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Issue 115
Part 6 – Attractions and Affairs
Attractions Are Part Of The Process…continued
by
Hal & Sidra Stone

Sometimes the awareness that one’s partner is attracted elsewhere can act as a powerful motivation for growth. Most of us can use this motivation to look at aspects of ourselves that we would prefer to ignore, those selves that we find truly objectionable. We can even use it to help us take the next step in our own evolution of consciousness quickly, lest we end up taking it alone. This may not be the world’s most noble motivation, but it certainly works!

Cindy and Clyde are girlfriend and boyfriend. Cindy is a gifted academic student and, as we might we expect, Clyde is much more into pleasure and non-academic pursuits. He is helping to make a film and has to spend some time away from her. Cindy is very jealous and is convinced he will have an affair with one of the actresses. There is no real evidence that this is going to happen, but we may safely assume that he felt strong attractions toward some of these actresses.

So long as Cindy identifies with her academic self and disowns her own actress self (that in her which is concerned with beauty, makeup, clothing, appearance), she will always be strongly jealous of Clyde and will literally drive him to the actress type. If Cindy can become aware of the actress as a disowned part of herself, her jealousy of Clyde will change and he will feel less attracted to the actresses in his life.

From his side, if he were able to admit more openly that he was attracted to one or more of these actresses, the issue would be much more natural and neutralized between them. By not admitting his own feelings, Cindy is forced to carry them for the two of them.
Talking about attractions helps us to clarify aspects of the relationship that are not working well. If Peter were to talk to his wife about his attraction to the young woman in his office, they would most probably go on to discuss her bonding to their children and his responsible father bonding to his family. He could then tell her of his unhappiness at being neglected and his irritation at being taken for granted.

His wife might let him know that she, too, had been feeling left out, that she felt he was preoccupied with their finances and was always working, and that she was upset because they never took time for themselves, time to have fun as they had in the past. Entire areas that they had politely covered over would come to the surface for examination and, ultimately, some form of resolution. Such discussions are painful, but avoiding them gradually erodes the relationship.

So often in relationship, couples refuse to fight and show anger or upset because the children are around. If we wait till the children are not around to have our fights and display our anger, we can wait for decades before we ever get things off our chest. Strong bonding patterns invariably have strong anger underneath. We are not suggesting that the expression of anger should become a way of life in a home. We are simply saying that anger is natural and that it needs to come out when it needs to come out.

It is important to realize, too, that as the love energy disappears from the primary relationship, it can lock onto one or more of the children, and when this happens, they begin to develop an importance that does not properly belong to them.

So often in family dynamics, as we have seen, one or more of the children develops a sense of self-importance that is extreme and unnatural. Oneof the reasons this happens is that the son or daughter becomes a surrogate wife or husband for one of the parents. This can be an excellent motivation for parents to develop a more effective primary relationship or perhaps, if this is impossible, to separate from one another.

It is always frightening to the vulnerable child when we open up new areas for exploration, talk about some part of the relationship that is not working well, or discuss an issue without knowing where the talk will lead. The child is usually uncomfortable to hear about our partner’s realities, whatever these might be. But this is what keeps relationships alive and what brings about new growth.

As we have said, attractions tend to bring up our disowned selves.
In the example of Laura, the disowned self was a frightening one. She felt unable to deal with her Aphrodite sexuality in any way other than disowning it. Her inability to talk of her attraction kept her from bringing her disowned sexuality into the marriage and locked her into acting upon it in a long-term and generally uncomfortable affair. If she had been using her marriage relationship as a teacher rather than as a safe refuge from the perils of her sexuality, she might have shared her attraction to Ned with her husband. Together, they might have traced it back to her disowned sexuality and, together, they might have worked out a way to bring this into the marriage. The apparently fatal attraction might have led to a growth spurt and an enriching of the marital relationship.

There is always a risk and there is always fear when we are brought face to face with a disowned self. There is, indeed, the possibility that Laura’s husband would have been threatened by her sexuality and would not have tolerated it. This would have left Laura with the option of disowning her sexuality anew or deciding that she did not wish to live her life without it and, therefore, ending her marriage. It would force a decision from an aware ego.
It requires a good deal of courage for most of us to own up to our attractions, to explore them, and to dig down into their roots. The end of theprocess is not predictable, which is why, when we are in a bonding pattern and fully committed to holding on to the relationship at all costs, we do not like to enter into these threatening discussions.

There is always the possibility that we will discover that our differences are irreconcilable, and that the relationship must end. But it would be an honest ending that involved two aware egos, and we would each have learned something new. We would have continued our own growth process. Each of these explorations into consciousness brings its own reward by furthering our individual evolutionary process.

Issue 114

Part 5 – Attractions and Affairs 
Attractions Are a Part of the Process
by
Hal & Sidra Stone

Attractions perform a number of important functions in most of our lives.

First of all, they bring great vitality with them. If we never experience sexual attractions, it is quite likely that we have disowned an important self and have thereby cut off a major source of psychic energy.

Secondly, they break bondings, and they break them with a vengeance! There are few things that catch the attention of a partner with the intensity and immediacy of a good solid attraction to someone else. Thirdly, they alert us to what is missing within ourselves or within the relationship.

It is extremely important, therefore, to make our attractions a part of the process of relationship. This does not mean that we must compulsively comment every time we notice somebody attractive. It is unlikely that a continuous commentary of this type is coming from an aware ego; it is more likely to be a power play from a controlling mother or controlling father.

Sharing attractions from an aware ego almost always involves some hesitation and discomfort. When we love someone, we usually wish to spare this person pain, and we always risk hurting the other when we talk of our attractions to someone else. In addition, most of us have a guilty child within who fears that somehow when we hurt our partner with this revelation of our perfidy, we will be punished in return.

Last, but definitely not least, our vulnerable child fears abandonment every time that we are brave enough to discuss our attractions with our partner.

However, attractions do play an important part in the process and sharing them does help to move things along, although sometimes the movement can be fairly uncomfortable. For instance, attractions break bondings. When a couple is cozily bonded, this bonding will usually be unconscious; they will not be aware of the fact that they are bonded. If one or the other (or both, for that matter) start to experience attractions outside the relationship, this is the relationship’s way, if you will, of signalling that something is off in the way they are connecting to each other.

If they are in a solid bonding pattern, they will try to ignore the attractions and work things out on their own. These attractions then tend to become stronger and more numerous. Perhaps something will happen to break open the bonding pattern but, if nothing else works, talking about the attractions forces the issue. When we talk about our attractions, we automatically move out of good parent or pleasing child and must look to the totality of our selves and the complexity of the relationship. We are no longer playing it safe and exposing only our more reassuring selves to one another. In this way, we begin to become aware of and separate from the bonding pattern with which we have been identified.

The alternative to sharing our feelings and fantasies is to begin to lead a secret life. What happens here is that we live with a partner, but more and more time is spent living inside our own head. Our secret fantasy life can easily become more interesting and intense than the actual relationship in which we are involved. This can even develop to a point where our partner is tolerated sexually by virtue of the fact that the fantasy partner or partners are substituted for our real partner during sexual relations.

This secret life is a very natural phenomenon that develops in primary relationships. As it grows, we generally feel guilty about it and so we have an even stronger motivation to keep it private. It is obvious that at some point, the real relationship is going to suffer and eventually a serious deterioration in the quality of relationship will take place. Intimacy in relationship cannot live forever alongside an ever-growing secret life that is directed toward other men and women.

On the other side we have relationships in which a decision is made by the couple to live out their sexuality freely, so long as there is some measure of discretion involved. Sometimes there is the added proviso that the partners not become seriously involved with another person, and that if this happens they will tell each other. We are very pragmatic about relationship. Our feeling is that what works, works. There are many people living in such open relationships who are very pleased about the way they work. Many of these relationships also come to an end. Interestingly enough, we have not met very many people who have made the choice for an open relationship in a second marriage.

The main issue in these kinds of open relationships is the status of the vulnerable child. We have spoken of this before. Many of our different selves absolutely love the idea of an open relationship. The vulnerable child does not feel this way at all and, generally speaking, will gradually remove him – or herself from the partner. This has an interesting effect, because as the child is removed, some deeply satisfying energetic exchange between ourselves and our partners disappears. This is a physical as well as a psychological fact and, as this energetic exchange disappears, we are more and more starved for outside relationships that might bring it to us.

 

Issue 113

Part 4 – Attractions and Affairs
Everyone Has Attractions…continued
by
Hal & Sidra Stone

Laura  had  lived  out  her  Aphrodite,  her  sexual  self,  during  her  adolescence.  She was sexually active,  and she loved to take drugs, dance, and stay out all night.  However, the disapproval that this elicited from her classmates was distressing to her basically sensitive nature.  After graduation,  she left town,  another self in her took over, and she disowned the Aphrodite self that had been such a major part of her life.

Laura,  or more accurately the proper woman in Laura, married  a quiet, sensible man who was completely out of touch with his own sexuality. They lived a life devoid of the excitement of her past. She was able to maintain this lifestyle for a number of years until she met Ned, her tennis teacher.

Ned was the disowned self that she had left behind.  He romanced all the ladies,  drank,  took drugs,  and generally acted the tempter. Laura found herself hopelessly attracted to Ned.   She began an affair with him even though this put her marriage and her hard-won social status at risk.  She found herself taking drugs again, and she found herself sneaking money away from the household accounts to give to Ned. Although she kept trying to break the relationship and to  “reform”  herself for a second  time,  the pull to this disowned self was irresistible.

When we look at marriage relationships in general, we often discover that it was a particular self in a person who got married. Sometimes the man or woman is aware of what is being sacrificed or disowned.  At  other times there is no awareness on any level, and the disowning is complete.  The more extreme the disowning process,  the more extreme is the attraction likely to be to someone who carries the disowned energy. These kinds of attractions happen as a way of forcing us to meet, and eventually embrace,  our disowned selves.

Let us contrast this particular attraction and affair with the attraction that Henry feels. Henry is a  strongly sexual man who is in touch with this sexuality.  He is like many men: he loves women. He notices attractive women wherever he is, and he feels a thrill and a desire to have sexual relations with them.  This attraction  is non-specific but strong.

From time to time Henry experiences discomfort with these sexual feelings because he knows that his wife feels very vulnerable with them,  but he knows that if he tries to deny them, all the sexuality disappears  from his life. Henry walks the line between honoring his attractions and acting upon them.  Because he does this, they do not gain power in his life. His sexual self is a part of his life and a part of his relationship to his wife.   Unlike Laura’s,  it is not disowned.

Henry relates to his wife from an aware ego, honoring his sexuality but protecting their relationship and staying related to the needs of her vulnerable child (and his, too). He enjoys the feeling of being attracted and does not feel compelled to hide it, but,  at this point in his life, his choice is to remain monogamous.

Issue 112

Attractions and Affairs
Everyone Has Attractions

by

Hal and Sidra Stone

Attractions   are  a natural  part  of our  everyday  existence. What we do with them and how we handle them is the real issue.

Of course, as we have described briefly in the last section, there are other parts of us that feel quite different from our vulnerable  child.

Our  sexual selves, which  might  include (amongst others) Aphrodite, the satyr, the playboy, and the open marriage  or free love advocate,  all yearn for multiple partners.   These  selves are extremely  important and  carry with them much energy and a high intensity of feeling. Their attractions do not lessen just because we wish, from an aware ego, to engage in an intense,  consciousness-enhancing relationship  that includes  the  vulnerable  child.  Needless  to say, this poses quite a problem.  Talk about embracing  the opposites!

None  of us can deny these selves to save our relationships. This would just put us back in the position of disowning some parts in favor of others. And it does not necessarily work. The fact that we would rather not acknowledge a self does not in any way make it disappear.  If we feel very strong and deep attractions for other people and try to stuff them down into the unconscious,  these feelings simply go underground and begin to operate in the dark. When these feelings operate in the dark we do not see or know what is going on. But our partners  and our friends  usually do. We may not notice the way we stared or blushed or stopped talking when someone attractive  came by,  but  those others  with  us are very likely to see. Most definitely, the vulnerable child of our partner  knows, and knows immediately.

These  attractions  can  range  from  a  mild  interest  and delight to an intense fascination.  They  may happen  all the time  or just occasionally.  When  attractions  are extremely intense and become a preoccupation,  it is usually a sign that something serious is missing in the relationship or that something important  is not being talked about. The following is a classic example of a strong attraction signalling that something is missing from a relationship.

After many years of marriage, Joan became less thoughtful of Peter and stopped planning exciting things for them to do together.  Their children  were  teenagers  and  they  occupied  her completely.  At  this time,  Peter was facing the added  financial pressures  of college tuition  and emotional pressures at work. It seemed as though his life had no fun in it anymore.  He found  himself intensely attracted  to a young woman at work. She was bright,  happy and extroverted, and she always seemed to be having a good time.  He thought about her constantly  and wished that he had the courage to have an affair with her.

Something is missing  in  Peter’s  marriage,  and he is drawn to it when he sees it elsewhere. Somewhere along the way he has lost his natural connection to his own playfulness. He has become identified with being responsible  and serious. Before he met Joan, he had no connection with his own playfulness  and  fun-loving  side. Joan brought  this  out  in him. He needed her to bring this out in him, because he had never fully embraced  it as a part of himself.

Now, his playful child, who had been cared for by Joan, is  no  longer considered  important  and  feels  abandoned. Joan’s attention has switched to the couple’s children; she has fun  with  them  and  with her girlfriends.   He  misses  this element of lightness in his own life, and he is naturally drawn to this energy elsewhere. His attraction to the young woman in his office is intense.  He spends much time daydreaming about her and wondering  what life would be like with her instead of with Joan.

Most of us are used to thinking about attractions  on thebasis of our physical feelings, and these can certainly become very powerful in these situations.  However, the fascination and power of this attraction is at least in part a function of the fact that the young woman is an expression of a disowned self in him with which he desperately  wants to connect.

Attractions  that  are based on disowned  selves can become extremely  powerful.  These  kinds  of attractions  can become obsessions that will not release us despite all of our attempts  to extricate ourselves. They  can often monopolize our energies, inexorably drawing us out of our current relationship.  They  can draw us into behavior that is very destructive  or non-productive,  or they can open us up to a very new and creative kind of relationship. In the next Voice Dialogue Tips, let us look at a few examples of this  kind of disowning  and  see how the relationships  might be impacted.