by Connie Zweig
One weekend they attended a formal event together. Grant mentioned that he wanted to wear a new tuxedo; Jackie felt uncomfortable but did not say anything. After they arrived, a friend mentioned that Grant looked attractive in his new tux. Jackie added, “Just don’t mistake him for the waiter and order herb tea.”
Grant’s body froze. Jackie felt him pull away from her, as if he were shriveling up. When they sat down together, he didn’t take her hand; he looked straight ahead. And for the rest of the evening he acted aloof and cold. Driving home in the car, Jackie asked him what was troubling him. “I’m furious. You shamed me in public,” he said. “Once you do that, you can’t take it back.”
Jackie was stunned. A passing joke had caused her lover to feel disgraced and humiliated. She quickly understood his experience and apologized, but the damage had been done. Grant felt betrayed; the shaming incident triggered earlier feelings of belittlement and abandonment, and he withdrew from Jackie. She told him that she would try to understand why her shadow had emerged.
In therapy, Jackie reported that recently she had been feeling trapped and smothered by Grant’s relationship style. She resented sacrificing time from her acting and her friends. Sometimes she would agree to see him when she was preoccupied with other affairs out of fear of disappointing him or being abandoned by him. In effect, she was doing what her mother had done: giving up her voice in the relationship and projecting the power of decision-making onto him, and then resenting him for it. Her shadowy issues of dependency and abandonment lurked below the surface of consciousness, beneath her persona of independence. And her rage seethed below the compliance.
Gradually Jackie realized that, underneath the struggle with priorities, she was beginning to feel very attached to and vulnerable with Grant, which made her feel frightened and small. “I think I understand now why I shamed him. I was feeling small and seeing him as big. When I made the joke, I felt big again, just for a moment, by making him small.” But the trouble with shaming is that it actually achieves the opposite of the desired result: When Jackie became conscious of what she had done, she felt very small again, embarrassed and ashamed.
To review this variation on the theme of power shadow: Jackie withheld communication and acted compliant out of fear of rocking the boat. She did not want to jeopardize the security she had begun to feel, thereby diminishing her own sense of power in the relationship and resenting him for it. In effect, she no longer felt entitled to a voice that honored her own authentic needs. In addition, she projected power onto Grant, making the problem his fault and causing her unknowingly to want to reduce him. Her power shadow emerged unconsciously as a shaming character to equalize the power. But, instead, it created pain and distance. Fortunately, Jackie and Grant wrestled with this shadow issue until they felt safe with each other again. And having addressed their hidden shadow needs, Eros returned.
SEXUAL SHADOWS: DEMANDING AND WITHHOLDING INTIMACY
Strange as it sounds, sexuality can be an arena in which we turn our partners into our parents. We may carry on family sins unknowingly by perpetuating a parent’s repressed feeling or behavior (“My mother never enjoyed sex; she saw it as her duty”; “Oral sex is unnatural”) or by enacting family taboos such as incest (“My father did it to me and I ended up okay”) or affairs (“My father was unfaithful and my mother survived”). We may arduously long for partners who are in other committed relationships, becoming the child who longs for the opposite-sex parent and plays out the Oedipal drama in romantic triangles for years.
Or we may enjoy sexuality without intimacy until we begin to become emotionally involved. Then a mother or father complex erupts, turning the partner into a parent and evoking the sexual taboo so that the fire of desire is suddenly snuffed out. One man in this predicament could express his sexuality until he began to feel emotionally attached. Then he could not stand to be touched on the genitals, which felt too intimate and threatening to him. Another lived for five years with a woman whom he loved deeply but for whom he felt no sexual desire. He did, however, have intricate masturbatory fantasies about anonymous women in the street.
In our sexual intimacies we may discover Aidos, goddess of modesty, self-respect, and shame. Traveling with Aphrodite, goddess of love and desire, Aidos enfolds her dark wings around lovers and their sexual secrets, protecting their authentic shame, their instinctive need for privacy and boundaries. In this way, Aidos serves soul. But she can be co-opted by the ego or by a shadow character, who criticizes, disparages, or humiliates our desires, resulting in self-deprecating, inauthentic shame.
To do sexual shadow-work is to open Pandora’s box, to release sexual afflictions, erotic mischief, and endless craving. Some will find there a terror of being devoured or eaten alive by the lover’s insatiable appetite. Others will find a habitual, mechanical response that disguises bodily numbness and covers over the deadening of natural erotic feeling. Still others may discover a will to power, a need to dominate and control a loved one in order to feel safe enough to become aroused.
But like Pandora’s box, which contained sorrows and plagues, the sexual shadow at bottom also contains hope: to shed light on our sexual revulsions, inhibitions, and shames is to shed light on the full range of our erotic potential as well. People who can open the lid may begin to reclaim a sexual identity that offers more pleasure and more freedom from a parent’s constraints.
From the day he was born, Rory’s mother had been charmed by her darling son. Whatever he asked of her, she would surrender if he would only ask long enough and lovingly enough. So, naturally, when he fell in love with Margaret, he continued this strategy even unknowingly, believing somehow that it would continue to fulfill his needs.
But when Margaret did not wish to have sex, a problem arose. Rory would persist, asking as long and as lovingly as he could. But if Margaret held her ground and continued to say no, he became angry and his critical character emerged and called her names. He expected to get the answer he wanted if he asked in just the right way. And when Margaret did not adore him as his mother had, he felt totally abandoned and interpreted her response as proof that she did not love him or value the relationship. He believed this issue was her problem—she was cold and unloving. But she also carried his cold, unloving shadow, which erupted when he felt rebuffed.
Margaret, however, had a secret chemical dependency, which was even a secret from herself. Using three cups of coffee to wake up in the morning, two glasses of wine with dinner, and sleeping pills to rest at night, she had numbed herself to her own feelings. As a result, when Rory approached her for intimacy, she could not feel vulnerable; he felt forced to demand the sexual intimacy to which he was entitled.
Also, Margaret had been verbally abused by her mother. So when she heard Rory’s accusations, she withdrew even more, launching a roller-coaster ride in which each could see the Other’s shadow: He sees his self-centered, insensitive, ungiving side in her, and she sees her judgmental, critical, attacking side in him. Both partners despise these qualities in the Other and, until they did shadow-work, both remained unaware of them in themselves. Eventually, Margaret discovered that her inability to share intimacy called forth the very emotional abuse that she wished to escape.
Larry withheld sexual intimacy for other reasons. A gifted artist who earns his living in the advertising industry, Larry had had hundreds of sexual escapades before he met his current partner. But no one had touched his heart deeply, opening him to the tender feelings of love. Instead, he had created a gruff and aloof persona as a tough guy who used women sexually but suffered secretly from a lack of intimacy in his life.
When Larry met Claire, he wanted to protect and care for her. But he did not desire her sexually. When he begins to have sexual feelings or fantasies, he’s not drawn to make love to Claire but to masturbate to pornographic pictures. This fantasy activity, however, typically leaves him feeling ashamed, guilty, and empty, as if he has a secret life full of lies. Larry finds actual sexual contact
with Claire too messy for his liking, but he feels saddened that Claire receives so little contact from him.
In an early betrayal, Larry was abandoned by his mother as an infant when she left him twice with his grandparents. When she retrieved him later, in his teenage years, she would drape her legs around him, making him feel aroused and disgusted. But he would not ask her to stop because he feared hurting her and being abandoned again. She also exposed herself by wearing very little clothing around the house and often told him to rub her naked back, exposing her breasts inadvertently to his curious young eyes. These early experiences created the roots of Larry’s split between sexuality and intimacy. His sexuality became a “bad” character at the table; he could only enjoy sex furtively. But in doing so he felt terrible shame, as if he himself were bad.
In this context, Larry’s shadowy fantasy life served him well. He permitted his “bad” sexual character expression through flirting, peeping, and pornography, while maintaining a “good” or pure character with Claire by avoiding sexual intimacy for five years. Unconsciously, he knew that if he became sexual he would have to deal with his guilt and rage. And if he became vulnerable, he believed unconsciously that he would become dependent, smothered, and eventually abandoned. So, to be safe, he maintained the split.
Larry disclosed that at times he felt impulses to move toward Claire, but he would get busy or distracted. Then he would feel a wrenching guilt for failing to meet his obligation to her; he would be caught in his mother complex. The therapist explained that there are two kinds of guilt: inauthentic guilt, which arises from the ego as a historical complex; and authentic guilty which arises from the Self in the present time as a valuable signal from the unconscious. When Larry gets busy in an unconscious effort to distract himself from sexual feelings and to avoid following his impulses toward intimacy, his guilt is a cue that he is failing himself, not her. Understanding this distinction, he can now use the guilt as a reminder to acknowledge his sexual feelings in the moment or witness his resistance to them. Uncovering these memories of early erotic stimulation and opening the traps of his parental complexes helped Larry to understand his behavior and to begin to heal the split between sex and intimacy.
What shadow character in you demands intimacy and what are its deeper needs? What character withholds and why?
AN ARCHETYPAL PERSPECTIVE ON ROMANCE
Within our fantasies of romance there are timeless mythological images of sacred union. Aside from the personal aspects of our parents and our own missing parts, these archetypal forces shape our partnerships. They can reveal the nature of the Other as well the kinds of qualities that the Other may being forth in us. And they offer a glimpse into the nature of the relationship itself, the particular quality of the bond that may emerge as a result of the story that underlies it.
So, for people seeking a deeper look into their romantic relationships, we suggest exploring the myth at its core: You may be living an erotic bond like Psyche and Eros, which begins in blindness with a stranger and leads to an awareness of the divine. You may imagine living a complete spiritual union like Shiva and Shakti, whose ecstatic merger is all-consuming and overcomes their individuality. You may be struggling with a rivalrous battle for power like Zeus and Hera, whose marriage seems to feed on ongoing conflict, which permits them to remain together but feel separate. You may have forged a brother-sister marriage like Isis and Osiris, in which you feel that you belong together for the purpose of mutual reliance without dominance and with or without sexuality. You may have found an older man-younger woman alliance like Merlin and Vivianne in King Arthur’s Court, who mentor and caretake one another, respectively, awakening each other’s dormant gifts. Or you may have created an older woman-younger man alliance like Inanna, a mother-goddess, who initiates Dumuzi, her son-lover, revitalizing them both with life. Or you may have discovered an older man-younger man bond like Zeus, whose passion stirs the handsome mortal Ganymede to respond and, as a result of their love, he becomes a god. You may have found yourself, like Ariadne, abandoned by a hero-lover, dejected and alone, and later partnered with the god of ecstasy, Dionysus, who ironically becomes a faithful husband. You may be a single mother like Demeter, whose primary role is to care for children with an absent father. Or you may find yourself facing the death of your loved one, like Orpheus grieving inconsolably the loss of Eurydice.
Each of these stories, and many more, tell of a way to love and be loved. Each opens onto a vast expanse of possibilities, and each has its shadow side, its dangers and limitations.
In your myth, which gods are being honored? Which are being sacrificed? Do the gods or goddesses that are being expressed match the myth you desire to live?
WHEN RELATIONSHIPS END: THE SHADOW’S MOVING TARGET
As the divorce rate so glaringly shows, at times the centripetal force of love and the magnet of mutual attraction are not sufficient to hold two people together during a crisis of commitment. When the love bond snaps, one partner or both may end the relationship abruptly. Then the shadow begins the search once again for the perfect fit.
During the dating stage, for instance, an individual may know instinctively that a given person, is not a potential long-term partner. In that case, an internal crisis may precipitate an end to dating, such as when Brad, who remained in obligatory relationships due to his fear of being alone, his need for sex, and his desire to be seen with beautiful women, ultimately felt that he was losing his own integrity and self-respect by continuing this pattern. A few weeks or months later, the search would begin anew.
At other times, a shadow character may step in to end a relationship by acting out a betrayal, thereby making the person seem unacceptable. One man told his therapist that he could not stop screaming abusively at his partner, then felt humiliated by his own outburst. But he was not surprised when she packed up and left. In retrospect, he realized that unconsciously he had wanted it to end. A woman client confessed to a sexual liaison with her ex-husband, never consciously suspecting that her current partner would find out. But when he did, she made no apologies. She felt as if her actions had been choreographed by some unknown, alien part of herself. In addition, under the influence of a new drug, such as a diet pill, sleeping pill, or antidepressant, another character may emerge, leaving a partner to feel as if he or she is living with a stranger. In these ways, we may cheat, lie, become abusive or depressed in such a way that our partner has a rude awakening: a positive projection shatters and the connection breaks.
Alternatively, a relationship may end for developmental reasons—that is, one partner leaves the eggshell, while the other is not ready. Doris, who was raised by a strict single mother of six children, ended a difficult marriage after thirteen years. The following year she began to date a man and found herself falling into the victim pattern that she had learned from her mother and perpetuated in her own marriage, thereby betraying herself again. Some part of her wanted to crawl back into the eggshell, to let this man take charge of her life and make decisions for her. But Doris saw the cues: She began to feel small, as if she were disappearing. And she began to feel irritable and angry. After dating him for ten weeks, she told him that she wanted more from the relationship. She needed him to acknowledge her feelings and to listen to her more considerately. This man could not honor her request, so she ended the relationship. Although externally the relationship failed, internally it succeeded. Whereas it took Doris thirteen years to emerge as an adult in her marriage, it took her only ten weeks to recognize what she needed and ask for it in her next relationship.
Because of the cultural bias toward maintaining marriage and honoring commitment and the ego’s bias toward permanence, this ending typically feels like another failed effort, rejection, or abandonment. A partner may be deeply disappointed in himself or in the Other, feeling betrayed and abandoned. New salt adds to the sting of old wounds, and the promise of love goes unfulfilled.
If the shadow’s objectives, which were instrumental in generati
ng the attraction, remain unconscious, then the patterns will probably repeat themselves in the next relationship, again re-creating old wounds without awareness. If the relationship has served an individual by bringing the shadow’s motivations into consciousness, then the relationship can be considered at least partially successful. Eventually, if we do not deny the loss but allow ourselves to grieve it deeply, we may one day feel gratitude for the awareness gained at the cost of great emotional pain over losing a relationship.
From the soul’s point of view, any relationship that generates feelings of being seen and loved can be considered a success, even if it lasts only a few weeks. For we believe that love heals. And human beings evolve through sharing love and expanding awareness together. When the soul is nurtured in a conscious, caring way, we are more willing to risk showing those more shameful, vulnerable aspects of ourselves to a partner and thereby discover a deeper sense of our own authenticity.
For longer-term relationships, commitment may become the crisis issue. After a year or so, a woman may be headed for marriage and children, while a man may still feel unprepared for monogamy or family. If he says he’s not ready, and she says she needs to take this step for her own integrity, they have a serious crisis of commitment: The authentic needs of one conflict with the authentic needs of the other.
If he values the relationship over his own needs and agrees to her request but is not internally ready, he betrays himself and resents her for feeling manipulated into giving up his power. Perhaps they can find interim agreements, such as six months of monogamy as an experiment. If that’s not enough for her internally but she agrees to it anyway, she steps out of authenticity with herself and ends up resentful of him for giving up her self-respect, which causes her either to withdraw or attack him. Their differences in timing and the way they handle these differences could signal the end of the relationship.
