Chapter 17 Part 1
Alone Together
Before
Tomme, our protagonist in the Emerald Forest, could marry, he had to
go through initiation. His indigenous culture took marriage too
seriously to let immature boys marry. As Tomme emerges, finally,
from a deathly dunk in their river of life, his father as elder
yells, "The boy is dead. The man is born." Tomme is now ready to
marry.
Most of
us, unlike Tomme, enter into a committed relationship before we
realize that we haven't done the emotional work of maturing. We find
out after commitment that the initiatory work of finding our calling
and true identity still needs to be done. Since we are not in an
elder culture, we usually discover this more toward mid-life, if we
find it at all. I mentioned in a previous chapter the dilemma of
becoming initiated while within a committed relationship. I want to
talk more fully in this chapter about the complexity of dealing with
that dilemma.
Most of
us look at relationship as a cure for our loneliness, a salve for
our lonely hurts. To most, loneliness is the symptom of a disease.
The disease is aloneness. The cure is romantic connectedness.
Psychologically, many of us see a committed relationship as life's
goal and the cure for diseased aloneness. Certainly the
entertainment media portray the romantic love relationship as the
focus of life.
For
example, many people still feel embarrassed to sit alone at a movie
theater, haunted by the romantic ideals in the very movies they wish
to see. A romantic relationship seems the obvious cure for this
disease. Anyone who suffers from the disease is assumed to be a
failure, not having what it takes in the most important endeavor of
life. A man who has this magic relationship is assumed to be
initiated, automatically reaching manhood, just as the damsel brings
manhood to her knight. This relationship then relieves a man of the
fear and challenge of facing his initiatory aloneness.
A
Second Chance
Most men
who come to counseling have been ambushed by strong feelings they
never knew they had. The relationship that they thought would give
them happiness has betrayed them. Separation, or the threat of
separation, has triggered the initiatory archetype inside. Buried
feelings of abandonment rush to the surface, where they erupt into
consciousness. The boy is being yanked from the village in an
initiatory movement, away from nurturing mothers. He is overwhelmed
by being thrown into the wilderness alone. His aloneness is
frightful and shocking. The initiatory depression is overwhelming.
It is
entirely understandable that most men in this extreme condition will
instinctively look back, pulled by regressive forces. Many a man
will feel a deep nostalgia for the very relationship that bored him
the month before. A man will feel the tenderest feelings for a woman
he has been angry at for years. In his desperation, he will look at
this disintegrating relationship the same way the boy looks
longingly back at the village.
Some men
get a chance to go back to a separated relationship. Others have the
relationship permanently taken away. Most yearn for a second chance.
If a man who is given another chance will not discard the memory of
his initiatory terror, he can start to take his initiation
seriously. He can use the relationship to further his growth and the
growth of his partner. A committed relationship can be part of a
path to initiation and maturity. However, this path still involves
all the initiatory pain and loneliness of the solitary man.
The
realization that relationship is not a shortcut to happiness is one
of the first realizations of the initiatory path of relationship. It
is also one of the hardest initiatory losses to face. Adolph
Guggenbuhl-Craig, a Jungian psychiatrist, speaks to this issue when
talking of the purpose of marriage. In his book Marriage, Dead or
Alive, he says that "the central issue in marriage is not
well-being or happiness; it is ...salvation." By salvation he means
the sense of wholeness and maturity that comes from the inner
journey.
Salvation is a good word to convey the soul work of the initiatory
path. If the reason for a committed relationship is indeed
initiatory, then a healthy commitment involves initiatory suffering,
not instant comfort and identity. If relationship is initiatory, the
initiatory suffering involves death and loss. The first, and perhaps
hardest loss, is the death of many of our romantic ideals of
relationship itself.
Probably
the hardest ideal for a man to lose is the assumption that the
romantic relationship, itself, will automatically and immediately
bring happiness and satisfaction. The right relationship is assumed
to cure all life's wrongs. The next hardest loss is the ideal that
the right relationship is a shortcut to manhood, and the path to
instant self-esteem.
If
Only She'd...
Our
cultural answer to the problem of an 'unhappy' marriage is to assume
there is something wrong with the relationship. Many reasons come to
mind. The timing was wrong. The two people are not suited for each
other. This was a case of mistaken identity. An uninitiated man will
often start fantasizing about another woman at the first signs of
deeper dissatisfaction in his present relationsip, feeling that the
right relationship should not be this much trouble.
Even if
a man feels he is with the right person, an uninitiated man will
assume that any problems lie with his partner. His partner obviously
doesn't understand or accept him. His partner has serious problems.
His partner is being irrational or hysterical. For whatever reasons,
the answer lies squarely in the other person's domain.
This is
the typical feeling in a marriage counseling situation. Usually each
member of the couple will feel that once his or her side is
understood the counselor will straighten out the partner. Each
partner is sure they are being unfairly treated. Each partner feels
the other has some serious problems. This is typical of thinking
before initiation. The uninitiated man will always look outside
himself for an answer. And he will always see the problem outside
himself.
If a man
continually feels that the problems are mostly with his partner, and
concentrates his energy on changing that partner, he is really
trapped in the village. For he will be unconsciously acting like the
spoiled boy looking for the right parent, really the mother, to
finally understand him and treat him right. He will also be stuck in
a fantasy of the perfect relationship. He will be stuck with the
notion that the right woman, in effect, can initiate him.
For most
men in our culture, a committed relationship is not an initiatory
path but a Grand Detour. It is a way to stay in the village while
seeming to be a mature and initiated man. Who can question a man who
is a 'good provider', having a good job and sharing his fortune with
his family? In our culture a committed relationship, especially
marriage, has become a pseudo-initiatory rite. It is shake-and-bake
manhood. It is a 'responsible' way to avoid the painful initiatory
path. Because of the lack of elder consciousness, our whole society
unconsciously believes this.
Mark
Gerzon underscores this theme when he talks of young men having sex
and getting married. He talks of young men asking "young women for
more than companionship, or sex, or marriage. They ask women to give
them what their culture could not-their manhood."
Separation
As I
have said before, often a man will come to some dim realization of
an initiatory need, beyond a relationship, at the time of a
relationship crisis. His 'normal' world has been taken away.
Sometimes his partner has withdrawn any positive feeling, possibly
talking about separation or divorce. She may say she no longer loves
him. Perhaps he has already been kicked out of the house. Or maybe
his partner has been indifferent for some time, with no blowups, yet
no ups at all.
Sometimes, the initiatory archetype has started to stimulate him
into realizing his need for inner fulfillment. The elder voice
within becomes more compelling. A man starts to change enough inside
to see his relationship differently. In other words, he has started
to look inside, while withdrawing regressive expectations from his
partner.
This is
where a man finds himself in a dilemma. The unhealed 6 year-old boy
in him, especially if the woman is separating, will go about trying
to please the partner, most often the wife, as a way of getting her
back. He will be frightened of mother separation and in need of
comfort. He will long for the village of his former life. He will be
desperate, and pull a man strongly in the wrong direction.
The
unhealed 10 year-old may not be so afraid of mother separation, but
more afraid of the social disapproval of the patriarchal father
voice. 'Responsible' men don't separate and leave their children or
their fortune. 'Responsible' men keep commitments. According to the
patriarchy, a 'responsible' man must play by the rules of duty, the
patriarchal mission that cannot see beyond the traditional father
role. He will not be able to bear society's disapproval if there is
separation for any reason. (He is also ripe for an affair as long as
he continues to support his family. The patriarchy actually winks at
this behavior, as long as a man is not caught.)
The
unhealed early adolescent, possibly the one having the affair, will
be looking for a friend, without the commitment and responsibility
of an exclusive relationship. He wants his freedom, yet he is not
yet ready to find the freedom that only initiation can bring. He
sees the possibilities of commitment, yet he is missing the
emotional tools of manhood. He also has not had his vision yet of
what his manhood will be. He is not yet ready for true emotional
commitment, yet he is still in a committed place. He will be
terribly afraid of any new commitment, yet he will constantly be in
some relationship, fearing initiatory aloneness.
On the
other side of the dilemma, the emerging man, who is now in the older
adolescent stage, starts hearing an insistent elder voice of fuller
consciousness. This voice speaks of the need for a whole new way to
relate to the world. The voice talks of an answer within himself
beyond the patriarchal responsibility of the village. This new
consciousness also beckons to a new way of being in a relationship
that he used to call romantic.
When a
man listens to the elder voice he instantly realizes he is putting
all his relationships at risk, especially the committed relationship
he is in. This risk involves his need to reevaluate and reshape his
relationships in light of his new consciousness and emerging new
identity. He intuits he will be changed profoundly by initiation.
Like any initiate, he wonders if his relationships will survive
these changes. He wonders if he can bear the separation involved. He
wonders if his partner will stay loyal. He will start to experience
the terror of all new initiates, as he waits for the elder to
surprise him one very early morning.
The
elder voice tells him he must leave the old relationship, in some
ways, in order to really test his motivation and his commitment. It
also tells him that most of the reasons he has stayed in
relationship will no longer work. The voice starts to question the
reasons any man stays in a committed relationship. The uninitiated
man has only old, outdated answers. The initiate starts looking for
new ones.
Recontracting
Most of
the time when I do marriage or relationship counseling, I talk about
the need to recontract the relationship. Recontracting involves
reevaluating the expectations and assumptions that each partner has
of the other. The expectations and assumptions, the clauses of the
contract, are universally unconscious. They are assumptions that are
not verbalized or understood. Yet they affect every day of a
couple's life. One of the first steps in counseling is to try to
make these unconscious agreements conscious, in order to see if they
still fit the marriage.
Tim and
Beatrice were married for 24 years. This was Tim's first marriage.
Beatrice was married before to a man who was a narcissist, a
perpetual boy. Beatrice's first husband did not support the family
well, drank a lot, and was generally looking for the world, in the
form of Beatrice, to take care of him. He finally left Beatrice for
another mother object after Beatrice got tired of that role.
Beatrice realized later that she fell into the same role with her
first husband that she had with her father.
Beatrice
came from a poor family. Her father was depressed most of his life,
seriously enough that he could not keep significant jobs. He settled
into the life of a semi-invalid, expecting Beatrice and her mother
to take over the family responsibilities. Beatrice felt, from a very
young age, the overwhelming burden of mothering a depressed,
hopeless man. She had lost her own adolescence, just like the
adolescent boys I have mentioned.
After
her father and her first husband, Beatrice swore she would never
take care of another man again. She yearned to dance through life
with a partner who could lead their dance well. Then Beatrice met
Tim. Tim was never married. He came from a well-to-do family with a
hard-driving, alcoholic, successful businessman for a father. He had
good breeding, he could take care of her, and he could dance.
When Tim
first started dating Beatrice, she was in bad straits financially,
with two small children. Tim had lots of practice rescuing the
needy. He had been called upon often by his tearful mother to search
for his father, who was drunk in some desolate bar.
Tim
suffered unknowingly from a terrible father wound. His father had
little time for him, yet had high expectations for Tim's success.
Tim's father rarely taught Tim the skills that he would need to gain
that success. As a result Tim had a very strong negative father
voice, the Vader voice, reminding him of strong father expectations
and Tim's many personal shortfalls.
Tim's
mother was never able to do much more than collude with her husband
in his expectations and treatment. Yet she looked to Tim for the
emotional warmth she missed from her husband and other children.
Tim's mother had expectations and hopes for Tim, too. She needed a
hero in her life that really loved her. Tim unknowingly became that
hero. He became another white knight, unseating his father,
following the hero role toward the illusion of manhood.
Tim
followed his father voice as much as he could by getting a college
degree and securing a mid-level management position. He also
followed his father voice by getting a professional job, yet never
being a big success. He actually honored his father in his failure,
keeping both expectations and labeled shortcomings.
When Tim
met Beatrice, both were smitten. Both found a fantasy partner. Both
also sealed an unrealized contract at the time of the marriage. The
contract read as follows: Jim would be responsible and take care of
Beatrice financially and socially, introducing her to the dance of
the upper middle class. In return, Beatrice would admire and respect
Tim, making him feel like the successful and mature man Tim wanted
to be. The contract also read that she would be 'understanding' of
him and he would be protective of her. Understanding included her
acceptance of a nervous problem he had. Protection included
financing her social life. Tim could continue to be a hero in his
woman's eyes, whille Beatrice was finally resuced.
Problems
arose at mid-life after many relatively happy years. Their children,
Beatrice's children from her first marriage, were grown, and
grandchildren were on the way. Beatrice had more time to socialize,
moving in higher and higher circles, learning to navigate on her
own. However, Tim was finding the hero role quite uncomfortable. Tim
never really enjoyed Beatrice's circle of well-to-do friends. They
reminded him of his critical father's world. He found himself less
willing to accompany his wife in those circles. He also found
himself less willing to work an executive job which he found less
and less satisfying, especially for a boss of the Vader philosophy
of management.
By this
time he was in counseling for his dissatisfaction. His elder voice
had started to question his life assumptions and his ideas of
success. As second father, I tried to support him in his strengths
and counter his insidious patriarchal voice. I supported him in
starting to recognize and separate from his father's script. He
started considering quitting his job and starting over. He started
listening to voices within. He started to think seriously of taking
risks on his own. He was starting on an initiatory path.
When he
broached the subject of quitting, he felt a deep betrayal. Beatrice
became very anxious and upset. She felt he was taking away the
lifestyle they both somehow agreed upon. She was not willing to risk
a change. But most of all, she was frightened of having to again
take care of an 'irresponsible' man, out of a job, who was supposed
to take care of her.
Tim, in
turn, felt abandoned by Beatrice. He felt she didn't love him for
who he was, but for what he could get her. He felt his worth to her
was measured in terms of his net worth. He no longer felt her
understanding and resented her respect. He didn't have the
'unconditional love' he thought he should have. He felt that
Beatrice's love was dependent on his job and success, just like he
felt his father's love was.
Tim
started to resent the conditions of their unconscious contract
without knowing how he originally negotiated it. Neither member of
the couple realized that the old contract was falling apart. This
contract disintegration caused the greatest of stress for both.
Neither realized that they were at a crucial point in the marriage.
They were at an initiatory crossroad, one of several that modern
marriages inevitably go through.
Recontracting would involve a great deal of initiatory pain for each
one. Tim would have to give up the boyish need for unconditional
love from a woman. He would have to continue separating from his
needs for manhood through a woman's validation, and self-esteem
through being a hero. he would have to face his life choices in the
context of initiatroy aloneness.
Beatrice
would need to take more responsibility for her own lifestyle. She
would have to face her fears of not being taken care of and
protected. She would have to face her neurotic pain, by refusing to
take responsibilty for a depressed, out-of-work man, while working
to heal the trauma of her adolescence. She would need to realize
that no man or woman can protect her from her initiatory pain.
The
couple had to first realize and accept that an unconscious contract
existed between them. Then they had to find out which clauses they
could live with, and which fears of change they could handle. They
both had to face their own initiatory pain, as all partners in any
realtionship must. I will talk of Tim's decisions and direction in a
following chapter.
Householders
Most
relationships in our culture were originally contracted with
insufficient information and limited self-awareness. In other words,
there was not the maturity needed to follow through on a healthy
commitment. Nor was there sufficient information about the identity
of the partner the make a healthy decision. Most decisions for
relationship are made in the honeymoon phase of a relationship,
which is always a regressed place. From the male perspective, the
boy's fantasies and dreams are projected onto the loved one. So the
boy, not the man, ends up choosing a mate. Psychologically, the
child ends up making the adult decision.
Sometimes the original contract, though childlike and unconscious,
meets the immediate needs of the couple. It did for Tim and
Beatrice. For example, in most traditional marriages each member of
the couple takes a stereotypical role. The woman becomes primarily a
mother, both to the children and to the man, even though she might
have a job. A man becomes the father, both to the children and the
woman. The couple relates as mother and father, rarely as husband
and wife. In this arrangement, the boy acts out his father script
and his masculine persona while getting his mother needs met. The
girl becomes a mother, while getting her father needs met by a
protector/provider.
This
contract works well during the family, or what I call householder,
stage. At least it works enough to keep the relationship fairly
intact. As long as neither grows or regresses significantly, the
marriage endures. These are the traditional marriages that have
worked by society's standards for thousands of years. This is the
patriarchal marriage, and still the dominant model of marriage in
our society.
In the
case of a working patriarchal marriage, the couple is
psychologically ready to make a lifestage commitment, not a lifetime
commitment. For the lifestage of householding and family building,
each partner is clear about the expectations of the contract and has
the emotional capability of following through. The couple can often
accomplish one life stage together. They can keep their commitment
because of clear expectations going in. Their contract is clear
because it is the model contract of the day. And up to about 100
years ago, this was the type of marriage that was the model of a
total committed relationship.
The
householder stage is still the lifestage most people are taught to
accomplish. The boy in need of following a father, and of being a
father, reaches patriarchal manhood in this stage. Marriage is seen
as initiatory by going through this stage. Job success is the most
important male accomplishment in negotiating this stage.
By the
time most men were at the end of this stage, they were into old age,
or dead. In this case the traditional adult lifetime, and marriage
time, spanned two life stages, householdership and old age. In very
few marriages did both members of the couple reach the end of the
householder stage together. Many women died in childbirth, or from
complications of childbirth. Men often died in war or from overwork.
The
traditional marriage worked for centuries for the patriarchal man.
Men lived and died within the father paradigm, finding success with
being a provider to wife and children. Men also enjoyed whatever
pleasure there was in having social and political control in the
marketplace. Success had little to do with finding emotional
intimacy with a partner. There was no vibrant next stage of married
life after the householder one.
The
negative side of this paradigm, today, is the pseudo-initiation that
the patriarchy promises. The illusion of manhhod is no substitute
for manhood itself. The positive side of the paradigm is that in our
culture this is the time a man can get father needs met, and ego
strengthened, by being a good father. During this time a man can
unconsciously father himself and, thus, provide a foundation for the
next initiatory step. He, sometimes with the help of other fathers,
can ready himself for the elder's call.
The
patriarchal marriage still works for many couples today through the
householder stage. This is true even if it is a second marriage, as
it was with Tim and Beatrice. Then something new happens. The
marriage becomes very fragile and often falls apart, often at the
time when the youngest child reaches adolescence. The something new
is modern midlife. The waning time of householdership is the time a
man reaches midlife instead of death. Marriage then often loses its
patriarchal meaning to a man. The man is no longer an active father.
He is often exhausted or disillusioned by his provider role.
Patriarchal motivation is lost. The illusion of manhood starts to
become clear.
The
marriage mother also loses her attractiveness as life partner.
Neither he nor his children need a mother as much. Even the young
adolescent can become tired of female fantasies, either through
pornography or affairs or a rich masturbatory fanatsy life.
This is
the time the elder voice starts more insistent questioning. The
existing marraige contract starts losing its meaning on many levels.
The marriage and the man are at the crossroad between village and
wilderness.
Larry Pesavento ©2005
