Romancing the Shadow

by Connie Zweig

  Slowly, with the help of their therapist, the partners discovered which characters were at work: the fuser and the distancer. They found that this pair of opposites had been split between them, each side carried by the Other and shadow-boxing with one another. So, their shadow-work involved making them conscious of their disowned traits. As Joel slowly learned to find an authentic sense of security within himself, he began to uncover a shadow character that held his need for separateness and a healthy distance. He no longer panicked when he felt alone, fearing that he might disappear; he even gradually grew to enjoy solitude. Eventually, he could tell Ellen that he loved and honored her independence, even though it felt shadowy to him. As a result, she could feel more deeply accepted for who she was, not simply for his fantasy projection of her.

  As Ellen slowly allowed herself to feel loved, she began to feel more emotionally dependent on Joel, even to need him, uncovering a shadow character that held her own need for intimacy. She was deeply afraid of these vulnerable feelings, which she had repressed for a long time. And sometimes, when Joel pulled away, she felt humiliated by her own feelings of dependency. But the authentic nature of their growing love allowed her to build trust in herself, in Joel, and in the relationship itself. Eventually she learned to witness her automatic tendency to brandish the sword and power shield. At times she would backslide and separate from Joel in an abrupt way, hurting him deeply. Then, together they would remind each other that Athena, not Ellen, had taken control and issued a call, and they would seek to hear her deeper need.

  With ongoing shadow-work, they continued to bring more of themselves into conscious awareness and thus into their relationship, exposing denied aspects of their personalities and opening up new avenues of intimacy. Eventually, the two discovered together that Ellen’s fear of fusion is just the other side of Joel’s fear of abandonment.

  Where does the shadow sabotage your intimacy? When does your fear of fusion cause you to appear distant and aloof? When does your fear of abandonment cause you to surrender your authentic voice and your independence in an effort to feel safe?

  These disowned compensatory traits, when projected onto a partner, can become threatening because they stir up taboo shadow feelings. For example, initially a man may be drawn to a woman’s open sexuality, then find her behavior inappropriate as his wife. This pattern may stem from the archetypal split known as the Madonna/Whore syndrome, in which a woman may carry either the elevated projection of mother—purity, kindness, and compliance—or the devalued projection of mistress—sensuality, instinct, and bodily hungers. During dating, a man may be attracted to the “whore” quality of a sensual woman, but he would never take this character home to his family. And he may feel that the mother of his children must be “pure,” like his own mother. With this split the man may find himself lamenting the loss of his sexual desire and unconsciously rendering himself incapable of maintaining a satisfying sexual relationship because to have sex with mother is taboo. Thus his underlying negative attitudes toward sex and intimacy may have been buried together in the shadow during dating and only become evident during later stages of romance or marriage.

  This pattern has deep cultural roots in religious teachings, as well as individual roots in a man’s psychology. If a man with a puritanical character at the table has cast his own bodily eros into the shadow to live a “pure” life, banishing the wildness of Dionysus and labeling others as hedonists, then he cannot tolerate these energies in his partner. As a result, he may turn her into a mother figure, a sexless caretaker who is supposed to love him unconditionally and display no shadow of her own. In some cultures, where this pattern is seen as the norm, men may turn to a mistress to fulfill their more sexual Dionysian needs. Or a woman initially may be attracted to a man who appears to be upbeat, optimistic, even ecstatic. As our client Lorraine put it, “When I met Josh, he had a radiant sparkle and boundless energy. He just seemed to live life so fully and was not brought down by petty problems.”

  But after a few months Lorraine wanted more vulnerability from Josh and could no longer tolerate his high energy and seemingly automatic positive attitude. In fact, she came to believe that he habitually denied his more difficult feelings and defended against them with learned optimism. As they spent more time together, she noticed that he drank several cups of coffee in the morning and again in the afternoon. When she suggested that he was addicted to caffeine, he denied it and agreed to cut down his coffee intake to prove her wrong. But as his energy level dropped, he grew weary and moody and had to admit that she was correct. Lorraine, in turn, needed to support the less energetic, more moody Josh if she wanted more emotional authenticity.

  In these cases, a partner may begin to discourage a troublesome quality or shadow character in the Other: He may shame her sexual desires; she may criticize his lack of emotional range. In response, the receiver of the projection may begin to feel judged and diminished in just the way that he or she did by a parent, which caused the wound in the first place. In this way, the shadow achieved its goal—to recreate the past.

  Compensation is only the most obvious solution to the shadow’s dilemma. Many couples have more complicated unconscious dynamics than a simple balancing act of disowned traits. In what psychologists call projective identification, one partner unconsciously identifies with the other person’s rejected part, or shadow character, and acts it out. For instance, if a husband has cast his rage into the shadow and never shows angry feelings, the wife may grow angrier and angrier, unconsciously carrying them for the pair. Just as family members split the pie of shadow material among them, the couple splits it between them. As a result, one appears highly emotional, the other highly rational, such as a feeling-oriented mother’s daughter paired with a thinking-oriented father’s son or, alternatively, a sensitive, intuitive mother’s son bonded with an intellectual, independent father’s daughter. Other combinations: one partner appears upbeat, the other depressed; one appears neat, the other messy; one appears to need intimacy, the other to need distance. One may even become an alcoholic, the other a teetotaler. In this way, a process that is actually internal to both people is externalized, becoming an interpersonal conflict and creating the Other, the worthy opponent, the shadow-boxing partner.

  Consequently, the sender is protected from seeing those traits in himself and can instead criticize and try to change them in his mate. The receiver, who carries the dirty laundry that doesn’t fit with the sender’s persona, then becomes “the problem,” the person who needs to be fixed. From the ego’s point of view, the lover may seem strangely unfitting—too unhappy, too messy, too loud, too shy, too indulgent, too prudish. But from the shadow’s point of view, the lover may seem strangely familiar, like a parent or even like the flip side of oneself.

  If the shadow did its work of finding an appropriate fit with a partner, the relationship re-creates early patterns—and thereby provides an opportunity for consciousness. Thus we suggest that the early stages of romance are determined primarily by the shadow’s needs; they form the bases for the initial attraction and for the development of later, more conscious stages of relationship, which occur in real time with a Beloved, rather than as a repetition of the past with a projected Other.

  Who lives in your lover’s shadow? A slut, an artist, a helpless child, a violent tyrant, a reclusive monk, a free spirit? How do you relate to these characters in him or her? How do you subtly discourage their expression in your partner when they do not fit your image of him or her?

  PARTNERS AS PARENTS: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE

  Randy, thirty-two, a tall, lanky, boyish-looking property manager, had a troubling childhood. His mother was addicted to painkillers and often drifted off into a world of her own, betraying him through neglect and abandonment. When his mother was awake, she became extremely critical and accusatory, blaming him for a dirty house or an unprepared meal. At times, the verbal abuse would escalate until Randy felt overwhelmed and cried, covering his ears and begging her to
stop. He did not know which of her extreme behaviors was worse: her withdrawal and neglect or her raging accusations.

  Either way, he experienced his mother as crazy and out of control. So he learned to survive as a teen by using his mother’s shield and retreating into drugs and later by retreating into books. In these ways he avoided feeling vulnerable to her rage and responsible for her unhappiness. In fact, he avoided feeling anything at all by anesthetizing his soul.

  By the time he left home, Randy had identified with his academic father and developed an intellectual shield, which caused him to be hyperalert and self-protective. He learned that by relying on this character, he could think things through analytically and avoid the swirling tides of sadness, anger, and guilt, He could remain alert and above water; he could find neat answers to messy problems, thereby banishing his mother’s chaotic emotional world into shadow.

  In his thirties, Randy discovered in himself a deep spiritual longing and a hunger for an orderly, meaningful universe. As he explored various methods of positive thinking and Eastern philosophy, he found corroboration for his disdain of emotional life. And slowly he began to feel safe with his newfound answers, continuing to fortify his intellectual defense against feelings of sadness, guilt, shame, and isolation with an intricate spiritual philosophy.

  Living out the character of a charismatic puer, Randy acted like a magnet for young, attractive, spiritually oriented women. He had lived with six lovers before coming to therapy and reporting that each was not spiritually committed enough for him; each was too distancing or too emotionally volatile. As he told the stories of these relationships, a pattern emerged.

  The lovers initially felt a deep spiritual union and moved in together within a few months. Randy was finely attuned to any lack of harmony between them, such as a difference of opinion. In those moments, a shadow character emerged: He panicked with a sense of abandonment if his partner separated or asserted herself even a little. An independent move, such as making a social plan without consulting him, which felt to her like a one on the psychic Richter scale, felt to him like a nine—and threatened seismic catastrophe. Randy’s shadow character could not tolerate a feeling of separateness; he needed his lover to be present to him at all times and felt extremely anxious if she turned to her own reality.

  Although he thought of himself as a calm, sensitive, emotionally available man, Randy panicked if his partner became what he called overly emotional. He would feel irritable, angry, or depressed. Because he was unconsciously avoiding his own feelings out of fear of falling into chaos, he could not tolerate disturbing feelings in his partner. At those times, he would begin to analyze her problems in an attempt to fix her and re-create the harmony he so desperately needed. He projected his mother’s loss of control onto his partner, and his desire to fix her covered up his inability to deal with his own internal chaos, which threatened to emerge when he felt emotionally overwhelmed.

  Randy currently lives with Betsy, twenty-nine, a petite blond songwriter who was abandoned by her father at a young age and raised by a dominant, intrusive mother. To assert herself with her own mother, Betsy unconsciously felt that she would have risked abandonment. So, instead, she developed a quiet but resentful, rebellious shadow character. With Randy, she re-created this pattern: Unable to express her need for quiet in the mornings, she felt that he would abandon her if she asserted herself. But, as a result, her resentment built up a head of steam until she told the therapist how she felt.

  Randy gets up early in the morning to go to work. He tries to tiptoe around quietly, but Betsy awakens and experiences his sounds as an intrusion. As she describes the situation, “When he enters the bedroom and I’m asleep, he’s being incredibly insensitive, selfish, and invasive.” Thus she projects aspects of her own shadow, inherited from her mother, onto Randy.

  Caught in the clutches of her mother complex, Betsy freezes: She has no idea how to communicate her needs to Randy in a constructive way, so she sees a choice between two extremes, each reflected in a shadow character: to sacrifice her need to sleep, becoming tired, resentful, and withdrawn; or to become combative, making demands and risking his rejection.

  Betsy replicated her relationship with her mother: If she asserts herself, she believes Randy will abandon her. In therapy, she learned to describe her dilemma in the context of each character at the table: the frightened little girl who fears abandonment, the overly independent woman who cannot express her vulnerability, and the mature woman who has valid needs of her own. As she separated out these characters, she was able to witness each one in her relationship with Randy.

  Of course, Randy also replicated his relationship with his mother. When Betsy becomes emotionally reactive due to the buildup of her own unexpressed feelings, he panics; he experiences her as judgmental and is terrified that she will lose control. In his panic, he unknowingly distances from his own feelings and retreats to his intellectual shield by analyzing her, projecting onto her the source of their problems. But even when he’s accurate in his description, she feels attacked, “as if he’s shoving himself down my throat.” So she rejects him, defending herself against the attack. And their joint objectives—to communicate in an effort to feel safe and loved—are lost.

  The couple’s parental complexes are shadow-boxing with each other, feeding off one another’s fears and anxieties in an endless downward spiral until they can put on the brakes only by taking responsibility for their own feelings, romancing their projections, and moving out of the past into present time. Ideally, Betsy needs to identify the cues that indicate that she is caught in a complex: She feels shut down and deadened; she becomes humorless, unable to laugh and play. Then she can learn to say, “I feel invaded and it angers me. But I don’t say it out of fear that you will judge and reject me.” Ideally, Randy also needs to identify the cues that indicate that he is caught: He feels irritable and anxious and becomes critical. Then he can learn to say, “I feel cut off and attacked by you.” In return, Betsy might tell him, “I feel overwhelmed with responsibility when you feel cut off. I’m not your mom and I can’t take care of all of your needs. I have needs of my own.” As Randy begins to witness his feelings of disconnection, he can become more able to respect Betsy’s boundaries. As she begins to witness her silent victim character and separate out from it, she will feel better about herself and less resentful of him; she may one day feel safer to move toward greater intimacy.

  Other people who have a pattern of creating long-distance relationships or longing for unattainable lovers, such as married women or men, also may be turning their partners into their parents. Peter, a high-tech entrepreneur, believes that he remembers feeling unwanted even in his mother’s womb. He has faint memories of reaching out to her and feeling rebuffed both in utero and as an infant. When he came to therapy, he claimed to be in love with a Frenchwoman whom he met while visiting Paris. His long-distance yearning for her aroused deep passion in him. He believed that she was his ideal woman—except that she wasn’t there. When he uncovered the connection with his yearning for his mother’s attention, he was more able to end the fantasy relationship and prepare to meet a woman who would be more available to him.

  Childhood sexual abuse also imprints our parental projections onto lovers. Camille, an African-American college student who was molested by her father for nearly ten years, explains that she feels safe only in romantic triangles. “I tend to be attracted to men who are already in relationships, because they want me but not too much. They’re not too needy, so there’s no real risk involved. And I can feel the excitement of competition, jealousy, and fear that I felt with my parents at a young age. I just have no interest in monogamy, no vision of being intimate with one other person for a long time.”

  Most intimate relationships have some version of this story: one partner (or both) turns the other into a parental figure. In the grips of a complex, he or she feels hurt and angry, then numb and deadened. As a result, a mechanical, repetitive process gets played
out in which each lover believes that the problem lies in the other person, blaming the Other’s moods or behaviors endlessly. Therefore, the solution to the problem lies in that person’s waking up and changing. We call this negative downward spiral the roller-coaster ride because the lovers get on at the same place, seem to spin out of control, but end up getting off at the same place—and nothing has really changed. They had a wild ride, which always ends in aggression or withdrawal, another form of aggression.

  When faced with a repeating roller-coaster ride, the sweet, simple words that used to heal wounds now feel thorny. They begin to further irritate the wound until one or both partners feels deeply hurt, disappointed, and betrayed. Eventually, the partner feels like an enemy, and both feel hopeless and defeated. This feeling of hopelessness (“He will never love me in the way that I need”; “She will never change”; “This will never work out”) may at times seem endless. And without fresh awareness, suffering may increase until one partner ends the relationship. Even if the two find their way to forgiveness, in time the cycle repeats itself.

  The roller-coaster ride can, however, become a vehicle for shadow-work: The projections can reveal an aspect of a woman’s internal shadow in the partner’s actions, such as her punishing, controlling side. Or a man may see his own darkness on the partner’s face—that is, his unconscious, angry, critical nature, which lies hidden behind his passive retreat. To romance the shadow we need to recognize our projection; admit that it exists within us; and identify and communicate our feelings in the moment, thereby relating to a realtime person, not to a ghost of the past. When each partner sees the other accept full responsibility, the blame game can recede. Then, both can relax and Eros returns.