BEYOND ROMANTIC LOVE
Copyright 2001, 2006
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Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath provides a new model for marriage in her seminal book, "YOU’RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED: Love After the Romance Has Ended," [1]. The model of humanity upon which it is based is totally compatible with Science of Ethics. It explores the steps necessary to achieve the goals made desirable by this model, and also examines the difficulties of doing so.
Key ideas from this book are provided below plus my responses as I seek to understand and apply these ideas within the framework of Science of Ethics. Mastering Dr. Young-Eisendrath’s ideas would seem helpful for anyone seeking to become an Enlightened Person.
“YOU’RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED: Love After the Romance Has Ended,” Polly Young-Eisendrath, Fromm, New York, 1997.
p. 9: INTRODUCTION
p. 9: “This book is about a radical new topic: intimacy between the sexes. Radical? New? Hasn’t it been over-worked in all forms of media? Therapists and other professionals constantly offer ‘cures’ for the disappointments of heterosexuality, while they admit that the research on marital happiness doesn’t look promising. You’ve probably read the statistics showing that marriage is detrimental to woman. Certainly you’ve heard about men’s avoidance and fear of commitment.”
"But consider the possibility that heterosexual intimacy has never before been tried. Only in the last two decades have married people sought intimacy. Previously they viewed marriage as a contract and the relationship mostly as a form of business. If it was enjoyable, that was lucky, but generally it was not expected to be.”
RESPONSE: I think "marriage as a business" mis-states what the issue is. And the author actually clarifies this point on p. 14-15 and also p. 27-28, where she discusses Western civilization's several hundred year old model: "They fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after.” It is only after one or both persons exhaust the overpowering emotion called romantic love that the business model replaces it because it is only then that a couple has to choose how to proceed after that dream has has been shattered.
p. 10: “Long-term intimate friendship is based on equality, and equality between the sexes is only now barely imaginable. Intimacy is rooted in trust, shared interest, and conversational exchange. Dialogue, as an exchange of points of view, is for the first time in history possible between women and men.”
“Over the past twenty years things have changed and women have gone on record. Feminist scholars have been laboring to rescue the contributions of women from the past to literature, the arts, and science…. All of this has led to this moment when both sexes have viewpoints and the possibility to listen to and understand each other.”
“Preparing to write this book and wanting to know about dialogue as a method of learning and development (originating with the Greek philosophers and moving through the centuries into the present), I searched the human sciences for models. Philosophy, theology, pedagogy, psychology, sociology, and the history of mind. I found models of dialogue between men…. but not between a man and a woman. Obviously there had been no need for such a model – until now. If women weren’t legitimate speakers, men didn’t have to think about how to learn from them or have exchanges of viewpoints.”
RESPONSE: This gets to a very deep matter. I take Young-Eisendrath’s point to be that women and men have different ways of speaking. And, if this is not considered all communication becomes distorted. This occurs since both assume conversation is taking place, but something critical is being lost because that difference is not recognized.
p. 11: “I believe we have unintentionally arrived at a turning point in history, chiefly through two means – a massive planetary crisis and the recent wave of feminism…. The old stories get us into trouble now. We’re looking for new ones.”
RESPONSE: Of course from the perspective of Science of Ethics our current situation in which we have indeed arrive at a turning point in history is neither unintentional nor unpredictable. Rather, it is one more giant step toward a new stability, the goal toward which we have been aimed since the evolution of our ability to use modern language. Feminism itself must be seen as one more essential step in this process, and the goal is equality between all adult humans.
p. 11: “The stories I tell in this book, related to me by innumerable couples, weave a new narrative of limitation, cooperation, and equality of influence. If our planetary crisis is forcing an end to the old stories of dominance-submission, as I believe it is, then the search for heterosexual intimacy is providing a means to a new adaptation. Knowing something about the ingenuity of human adaptation, I believe we are unintentionally protecting our survival through this new broad search for intimacy between the sexes. Sneaking up on the most entrenched sexists among us is the necessity to convert the desire for intimacy and companionship with a mate into a respect for equality and shared power.”
“American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan was the first theorist to offer a clear definition of intimacy. He defined it as a special kind of relatiohiship based on reciprocity, trust, and equality. After working with psychiatrically disturbed adolescents for much of his career, Sullivan concluded that many people are unprepared for intimacy because they have never experienced trust based on reciprocity. Trust based on reciprocity is found first and foremost in the love for an equal. It cannot happen between parent and child; they are not equals. This kind of trust comes from loving another as much as oneself, not more and not less."
RESPONSE: It seems to me that this desire for intimacy comes directly out of our nature as human beings, out-and-out social animals. However, the way out inclinations are actualized is shaped by our memes, our symbolic language. It is our language that allows us to expand intimacy and to define it in new ways that move us toward a new stability for the species. And, I fully agree this effort is necessary to protect the survival of the species, but is not recognized as such by those guiding these changes.
p. 11-12: “Although this book is grounded in everyday matters such as fighting, sex, and parenting as part of an intimate relationship, it has a much broader scope and meaning. This book is about the possibilities of and barriers to sexual equality, experienced by men and women who want more intimate and pleasurable contact with each other. In my view, heterosexual intimacy rests on sexual equality on the personal and public levels. Personally it requires a couple to respond to the inequality in power, status, and income that exists now between the sexes. Male privilege is a barrier to intimacy. Female silence is a barrier to intimacy. Equality in a heterosexual friendship or marriage is not a fifty-fifty split of tasks and income (the onerous chit list of what each partner owes), but the rhythm of equal influence in conversation through dialogue. This is a rhythm of give-and-take that requires speaking one’s mind and understanding another’s. Dialogue, as a particular form of conversation, is a practice of the rhythm of equal influence. As we will see, dialogue leads a couple into an ongoing adult form of dependence on each other – something I have dubbed ‘mature dependence,’ using a term from psychoanalyst W. Ronald Fairbairn."
RESPONSE: “Mature dependence” is an exciting idea that provides some very specific behaviors that in my mind lead naturally toward the goals expressed by Science of Ethics.
However, Dr. Young-Eisendrath is hacking a path into unexplored territory so she from time-to-time gets overwhelmed by her own limitations. One of the more important places this happens, at least for me personally, is in her drum-beat focus on male dominance and female subservience.
Obviously, the phenomenon exists and is older than our species. It must be overcome, and has been attacked in many places as our species has moved to achieve the stability our "wisdom" potential has been driving us toward. To place the cultural problems of male privilege on the shoulders of a partner, especially one who has given up such privilege, is shallow thinking. Also, Young-Eisendrath too frequently makes this issue appear to be only a male problem and fails to recognize in a general way that its solution will require just as big a leap for women as it will for men. When women see their partners as "little boys" after they've made themselves vulnerable this is an evidence of the problem to be overcome. And though men have been shown a model for achieving this step (lowering barriers) and some have begun to take it, women at the cultural level have not thus far been provided a model to help them respond in an appropriate manner.
Fortunately, Young-Eisendrath provides the tools (dialogue, understanding projection, etc.) to allow the discriminating reader to understand how many men are also trapped in a segment of the subservience behavior pattern. Better yet, the tools she provides can actually help these men work through such patterns and thereby function more effectively in the world.
My working assumption is that all who are willing to work seriously on the ideas Dr. Young-Eisendrath presents will be amply rewarded for their efforts by finding how to make the necessary changes in their own personal life.
p. 12-13: “On a public level too the mutual alignment of women and men on the themes of intimacy (such as trust, reciprocity, equal voices) leads to new awareness and action in favor of sexual equality.”
“I believe that the search for heterosexual intimacy is an outgrowth of contemporary feminism, hopefully one in contrast to disappointingly slow and small changes in social and political institutions…. Here is my own definition of feminism….”
“A discipline of thought and action that aims to enhance mutuality and trust among all people; to reveal the meanings of gender differences, especially as these might interfere with reciprocity and trust… and to oppose all models and methods of dominance-submission for relationships among people. What feminism has revealed, in its many forms from theology to literary criticism to psychology and philosophy, is that the silencing and trivializing of women and their ideas affect all of us all of the time in the way that we expect the world and ourselves to be.”
RESPONSE: For me the above formulates the essential goal for any who would seek to become an Enlightened Person. However, in my mind the search for heterosexual intimacy is not an outgrowth of contemporary feminism, but the other way around. Feminism has been successful in impacting society dynamically because most men at some level understand that dominance-submission patterns are threats to their own well-being and that ways to break these patterns must be found. Feminism is a powerful tool to break this pattern because it attacks the problem at the very foundation, male dominance over women, which provides the model then for dominance over other men. And as Young-Eisendrath clearly states below feminism is about what is best for both men and women and without it both suffer.
p. 13: “Intimacy depends on equality. Equality between the sexes is not possible until women enter the culture as fully privileged speakers, something that is only now beginning to be accomplished.”
RESPONSE: It seems clear to me that one must recognize that a relationship between two people, or even within some sub-group of society, must be able to be distinguished from what is happening in the bigger society. No individual can force a society to become an Enlightened Community, though hopefully any of us can help one move in that direction. So we must do our best to overcome cultural patterns and conditioning in our relationships, especially in our marriages and with our friends. Also we must do our best to avoid blaming each other for things over which we have no control, and recognizing that within our private relationships we can often achieve behaviors that violate the social norms.
At the same time we need to do whatever we can to support efforts to make the changes that are necessary in order to create an egalitarian community.
p. 13: “We see the effects of gender stereotypes as inhibiting and limiting for everyone, not just women…. In part they are changing because women and men want intimacy and friendship in their relationships. Marriage is no longer merely a social contract. Suddenly it is a commitment to a relationship.”
p. 14: “I am earnestly, perhaps over earnestly, dedicated to intimate partnerships between people. The two-person relationship, particularly between equals (people of equal influence), is the place where I find the sacred or transcendent in human life. This kind of relationship occurs in friendship, intimate partnership, and psychotherapy. Speaking face-to-face and eye-to-eye with a partner gives anyone the possibility of mirroring transformations, my term for the reflections offered and the boundaries clarified of the self in intimate relationship. When an equal and intimate partner offers a view, a criticism, or a compliment, the gesture carries heartfelt (from heart to heart) meaning that helps us transcend the limits of ourselves. Over time these mirroring gestures are invitations to growth and change.”
RESPONSE: In my mind there is another facet of this and that is self exposure. When the other opens themself completely to us this provides the opportunity to look deeply into the heart and mind of our marriage partner and get an expanded vision of what another person truly is like. This allows us to expand who we are in ways that would otherwise not be possible.
p. 14-15: “Because of the biases of our male-dominated society and the history of heterosexuality itself, we heterosexual people tend to believe that our intimacy is ‘natural,’ something like the birds and bees. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only has intimacy between the sexes just recently become possible, but also it is hampered on every side by envy, power, and gender differences that are in fact very difficult to unearth and claim. Until now heterosexuality has also been clouded by ideals of romance and romantic love that are confusing for couples because these ideals don’t work in a long-term relationship. Instead of evolving ‘just naturally’ from the ‘right’ relationship (as many people believe it does and should), intimacy is as unnatural between the sexes as it is between any two groups of people who have been cast as antagonists and opponents of each other over millennia. Our stories about men and women, hence our expectations for their relationships, are based on dominance-submission and power struggle, not on trust and reciprocity….. The married woman loses her power at the end of the courtship.”
RESPONSE: This idea of what is “natural” seems very important to me because it helps clarify what it means to say that humanity is in the process of creating itself. In my model all human relationships have a dominance-submission component. This comes out of our “tribal” (genetic) propensities And overcoming and reshaping this propensity has been at the core of human effort to use our “wisdom” potential (based on symbolic language) to re-invent our species. The relationship between men and women in a marriage relationship lies at the core of this struggle and Dr. Young-Eisendrath does an important job in clarifying what is necessary to change these patterns and provide suggestions for how it can be done. Her clear statements about the weaknesses in using romantic love as the marriage bond are of seminal value.
p. 15: “This book is about new stories of the adventure of heterosexual trust. It’s also about the connection between equality and development through relationship. Working through the differences, conflicts, and stereotypes we bring into relationships with the opposite sex can lead to mirroring transformations of the self. The only method, in my view, that can make this process work is dialogue.”
RESPONSE: In my mind this transformation of the self can best be characterized as becoming an Enlightened Person which must lead to a transformation of society in the direction promoted by Science of Ethics, i.e., producing an Enlightened Community. And, the models Young-Eisendrath provides would all be helpful for achieving that goal. Equality, trust, and dialogue must all be extended to include all people not merely isolated couples who have had the good fortune to achieve this state with each other.
p. 15: “Heterosexual trust is built on a recognition and acceptance of differences between the sexes.”
p. 15-16: “I am a Jungian psychoanalyst and a psychologist who studies human development by doing psychotherapy and research. These avenues of learning and knowledge have led me to my own, perhaps unique understanding of gender. In my view, gender is the meaning, role, power, and privilege assigned to each sex by society. Gender is made of stories into which each of us is born, stories about how female and male people should be and become. In this period of time, we mostly tell biological stories to justify the differences we expect to see between the sexes, stories about hormones and brain chemistry, for instance. In other periods, people told a theological story about God’s limiting men and women in clear, predetermined ways….. Gender limits everyone to particular expectations. In our society, men are expected to be stronger and more intelligent than women, and women are expected to be more emotionally expressive and empathic than men. These limitations differ from society to society. The qualities that are assigned to either sex depend on the environment and the tasks that need to be accomplished for survival and development in that society.”
RESPONSE: I agree with Dr. Young-Eisendrath that gender issues are bigger than simply biology or culture. But it seems critical to me to recognize that there are biological differences that have consequences. I would see these more as propensities when they get to the level of behavior, beliefs, goals, and the like, but nevertheless something that needs to be recognized and taken into account. And if one examines what is beneath the gender differences defined by each culture and varying from culture to culture we will find those biological propensities upon which cultures build their definitions. We all can be so much more than we are, and much of that requires developing those parts of us that are difficult to develop and learn how to utilize; i.e., our rational abilities to understand the important aspects of the universe in which we live, and our compassion for every other human being.
p. 16: “Most people believe that gender is reality based on sexual differences.”
p. 17: “To be frank, I do not believe that gender or culture is the ‘product’ of biology, any more than I believe that expectations about racial differences refer to biological constraints. Rather I believe that culture has the upper hand in shaping explanations.”
RESPONSE: Although biology underlies everything human, and sets the limits for behavior, it rarely alone explains any behavior. It provides propernsities which memes shape. So for me the above states the goal clearly. How can we develop explanations that help each person achieve their full positive potential which includes helping everyone else do the same? For that it seems to me we need an over-view such as the one provided by Science of Ethics.
p. 17-18: “Psychiatrist Carl Jung… thought that men were biologically and universally the natural ‘culture makers’ – more objective, better leaders, more rational, and more independent. He believed that women were biologically and universally the ‘relaters,’ who were better at caring for others, knowing their feelings and emotions, and valuing relationships…. Jung also believed in the possibility of all of us capturing the ‘other side’ of our potential as we encounter our own unconscious in the second half of adult life.”
RESPONSE: And, hopefully, with clear goals and better social support individuals can develop their full positive potential earlier in life and have more years to live the consequences of that achievement in their own lives and in society in general.
p. 18: “I do not believe in Jung’s premise of natural capacities of gender, but I find much that is valuable in his concept of the opposite within. This is the term Jung used to name the characteristics, ideals, and fears that each of us connects with the opposite sex. Gradually, in the second half of life, a woman can claim and express what she previously thought was masculine, the property of men. A man can claim and express what he thought was feminine. Jung believed this was a natural, biological progression from an original limited identity with one’s own sex to an eventual expanded identity with characteristics from both sexes. In later life, then, women would become more aggressive and authoritative, and men would become more passive and nurturant. I believe that both our initial gender identity and any later development of opposite characteristics are sustained through relationships. These relationships, intimate and otherwise, provide the stories about gender that we may accept or reject. Nurturance, aggression, empathy, and independence are qualities that shift by culture, family, and immediate situation.”
“In my view, our long-term intimate relationships with the opposite sex provide the opportunity, but not the necessity, of developing the characteristics previously thought to belong to the other sex. Intimate partners often refuse to be labeled and characterized in ways that we desperately want to label them. This desperation speaks of our desire to see aspects of ourselves as ‘opposite’ to us, as belonging to the opposite sex. The possibility of broadening, mixing, making more fluid the identity with particular gender is not guaranteed through the fact of aging, however. It is a developmental accomplishment of the highest order to become aware of and alert to – to integrate – the opposite within while remaining comfortably identified with one’s embodied sexuality.”
“Although I don’t believe in fixed characteristics that are male or female, I also don’t believe that the sexes are equally capable of the same things.”
p. 19: “I believe that we are all powerfully influenced by the division of the human community into two exclusive groups, and by the meaning, role, power, and privilege that are assigned to each group.”
RESPONSE: Obviously, this arrangement is a defining feature of a human being and human societies. From an evolutionary perspective the genes of our ancestors led to one kind of individual and one kind of society which produced a stable solution. When our predecessors achieved symbolic language the existing stability was upset. Since that time we have been seeking to find a new stability and a core part of that solution must offer a way for dealing satisfactorily with maleness and femaleness. In my mind the suggestions of Young-Eisendrath provide the model for how we need to proceed on this matter.
p. 19: “From our friends (and the media) we find out about self and Other. Just as each of us comes to identify the self with its assigned meaning, role, power, and privilege, we also come to organize an ‘Other’ within, our subjective experience of an opposite who constrains or inhibits the self. Here is where I find Jung’s theory of gender to be helpful. He believes that this opposite, this Other, is crucial to our development in adulthood. In order to know ourselves, our own potentials and fears, we have to claim the Other and integrate it into the self. For each of us, this Other consists of what we hold to be the opposite of the self, parts of our personalities and our experiences that we consciously or unconsciously exclude from ourselves and label as opposite, different, not-me.”
RESPONSE: To the degree that the foregoing is true this has important implications for understanding the “I,” or self. If we do indeed, in childhood, exclude a part of our self and think it exists outside our self or “I,” then this is a major fragmentation that increases the difficulty of knowing ourself. Certainly this issue must be a matter of importance to Science of Ethics.
p. 19-20: “Within ourselves, each of us has images and beliefs connected to wishes, ideas, and fears that we associate with ‘them’ but that belong to ourselves. Our internal Others, our dream lovers, are imagined to be members of the opposite sex, but are aspects of ourselves that we reject because somehow they don’t fit the story of what we’re supposed to be. Our fantasies of dream lovers are reinforced by peers and the media with collective images of the opposite sex…. Stereotypes and dream lovers intermingle when we are imagining and fearing the opposite sex. Stereotypes are ‘data’ used to reinforce our subjective impressions, and dream lovers are ‘gut feelings’ that reinforce stereotypes.”
RESPONSE: Young-Eisendrath presents some powerful ideas for examining the things that lie at the core of who we are. I believe the model she presents can be very useful in looking at one’s own behaviors and beliefs as well as the behaviors and beliefs of others. It provides ideas of great value to Science of Ethics.
p. 20: “Trying to establish an intimate friendship with a person of the other sex requires reclaiming stereotypes and dream lovers back into the self. If we want to understand – and not silence or inhibit – another person in order to befriend that person, we have to allow that person’s claims and statements to overtake our prejudices. This is a momentous challenge for heterosexual couples, as we will see.”
“If the challenge is met, a woman and a man in intimate exchange will come to know themselves through mirroring transformations. They will come to know not only what has been recognized as self all along, but also other personalities within – other voices that intimidate, desire, and inspire in ways that had been imagined to belong to the opposite sex. When a couple can accomplish this kind of transformation together over years, they discover a relationship that is infinitely fascinating.”
RESPONSE: Based on my own small steps moving in the direction indicated above I have great hope for these suggestions.
p. 20: “Not only do heterosexual couples have difficulty in committing themselves after the romance has faded, but we all have difficulty in pulling apart and understanding the levels at which we entertain the notion of ‘difference’ about ‘the opposite sex.’ It is this notion of difference as Other that interferes in a unique way with trust between the sexes.”
p. 20-21: “This book focuses exclusively on heterosexual intimacy, although I also see same-sex couples in psychotherapy. I have chosen to treat heterosexuality exclusively here because of its mystified and suppressed difficulties…. Dialogue and mirroring transformations are not cures, but methods for proceeding if two people want to form an intimate relationship that continues to be satisfying over time.”
p. 21: “This is an account of a method – dialogue – used to pull apart the levels and strands of confusion between the sexes.”
“Whether you are a woman or a man, I hope you will find yourself in this book. I hope also that you will find a path revealed that will enhance your mirroring transformations through intimacy.”
RESPONSE: And I feel very hopeful about Young-Eisendrath's ideas. To me they not only present an exciting model for marriage appropriate for an Enlightened Person, but also useful ideas for overcoming some of the barriers that keep persons from wanting to be Enlightened, or being able to achieve a successful marriage.
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