Romancing the Shadow

by Connie Zweig

  Relationships shift in a similar way. If Elaine allows the pressure to leak slowly from her marriage container, the situation could continue for a long time. But if she remains with Stan inside the container and allows the pressure to build, some kind of breakdown may occur—which may lead to a breakthrough that she cannot predict.

  In addition, this crisis of commitment proved to be a developmental step for Elaine, because previously the spirit had been exiled outside of her awareness. But since meeting Dave, she became conscious of it as a dynamic factor within her. Archetypally, Elaine discovered that her Artemis nature felt trapped in the early marriage and acted out its independence unconsciously. When she began to attend to the authentic needs of this character, such as spending time alone in the garden, she began to heal the split in the marriage archetype.

  Elaine decided that she would remain in her marriage, hoping that, with the addition of conscious intention, the increasing pain and pressure would motivate her out of inertia. While talking with her husband, she found that she hesitated to move toward intimacy with him because of the fear that he would not desire her. If he did, she also feared that she would not be able to risk real physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with him after seven years of blocking it.

  After another secret date with Dave, Elaine confessed that she felt like a “bad girl.” This character fantasized about sex outside of her marriage and the freedom to be unattached. She then became increasingly aware of how much she permitted the “good girl” character to rule the kingdom at home with Stan, and she became the subdued, organized, self-controlled wife she believed he needed. Now this character felt suffocated and began to resent the constraints of her Faustian bargain with Stan, which sacrificed soul for comfort.

  When the therapist asked Elaine about other situations in which she felt “good” or “bad,” she disclosed that as a young girl she had felt unworthy and inferior because of her family secrets: debilitating poverty and her mother’s alcoholism. Suddenly, as she spoke, she looked up and claimed that she had always tried to be a “good girl” at home but secretly felt “bad” because of her shame. In her early relationships with men, she would replicate this partner-as-parent dynamic and, at some point, her “bad girl” would come alive. Certain that her real feelings would be unacceptable to her boyfriends, she hid them and created the “bad girl” by acting out and feeling guilty, just as she had done with her husband.

  Elaine saw the pattern. In that moment, she chose not to act out the affair with Dave but, instead, to recognize the “bad girl’s” erotic desire for an Other as a signal to pay attention to the crisis in her marriage. Her inner work involved risking her authentic self-expression so that her marriage could move out of the cocoon stage, in which her partner served as a parent, and into an adult, real-time relationship. To achieve this, she had to speak with Stan about her secret erotic desires in an attempt to bring the “bad girl” into their marriage. When the therapist suggested that there might be a “bad boy” lurking in Stan as well, and that she might seduce him into coming out to play, she seemed shocked. She feared his rejection, but she feared repeating the pattern of looking outside of the marriage even more.

  Many impulses toward an affair reveal the split archetype within marriage: bonded and free, attached and unattached. Each pole contains an authentic desire of the soul that may be carried by a shadow character: the one who seeks commitment and partnership and the one who seeks freedom and independence. To learn to use a temptation to have an affair as a wake-up call to heal the split archetype, we need to find an appropriate place at the table for each character. In this way, we can honor seemingly opposing needs of the soul and attend to the Third Body of the marriage.

  An Artemis-style affair like Elaine’s may have different traits and motivations than an Aphrodite- or Athena-style affair. For men, a Zeus-style affair would differ from a Dionysian tryst or a Hermes rendezvous. By uncovering who is motivating an affair and what this character is telling us, we may learn to meet its deeper needs, preferably without unconsciously destroying an ongoing relationship. Or we can choose more consciously to end a relationship without the pain of betrayal.

  Who in you needs to feel more bonded? Who needs to feel more free? How can you meet the authentic desires of these characters?

  MONEY SHADOWS: FROM DATING TO COMMITMENT

  The story of one couple illustrates the development of money issues as a reflection of the development of a relationship. When Bob, thirty-six, and Hailey, thirty-three, began dating, he was earning a steady income as an accountant and she was between jobs. But they agreed that they would split the cost of dates fifty-fifty by taking turns on alternate evenings so that Bob did not feel taken for granted. In his previous two marriages, money had created emotional difficulties. After about a month of sharing costs he told Hailey, “I’m so glad that money isn’t going to be an issue in our relationship.”

  As they became more romantically involved, each felt a spirit of generosity as the money flowed between them easily like the love. Hailey reported that she felt she was being vigilant about paying her way, especially when they traveled together. When she obtained a lucrative salary a few months later, she began to fantasize about buying Bob special gifts or treating him to a trip to the Bahamas.

  Then their romantic projections began to rattle. Each partner felt little disappointments, then deeper wounds. One evening Bob turned the conversation to money. “You’re not paying your fair share,” he claimed. “I have the records from my credit cards. I’m paying about two-thirds of our costs and you’re paying one-third. Those are the facts. Before you had the job, I didn’t mind. But now we need to adjust our agreement.”

  Hailey felt shocked. She felt wrongly accused. But she had only her feelings to account for the money because she paid for expenses with cash. “I don’t agree with you,” she said. “But what would you like to do?”

  Bob suggested that they split each bill fifty-fifty in the moment, rather than alternate evenings, “so that she could see how much meals and entertainment actually cost.” Hailey could not believe his statement; she felt patronized for the first time. An independent career woman, she knew well the cost of a comfortable lifestyle. But she did not yet feel safe enough to express the shadowy feelings, so she swallowed her resentment and agreed to the new arrangement.

  A few days later, Bob turned the conversation to sex. “Our giving and receiving in sex is not equal,” he said in a forceful tone. “I’m making love to you every time.”

  Once again, Hailey went into shock and disbelief. But this time her response was more authentic. “I can’t believe you feel this way,” she professed. “It’s just incredible to me. I give you massages and sexual pleasuring much more often than you give them to me.”

  Bob’s accountant character suddenly had appeared in two new arenas, tallying up credits and debits in money and sex. Hailey felt hurt, insulted, and resentful, as she had in childhood as a frequently criticized father’s daughter. With her natural spontaneity stolen, she realized that, like a bean counter, he was monitoring her every move. “The innocence is gone now that we’re keeping track,” she told the therapist.

  At a deeper level, Bob and Hailey played out their shadow issues disguised as money issues. She felt frightened that she could not be enough for this man: nurturing enough, sexual enough, conscious enough. Because her father had measured her against an impossibly high standard, she always came up short. So, with her father’s critical voice internalized, when Bob claimed that she was not giving him enough, she blamed herself.

  He suffered the converse: As a mother’s son, he felt unwanted by his mother. So he, too, struggled with the feeling of betrayal when he could not get enough. And he blamed Hailey for withholding that which he felt entitled to receive from her in order to feel loved.

  Eventually, as Bob and Hailey moved toward marriage, they tried to create a relationship to money that reflected a conscious commitment to one another. For some pa
rtners, this would involve joining their financial lives together as the rest of their lives become united. But for others, like Bob and Hailey, money might require another creative solution. After opening a joint checking account, Bob found that he could not tolerate Hailey’s negligence about balancing the books. Their attitudes toward money and their styles of banking simply did not mesh.

  Eventually they decided that, for them, the best arrangement involved keeping their money separate. As a result, he no longer blamed her for her style of accounting because it no longer affected him. In turn, she no longer felt controlled or blamed for her more relaxed spending habits. And in general this solution eliminated a category of conflict attributable to clear differences in their respective relationships to money, which could have become a constant irritant.

  CRISIS OF COMMITMENT: HAVING A CHILD

  Cindy, thirty-eight, and Mitchell, forty-one, had career-oriented lives, freed of the burdens of commitment to spouses and children. Both had traveled internationally and held high-paying jobs when they met. Both also had developed elaborate defenses against feeling vulnerable in intimate relationships. They also shared a historical wound that led to these romantic patterns: Mitch had been abandoned by his mother at birth and raised by an adoptive family. Cindy had been shipped off to boarding schools and spent little time with her family of origin. Each suffered from feeling unwanted.

  When Mitch met Cindy, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. “There was something about her, a kind of gentleness, that just made me want to protect her and care for her. I had never felt that way before.” The two became inseparable for eight months—and then Cindy discovered that she was pregnant.

  Because of her personal history of early abandonment and adult independence, and because their relationship was so new, Cindy felt frightened. She asked for his reassurance, which was not forthcoming. So she told him, “If you don’t want this baby as much as or more than I do, I’ll get an abortion.”

  Mitch felt punched in the stomach. In Turkish, he heard her say that if he does not obey her wishes, she will take everything away from him. So he reassured her. But at the same time, he built up feelings of resentment, which began to leak out in sarcastic quips. With his sarcasm, Cindy felt slapped in the face. In Turkish, she sensed his distance and withdrew, telling the therapist, “If I don’t push him to the brink of disaster, I won’t get the reassurance I need. But then he resents me for pushing him.”

  Cindy believed that Mitch did not really want the baby but only claimed to want it for her. She felt terribly anxious about taking this step and, disowning her feelings, expressed them as concern for him and his anxiety. Mitch, in turn, felt snared like an animal in a pen. He did not want to risk losing the relationship with Cindy, yet he felt hemmed in and totally unprepared for fatherhood.

  As they began to sort out the French and Turkish, Mitch could catch his sarcasm before it started a roller-coaster ride. And Cindy learned to identify her own anxiety and stop projecting it onto him. They both realized that their internal reactions to each other’s defensiveness can be interpreted as a signal from the Third Body of the other’s discomfort, which when unrecognized activates the roller coaster. Slowly, the partners learned to feel their own authentic desires, as distinct from their obligatory responses. And, as a result, Mitch realized that he would feel terrible loss and regret if they had an abortion. He discovered a deep desire to have a child that he did not previously know he had.

  Cindy knew her bottom line: “I don’t want to bring a child into this world unless it is totally wanted.” Mitch knew exactly what she meant.

  So a discussion about having a baby progressed to a request for a soul commitment. When Mitch told the therapist that he did not know how to be a conscious parent, the therapist pointed out that he already was doing it: questioning his motives, exploring his ego’s needs, romancing his projections, and remembering his shadow wounds. The conscious relationship, then, can lead to the birth of the conscious family or family soul. With this commitment, the parents as partners begin to learn yet another step in shadow-dancing: parenting a child’s shadow.

  RELATIONSHIP AS A VEHICLE FOR SOUL WORK

  In this chapter, we have reimagined the range of possibilities for a conscious partnership. We have proposed that by doing shadow-work with a partner to romance your projections, you can uncover your family sins and, in this way, gain a deeper self-knowledge, as well as uncover your partner’s family sins and, in this way, help to heal one another. The result: The Other becomes the Beloved, the cherished soul with whom you share your life.

  By attending to the art of communication, you can learn to reduce the blows in Turkish that leave you feeling wounded and scared of one another. And by using engagement as a time in which to explore your differences and shift the loyalties of your soul, you can move toward the shadow marriage, vowing to care for one another’s deepest needs.

  Finally, by honoring the Third Body, you can nurture the soul of the relationship, which in turn nurtures you. Like the mythic Queen Penelope, you can trust that your love will endure.

  These skills can also be applied to friendship, which is the topic of the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHADOWS AMONG FRIENDS: ENVY, ANGER, AND BETRAYAL

  I am as a spirit who has dwelt

  Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt

  His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known

  The inmost converse of his soul, the tone

  Unheard but in the silence of his blood,

  When all the pulses in their multitude

  Image the trembling calm of summer seas.

  I have unlocked the golden melodies

  of his deep soul, as with a master key,

  and loosened them and bathed myself therein—

  Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist

  Clothing his wings with lightning.

  —PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  The shadow lurks like an incredible hulk behind our dearest friends. At one moment, we may feel as if we have found an eternal ally, one who will go the distance at our side. We imagine that we are no longer alone but accompanied by a like-minded twin. We understand him or her without effort; we feel understood in return. We can speak to our friend as if we are speaking to ourselves.

  Then, in a moment of shock and disbelief, we feel betrayed: We turn our heads and see, instead of a trusty comrade, a gossip or, worse, a liar, who tells our secrets to an unknown other; a seductive vamp, who allures a romantic partner; a cheater, who gets away with something illicit or illegal; a racist, whose bigoted, parochial attitudes disgust us. In effect, we see, instead of a friend, an enemy, and we fall from grace, our innocence spoiled, our love rent. The warm openness of friendship turns cold and contracts, leaving only feelings of disappointment, anger, resentment, even betrayal. We step onto a roller-coaster ride, making critical, hurtful comments, not knowing whether we will still have a friend at the end of the line.

  At those times we may come to see that our fantasy image of friend, like the image of family or the image of the Beloved romantic partner, compels us to long for the ideal friend, the archetypal friend. We imagine an end to loneliness, a communion of souls, a joint destiny. We recall archaic rituals of blood pacts in which each person wounds him or herself, bleeds into a cup of liquid, and consumes the other’s drink. Sacredly bound to our friend, the betrayal becomes even more potent: The betrayer carries the blood of the betrayed.

  This archetypal image of the loyal friend carries multiple meanings of soul and shadow. Eros, god of relatedness, dwells here. He pulls us together, arousing empathy, admiration, even adoration; at times, he adds sexual desire to the mix. The fear of sexualized Eros among friends hinders intimacy between heterosexual men; they bear the collective wound of homophobia in their individual friendships. Heterosexual women typically have more permission to exchange physical and emotional tenderness, kissing one another and crying together; however, they, too, may suff
er the sexual shadow in their affections for each other.

  Typically, then, unlike a romantic partner, a friend is not a sexual partner, although the bond may arouse fearful erotic feelings. Unlike a parent, a friend is not a caretaker, although the bond may arouse uncomfortable feelings of mothering, dependency, and abandonment. Unlike a sibling, a friend is not typically rivalrous, although the bond may arouse shadowy feelings of competition, envy, and jealousy.

  Instead, a friend offers us a place to feel special; a friend permits our authentic specialness to be seen. For many people, to feel special is forbidden because it leads to arrogance or hubris, the sin of pride. To feel special is dangerous because it means to stand out, to be separate from others, to be the object of envy or hatred. But it is only when our specialness is tied to ego that it looks like hubris or self-centeredness to others or feels uncomfortable to ourselves; it is inauthentic specialness. On the other hand, our unique specialness at the level of soul is honored by a friend, who can see infinity in our particularity.

  We attempt in this chapter to reimagine friendship and to revalue the specialness of the soul friend. We explore friendship based on affinity and friendship based on otherness. And we suggest that every friendship, at some point, offers an opportunity for shadow-work, an opportunity for widening the range of our own self-acceptance and deepening the quality of our own capacity for forgiveness.