As we grow we become more emotionally sophisticated, and Lover energy drives us to experience different forms of love: brotherly love, sexual love, romantic love, love for ourselves, love for the planet on which we live.
Such is the male constriction on feelings in general and love in particular that many men will never experience the profound bond of brotherly love. This sense of non-sexual connectedness with another man resides in the Lover quarter and comes from an open-hearted place of mutual respect, connection, understanding and, yes, love.
Appreciation
Any artistic creation which evokes a sensual response draws upon the energy of the Lover. This includes our appreciation of literature, poetry, sculpture, dance, design, aesthetics, masculine and feminine beauty, as well as much else.
The Lover is the part of us which appreciates the sensuous touch of a massage therapist, the pleasure of holding a lover’s hand, and our sense of peace and joy as we sit in silent connection with a friend watching the sunset together.
We feel the Lover’s energy in the grace of time spent with children in those peaceful moments before they fall asleep. We feel it when we stop to smell the flowers as we walk through a beautiful garden. We feel it when we appreciate the sensuous delights of a finely crafted dinner or a fine wine. This is the energy that allows us to appreciate art and beauty, whether that be the soft touch of a finely sculpted piece of wood or the appreciation of a magnificent Renaissance panting.
When we’re in our Lover archetype and its energy is in balance, the whole world looks optimistic, joyous, gracious, and perfect in every way.
You get the idea, I’m sure: the Lover loves connection and sensual experience of any kind.
Spirit v Soul
The Lover is a spiritual being rather than a soulful being. The Lover looks for unity with the world beyond himself, using the unconscious mind as a gateway to connect with something bigger – universal intelligence or cosmic consciousness, if you like.
This contrasts with the soulful energy of the Magician, which we can picture as going downwards and inwards to access the astounding force of the unconscious – the soul – for its own purposes.
The Lover, Love and Sex
As we know, sex is a powerful and important part of the Lover archetype, particularly for men. There’s no getting away from the fact that while women may be driven by romance, sensuality and the very idea of love, men are very much driven by the act of love, the physical expression of the sexual energy within us.
As for love, well, we men project much of our capacity for love onto the feminine and allow women to carry it for us. However all of us men have a massive capacity for love – if we allow ourselves to feel it.
Men’s love tends to be a very nurturing and protective kind of energy. And yes, that is part of our function as men in human society – to nurture and protect. It’s not hard to imagine that a woman may have a deep genetically determined desire to have a man bonded to her who is dedicated to her protection and the protection of their children.
Although many men can identify easily with this type of love, we find it much harder to identify with the other side of our love: vulnerability. This is the energy within you which needs to be held, protected, and looked after. It’s what you show of yourself when you open your heart to someone and meet them at a deep feeling level. That is the essence of male vulnerability.
Sadly, most men are not good at making themselves vulnerable or opening to the giving and receiving of love, except perhaps in the first flush of romance. You’ve probably heard it said that women want sex when they feel love for their man, while men need to have sex with a woman to feel their love for her. And there’s truth in that. But why would men find being vulnerable so difficult, except during intercourse – and sometimes even then?
Perhaps the answer lies in society’s expectations of men. Maybe our culture dictates that men should occupy the Warrior space rather than the Lover space. Maybe we learn that the Lover archetype and all the energies associated with it are the province of women rather than men. Perhaps boys are shamed by their peers and by society more generally if they show their vulnerability. Maybe at some level we expect boys to be tough and manly, to be more Warrior than Lover from Day One.
But we don’t really need to know the answers to those questions to appreciate that all our lives would be more rewarding, gentler and more fulfilling if men were able to express their vulnerability and their need for love.
This is why men’s groups can be so important for all of us – and by that I mean men, women and children alike. Why so?
I believe men fear judgement and criticism. It’s an alien energy for us, one which destroys our confidence and power and diminishes our masculinity. There’s something dark and shadowy about judgement and criticism. These are not energies helpful to us when we are trying to find our place in the world. These are not energies that we welcome in any way, as far as I can see. Yet judgements come at us from all sides.
A men’s group which is free of judgement and criticism, which offers a sacred space where a man can open his heart and speak honestly and truthfully about who he is, allows a man to become softer and to enter more into his Lover. By doing so he may find his vulnerability and perhaps even embrace it, and so become a better husband, partner, lover, and father.
And that said, sex is very important for most men in a purely physical way. You might be a man who feels the drive to have sex so strongly that you want to fuck everything in sight. You might have a more modest sex drive. Strong sex drive or not, as a man you still carry the imperative to find a way of expressing this energy.
So powerful is this energy that it colours our thinking, encouraging us to mentally strip women as they walk past us in the street or to imagine, perhaps unwantedly, what it would be like to have sex with the female clerk in the store, or the waitress as she takes our order. Whatever our sexual orientation, the sexual imperative affects us all one way or another.
The path which beckons when we harbour these thoughts is a route to the sexual harassment and oppression of women. It’s a path which reinforces the ambiguous attitude to sex in our society, where sex is shameful and we don’t acknowledge our sexual urges, while at the same time we plaster sexualized images of women promoting perfume and consumer goods on every other billboard and TV advert.
Of course sex is a primal drive. There was a time when the survival of our species depended on high rates of reproduction, and so we men were gifted by evolution a high sexual drive fuelled by testosterone so we could reproduce as often as possible.
Natural though that may be, if you’re walking down the street splitting people into categories according to your level of sexual interest in them, then your sexual energy is in control of you rather than the other way around. And if you’re eyeing up women primarily as sexual objects rather than fellow human beings it’s a fair guess you have some work to do on your sexual shadows.
In men’s groups I’ve heard men speak of their fear around sexuality. A common theme seems to run through all of their stories: the fear of being seen as effeminate, feminine, weak, “a pussy”, or unmanly. A man’s fear of his Lover archetype, complete with its softness and tenderness, might alienate him from this softer yet extremely powerful side of himself.
Such is the force of our sex drive that it can cause us to make all kinds of decisions, both good and bad, about how to live our lives. Such is the force of the Lover that its urgings may seem irresistible, even when leading us into some self-destructive catastrophe.
A middle-aged man who leaves his wife and family for a woman twenty years his junior may be in the grip of forces he can’t control, forces which may seem to offer instant gratification but which can damage him and others around him most profoundly. Perhaps he is unable to control the power of his Lover archetype and the sexual drive that lives there. He may be a man whose Sovereign is weak, a King unable to set the appropriate boundaries to curb his wounded Lover’s seemingly ir
resistible wishes, impulses, needs and desires.
Instead, from his shadow unconscious, lover energy plays out in all kinds of dysfunctional behaviour, driving his life and denying him rational and conscious free choice in his life as a grown man.
We can all get more control over our Lover when we acknowledge the extraordinary power of this archetype and the amazing force it can have in our lives. Then we can begin to come to terms with it, and start dealing with all of the issues we have around sex, sexuality, intimacy, and above all our relationship to the feminine.
I believe a lot of the difficulties men have in these areas stem from the fact that many of us have an ambivalent relationship with the feminine, either external or internal. Many men I work with seem to be in awe of the feminine, even fearful of it. Many men seem never to have fully separated from Mother and identified fully with the world of the masculine. And it hardly needs to be said that a powerful sex urge combined with a deep-seated fear of the feminine, whether that be conscious or unconscious, is not going to produce a happy outcome for anyone.
And what of porn?
Boys as young as ten are now accessing porn on the Internet. This is their first introduction to sex generally and more particularly to the way we “make love”. How will that impact their relationships with real women later in life? That’s a question only time will answer.
It’s an important question, though, since the majority of men in the world today, at least in the Western world, are taking advantage of the easy availability of porn on the Internet to relieve their sexual desires quickly and simply.
Unfortunately this plays right into a male tendency to objectify women and make them into sexual objects. I suspect it will also make many men less interested in genuinely “making love” to a woman. More than anything else, porn allows us to reach inside ourselves and express our sexual desires, no matter how shadowy and dark they may be. This hardly seems like a healthy process, certainly not when compared to healing your sexual shadows and fully owning your mature masculine sexuality.
You may even have reached a point where you prefer Internet sex to real sex with a real person. After all, it’s easier, it’s quicker, and it can certainly seem simpler. But this form of sexual self-expression denies you the deep emotional connection and satisfaction which can come from fully experiencing your male power and potency during lovemaking.
I’ve worked with men who have sexual issues for many years, and in that time I’ve watched men discover how to fully embody and embrace their masculinity during lovemaking. If you take the potentially challenging path of doing this, you’ll move well beyond the transient pleasure of simply fucking. And as you do that, you’ll discover all the rich and delicious experiences your body can provide you with in the Lover archetype.
When your Lover is alive and well, and you’re on good terms with it, the world changes in a beautiful way. You find yourself caring about things you never imagined would matter to you: the aesthetics of your environment, the way you look after yourself, your appreciation of beauty and the Natural World. And, of course, when you’re living in harmony with your internal Lover, the quality of your relationships will improve, whether sexual or otherwise.
The Lover In Harmony With Other Archetypes
The Lover is what humanizes all of our other archetypes. Without the Lover we can be detached, unfeeling, perhaps even inhumane. The Lover holds our compassion, our capacity to empathize, and our ability to feel for others: all vital elements of our humanity. To fully enjoy life we all need a balanced psyche where the power of the Lover archetype and its liking for sensuality is contained and boundaried by the power of the King, the Warrior, and the Magician.
So the Lover needs boundaries. In particular he needs boundaries set by his King, because those are the boundaries that provide a structure within which the Lover’s energy can flow in a controlled and contained way. Without these boundaries a man’s lover energy can be all-consuming and self-destructive.
The Lover also needs the energy of the Warrior, who can exercise the clean cut where something has come to an end and needs to be removed from your life – the ending of a relationship being a prime example of this. The Warrior’s energy is needed to cut through old ties which might continue to entangle the Lover, for he hesitates to make a clean break for fear of the grief which may follow.
And the Lover requires the detachment of the Magician so he can step back into a more detached and objective place from where he can see the bigger picture and get in touch with the true reality of life.
The Emotional Wound in the Lover Quarter
To cut to the chase, the cause of the wound in this quarter is a lack of love and connection – or a loss of love and connection – in childhood. More broadly, it’s about your emotional needs not being met during childhood. And because this archetype is so primal, so fundamental to us, deep and painful Lover wounds can still be inflicted on us during adolescence, maybe even into early adulthood.
I see a lot of men and women on my workshops still carrying the grief and pain of the loss of their grandparents, especially when these were the kindest and most loving adults in their life.
I work with many others who were wounded in the sensitive area of the Lover by the unthinking (or deliberate) cruelty of disciplinarian teachers, unfeeling parents, and jealous siblings.
One of the most common causes of a Lover wound in men (and women, for that matter) seems to be the pain of abandonment – whether that abandonment was real or simply an interpretation of events by the child. This is especially true among those who were sent away to boarding school during childhood. This wound, always damaging, but worst in those men who were sent away to boarding school without explanation at the age of 7 or so, has seared the souls of generations of fathers and sons in countries where this kind of education was seen as a privilege. For those with a personal interest in this area, the work of Nick Duffel and his group Boarding School Survivors may be very helpful (you can find it online).
Wounds in this archetype can be especially painful to sensitive boys who need respectful care, love and support as they grow and develop. We are all born with different degrees of resilience; what wounds one boy may leave another untouched.
The sensitivity of boys – as described by the men they have become, the men I work with, men who are still carrying the pain of childhood abandonment or betrayal of love and trust, the pain of the loss of significant adults, siblings and pets, the destructive impact of harsh words or humiliation by their peers, the damage caused by a mother or sisters who smothered a boy with love and made him dependent on feminine approval, indeed each man with his own unique story of wounding – yes, the sensitivity of boys never ceases to astound me. No wonder so many men carry wounds in this archetype.
Whatever the cause of a boy’s Lover wound, the outcome is the same: he somehow comes to believe he’s not lovable, or that there’s something wrong with the way he loves, or that he’s incapable of loving others, or some variation of this theme.
As always it makes no difference to the child’s view of himself that the real problem lies with other people: bad, unfeeling, unloving, insensitive, inadequate or unwilling parents, peers, siblings, teachers, priests, carers and other adults… and of course the wider society which looks the other way.
Children don’t usually think that way. They almost always take emotional wounding as somehow being their fault. The logic in a child’s mind, consciously or unconsciously, goes like this: “They wouldn’t be treating me like this unless I deserved it. There must be something about me which made this happen. It’s my fault. There’s something wrong with me.” This is because almost all children idealize their parents, even when their parenting is totally inadequate.
You probably have a Lover wound if these words resonate, sound familiar, or the patterns of your relationships make you wonder if you carry any of these beliefs: “I’m not lovable.” “There’s something wrong with the way I love.” “I don’t love rig
ht.” “I can’t love.” “I don’t know how to love properly.” And such like.
Whatever the cause of your original Lover wound, the beliefs about yourself which grow from it will interfere with your ability to give and receive love as an adult in an open-hearted, trusting, and truly connected way. These beliefs are expressed in adult life in statements such as: “No-one will ever want me.” “I will never have a successful relationship.” “Women don’t find me attractive.” “I haven’t met anyone good enough.” “I just haven’t met the right woman yet.” You may know some others.
So if you repeatedly have relationships which fail, if you’ve never been in a long term relationship, if you just can’t seem to find the right woman (or man), if you’re still searching for some ideal vision of femininity, if you are overly dependent on a woman to be happy, and especially if you feel you’re still in the sway of the feminine, then you most likely have some form of Lover wound.
Mind you, we all have this wound to some degree. It’s simply not possible for parents to meet any child’s needs perfectly. The question is – were our parents loving enough? Did they meet enough of our needs to give us a sense of security and trust in ourselves, and equally important, in the people around us… and even, perhaps, trust in the world?
I am told that Balinese children are some of the most secure, confident and happy children in the world. (Apparently the adults generally look much happier than people in the West, too.) Maybe that has something to do with the way the Balinese care for their babies, which is very different to our Western approach.
Balinese people regard babies and young children as sacred beings because they are so close to the beginning of this life and also their previous past life. In fact the Balinese believe that children are in the realm of the gods and have the ability to see the supernatural world. And so from birth until the age of three months babies are carried everywhere and are never placed on the ground, just as befits a little god.
Warrior, Magician, Lover, King Page 11