and Injured Innocence
Within our shadow lies what Buddhist Robert Thurman calls our “injured innocence”. This is a place of habitual assumptions that protect our self-sufficiency and self-identity. It is this “I” that is threatened during ruptures in attachment when we are indignant, hurt or feel that we have been wronged in some way. The thoughts ‘I am right’ or ‘this has been done to me’ are the hard nut of the false self – the self that obscures our heart and our vulnerability. Fr Richard Rohr says that when we fall in love, we must let go of the false self and the person who we thought we were.
In his new book Consolations, David Whyte writes “ the shadow is inescapable”. He goes on to say “To cast no shadow on others is to vacate the physical consequences of our appearance in the world. Shadow is a beautiful, inverse, confirmation of our incarnation. Shadow is intimated absence; almost a template of presence. It is a clue to the character of our appearance in the world. It is an intimation of the ultimate vulnerability, the dynamic of being found by others”
How do we negotiate this mine field of shadow, childhood pain and primal wound? Eventually, there is an inescapable eruption that could destroy or transform the relationship. Like any reflex, these wounds kick in, and we react before the more conscious part of ourselves has a chance to say “Wait hold on a minute. What is going on here in this moment.”
When we have enough courage, we may sacrifice the false self of our injured innocence in the service of attachment and grant the other the power to change us. Then, relationship can be experienced as grace and as a gift. Even in the most abject emotional pain, we can approach intimate relationship as a treasured and honoured opportunity to work on ourselves, and to heal our wounds that lead to greater connection.
Part II – Complexes in relationship, and the Problem of Power and Fear.
© Christina Becker 2015
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