Over the years, I’ve coached people in many different areas of life: creativity, writing books, awakening coaching, conscious masculinity. No area of life is more haunted by shattered dreams than intimate relationships.
Here’s how it goes.
Soon after we enter puberty, we start to develop crushes. It’s the first stages of ‘limerence.’ You can’t stop thinking about the object of your desire, you want to write letters, do everything together. That special someone appears to be almost mythical. Usually in early puberty, this is not primarily driven by lust, but more by a kind of gentle obsession.
Then, somewhere between teens and early twenties, we experience full blown “falling in love.” Often accompanied by the endorphins produced by having sex, we are in a state sometimes compared to madness. We have found complete, untainted perfection in human form. Every gesture, every word, sends shivers of excitement and intoxication through the whole body. We are on fire. All we want to do all day is write poems, send gifts and love notes. We are beyond any shadow of doubt convinced that this is the One.
Until it isn’t.
The crash from this kind of euphoria has driven many forlorn lovers to suicide, it’s so devastating. We feel betrayed, tricked, led along, manipulated. Now the One who was the answer to all our dreams has become our greatest source of pain and torture. If their affections are now redirected elsewhere, the torture becomes even worse, and has driven people to acts of violence, even to murder.
It’s not hard to see why falling in love has been defined as a psychological condition (termed ‘limerence’), and been given a very, very bad rap.
Somewhere in your twenties (or in some cases…never), an adjustment happens, and you ‘grow up.’ If those feelings return again, you dismiss them as ‘childish infatuation.’ You might go to a love addicts support group to get over your childish tendency to project perfection onto other human beings. Instead, you make the sensible choice: you marry your best friend from childhood, or a coworker who shares the same interests and hobbies. We’re compatible!! You settle down together into a functional and predictable arrangement of domestic routine. You might even have kids together, but other than that, many couples report that sex diminishes to a trickle.
By and large, this is the double bind that many people find themselves in around intimate relationships. Either the giddy rush of infatuation, falling in love, and amazing sex interspersed with periods of bitter disappointment, or the sexless compromise of domestic life.
Depressing, huh?
There is good news, however.
Evidenced by many research studies, we now know that couples who continue to unrealistically idealize each other actually thrive more than couples who try to stay realistic.
The Psychologist Sandra Murray, for example, conducted a series of studies in the 1990s that demonstrate that couples who unrealistically idealized their partners had a greater chance of marital stability and satisfaction over time. “Seeing a less-than-ideal partner as a reflection of one’s ideals predicted a certain level of protection against the corrosive effects of time,” she concluded. “People who initially idealized their partner the most experienced no decline in satisfaction.” Her studies also showed that the partner being idealized tended to thrive more and experienced greater satisfaction and security in the relationship.
Turns out that holding unrealistically high expectations for your relationship, and seeing your partner as a demigod, may be quite a good idea, as long as it is balanced with some realism about day-to-day activities.
Researchers like Lisa Neff and Ben Karney show that the key is to develop the capacity to idealize your partner in generalizations, but to be accurate in specifics. What does that look like?
Oh my God! When I see you gazing out at the view like that, I see such depth and wisdom in your eyes. And I know you’ve been a little, a bit out of sorts lately, and getting irritable with the kids. But it’s okay, love. It will pass.
When we were making love last night, it was so hot. There was a little window there when we paused, and we were just breathing together. You looked into my eyes, and I felt I saw the whole universe in your eyes. It was like meeting God. Oh, and by the way, don’t forget to take the Tums to work with you today. You were farting in the night, and it smelled really gross.
I love you so much. You’re so loving and kind. Your heart is completely pure, like an angel. Oh yeah, and don’t worry about chewing out that telemarketer. You were totally within your rights to call him a sleazy worm. He had it coming.
You’re so wise. I trust you so much. You’re really connected to your gut, and you make good decisions. Fundamentally, I’d trust you with my life. Yeah, and don’t worry about buying that dolphin-song powered AuraEnhancer™ on Instagram. We all get taken in sometimes. I’m sure it’s returnable.
You get the point. In a generalized way, you see your partner as an incarnation of the divine. In specifics, you’re not blind to the contractions, quirks, and mistakes, but you quickly let them go. Neff and Karnney’s research has been substantiated by such titans as John Gottman, Drs. Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, Terry Real, and others. We need to develop the capacity simultaneously for cherishing and for realism.
So, how does that connect back to what we talked about at the beginning: the seemingly impossible choice between falling in love and then crashing on the rocks, or settling for sensible domesticity? You can have both. You need to have both.
Can you remember the time when you fell in love the deepest? Wasn’t it not just the one you were infatuated with that looked beautiful? Didn’t the colors of the blossoms become brighter too? Didn’t the perfume of the jasmine seem even more intoxicating? Didn’t every song on the radio bring you to tears? Didn’t you find it easier to forgive other people, to see the best in everyone? You didn’t just fall in love with John or with Jane. You were in the vibration of Love itself. From a Taoist perspective, the heart energy was fully activated. You weren’t exactly in a state of delusion; you were seeing things clearly. You were temporarily able to see through the multiple layers of broken chaos in every moving thing, all the way into the hidden beauty.
There’s a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in,
sings Leonard Cohen.
Stan Tatkin helps us to understand this in neurological terms. What we experience when we fall in love is not exactly “delusion.” It’s just selective vision, a partial truth. You are tuning out all the flaws and blemishes, and focusing attention on the deep innocence and beauty underneath. The brain is running on an uptake of dopamine (associated with novelty) and noradrenaline (excitement and danger) and a drop in serotonin. The nervous system is in a state of sympathetic arousal dominance.
You need regular access to this way of seeing things, or life will turn gray, and you’ll become depressed. You need to keep the channels open to see the deep beauty underlying all things.
The sensible decisions we make to settle down with someone compatible are equally valid, and also partial. Tatkin would tell you that this state is characterized by the restoration of serotonin, a reduction in dopamine and pleasure-based endorphins, along with an uptake of GABA. Your nervous system returns to ventral vagal dominance. You feel safe, secure, and you can get things done with ease. You equally need this dimension to be able to see yourself and your partner with compassionate realism: understanding, empathy, and forgiveness.
In The Tao of Deep Intimacy, my new book coming out soon, I make the distinction between Essence-to-Essence meeting and the play of subpersonalities. Essence is that unique expression in each person which is directly connected to the infinite source of all things. It’s relaxed, open, free, and innocent. It’s often luminous in pre-verbal babies, dogs and cats, and you may tap into Essence in peaks of sexual ecstasy, or with substances like MDMA. The play of personalities is what we are mostly caught up with and which can get us in trouble. Terry Real calls this “The adaptive strategies of the wounded child:” ways we’ve learned to navigate the world and numb unresolved pain, habits like criticism, control, withholding. and pulling away. A sustainable relationship needs adoration of Essence, and realism and compassion for adaptive strategies.
When we can activate both of these currents simultaneously in relationship: adoration in the general and accuracy in the specific, we stand a good chance of creating a relationship which is completely fulfilling and leaves nothing more to be desired.
