Love & the Long Body

The lament, "He isn't at all like the person he used to be when I married him..." Or, "She's so different from what I remembered when we were first dating!"- has become so commonplace and is the butt of so many jokes that one scarcely stops anymore to ask the obvious question: Is that really true? Are people so chameleon-like that they actually change their whole personality from one year to the next?

In most cases the answer is obviously no. The husband, wife, partner has not really morphed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. It is your perception of the person that has changed so dramatically. The perception leading to this particular complaint is one of the chief causes instigating divorce. It may therefore be instructive to explore the reasons that give rise to such a common mystery.

The short answer lies in the phrase "romantic projection" and the loss of that projection – the slipping of the mask on Mr. Right; the sliding off the pedestal of Ms. Perfect – and the subsequent disillusionment and disappointment. But just how does that happen? If we shed light into this dark and tangled wilderness it may bring some relief to those caught in the snares of bitterness, guilt, anger, and remorse.

If you have already gone through a divorce this insight may bring understanding and some sense of closure. If you are contemplating divorce, this recognition of the machinations of the psyche taking place inside yourself (intra-personal) and between both of you (inter-personal) as well as beyond both of you (trans-personal) may give a greater clarity to your decision-making.

Romantic projections are born in childhood. The poet was correct in saying "the child is father of the man." Our childhood drama sets the stage for the dramas that will be enacted by our future self. The scripts we create and the characters we conjure up later in life are all in service to the psychological puzzles left over from childhood. As soon as one puzzle is solved another steps in to take its place. Puzzles inherited from mother or father or grandparents will come seeking the resolution on the later stages of our life.

Those who think they can avoid this fate by moving to a new country, entering an entirely different line of work, marrying someone they think is completely different from dear old dad, etc. are often jolted out of their smugness by suddenly recognizing the patterns of childhood repeating themselves perfectly – with a different backdrop, in different costume, or in a different language – but the same essential story.

Our childhood story is our inheritance and it is a treasure not a burden. Even stories of tragedy are treasures because each new iteration of the story gives the characters another chance to experience the depth of emotions, revisit the critical choices, mull over the ethical implications, so that the script becomes refined each time a new generation takes hold of it.

The privilege of each individual is to accept the challenge of editing the ever-changing family script and adding his or her touch before handing it over to those who come after. The accumulation of sacred energy around this creative process of ancestors and descendants is what the Native Americans call "the Long Body."

Romantic projection is one of the most effective devices the psyche has devised to ensure that you are attracted to the people who will fit into your script. Reciprocated romantic attraction means that both of you are ideally suited to take up personae dramatis in each other's dramas.

Thus, the moment you realize that your wife is strangely and uncomfortably like your mother is actually a testimony to the unerring cleverness of your psyche in drawing someone who can help bring resolution or new dimensions to that whole relationship.

Here is how romantic projection works:

Someone comes into your life and you think you see them for who they really are. But no, you see them as you really are. That is, your perceptions are filtered by early experiences that have left judgments about complicated personality characteristics. You're not aware of these judgments; they are below consciousness, but become activated when you meet someone who has a sufficient trace element of one of those personality characteristics such that you can "hang a projection" on that person. This is what makes them attractive to you.

Consciously you're saying to yourself, "I am attracted to this person because he is strong and resolute and generous, and therefore will not abandon me the way my father abandoned my mother when I was a child." Your psyche, on the other hand, is already gleefully getting out the pen and paper for a new draft of the script in which Mr. Perfect hits hard times, stops paying the bills, takes to drink and runs out on you and the children, perfectly re-creating your childhood scenario - because this time around the soul wants to see if you'll play it differently than your mother did. This time around you may learn a different way to take care of yourself and then bond with your mother through compassion and learn forgiveness by developing the long neglected spiritual side of the family.

Along the way you begin to discover all sorts of abandonment issues in the family and the coping strategies developed by women who grew stronger and more assured with each generation until the one came who was strong enough to reach for forgiveness and arrive at gratitude and then move beyond that to recognize the unconscious fantasies of the women in her lineage that placed all the men on a high pedestal where they were meant to fail and fall so that the women could learn courage and self-respect; so that the women could learn what it is to be equal in discipline, responsibility, capability, ambition, power, satisfaction; so that a woman - having reach this place - might then attract a man who had failed and fallen so many times that he had learned to redeem his inner feminine and grow slowly to a place where he could be powerful without being oppressive.

And so the script writing goes on with every generation who has the capacity to bring consciousness to the contents of the play, making a greater contribution to the positive transformation of the family drama.

Of course, as soon as the puzzle of woman's self sovereignty has been solved, the family moves to the next puzzle, which might be the balancing of intellect and emotion, or the exploration of artistic talent by "the chosen one," or the risk-versus-security puzzle, or the celebration of the individual versus emphasis on community, – or any one of an infinite number of fascinating scenarios which might take generations to play out with all of the unique facets from a particular place and time.

Cameo Appearances

We are all privileged to play important cameos in each other’s lives that move the story forward in some way. I like to imagine the "cast party" in the afterlife when everyone has a chance to congratulate each other on their stellar performances. The ex-wife assuring the husband who bullied and demeaned her that "…if you hadn't played the role of the jerk so well, I might not have had the righteous indignation that made me decide to go out and make something of myself, just to prove you wrong. So thank you. Well played!" And the ex-husband replies "I'm so grateful you walked out on me when you did. If I hadn't been forced to see how emotionally cold and shut down I’d become, I would never have found all the grief inside me or moved through it and discovered my capacity for forgiveness and actual joy."

And so, whether we see it or not we are all serving each other. And in serving each other we serve the families that we have been born into. And then serving those families we expand the horizons of our communities, our cities, our species, and our world. When life is apprehended as a school for the soul, there is nothing that cannot be turned into a valuable lesson. And there is no lesson, however banal, painful, or striking, that does not bless those around us. That is why it is so important to pay attention, and become aware of the bigger story in which we live and move.

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My Name Is . . . I am the Daughter of . . .

This poem, written in 2011, is a reflection of my own process of discovering how my individual life is rewriting the script of my family, the “long body” of which I am but a single animation:

My name is "Shirks the Yoke"

I am the daughter of "Carries the Cross"

Who is the daughter of "Wolf at the Door"

who is the daughter of "Woman's Destiny"

As it was, and is, and ever shall be…

Today I take the cloth so that I may topple altars.

I speak names in vain

And rage against the light.

The Mother of Mothers wanders

the shadowed passage of my heart’s home,

Whimpering in empty pantries,

Weeping in dry coal bins.

Lack is her constant companion;

Bare Necessity her only mate.

My luxury is called Choice -

Achieved by the mere fact of history's turning wheel,

And the labor of the hands and backs and aching

hearts of the mothers.

Will you see me, oh, mothers, if I turn to salute you now?

Garbed in freedom,

claiming motherhood and priesthood,

Solitude and sexuality,

Sitting still and making my way in the world?

I have dared my deeds, not just for my daughters,

But for you, Mother of Mothers,

Ground under Necessity's wheel –

You have carried me,

Now I will carry you.

I will give you a new name –

“Triumphant One.”

rda. 1/15/2001