Conscious Love

Maintaining an alive connection with an intimate partner today challenges us to free ourselves from old habits and blind spots... brings us face to face with all our gods and demons. John Wellwood, Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love

Over many years I've observed that however much we think we've developed ourselves, we will be tested in the crucible of relationships. 

Margaret Frings Keyes describes four stages of relationship which, paradoxically, grow worse before we can move into true intimacy:

1. Falling in Love: we project unconscious positive images onto the other and glimpse the possibility of our wholeness.
2. Adapting to Roles: we rebel or conform to the partner's expectations while repressing fears of losing the other.
3. Darkening Conflict: we withdraw and refuse to deal with difficulties, try to control the partner, separate, or begin the work of integrating the Shadow (the only way we can move into stage 4).
4. Remembering Self: we observe our interactions without judgment, see our prejudices as distortions, and begin to love consciously, choosing how we will respond instead of reacting blindly to old, habitual patterns.

The formula is the same as it is with personal work: identify our relationship patterns, non-judgmentally observe how those patterns work: what triggers them, who says what, and how even attempted changes feed the old pattern instead, then experiment with pattern interruption, doing something different, however, small.

Everyone speaks of an intimate relationship as requiring "work." I wish we could all inject a sense of humor and playfulness, as Harville Hendrix did when he wrote:

So when we fall in love, when bells ring and the world seems altogether a better place, our old brain is telling us that we've found someone with whom we can complete our unfinished childhood business. Our imperfect caretakers, "freeze-dried" in the memories of childhood, are "reconstituted" in our partner. Unfortunately, since we don't understand what's going on, we're shocked when the awful truth of our beloved surfaces, and our first impulse is to run screaming in the opposite direction.

(More about Transforming Relationships)