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Issue 125
Marriage as a Business Relationship – Part 8
by
Hal and Sidra Stone  

Life is very complicated. There are myriads of details that seem to increase as the years roll along.

Each day has its own list of chores and activities and plans and planning and car pools and house cleaning and gardening and bills to be paid and calls to be made and cars to be repaired and purchases to be investigated and shopping to be done. It is always amazing how much there is to do in what seems should be the rather simple business of running a modern household.

The vulnerable child within is generally very anxious about the world, and it is very important from the child’s standpoint that the details of living are taken care of properly; otherwise there is a great deal of anxiety. What this means in family relationships is that the couple, in addition to everything else that they are doing, are running a business and are business  partners. 

Being good business partners is not necessarily conducive to the maintenance of a romantic relationship. Not being good business partners and allowing the details of life to be ignored is guaranteed to be destructive to relationship.

If we accept marriage as, in part, a business relationship, then we have to honor this by providing time for the business to be transacted. Otherwise, the business enters into every facet of one’s life.

We personally feel it is very valuable to have regular business meetings. At these times, we talk over everything that has to be done, establish priorities, and then decide who is to do what. We find that it is extremely valuable for us to give the business side of our relationship this kind of structure, particularly because our professional and our personal lives are intermingled.

It helps very much in containing the business side of the relationship and not allowing it to spill over into the rest of our lives. It also helps us in the containing of pusher energy by providing a  structure as to what needs to be done.

What we are all struggling with is the issue of maximizing the amount of intimacy we can have in our relationships. Too much attention being paid to business can destroy intimacy. Too little attention being paid to business can destroy intimacy through the anxiety that is created. It is a difficult balance that each of us must wrestle with in our lives.

Issue 124
Enhancing Relationships – Part 7
‘Jealousy’
by
Hal and Sidra Stone  

A short word on jealousy, a most maligned aspect of relationship. There are many kinds of jealousy and there are many causes, but jealousy, when appropriate and moderate, does much to support a primary relationship.

There has been a strong tendency in recent years to view jealousy as something bad. There is no way of being or feeling or thinking that is essentially bad or good. It is always a question of how the energy is used. Since we love one another and we want to guard our relationship from erosion, we are both quite sensitive to anyone or anything that could conceivably cause damage to it.

We look upon normal jealousy as a protective mechanism. It is like pain. Pain warns us that there is something wrong.

If you did not feel pain, you would not know when one of your feet was in a campfire and that you should remove it. There is no great advantage not to feel the pain. As a matter of fact, people who do not feel pain can get very badly hurt. Your foot, for instance, could remain in the campfire until you smelled burned flesh, if you were unfortunate enough to have a problem with the pain receptors in that particular foot.

Jealousy can alert us to problems in our relationship. If we are caught in a bonding pattern and one of us is attracted to someone else, our jealous reaction alerts us to this, perhaps even before the attracted partner is actually aware of the attraction.

The jealous partner is then in a position to bring the matter into awareness. After the first blood is drawn, we can open the issue to a creative process and see our parts in the dance of the selves that led up to this. We have found that growth inevitably follows an exploration of selves that has been initiated by a jealous reaction.

There is one other creative aspect of jealousy that should be noted. Jealousy is a powerful indicator of a disowned self. 

If you see someone as more attractive, more sophisticated, more powerful, more wise, more creative, more spiritual, more self-indulgent, or any of the myriad other “mores” that can be brought to mind, and you are jealous, you are probably looking at a disowned self.

This can lead to the exploration and integration of a new, and usually a very welcome, disowned self. This disowned self is one that you wanted but thought belonged only to others, rather than a disowned self that you had found distasteful in others and had not wanted for your own.

Jack is jealous of his brother Bob, because Bob is very wealthy and quite successful in his investments and business dealings. At a certain point in Jack’s life, he discovers that the whole world of business and finance is a disowned self of his, and he begins to honor it and embrace this part of himself. He never is going to have as much money as his brother has, but as he begins to honor the world of business and finance, as he gets  this part of his life organized, his feelings of jealousy dissipate to a large extent.  He has embraced a disowned self, and so he no longer has to be intensely jealous of people who are identified with their business selves and who are successful in the world of finance.

A different kind of example would be that of Nan. She feels very jealous of her husband, and she is somewhat ashamed of the fact. She has mentioned on a number of occasions that she is jealous of him when she sees him with other women at the parties they attend. He is quick to reassure her that it is all quite innocent. She then dreams for three nights running that he is having an affair. When she finally confronts him in the morning after the third of these dreams, he admits to the affair and to others besides this one. Her jealousy was quite justified and had given her some very important information.

Alice is very much identified with her vulnerability and frequently feels like a victim. She disowns her own Aphrodite energy, and so she is very jealous of her husband’s secretary, who is an Aphrodite type.

One must learn to take jealousy seriously, but one must also learn to examine the possibility that one’s disowned selves are involved in the matter. Alice remained jealous of her husband and brought up her suspicions over and over again, accusing him of an involvement with his secretary. Eventually, her husband did enter into a relationship with the secretary, which ultimately broke up the marriage.

In our view, the inability of Alice to face her own Aphrodite nature, and to integrate it, literally created the fate that she so much feared. Her disowning of the Aphrodite energy within herself had created an energetic vacuum in the relationship with her husband. It may have happened under any circumstances, but our own experience and viewpoint are that things would have turned out differently had she been able to come to grips with her jealousy and understand the lessons it was trying  to teach her.

Issue 123
Enhancing Relationships – Part 6
‘Sexuality continued’
by
Hal and Sidra Stone 

Sometimes,  we have found an active sexual involvement in a deeply bonded relationship.  With the current emphasis upon good sexuality, we have seen a surprising amount of sexuality these days that is the bonded sexuality of responsible  parent to needy child.

The responsible parent is not a very sexual self and brings little excitement and depth to the sexual experience. However,  a responsible parent knows that sex is important for her child’s well-being, and many a responsible mother has made sure that her husband’s needy son gets his necessary share of sexual satisfaction.  
She may even keep an informal calendar in her head, knowing how many days have elapsed since the last sexual interchange. This is usually better than nothing, but it is not too great. Think of having someone make love to you for essentially the same reason that she makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the children.

When this kind of bonded sexuality persists, both partners are usually dissatisfied,  but it is difficult for them to figure out what is wrong.  They may have frequent sexual contact; they may even both experience orgasm on a regular basis. Nothing seems to be wrong,  but still, there is something missing. This is one of the bonding patterns that can be brought to one’s attention,  by personal sharing.

Another frequent type of bonded sexuality is the demanding father/compliant daughter.  This is the more classical sexual bonding pattern that we have seen in the past. In this,  the woman submits to sex because it is demanded of her. She may even enjoy it from time to time, but it does not emerge from her own sexual nature and she is not involved in the same way as she would be if it had.

Since sexual activity is not her responsibility,  she never gets to experience the delight of her own desire or the power of her own needs. We are not talking here of the physical coercion to have sexual relations,  we are just talking of the daily ordinary bonded pressure from the demanding  father in the man. The  pressure from the demanding father often comes about because the man disowns his vulnerability and neediness. 

He has a physical need that makes him vulnerable and he has an emotional need as well that wants to be wanted. If the woman in his life does not respond to him with her own sexuality, he often feels sexually inadequate and emotionally vulnerable, and as he disowns this, he is quite likely to move into the role of demanding father.

Issue 118
Enhancing Relationships – Part 1
by
Hal and Sidra Stone

The  Voice Dialogue process  involves working directly with one’s various selves. It is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. It  can be especially helpful to use in relationship, because it gives people the opportunity to communicate safely with one another’s selves. When Voice Dialogue is used in relationship, it enables individuals to have direct experience of, and to broaden their understanding of their own selves, the selves in other people, and of the bonding patterns that seem to run their lives.

Needless to say, this promotes intense intimacy and a most thorough understanding of one another, and of one another’s process. However, as in  any kind of exploration, one does not know exactly what might come up. Reading our book and receiving training  from a therapist and/or teacher who does Voice Dialogue training is what we would recommend for anyone who is interested in learning about this process. Even though you might not  actually be able to practice Voice Dialogue, you can use your understanding of selves to greatly enhance the communication process between yourself and others.

Let us say that Barbara and Norman have gone to a party.

Barbara is feeling somewhat withdrawn afterwards, and Norman asks her what is wrong. She says that nothing is wrong. Norman senses her withdrawal and, utilizing his understanding of subpersonalities, asks her how her little girl is doing.  With this, she bursts into tears and all of her feelings of vulnerability and inadequacy come pouring out. Without the knowledge that there is a vulnerable child within each of us, Norman might have simply been put  off by Barbara’s withdrawal. His own feelings could have been hurt,  and the two of them would have been off and running toward a bonding pattern where blame and recrimination ruled the communication.

Jean and Bob go to a movie and Bob feels very depressed afterwards. He has a hard time expressing his feelings. If Jean was to ask him what he was feeling, little would be expressed, because he really doesn’t know. However, if she was aware of the selves, she could ask Bob to get in touch with them and see how each of them feels.

The theme of the film was the portrayal of a man who was dying of cancer. Jean asks Bob if he can get in touch with the part of himself that is afraid of dying. He is able to do this, and it is as though he is able to speak from this place. Then he realizes that it is not dying that he fears, but rather being crippled or mutilated, being unable to function  physically.

Jean then asks Bob whether there is a part of him that is specifically afraid of cancer. He is shocked at this but soon is able to get in touch with the part of him that has always been terrified of getting cancer. Several members of his family have died of cancer, and he, or a part of him, has had this fear from the time he was twenty, when his mother died.

It  is very often a deep relief to realize that there are different parts of us, that these different parts feel and think quite differently about things, and that this is perfectly normal and natural.

Issue 117
Attractions and Affairs – Part 8
The Role of Affairs in Relationship…continued
by
Hal & Sidra Stone

Sometimes an affair can move us along in our evolution of consciousness when our marriage has come to some sort of roadblock.

Jack, for instance, is another responsible father type. His life consists of taking care of wife,  children, office help, dogs, and whatever else is within his orbit. He is highly principled and strongly monogamous in his philosophy of marriage.

At a party, Jack meets Gwen and gets pulled into an affair over which he seems to have very little control. She is a very sensual woman, different from anyone he has ever known. On a night that he has been with her, he dreams that all the displaced persons and  minority groups of Central Europe are returning home from their dispersion around the world.

It is clear from this dream that Jack’s involvement with Gwen has touched him deeply and is having a strongly healing effect on him. The minorities and displaced persons are the parts of himself that have had no home, and this relationship is helping them to find their rightful place in his psyche. Jack’s involvement with Gwen stayed an involvement. He ultimately remained in the marriage, though it was a very different marriage than it had been before. The drive toward consciousness is an intense one, and if a particular relationship does not support that drive, it is natural for another relationship to come along that does support this drive toward a greater awareness.

There is usually an intense pull to have an affair when something within wishes us to break form and move ahead. As we have seen, there is an intelligence inside of us that pushes us forward on a path of ever-increasing awareness. This is a natural evolutionary process that demands movement.

On the other  hand, there is also a natural process that works against this evolutionary process, one that aims to protect the status quo at any cost. An affair can serve either purpose.  It can help us to maintain the status quo and shore up a relationship that does not support us in our entirety but is one that, nevertheless, we do not wish to lose. Or, an affair can be the catalyst that introduces new selves, releases new energies, and either changes or ends our current relationship, thereby leading us into a new phase of our evolution of consciousness.

Margie and Mac had been married for many years. They had married at a time when women were expected to give up their own lives and become mothers and wives. They loved each other dearly, but once Margie gave up her schooling and her plans for a professional life, they slipped  into a strong father/daughter bonding, with Mac as the competent good father and decision-maker and Margie living out the role of the helpless daughter.

Margie, an intelligent and perceptive woman, could not keep her power and competence disowned forever, and she began an affair that lasted for some time. In this relationship she was the guiding force and her lover relied greatly upon her intelligence and her understanding of human relationships.  Sensing that there was a good deal more to the affair than met the eye, Margie entered therapy. After some time she reclaimed her own power in her relationship with Mac, and the bonding pattern that had been entered into so long ago was broken.

Mac gave many indications that he did not want to be told of the affair, and Margie obliged. Realizing that his vulnerable child could not tolerate hearing about it, she never did tell him directly about her affair. At some level she was most assuredly protecting herself too.

The  marriage, however, had become a marriage again. As the disowned selves were integrated, the father/daughter bonding was no longer the predominant mode of relating and there was a return of the love that they had originally felt earlier in their relationship. As Margie said when the bonding had broken, “I had forgotten how much I loved him!”

How do we reconnect in a relationship after one partner has had an affair and the other has found out about it? As we have said, there are ways in which to resume a truly intimate relationship, complete with vulnerable  children, even after there has been a betrayal of trust and the vulnerable child has been hurt.

Bill and Edna’s relationship was committed to growth from the beginning, and the sharing of their psychological processes was important to both of them. They needed to tell each other about all their important relationships. For a period of time it was necessary for them to live in different cities, but their connection remained deep and they were in constant contact with one another.

One day Edna sensed that something was very wrong, and she telephoned Bill to ask whether anything·had happened. He had actually become intensely involved with another woman, but he was ashamed to tell Edna, so he denied everything and suggested that she might be projecting her own feelings upon him. He was reacting to Edna from a combination of guilt and judgment. She, in turn, was alternately feeling abandoned and expressing judgment, a not uncommon pattern.  The bonding was complete, and they were both miserable.

When Bill finally realized what was going on, he spoke to Edna about what had happened. He spoke with awareness rather than from his guilty son (which only would have made matters worse).  They looked together into what had happened and realized that they had been in a mother/ son bonding for some time,  and that the affair had broken the bonding. 

As a result of their serious commitment to a conscious relationship, and after a lot of personal work, they were able to resume their relationship at an even greater depth. They recognized that their initial mother/son bonding had precipitated the affair and that the affair had broken the bonding. They both now had an appreciation of the sensitivity of their vulnerable children and were aware of just how much these children knew. The relationship had taught each of them much more about themselves.

These  last examples have shown how an affair can precipitate a new awareness or even lead one to a new level of consciousness in a current relationship.  However, there are many times when the growth process is aborted by an affair, when the pain of the vulnerable child is too great and the child withdraws forever from that particular relationship that, like Humpty Dumpty, can never be fixed.

We have seen quite a bit of this,  particularly in the years of experimentation with open marriages. For many people,  there was an initial excitement about the idea of an open marriage, but when they actually opened their own marriages, something about it often did not work. It seemed as though the vulnerable child could not understand the principle of an open marriage, and it withdrew from the relationship altogether. A fair percentage of these marriages ended in divorce.

If the vulnerable child refuses to return to a relationship, and if the incident is used as a teaching, then the partners can face the fact that the particular relationship is over and they are free to continue on the relational path with someone else. They are in a position to begin a more conscious relationship with the next person, based upon their previous  learning.

Unfortunately, however, the protector/ controller sometimes steps in after a relationship is terminated in this way and withdraws  the child (and them) into a safe and protected space, thereby ending the process and keeping them safely removed from relationship forever.

As for the attractions themselves, it is clear that they are a natural part of our lives whether we are in or out of a primary relationship, so we may as well accept  them. This will probably deprive our critics of a particularly rewarding area of criticism,  one that they have counted upon since puberty and one that enables them to make us guilty children quite easily.  But we need not fear; our critics are extremely resourceful and will certainly find some other focus for their efforts.

When attractions are long-term and intense, as we have described earlier in this chapter, we may well find ourselves leading a secret  life in our heads, a secret life of fantasy. When this goes on for too long, the relationship must suffer because we become increasingly withdrawn from our partners. It is a highly paradoxical situation.

The more attached we are to our partners, the deeper the bonding in the relationship, the harder it is to share these kinds of feelings and fantasies. Yet, the act of sharing them is one of the key ways in which we can separate from these patterns. As we have said, we are all sensual and sexual human beings and these kinds of feelings will simply not remain confined to the bedrooms of our primary relationships. They are with us for life and must accompany us wherever we go, no matter how much discomfort this may cause us, and no matter how deep our love and commitment may be to our primary  partners.