Intimacy and Freedom: A Focused Marriage
Intimacy and Freedom: A Focused Marriage
According to existential theory, we face four major dilemmas in life. The most obvious is death, confronted in childhood in the form of frightening dreams, unresolved questions and pervasive fear and dread. The second is freedom embodied in those ringing, repetitive and obstinate "no's" we hear from the two year old, a celebration of the newly discovered power of choice and confronted immediately by its corollaries, responsibility and rejection. Another is isolation which begins at birth, is intensified by weaning and finally is confirmed by the misunderstanding of parents, the competition of siblings and peers and the indifference of the external world. The last is meaninglessness which shakes us as we find that the proscribed roles and socialized behaviors taught by our environment don't match our interior experience. Rather we find we are unable to live up to the standards set for a meaningful life: achievement, security, love and happiness (all in the name of the greater good, whatever class, religion, race, or cause that might represent).
Nowhere are these dilemmas more crystallized than in marriage, an institution fraught with expectations, obligations and heartbreak. Yet it is in those very words, "expectations, obligations and heartbreak" that a new direction lies. If instead of looking outward for the parameters of the marriage relationship we individually look inward, possibilities for engagement with one another arise. I have found no more profound and powerful process than Focusing as the vehicle for this "coming from the inside out" kind of intimacy, which arises from the individual experience of self as unique and respects that other self as unique, ultimately unknowable.
We all know the thrill of the new relationship, that getting-to-know-you phase, the sexual exploration of an unknown body, the sharing of inner truths and private anecdotes. And it is common knowledge that it doesn't last. I'd like to explore that experience. If each of us is unique and barely knowable even to ourselves, why can't it last? Why don't we remain surprising to one another?
When a couple comes into my office to sort out problems in their marriage, I too often hear something like this.
She: Well, I just needed to have someone else here so that I can say my piece. He just won't listen.
He: There she goes. Same old, same old. I don't see any point in this if it's going to be a repetition of all this same stuff.
She: I knew he'd say that, same old, same old. I just knew that's where he'd start.
He: And I knew you'd start in on me. There's no point in any of this. I've heard it all before.
Each is convinced that s/he knows that other perfectly, and each is correct on one level. Each is all too familiar with the expectations, obligations and pre-defined roles inherent in the relationship, though each may be unaware of the replaying of parental models and societal expectations. They may not know exactly where the models came from, but they are certainly familiar with them.
In 1960 I lived in the Balkans, teaching American Literature at a big city university. I became close friends with several married couples and was astonished at their lack of privacy, their parent's daily intrusion (my word, not theirs) in their lives, their segregation of the sexes, their senses that men only got to know so much of women's business and vice versa. Romance was a thing of the past, rarely experienced anymore except in extra-marital affairs. They were fiercely protective of their children, husband and wife joined in celebrating the wonder of the child (usually only one, an economic luxury). I couldn't believe how circumscribed their lives had become, how little they shared with their mates, how little joy they found in their marriages.
Later I was even more amazed at how little we Americans have actualized the potential of this freedom from convention in our own marriages. We have built our own conventions, something Helmuth Kaiser called the fusion delusion. In terror before the void of no rules, no standards, no lasting parental enforcement, we have built a romantic standard (certainly an oxymoron). And then all the rules went underground. No one knew exactly what they were anymore, but each person build his/her own set out of some necessarily distorted view of their parental marriage including deeply heartfelt expectations of being cherished.
However, the process involved looking outside, to parental models (to follow or to avoid at all costs), to mentors, to how-to books, to friends with experience. That old idea that there must be a right way remained. The reality that there is no right way comes as something of a shock.
Focusing provides a process, not answers, not rules, not models. This is the process of honoring the integrity and uniqueness of each individual.
Uniqueness
Freedom
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