Couples and Intimacy: The Uncommon Sense

Intimacy. Everybody thinks they want it and yet it is so common for us to put up barriers to prevent it. Why would that be the case? I think it is because most people when they think of intimacy, think of hugs, kisses, and other expressions of love and affection. Yet, those things are the bright side of loving intimacy.

Most of intimacy is made up of the difficult and scary task of knowing ourselves. For intimacy, we must be willing to tell the truth about ourselves. But first, we must do the arduous work of discovering our truth. As I often say, the first ingredient in intimacy is the authentic self. And the discovery of the authentic self requires courage and patience. 

In my experience of running intensives for couples, very often, one partner brings the other partner into the experience with the complaint:

“I don’t really know them. They are emotionally unavailable to me. I just want to hear what they are feeling.”  

And in many of these cases, we discover a fascinating aspect of the couple’s dynamic. As the reluctant partner is supported and encouraged to share their emotional world, it is often met with dismissing and discounting replies:

“That’s not how it is. That is not what I was saying. You don’t understand.”

Of course, the partner responding with dismissing messages doesn’t see it that way. They just think they are trying to clarify things and get to the real story. Yet, the real story is beyond their version of facts. What they are asking to know is the internal, emotional world of their partner. And that world has little to do with objective truth or accurate narratives.

In all of us, the emotional workings are a combination of our unique history, trauma, perspectives, learning styles, and a million other things that are largely unknown to our conscious minds; it includes our unconscious material as well. The split-off parts of us that we discarded, were relegated to the shadow to assure our belonging and attention from our caregivers.

Later, these disowned parts are projected onto our partners. During the early stages of romantic love, our projections are largely positive: will this person complete me? Can this person heal my wounds? Will this person prevent me from being lonely? Can this person take up the task of giving me what my childhood failed to offer me? J

James Hollis explains in the Eden Project, In Search of the Magical Other:

Of the many projections possible, the most common are those onto the institutions of marriage, parenting and career. [Regarding marriage], perhaps no other social contract has so much unconscious baggage imposed upon it. Few at the altar are conscious of the enormity of their expectations. No one would speak aloud the immense hopes: “I am counting on you to make my life meaningful.” “I am counting on you to always be there for me.” “I am counting on you to read my mind and anticipate all my needs.” “I am counting on you to bind my wounds and fulfill the deficits in my life.” “I'm counting on you to complete me, to make me a whole person, to heal my stricken soul.”

Sometimes therapists are known to say that you are bound to marry your mother or your father. But that’s not quite it. You marry into the dynamic you had with your earliest caregivers. The dynamic is more fundamental than most people realize. Beneath the surface level aspects of our looks, professions, or interests, it is the role we played in our relationship with our parents and family members. Were you the good one, the rescuer, peacemaker, scapegoat or problem solver? Were your parents critical, difficult to please, emotionally immature, depressed or anxious?  You find someone who will replicate the patterns you were required to navigate in your childhood. And you will find a sense of home with someone at the same level of consciousness and differentiation as those who raised you: most specifically, this refers to the implicit obligations. That is, how responsible were family members for each other’s feelings?

Our childhood experiences tell us how we are in relationship to others. We then are shaped in a way that predisposes us to fit with others who mirror the way our family saw the world. We find appealing what is familiar. In the early stages of romantic love, it is confusing because the old patterns seem so improved, “We are finally able to soothe an anxious other,” or “We are finally seen (by the non-narcissistic partner).” These temporary dynamics will eventually give way to the exhaustion of everyday life, and we settle into a kind of pain that is also familiar.

Hollis said it simply:

More often, the pathology of the parent-child relationship is calling the shots… Who in their right mind would seek out someone and say, “I want you to repeat my childhood wounding. I will love you because you are so familiar.”

As the projections of the early stages of romantic love fall away, as they must, we then begin the work of an enduring love. Joseph Campbell taught that in marriage, eventually facts will break through, destroying the projections of the early stages of a romantic relationship, and what comes next is love. In marriage, Campbell taught, we must transform our passion into compassion. I like to say in a successful marriage we must fall in love with our partner’s dilemma, over and over again.

Or you can leave. But here is the most important part: your psychological work is the same whether you stay or leave. And if this work is not addressed, you will recreate the same thing again because you are still unconscious of your projections. 

In my experience, soulmate is a term that is earned through the long, painful, and difficult work of taking back our projections and becoming who we are. If the marriage survives this process, it is magnificent.

Therapy can be a place where, in a safe but different context than any of us experienced in childhood, we are able to take back our projections, see how we are contributing to the very dynamics we are complaining about, and become clear on making our own happiness and meaning . If this work can happen with a couple, each individual can learn to support the other on their journey towards healing and wholeness.  

I will conclude with the words of Joseph Campbell:

I think one of the problems in marriage is that people don’t realize what it is. They think it’s a long love affair and it isn't. Marriage has nothing to do with being happy. It has to do with being transformed, and when the transformation is realized it is a magnificent experience. But you have to submit. You have to yield. You have to give. You can’t just dictate.

This is when the work begins to take back your projections, and your responsibility for your own life. And if you’re lucky and each person is willing to do this painstaking work, you will eventually call the other your soul mate.