“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu
Beyond the institution
The institution of marriage, as it is today, is simply no longer a deep and vast enough container for many evolving humans. Statistics show that more than 50% of marriages end in having a simple divorce agreement, and 50-80% of people cheat on their partners whom they love. We can choose to see this as a tragedy or come to understand what the statistics are reflecting back to us about how we partner with each other. You may read about “how to protect yourself in a divorce against wife” if you are going through the process of separation.
For starters, we now know that there are actually more than two clear-cut genders, and the world has been grappling with antiquated thinking about that lately and, thankfully, making progress in the direction of love.
All committed intimate partnerships offer us an opportunity to delve deeply into the potent quality of devotion, which no institution can enforce. Rather, it is an offering of the soul from one person to another that transcends all categories, differences, and conditioning.
The Vow
The vow that two people take when they marry is sacred, and equally so is the vow to the Self. As much as I loved my former husband, we had very different expectations about loving. I look back now and realize how creative we became in our attempt to “hold the family together,” in spite of those differences. We desperately wanted to remain together, and we consulted more than a dozen therapists along the way to help us find the sweet spot (thus my subsequent commitment to become the therapist I wish we had).
To our credit, the work we did in the year we ended was a testimony to the love we shared. No more blame, no more striving. We each put down our end of the rope and the struggle ceased. We were able to see what and who was there. It was beautiful, honest, difficult, and painful. It was the hardest thing I ever did to leave. And it was right.
Part of why it was so painful is the fact that we are mammals and biologically experience exquisite suffering when we separate from the mammals to which we are bonded, including our pets. The other reason that causes us to feel so grief-stricken when we end a marriage is that the original union involves taking a vow. To take a vow is to set the compass of your soul on a vision that you will do everything within your power to realize. 
The vow to the self is often eclipsed by the vow to the partner and is often not considered until the question of separation and divorce arises. In truth, it is the only vow there is. It is the vow to one’s own Soul—to one’s own awakening—which must be taken both in the spirit of lightness and as the guiding principle in one’s life.
In divorce cases involving infidelity, emotions are high. These divorces can be bitter as feelings of betrayal and anger surface. A divorce attorney Utah can serve as a buffer in these situations, making the process easier and less volatile for you, while also helping you make sound long term decisions instead of short-term decisions fueled by emotion.
Finding the treasure
There is a spiritual treasure inside every relationship, and remaining committed to finding that asks for a devotion that expands the capacity to love. The vow of marriage should not be taken lightly, and the two individuals are wise to do all they can to explore and seek the deeper meaning that their union has come to show them.
In her enlightening book called The Relationships of Above Average People, Olivia Roberts says that most relationships fail after the initial attraction wanes, because there is a difference in the rate of growth between the two partners. Roberts says “The more a person is capable of receiving the contents of their own soul, the greater is the potential for a person’s growth. The less a person is capable of receiving soul content into their subconscious mind, the less potential there is for growth in that person’s nature.”
Because the Law of Attraction is always at play, how connected a person is to their soul determines their vibration, which then determines the degree of attraction and compatibility with others. I have seen this over and over in both my personal life and in the lives of my clients. If a person who has set their heart’s compass on the vision of awakening in time is partnered with someone who does not hold that as part of his or her soul purpose, the relationship will eventually wither. Even if they remain together, the passion and excitement will wane. This leaves the partner who is more connected to their soul to make a choice between remaining true to the vow taken in the marriage, or the vow taken in the temple of the soul.
There is no right or wrong when this happens, and the process of resolving this dilemma can either bring great suffering, or lead both people to the treasure if they are able to widen the arms of love’s embrace.
The secret wedding
Generally, when two people fall in love and decide to get married, particularly when they are young, they tend to be more driven by their hormones than by the content of their souls. This romantic attraction is based on countless factors having to do with the unfinished business of childhood. In other words, our relationship with our parents and siblings and the particular way in which we were emotionally wounded has far greater bearing on the choice of a mate than most people realize.
The American poet and activist, Robert Bly, says that at every wedding ceremony, there is a secret second ceremony in which there is a transferring of projected material. If a man has disowned his Witch Archetype and projected it onto his mother, he can then easily transfer that Witch onto his bride after the secret ceremony. During this separate meeting, the man’s mother passes over her son’s Witch to the bride. Bly says that this second ceremony is done in the basement, or unconscious, of each person, whether a man and a woman or two men or two women are marrying.
A similar ceremony is being performed on the bride’s side, where her father is passing off his Tyrant to the groom. Each person unwittingly accepts the transferred material, which is really the disowned energy of buried emotions.
I see this dynamic all the time, and it is entirely unconscious. I call it the hall of mirrors because it’s like the attraction at the carnival where you walk into a mirror-filled hall and it’s nearly impossible to know what is real and what is not. This interpersonal dynamic creates great distortions and can cause two people who really love each other to see their disowned material in their partner, and drop into blame.
The only way to find the treasure in a relationship is to do the inner and interpersonal work of getting free of such unconscious projections, and to take them back by owning our own deep motivations. This is called shadow work, and it allows us to cease implicitly playing supporting roles in other people’s lives and feeling trapped and frustrated that we cannot be the star in our own life.
In The Little Book of the Human Shadow, Bly says, “When one ‘projects,’ one is really giving away an energy or power that rightfully belongs to one’s own treasury.” If a man projects his feeling or feminine side onto his wife, whenever a feeling issue comes up with the children, and the mother handles it, the two collude in perpetuating the model for their children. It’s as if both are under a spell that causes them to go unconscious, and they pass it down. The more we have integrated the parts we have projected out into the world and onto our partners, the more conscious we become and the more complete mirror we are for our children.
Breaking the spell
The more we have stuffed into the bag where we hide our shadow, the less substance we have. We are like slivers of who we once were, and when we partner with another sliver, we wonder why we end up feeling miserable and why our energy begins to drain. It’s really a blessing when one of the projections begins to “rattle,” as Bly terms it.
It only takes one person getting conscious enough face and integrate the light and the dark in their own shadow, and the spell of the secret ceremony begins to be lifted. Always my first work with a couple is to help them cease the blame by taking back their projections. Each person must loop back and own what is their own material and take back the power in their own “treasury.” This can only be done by shedding light on what is in the dark.
This takes tremendous courage, because there are no guarantees that your partner will continue to accept and love all of who you are becoming.
The decision
I once heard a poignant teaching story about a young couple who loved each other very much and decided to get married. They carefully wrote their wedding vows, including the well-meaning intention to love each other always, even if they “fall out of love,” and said they would then let each other go without fighting or hurting each other. When they took the vows to their Rabbi, whom they hoped would officiate at the wedding, the Rabbi read the vows and then looked at them with stern love, saying, “I cannot marry you. If you set out with the intention to open the door of your commitment when you fall out of love, then you will never know the love that is necessary to make a marriage work.“
As someone who has worked with hundreds of couples, I have held the sacred message of this story alongside the deep understanding of the need and right to make the decision to separate. Like Solomon deciding what to do with the baby, I leave the decision up to the couple, and the apparently irreconcilable differences naturally coalesce around the decision to stay or leave, and what that will look like. I try to help them make a choice that will allow both to remain connected to the love that brought them together in the first place, in spite of the mutable nature of love’s expression.
American anthropologist Helen Fisher has proposed three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. Each stage is driven by different hormones and chemicals.
- The first stage is lust and is driven by True Pheromones in both men and woman.
- The second stage is attraction and is the time of feeling love-struck. Attraction involves the three neurotransmitters adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin.
- The third stage is attachment and is the bond that keeps couples together long enough for them to have and raise children. Scientists believe that the two major hormones of this phase are oxytocin, often referred to as the cuddle hormone, and vasopressin, which is released after sex and you can release even more using marital aids like the perfect small vibrator.
It is very possible and often happens that a person experiences the feelings of lust, attraction, and attachment to different people. Attempted solutions range from secret affairs, open relationships, polyamory, swinging, and even shutting down sexuality all together. In her book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic And the Domestic, Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel says, “Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
Love doesn’t die
Far too many people end their marriage feeling re-wounded and without healing the original wounds of childhood. This happens when the couple fails to delve into the deeper exploration that would allow for the true gifts of their union to emerge. You can do this deeper exploration on your own and learn so much about yourself by being willing to be vulnerable, taking ownership, and remaining compassionate toward yourself, but it is always much better for both to be able to do that together.
Rather than take responsibility for their contribution, many people turn that over to attorneys, who then play out the conflict on the legal battlefield. The real battle is always within each person, between their own inner masculine/feminine natures, as well as between their higher and lower natures. Whether in straight, gay, lesbian, or transgendered partnerships, this dance of opposites plays out, and the wise person learns to look within for the answer.
Love does not die. It takes countless forms and is ever present. Even if the two choose to separate, they can remain true to the vow to love and cherish each other. And there are times when leaving each other is the only way to remain true to either vow.
It is a painful and confusing choice to end and intimate relationship, yet it can be done in a way that brings great freedom and joy for all concerned. The transformation each person must be willing to go through for that to happen has ripple effects that alter our conventional views about what it means to be a family, and can be the doorway to an ever-widening circle of embrace.
When an intimate relationship comes to an end, especially if there is unresolved conflict in the process, it is a profound opportunity for a person to return to the Self and spend time collecting the parts that have been scattered, projected or given away, and to reflect on the part he/she/they played in the relationship.
It is not a time to deny the love once felt, but to grieve the loss of its expression with that person, no matter what they have done. This is the true treasure—to realize that love never dies, that we can heal, and that we are here to carry the light of love throughout our lives, in all our relationships.
