The world has changed out of sight over the past 50 to 100 years. The changes have been evident in a number of areas--science, economics, politics, communication, and lifestyle.

Marriage

One area in which the lives of ordinary people have been impacted by these changes is that of courtship and marriage.

In this area we are confronted by a paradox. While more marriages appear to be failing, people are still opting for marriage, or a less-formal substitute that is scarcely distinguishable from marriage. Many who are divorcing are choosing to remarry. Marriage retains its fascination.

Divorce

One of the reasons why more marriages are being dissolved than was the case before the 1970's is that separation and divorce are more readily available than they were for our parents and grandparents. Before the introduction of the Family Law Act in 1975, divorcing spouses needed to fabricate evidence of adultery, if none was available, in order to prove fault. Current laws governing marriage and divorce make it much easier for couples to sever the legal bond that [251] binds them if the marriage is not working out. Furthermore, those who divorce do not have to endure the level of social ostracism that was the norm prior to the sexual revolution of the 1960's, when divorcees would forfeit the goodwill of their families and neighbours.

Furthermore, the community, enjoying a higher level of affluence, is able to provide pensions for single parents. This measure has been supplemented by tighter enforcement of maintenance orders.

Hormones

Hormonal energies are fuelling both elements of the paradox, the desire to bond and the desire to be free, free to enter into a relationship with someone else.

Evolutionary Biology

Biological imperatives, built into the bodymind, are potent factors in our choices and goals. These imperatives incline men to seek out healthy, responsible women in whom to plant their genes, and women to select men with strong genes, who will be adequate providers.

These motivations are not conscious. Nevertheless, they are the means through which the superorganism, the human species, perpetuates itself. We are its unwitting pawns, and are rewarded for our innocent compliance with delusions of love and the nectar of sex. This process has not been extinguished by the feminisation of men and the masculinisation of women. [252]

Adhesive

Given this persisting preference for marriage, over against singleness, is there anything that will promote permanency in our relationships? Is there a superglue?

Romance

For countless millennia, the family was the basic economic unit, and furnished space within which procreation could occur, and the young could be nourished and socialised. The family unit provided basic necessities for its members at a time when life expectancy was limited.

The notion that love and marriage belong together was a late development. This is not to say that couples did not share moments of intimacy. However, patterns, or illusions of intimacy, that we associate with the nuclear family, were rare in large, extended families. To argue that love matches have always been the norm is to read back into history patterns of thought largely confined to the 20th century.

The concept of romantic love emerged in twelfth century France. It involved knightly honour and damsels in distress. Love, in the romantic sense, was not associated with marriage, but with adulterous liaisons outsider marriage. These relationships were rarely consummated, as the woman was usually beyond reach, imprisoned by her husband in a castle.

Romantic love was a matter of the heart, not of the genitals. It expressed genital yearning, rather than genital consummation. It was associated with unrequited longing. In fact, the longing needed to remain unfulfilled for the illusion of happiness to be maintained. [253]

The story of Tristan and Isolde illustrates the main features of romantic love. In this Celtic myth, Tristan, a nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, after being cured of a wound by the beautiful Isolde, is dispatched by his uncle to Ireland to make suit on the king's behalf. Succeeding in his mission, through slaying a dragon that was devastating the country, Tristan sets out with Isolde by ship for Cornwall. While at sea, they mistakenly drink a love potion prepared by Isolde's mother for King Mark, and fall hopelessly in love. While they remain loyal to the king, they cannot escape their passion for each other, with its exaggerated yearning. After facing many dangers, they die tragically.

This story highlights the fact that romantic love is a powerful aphrodisiac, often leading to distress and tragedy. In romantic love, feelings are exaggerated and judgment seduced.

The concept of romantic love, over time, had an impact on people's attitude towards marriage. It was felt that if a couple fell in love they should marry. People should marry for love and should expect to remain in love throughout the duration of the marriage. Falling out of love was justification for adultery, or for leaving a marriage.

Projection

Romantic love is a notoriously insecure basis for marriage, as it represents little more than an exercise in mutual projection.

There is much that we don't know about ourselves. We have undeveloped potential of which we are scarcely aware. This potential includes contrasexual characteristics, the development of which is discouraged by many societies, [254] whose view is that men should be men and women should be women.

The fact that the feminine side of men, and the masculine side of women, remains largely undeveloped, means that we seek this undeveloped element in others. Men seek it in women and women in men. Men look for the missing part of themselves in women, and women look for the missing part of themselves in men. Men project their anima, or "feminine" side, onto women, and women project their animus, or "masculine" side, onto men.

This repressed part of the self is seductively alluring. There is a sense in which, when we fall in love, we fall in love, not with the flesh and blood person who carries our projection, but with the projection. We don't see the real person, but a fantasy we have unwittingly created.

Falling in love is an exercise in mutual projection. It is an enmeshment of undeveloped contrasexual elements in the two parties. It is fuelled by hormonal energies, and, on occasions, by conflicted energies in the unconscious. Couples are sometimes attracted to each other, not only by hormonal energy and mutual projection, but also by unhealthy pathologies.

While infatuation, or the experience of being in love, can lead to the negotiation of a more mature relationship, it is, in itself, a perilously insecure basis for marriage.

Sex

The sexual revolution of the 1960s had a profound impact on our perception of marriage. Not only did it legitimise discussion of sex and facilitate divorce, it also led many to [255] believe that good sex was the cement that kept marriages together. Sex replaced romance as the relational superglue.

Furthermore, if you were not having good sex with your partner, if they were not satisfying you, you were justified in seeking satisfaction elsewhere. This attitude influenced both men and women, reaching a crescendo in the 1980's.

Differences

It is generally recognised that men and women have different expectations of sex.

Men, who have twenty times more testosterone than women, are more interested in sex than in relationships. Men, who seek intimacy through sex, will romance a woman to get her into bed.

For most women, the relationship, rather than the sex, is primary. It they feel the man is genuinely engaging them relationally, and they are open to the possibility of a sexual encounter, they will willingly engage in love-making.

The difference between men and women should not be taken to suggest that women are less governed by their hormones than men. The fact that a woman's receptivity will be influenced by her menstrual cycle is evidence of the role hormones play in the sexual ritual. What it does indicate, however, is that men and women are fuelled by different hormonal concoctions.

It is often argued that men are more concerned with agency, and women with communion. Their different sexual responses highlight this distinction. [256]

For men, the sexual drive is so strong that it blinkers them to the physiological and psychological dynamics of the process. Many will later realise, having committed themselves, that they are locked into a mismatch.

Women, who were more likely to be drawn into liaisons on the basis of relational cues, can also misread the signals. At a time when young women are having difficulty negotiating relationships with their parents, they may regard the young man who has taken the fancy as a saviour, who will rescue them from their distress. It is also likely that they will be drawn to what they perceive as the young man's strength. This strength, however, may be little more than a combination of convicted energy deriving from pathological elements in his personality, and a powerful sex drive.

Men and women are inclined to read their expectations into the behaviour of their partners. Men see women having the same degree of interest in the sexual side of marriage as they do, while women erroneous conclude that men are primarily interested in the relationship. While there is an element of caricature and stereotyping in these observations, most would agree that they are generally accurate.

A Connection

While I have dealt separately with romance and sex, I am not suggesting that the two energies are unconnected. Our hormones, the source of their sexual energy, fuel the phenomenon we talk about as "falling in love". Infatuation is one of the early indicators that our hormones have kicked in. On the other hand, romance, a psychological structure involving interlocking projections, is the lens through which our sexual energies are directed, at least in the initial stages. [257]

The dynamics of "falling in love" is more complex than this brief description might suggest.

Physiologically it involves hormonal responses affecting the whole body, as well as complex neuronal responses within the brain. A filtering process is involved in this response. When we kiss, for example, our bodies, quite unknown to us, will analyse the fluid to test for physical compatibility, and evidence of medical pathologies.

The way these physiological dynamics are experienced, from the inside, in terms of the experience of infatuation, also has to be taken into account.

Furthermore, those experiencing this heightened state of awareness are predisposed towards having just such an experience because of cultural expectations that are reinforced by the media. It could also be argued that the circles in which we mix, the social systems in which we are caught up, will significantly influence our choice of potential partners. Sociologists argue, for example, that it is only when the majority of social indicators--class, race, family background, interests--are positive that we allow ourselves to fall in love.¹²⁷

Caution

How do we approach this cluster of dynamic elements? How can we ensure that our partnerships, our marriages, have the greatest chance of succeeding?

First of all, it is important for us to acknowledge that sexual attraction is part of a broader evolutionary dynamic. It is nature's way of perpetuating the species. The sexual attraction men and women feel for each other, and the associated experience of transcendence, or euphoria, is not [258] something we can easily turn on or off. We are seduced by this dynamic, in spite of the fact that we may be theoretically aware of just such a process. What sometimes happens is that we readily recognise what is happening to others, while remaining blind to what is happening to us. Nevertheless, awareness of the fact that the human species, as a superorganism, is using us to replicate itself, and ensure its survival, should caution us against losing ourselves wholly in the process.

It is also important for us to recognise that there are few who enjoy happy, fulfilling relationships. Of course, it is always possible to convince ourselves that our potential partnership, because of the intensity of our feelings for each other, will prove successful. While it is important to adopt a positive attitude awards possibilities latent in a relationship, it is also necessary to balance this optimism with a reasonable degree of realism.

Cultural Expectations

We should also take account of the strength of cultural expectations.

It is assumed, in Western society, that it is love matches that last. If, by "love matches", we are referring to couples who are in the grip of romantic love, then, as has been argued, this expectation is more likely based on fantasy, than reality. Infatuation is ephemeral, and, once we begin identifying the person beneath the illusion, we may discover that what initially attracted us to them is the very thing that now infuriates us.

Of course, it is possible to maintain a belief in romantic love, but only if we are willing to engage with a succession of partners. This is hardly to be recommended, because, as we [259] lurch from partner to partner, in a desperate attempt to maintain ourselves in a state of infatuation, we soon discover that the quality of the experience diminishes in direct proportion to the number of relationships we negotiate.

Another of the cultural expectations that disappoints is the notion that relationships help complete us, that the other person will complement us by supplying what we lack. The reality is that completeness, or wholeness, result from developing our potential, working on those aspects of ourselves that are deficient, rather than through our dependence on others, who possess characteristics we lack. If we manage to survive in a relationship, where the other person carries our undeveloped capacities, it will not be long before we begin hating them for the power they have over us, a power we have given them.

Recognition of the fact that we will be unlikely to be aware of what is happening to us in romantic engagements should caution us. It should also ensure that we will not be too hard on ourselves when we later review this phase in our journey. In retrospect, it may well be hard for us to resist the conclusion that marriage is a lottery, in which few walk off with prizes.

Relationships

In working on the relationship, it is important that both parties agree together on the values to be striven for in the relationship. Experience has led to the identification of a range of critical values. These include companionship, mutual respect, mutual trust, and the negotiation of a balance between intimacy and distance that respects the needs of both partners for closeness and personal space. [260]

Many partnerships flounder because they are based on the tacit assumption that the other person needs to change to make my life more bearable. Partnerships have a greater chance of success if each of the partners makes a commitment, not to submerge their identity in the other, or to capitulate to the other, but to work at changing themselves so that the change will advantage the other.

Personal Development

The greatest contribution we can make to the enrichment of a relationship is to commit ourselves to working on ourselves, on our personal development. On rare occasions, this may take one of the partners out of the relationship.

Nevertheless, it remains true that, the more we are in touch with ourselves, the better able we will be to enable the other person to be themselves. The more we will respect their integrity, and the less likely we will be to expect them to meet our unfulfilled psychological needs.

How do we measure this development?

Personal maturity can be gauged by the extent of our ability to observe and understand ourselves. This ability to distance ourselves from ourselves means that we will not take ourselves so seriously, we will not be overly defensive, nor will we be desperate to control situations. Our maturity will also be gauged by our ability to give of ourselves, to give of ourselves in a way that is not manipulative. It is also measured by our ability to love, to manifest a gentle, non-cloying affection, and to place the interests of the other person first. [261]

Summary

The more we are aware that marriages, or committed partnerships, are no instant heaven, but a place of soul-making, the more likely it will be that they will prove successful. When regarded in this light, marriage, or a permanent partnership, will provide us with an opportunity to develop, and will furnish an environment that will encourage and facilitate development in our partner and our children. Those entering a relationship with this attitude increase their capacity for relating to others, as well as increasing the scope of their heart hospitality. [262]

[ROI 249-262]