It's not that they never row – They just do it very well. Learn how to change bad communication habits for good.
Related Article - 1000 Questions For Couples - By Oprah Expert
You Talk, He Doesn't Listen
The Pattern:
With this loop, communication gets nowhere. Susan Quilliam says, “Couples can get into really bad trouble when thay get in the habit of looking ahead. He thinks, 'I know what she'll say,' so when she does say it she hits a brick wall. It gets to the point where all you have to do is raise an eyebrow and he shuts down.”
How It Happens:
Women are much more vocal than men and they need to talk to air their feelings. Counsellor Denise Knowles says: “A lot of men imagine that when their partner says something is wrong, she's asking him to fix it. More often than not, what women want is to be listened to, to unload the feeling.”
Unpick The Loop:
Ask him for five minutes of his undivided attention and say, “ I just want you to listen to me and not interrupt or try to sort it out.” You'll probably find after three or four minutes you've had your say and he can go back to the paper.
Attack And Defence
The Pattern:
“If someone says, 'You never do so and so,' that's taken as criticism and the other person attacks back,” says Denise Knowles. “They'll say, 'Well, you don't do this.' They're attacking as a form of defence. Until one or the other realises they have nothing to defend, the pattern goes round in circles.
How It Happens:
People prone to this pattern, says Knowles, are those “who were told from the word go that they were no good at anything.” Deep down they believe they're no good, but they don't like it, so they lash out. Get two people like this together and there will be a war.
Unpick The Loop:
If it's you doing the criticising, Susan Quilliam suggests: “Experiment for a week just noticing how many times you nag him or criticise. The following week, bite your tongue before you start. It can take many months to reverse years of non-communication, but any kind of change means the old pattern can't happen any more.” If it's you doing the defending, try not to do that either. A powerful trick is to agree: “You're right, I did forget to post your letter.” There's not much you can say to that.
You Complain, He Listens, Nothing Gets Done
The Pattern:
One partner appears to listen and take notice of what the other says, but it never translates into action, which is just as frustrating as not being listened to at all.
How It Happens:
Either you're challenging your partner on something he can't change or he's not taking you seriously.
Unpick The Loop:
Quilliam says: “Look at what you want done and take responsibility for getting it done another way. Maybe by paying someone outside to do it. When he says, 'But I said I'd do it,' look him straight in the eye and say, 'You obviously weren't going to, so I got it fixed myself.' No blame, no hassle. When he sees the outcome of his not doing it - that it gets done at the expense of his bank balance, things may begin to change. Not necessarily the first time, but eventually.
The Same Old Argument
The Pattern:
You have the same old argument on an annual, monthly, weekly or daily basis. Susan, 32, met her husband Roland, 33, at university 12 years ago. Today, Roland runs a large multinational company and Susan is a freelance journalist. Apart from the fact that they hardly have time for a chat, their work lives throw up a difficult issue that surfaces again and again. “He puts me and the children last,” says Susan, “and that upsets me. We have the same argument over and over again, but nothing changes. I don't really understand how we got here. Life just seemed to take over.”
How It Happens:
As Denise Knowles points out: “Nothing ever gets resolved, that's what keeps you in the pattern. You find yourselves picking up where you left off last time, perhaps with stronger tones and harsher words.”
Unpick The Loop:
Do something – anything – different. Refuse to have the same old debate. Offer an off-the-wall solution, crack a joke, book a session with a counsellor or hold your breath, count to 10 and say nothing. Experiment with any of these things and see what happens.
You Don't Talk, He Doesn't Talk Either
The Pattern:
There's something eating away at you, but you never say so. It's too private, too hurtful. You fear the world might end if you mention it.
How It Happens:
This self-destructive pattern comes about because you think you can't air the thing you're angry about – often because you're afraid you'll hurt the other person. So you repress it and you both get hurt. A common area for this is sex. Sarah, 31, a PA, loves Michael, 35, a store manager – they have lots in common and make each other laugh. There's just one flaw. “He's a lousy lover, but I can't possibly tell him,” she says. So she says nothing and puts up with a less-than perfect time between the sheets. And just occasionally, finds herself ranting about the washing-up instead.
Unpick The Loop:
You need to take responsibility for your own communication. The trick lies in expressing your feelings, rather than going on the attack. So, “I would love it if we could spend more time on foreplay when making love,” is a million times better than, “I'm sick to death of you just not waiting until I'm ready.”
Related Article - 1000 Questions For Couples - By Oprah Expert
Friday, November 23, 2007
8 Ways To Take Back Your Marriage
.Plan 'connection rituals' every day that are repeated, co-ordinated and take on significance – it could be eating breakfast out together once a week, having a Tuesday night dip in the spa (just the two of you), or even just doing chores together every Saturday morning. Make a point of saying goodbye in the morning and of greeting each other on your return. Set aside 15 minutes of quiet, private time each evening just to talk. Go to bed at the same time, even if one of you is a night owl.
2.Make a big thing of wedding anniversaries as a ritual that expresses wonder and gratitude for the duration of your marriage.
3.Don't forget Valentine's Day and birthdays Find out how these occasions were celebrated in your spouse's family and adapt them to your own individual rituals.
4.Reclaim time together – and say sorry if you have to cancel Plan one-on-one time, and if demands eat into that time, express regret and apologise to your spouse. It's the failure to do this that often makes the other person feel unappreciated and overlooked.
5.Don't lose your marriage to the children Set limits on the time and attention you give them, don't allow them to interrupt conversations and remember that you are allowed to set some kind of reasonable limit on their outside activities (i.e. You don't have to spend the entire weekend ferrying them about). Remember, your marriage is the foundation of the family; it's the sun, your children it's planets – not vice versa.
6.Don't overschedule yourself Clubs, committees and volunteer work all have their place, but not if they swallow time that belongs to your spouse. Keep a log of hours away from your spouse and reorganise your priorities if necessary.
7.Don't lose your marriage to TV or the internet Get the TV out of the bedroom and recognise early on that your PC and the internet are powerful absorbers of the individual time and attention that should be spent with your spouse.
8.Don't let friends, family or therapists undermine your marriage Unintentional sabotage is common and dangerous. Comments like “Why are you still there?” and “You deserve better” reflect a consumer view of marriage that may undercut the fact of a couple's intrinsic and enduring affection for each other.
2.Make a big thing of wedding anniversaries as a ritual that expresses wonder and gratitude for the duration of your marriage.
3.Don't forget Valentine's Day and birthdays Find out how these occasions were celebrated in your spouse's family and adapt them to your own individual rituals.
4.Reclaim time together – and say sorry if you have to cancel Plan one-on-one time, and if demands eat into that time, express regret and apologise to your spouse. It's the failure to do this that often makes the other person feel unappreciated and overlooked.
5.Don't lose your marriage to the children Set limits on the time and attention you give them, don't allow them to interrupt conversations and remember that you are allowed to set some kind of reasonable limit on their outside activities (i.e. You don't have to spend the entire weekend ferrying them about). Remember, your marriage is the foundation of the family; it's the sun, your children it's planets – not vice versa.
6.Don't overschedule yourself Clubs, committees and volunteer work all have their place, but not if they swallow time that belongs to your spouse. Keep a log of hours away from your spouse and reorganise your priorities if necessary.
7.Don't lose your marriage to TV or the internet Get the TV out of the bedroom and recognise early on that your PC and the internet are powerful absorbers of the individual time and attention that should be spent with your spouse.
8.Don't let friends, family or therapists undermine your marriage Unintentional sabotage is common and dangerous. Comments like “Why are you still there?” and “You deserve better” reflect a consumer view of marriage that may undercut the fact of a couple's intrinsic and enduring affection for each other.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Woman
You don't love a woman because she is beautiful,
but she is beautiful because you love her"
-Unknown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woman
"It is not meet that a son should set aside his mother, taking her place. Whosoever respecteth not his mother, the most sacred being after his God, is unworthy of the name of son.
"Listen, then, to what I say unto you: Respect woman, for she is the mother of the universe, and all the truth of divine creation lies in her.
"She is the basis of all that is good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. On her depends the whole existence of man, for she is his natural and moral support.
"She gives birth to you in the midst of suffering. By the sweat of her brow she rears you, and until her death you cause her the gravest anxieties. Bless her and worship her, for she is your one friend, your one support on earth.
"Respect her, uphold her. In acting thus you will win her love and her heart. You will find favor in the sight of God and many sins shall be forgiven you.
"In the same way, love your wives and respect them; for they will be mothers tomorrow, and each later on the ancestress of a race.
"Be lenient towards woman. Her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames the brute in him, and makes of him a lamb.
"The wife and the mother are the inappreciable treasures given unto you by God. They are the fairest ornaments of existence, and of them shall be born all the inhabitants of the world.
"Even as the God of armies separated of old the light from the darkness and the land from the waters, woman possesses the divine faculty of separating in a man good intentions from evil thoughts.
"Wherefore I say unto you, after God your best thoughts should belong to the women and the wives, woman being for you the temple wherein you will obtain the most easily perfect happiness.
"Imbue yourselves in this temple with moral strength. Here you will forget your sorrows and your failures, and you will recover the lost energy necessary to enable you to help your neighbor.
"Do not expose her to humiliation. In acting thus you would humiliate yourselves and lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing exists here below.
"Protect your wife, in order that she may protect you and all your family. All that you do for your wife, your mother, for a widow or another woman in distress, you will have done unto your God."
Issa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have created a high-resolution image of this beautiful "poem"
for you to download and print, for that special woman in your life.
it is a 2.2 MB .jpg file which you can download by "Right-Clicking" on the link
below and selecting "Save Target As".
but she is beautiful because you love her"
-Unknown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woman
"It is not meet that a son should set aside his mother, taking her place. Whosoever respecteth not his mother, the most sacred being after his God, is unworthy of the name of son.
"Listen, then, to what I say unto you: Respect woman, for she is the mother of the universe, and all the truth of divine creation lies in her.
"She is the basis of all that is good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. On her depends the whole existence of man, for she is his natural and moral support.
"She gives birth to you in the midst of suffering. By the sweat of her brow she rears you, and until her death you cause her the gravest anxieties. Bless her and worship her, for she is your one friend, your one support on earth.
"Respect her, uphold her. In acting thus you will win her love and her heart. You will find favor in the sight of God and many sins shall be forgiven you.
"In the same way, love your wives and respect them; for they will be mothers tomorrow, and each later on the ancestress of a race.
"Be lenient towards woman. Her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames the brute in him, and makes of him a lamb.
"The wife and the mother are the inappreciable treasures given unto you by God. They are the fairest ornaments of existence, and of them shall be born all the inhabitants of the world.
"Even as the God of armies separated of old the light from the darkness and the land from the waters, woman possesses the divine faculty of separating in a man good intentions from evil thoughts.
"Wherefore I say unto you, after God your best thoughts should belong to the women and the wives, woman being for you the temple wherein you will obtain the most easily perfect happiness.
"Imbue yourselves in this temple with moral strength. Here you will forget your sorrows and your failures, and you will recover the lost energy necessary to enable you to help your neighbor.
"Do not expose her to humiliation. In acting thus you would humiliate yourselves and lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing exists here below.
"Protect your wife, in order that she may protect you and all your family. All that you do for your wife, your mother, for a widow or another woman in distress, you will have done unto your God."
Issa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have created a high-resolution image of this beautiful "poem"
for you to download and print, for that special woman in your life.
it is a 2.2 MB .jpg file which you can download by "Right-Clicking" on the link
below and selecting "Save Target As".
Love Has a Purpose
present selected writings, sayings and letters and include notes made on his travels and extracts from his public seminars. They offer easily accessible insights into a wide range of subjects in the spiritual life.
Love has a purpose. But it doesn't have an objective.
You love for the pleasure of love. That is its purpose. But pleasure is not the objective.
In any loving situation between man and woman it's no good one of them loving for the pleasure of love, and the other not — because there's likely to be a selfishness in one of them.
Speaking first to woman . . .
Let's get it straight. The instinct for survival means that man pursues you — and you hope he'll keep pursuing you. That's the instinct for the survival of the species. Man as his phallic state charges towards woman as the receptive and passive state.
He wants to make love with you, woman. He wants to get inside your body, your receptivity. He is made to pursue you. But you are made for love. So it is for you to ensure that no man gets into your body without love. But you have been letting selfish man get into you. There hasn't been enough love and so you suffer.
Man is a great lover. Well, isn't he the greatest lover of all time? Great lovers can tell great stories. Man's a great storyteller, isn't he? He's got some great stories, some great answers. He's got all the answers, hasn't he?. And he seems to be able to deliver the goods too.
But woman, how do you ensure that he really has enough love in him? That he doesn't just want you for his selfish pleasure?
A couple of months ago at a meeting in Sydney, or perhaps the Gold Coast, I said something on this subject which brought the house down — big howls of laughter. And I can understand why.
I said that woman has to be wooed.
It's a word from my parents' generation. We don't hear it used much now, and when we do it's a big laugh. But we don't have to reject it just because it was used by an older generation. The dishonesty of that generation had to be broken down, because their wooing and courtship concealed so much sexual dishonesty. Courting . . . being on their best behaviour right up to the wedding night. Then, in twelve months' time when the courting and the honeymoon were over, what a change! — as courtship gave way to politeness, and politeness gave way to familiarity, and familiarity gave way to a settled companionship.
When that generation's dishonesty to love had broken down, the next generation came up with another kind of irresponsibility — promiscuous sex. All that dropping out, and dropping into communities, and dipping into this body, dipping into that one — no one taking responsibility. That is not love, where I come from. But many men think it is, and many women believe them. And what happens? The women get wet — emotional. They become emotional wrecks. And the men become brittle with the momentum of chasing round in a vicious circle, trying to find something better and not able to stop, like sparrows hopping from one gutter to the next.
Where I come from, man has to take responsibility for the woman he makes love to — every woman he makes love to. If he doesn't she becomes unhappy. Right love gets rid of her unhappiness, takes it out of her. But if the man's love is not pure, she will be unhappy. That follows, doesn't it?
It is true that as a man loves the unhappiness out of a woman, for a time there will continue to be unhappiness in her. But she will know if he is truly loving her. She will be able to say, 'Yes, I am emotional. But I know you truly love me'.
Speaking to man, now . . . You don't love her unless she can say, 'You cause me pain — but I am becoming less unhappy because you love me'. If she can't say that, then you don't love her — sorry! — because you've got to take her on when you love her.
So, woman, what's the value of being wooed by man?
It's the only way you'll be able to test him.
Is this man going to love you? Or is he going to love himself in you?
Do you want a man who is going to put selfish energy into your body?
What's the test of love?
Well, what is love? Love is first of all an attraction. You enjoy being together. So the man has to show that he enjoys being with you.
It's no good him giving you all the right answers from Barry Long's teaching. He's got to show you that there's a profundity inside of him and that he truly wants to be with you.
Do you want him for twenty-four hours? Of course you don't. Why do you want a man for twenty-four hours?
Man can't get a woman any time he likes you know. But woman can. She can go down the street and get one any time. Oh, I know she says it's difficult to get one that she wants . . . but that's not the point I'm making. You can get a man any time you want, woman, any time. Men are running around out there, driving their cars as fast as they can, screeching round corners on motorcycles, exciting themselves, trying to get women. But they can't get them. The women just stand there and say 'Oh what an awful noise!'
You women are looking for right energy, aren't you? If you get a man who's going to masturbate in you for a couple of days — if you get the wrong energy — you'll soon be very unhappy.
So man has to woo you. He's got to walk along the beach with you. He has to phone up and say 'How about going for a walk this morning?' And you say 'Sure. Great!' And down along the beach you go. And you hold hands and walk along.
You haven't hopped into bed yet, have you? No — he's still got to show you that he wants to be with you.
So next morning he rings up again and says 'Good morning. What are you doing? Come and have breakfast with me, down on the esplanade. Come on, let's go and have breakfast together. I enjoy being with you.'
So there's now an easiness between you. If you don't have that, what's the point?
At first it's not about making physical love. It's about discovering whether there is love for you in this man. This one might have love for you; that one might not. The one way to find out is to be wooed. It's not that you're unwilling or not ready to make physical love because you can leave that to look after itself; the bodies coming together is a natural consequence, generally. And it's not that you're putting any condition on lovemaking — although to win you over the smart man will say, 'Why are you putting a condition on our love?' (You've heard that one before, haven't you?) and you say, 'No, there's no condition. You've just got to show me that you love me'.
Hasn't your experience taught you what you want?
Have you learnt yet? Of course you have. That's why you come to me, woman, because I point out that you know what you don't want.
So you must be wooed to find out if there is something fundamental between you and the man, something more substantive than physical attraction, something that will be there when eventually he enters your body. There has to be a willingness to be with you. That natural easiness and willingness makes a lovely setting for the gem of physical love to sit within.
If you start off in this way you have much more chance of being honest with each other, because while he's demonstrating that he wants to be with you and truly enjoys being with you, you can talk about God and love, and you can tell him what you want and what you don't want.
And what do you want?
'I only want love — God, truth and beauty. That's what I want. And I'm prepared to die for it. So, for that one want, I will give up all my emotion as fast as I can. To have one want requires me to be honest. But it also requires you — if you want to be my partner and not just dip into me — it requires you to also want that one thing. Because if you don't want that with me, what's the purpose of our being together?'
For that one want . . .
One want is not out of the 'want shop'.
Love has a purpose. But it doesn't have an objective.
You love for the pleasure of love. That is its purpose. But pleasure is not the objective.
In any loving situation between man and woman it's no good one of them loving for the pleasure of love, and the other not — because there's likely to be a selfishness in one of them.
Speaking first to woman . . .
Let's get it straight. The instinct for survival means that man pursues you — and you hope he'll keep pursuing you. That's the instinct for the survival of the species. Man as his phallic state charges towards woman as the receptive and passive state.
He wants to make love with you, woman. He wants to get inside your body, your receptivity. He is made to pursue you. But you are made for love. So it is for you to ensure that no man gets into your body without love. But you have been letting selfish man get into you. There hasn't been enough love and so you suffer.
Man is a great lover. Well, isn't he the greatest lover of all time? Great lovers can tell great stories. Man's a great storyteller, isn't he? He's got some great stories, some great answers. He's got all the answers, hasn't he?. And he seems to be able to deliver the goods too.
But woman, how do you ensure that he really has enough love in him? That he doesn't just want you for his selfish pleasure?
A couple of months ago at a meeting in Sydney, or perhaps the Gold Coast, I said something on this subject which brought the house down — big howls of laughter. And I can understand why.
I said that woman has to be wooed.
It's a word from my parents' generation. We don't hear it used much now, and when we do it's a big laugh. But we don't have to reject it just because it was used by an older generation. The dishonesty of that generation had to be broken down, because their wooing and courtship concealed so much sexual dishonesty. Courting . . . being on their best behaviour right up to the wedding night. Then, in twelve months' time when the courting and the honeymoon were over, what a change! — as courtship gave way to politeness, and politeness gave way to familiarity, and familiarity gave way to a settled companionship.
When that generation's dishonesty to love had broken down, the next generation came up with another kind of irresponsibility — promiscuous sex. All that dropping out, and dropping into communities, and dipping into this body, dipping into that one — no one taking responsibility. That is not love, where I come from. But many men think it is, and many women believe them. And what happens? The women get wet — emotional. They become emotional wrecks. And the men become brittle with the momentum of chasing round in a vicious circle, trying to find something better and not able to stop, like sparrows hopping from one gutter to the next.
Where I come from, man has to take responsibility for the woman he makes love to — every woman he makes love to. If he doesn't she becomes unhappy. Right love gets rid of her unhappiness, takes it out of her. But if the man's love is not pure, she will be unhappy. That follows, doesn't it?
It is true that as a man loves the unhappiness out of a woman, for a time there will continue to be unhappiness in her. But she will know if he is truly loving her. She will be able to say, 'Yes, I am emotional. But I know you truly love me'.
Speaking to man, now . . . You don't love her unless she can say, 'You cause me pain — but I am becoming less unhappy because you love me'. If she can't say that, then you don't love her — sorry! — because you've got to take her on when you love her.
So, woman, what's the value of being wooed by man?
It's the only way you'll be able to test him.
Is this man going to love you? Or is he going to love himself in you?
Do you want a man who is going to put selfish energy into your body?
What's the test of love?
Well, what is love? Love is first of all an attraction. You enjoy being together. So the man has to show that he enjoys being with you.
It's no good him giving you all the right answers from Barry Long's teaching. He's got to show you that there's a profundity inside of him and that he truly wants to be with you.
Do you want him for twenty-four hours? Of course you don't. Why do you want a man for twenty-four hours?
Man can't get a woman any time he likes you know. But woman can. She can go down the street and get one any time. Oh, I know she says it's difficult to get one that she wants . . . but that's not the point I'm making. You can get a man any time you want, woman, any time. Men are running around out there, driving their cars as fast as they can, screeching round corners on motorcycles, exciting themselves, trying to get women. But they can't get them. The women just stand there and say 'Oh what an awful noise!'
You women are looking for right energy, aren't you? If you get a man who's going to masturbate in you for a couple of days — if you get the wrong energy — you'll soon be very unhappy.
So man has to woo you. He's got to walk along the beach with you. He has to phone up and say 'How about going for a walk this morning?' And you say 'Sure. Great!' And down along the beach you go. And you hold hands and walk along.
You haven't hopped into bed yet, have you? No — he's still got to show you that he wants to be with you.
So next morning he rings up again and says 'Good morning. What are you doing? Come and have breakfast with me, down on the esplanade. Come on, let's go and have breakfast together. I enjoy being with you.'
So there's now an easiness between you. If you don't have that, what's the point?
At first it's not about making physical love. It's about discovering whether there is love for you in this man. This one might have love for you; that one might not. The one way to find out is to be wooed. It's not that you're unwilling or not ready to make physical love because you can leave that to look after itself; the bodies coming together is a natural consequence, generally. And it's not that you're putting any condition on lovemaking — although to win you over the smart man will say, 'Why are you putting a condition on our love?' (You've heard that one before, haven't you?) and you say, 'No, there's no condition. You've just got to show me that you love me'.
Hasn't your experience taught you what you want?
Have you learnt yet? Of course you have. That's why you come to me, woman, because I point out that you know what you don't want.
So you must be wooed to find out if there is something fundamental between you and the man, something more substantive than physical attraction, something that will be there when eventually he enters your body. There has to be a willingness to be with you. That natural easiness and willingness makes a lovely setting for the gem of physical love to sit within.
If you start off in this way you have much more chance of being honest with each other, because while he's demonstrating that he wants to be with you and truly enjoys being with you, you can talk about God and love, and you can tell him what you want and what you don't want.
And what do you want?
'I only want love — God, truth and beauty. That's what I want. And I'm prepared to die for it. So, for that one want, I will give up all my emotion as fast as I can. To have one want requires me to be honest. But it also requires you — if you want to be my partner and not just dip into me — it requires you to also want that one thing. Because if you don't want that with me, what's the purpose of our being together?'
For that one want . . .
One want is not out of the 'want shop'.
Woman and Love
A woman wrote to Barry Long:
She had been deeply moved by Barry Long’s teaching, particularly with regard to love. Now she was with another master, a man who clearly loved God, but his teaching appeared to contradict much of what had been revealed to her by Barry Long about the nature of man and woman.
The new master was emphatic about the responsibility of the individual. For example, it would be avoidance of responsibility to regard ‘unloving actions’ from men as being in any way responsible for the state of a woman. In confirmation of this, a woman in the group associated with the new master had spoken of experiencing deep peace after surrendering to her abusive husband.
A man in the group had been approaching the correspondent over a period of time and had proposed marriage. She didn’t have a wholehearted response to him and was worried about his irresponsible past, including gambling debts. Should she drop her reservations and go with him? Perhaps love would develop in her. Surely a truly loving woman could turn around a man’s weaknesses?
The situation had raised great self-doubt in the woman. Had she misled herself with romanticism? Would coming to see Barry Long help her sort it out?
Barry Long's Reply:
It seems that the most difficult thing to grasp for a sincerely motivated woman like you is the simplicity of truth and the simplicity of love; that they are two distinct qualities or states in divine intellect.
The realisation of truth or God alone does not imply the realisation of real love. Love has to be lived and in this piece I’ll be describing precisely what that means. Although the realisation of truth does not lead to the living knowledge of love, the realisation of love through living leads to the realisation of truth.
TWO MASTERS MEANS CONFUSION
Your main problem is you have two spiritual masters. So you are divided. Give yourself wholeheartedly to one truth or the other — and live it. Either way, if you are ready, will lead you to your death while you are alive. But that’s pretty rare.
The reason it’s rare is because spiritual aspirants expect to get something from the master, instead of being responsible and dying — which means not yielding — to the clamorous ignorance of their human nature. All the master does is point the way according to his realisation. All masters’ realisations differ in method but are the same in end result — provided the master is really a master of truth and love.
There’s no doubt that the master you are currently with is a master of truth. But you keep writing to me for answers. If you come back to my teaching I have nothing to give you other than what is already in my books, tapes, videos and writings — and in my presence and words at my seminars.
While you stay away you are increasingly out of touch with the continuous revelation of my truth. As you would be similarly out of touch with your current master if you left him. You want it both ways which is the human failing in the spiritual life. I can’t give you anything. Best to stay where you are — and really start dying to your troublesome self.
Now to your other problem or confusion.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
You are here to enjoy your life. That does not mean pleasing yourself. The word enjoy derives from the Latin, to rejoice; and the shorter version is joy. Joy in our human ignorance has become synonymous with pleasure and getting. But joy is not pleasure or an effect of getting; it is simply joy. And if you (or anyone) don’t know in your own experience what I’m speaking of you’re dead from the body up.
You are woman, the intelligence of God in female form. That state is realised, made real as your living life, by you becoming more intelligent. And you become more intelligent through experience.
Most experience leads to knowing. Knowing relates to the world: how to drive a car, run a business, be a doctor, a scientist or to do or become anything. It involves an accumulation of experience which is supposed to culminate in what the world would call an expert, connoisseur, genius, or something. That’s knowing. To know anything requires only the senses and the common human intelligence of awareness.
But knowing, no matter how impressive, cannot lead to the realisation of God in female or male form. That requires knowledge.
Knowing is not knowledge.
Knowledge certainly requires experience, but the experience of your whole life from the time you were born. That totality of experience is common to everyone. But what finally produces knowledge out of experience is the capacity to be CONSCIOUS of experience rather than being just aware.
To be conscious of experience is to be free as an uninterrupted state within of personal consideration, which adds up to being free of fear. It also means being free of aimless thought and bothersome emotions. You are then innocent — and life is seen without interpretation for the simplicity it is.
Conscious love between man and woman is the ultimate state of knowledge in existence. It requires a high degree of intelligence or consciousness. That does not mean such intelligence is not within everyone’s reach. The intelligence is there for all — provided the individual has acquired sufficient knowledge of what appears to be love in existence between man and woman.
The most immediately available experience for this is the love life. For love in existence, despite any protestations to the contrary, begins with the irresistible attraction between man and woman. It’s what makes the world continue, or makes the world go round, as they say.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?
What does conscious knowledge of love between man and woman teach woman? What has it taught you about man? I’ll answer for you. Man hurts.
Every woman on earth has been hurt by man’s love. If she hasn’t, she hasn’t lived. But the question is, why does she keep getting hurt? Why does she keep going back for more pain, more passing pleasure and passion, more heartbreak, familiarity, disillusionment, disappointment and confusion?
The explanation, like truth, is simple: after all her experience she still hasn’t REALISED that man’s love, the way he loves, hurts. Oh, she KNOWS it; but it’s still the unconsciousness of knowing, not knowledge. The result is she keeps hoping and trying; and eventually compromises with man’s love; or she cuts off from him in frustration or fear; or turns to her own gender for love; or busies herself in the world; or finds cruel solace in drugs or alcohol.
And yet every woman has yearned within for completion with man which she has correctly intuited (like you) somehow exists. But the message from all the men of truth on the world scene that I know of, is that in having that conviction, you’re a romantic — a pathetic female whose intuition or knowledge of love is inferior to theirs. To me, if love is not continuous romance it’s not love. And what is romance? Romance, to me, is constant delight. But in existence, it takes two.
Your difficulty is that you haven’t learned yet from your experience, haven’t made your intuition real. You are thinking of being with a man who says he loves you, has asked you to marry him and yet you don’t have a ‘wholehearted response back to him’. You say he ‘brings with him a rather irresponsible legacy of gambling debts that you find not very inspiring of confidence in him as Man’. You find your ‘heart sinking at the prospect of taking on yet more turgidity and denseness.’
Are you crazy? You want to go in there again and suffer, of your own volition? You have the usual forlorn hope of reforming man even though you don’t love him (which if you did passionately enough might make a bit of a difference but I wouldn’t wager your life on it). You’re tempted to take on this man and his problems. What a predictable disaster for love on earth.
How could you possibly enjoy your life tied to such a partnership which would certainly end miserably anyway, like all your (and every woman’s) previous love relationships with man?
THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION
There is of course a simple explanation in truth for your seeming compassion for the man; for your considering taking him on — and for your instinctive reluctance to do so.
Woman in essence is a divine creature, all pure love. She is a consciousness, a principle embodying mother, sister, daughter, lover, comforter, nourisher, God — all at once in female form. But only when she is conscious.
Such consciousness is now. There’s no time in it. Without the consciousness woman clings to her various experiences as woman and becomes each one at different times — hence mother, daughter, lover etc. To be all those attributes at once is beyond simultaneous knowing. To have or be that pure knowledge, you can’t know anything. You’re just what you are, action, and stillness within, moment to moment; but with the knowledge that you must be true to love or the indescribable ‘that’ which you are.
Woman today is semiconscious more or less. Instead of being the precious knowledge or consciousness of love that living has revealed to her, she divides herself emotionally into the confusion of being sometimes mother (of her children as well as of man), sometimes lover, sometimes sister, sometimes daughter, nourisher, comforter.
And sometimes — very rarely — she sees in her own experience the futility of trying to change man or teach him about the reality of love. To think that she can change him is her major error.
WOMAN, SOURCE OF ALL LOVE
All love in existence begins with woman. Without woman’s womb there would be no one to love or be loved. Man’s semen may be the means; but it is woman who carries the burden and the pain of giving birth to love. Hers is the first sacrifice for love.
Nonetheless, true love is man’s essence. But it is concealed under great layers of ignorance — of millennia of notions of female inferiority and weakness. This has been nourished by his forceful intellectual knowing and success in exploiting her in all areas of love and relationship.
He cannot be taught by woman. He is too arrogant in the certainty of his knowing. Knowledge he may have, even of God the ultimate truth outside existence. But knowledge of love he no longer has. Only in one way can he restore himself and be restored to the full glory of his divine role in existence.
Man must love woman. Not any woman. Any woman will fall again for his sweet talk, his promises, his apparent well-meaning sincerity, his cute little-boy-lost look, his sexual prowess; and particularly she’ll succumb to her own certainty that her love can transform him. Or she will give in to her feelings of insecurity, her longing to be loved or her imagined sexual need. Or she’ll just use him, mislead him, badger him and leave him in one way or another.
A COSMIC TASK
The only woman man can really love (so that through her he can realise God as love in existence) is a conscious woman, a woman who will not compromise with him in love. This despite something inside her howling for compromise — for all the best possible reasons that her mind and other people will throw up. This is a woman who has realised as her own unshakable knowledge that man’s love, the way he is, hurts and causes ongoing pain.
Not just ongoing pain for her if she compromises, but for all women everywhere.
Thus does the task and knowledge of such a woman take her consciousness beyond the world of personal love which clogs and holds back the evolution of real love on earth. Hers is now a cosmic endeavour, although the woman herself will not know this. Some woman has to do it and this is the woman — a female catalyst in the divine or cosmic plan which even the great masters of truth, by what they’ve left us, have had little knowledge of.
This woman is potential in every adult woman who is prepared to die to self consideration for love’s sake — without expecting a result or to get something in return. Sufficient for her — because she has no choice — is the knowledge and consciousness of real love free of knowing or wanting. She is indeed alone.
Only for the love of such a woman will man give up the selfishness that keeps him from realising the principle of divine love that he is. But where is she? Where is she out there?
She’s not there until man is truly willing to love and change. Then she appears for him. Otherwise he’s involved in a futile search. If he wants her, he must die for love first.
HOW
To love such a woman by dying for love man must give up his negativity, self-doubt, independence, reservations, imagined authority and fear of love. She will not harangue him or make emotional demands on him. To her that would not be love.
He loves her because he can’t help it. He’s humble enough to see the strength of the consciousness in her that will not compromise true love. And yet she never assumes to be that or to be anything special. She is only special to him.
He wants nothing more than to be with her, live with her, be always by her side and to care for her. (All that of course will have a familiar ring for most women. The man really means it from his deepest place within. But something gross and beneath him intervenes — his self, his fear of losing his independence which for a time he was able to suppress in the face of the wonder and glory of love. So he woos her, declares his love for her and after the initial joy of getting together gradually or subtly backs away in familiarity, companionship or disinterest.)
Above all, the man of love realises in his own being (and not because she told him) that while he is subservient to his negative independent self she cannot love him with the conscious God-love that she is — even though she does in truth love him. Above all for her, she must be true to the truth and love she is.
In that way does such a woman bring man back to love — without doing anything apart from being true. And man does it for himself. However, for him to love the consciousness of woman like this, he will have an innate love of God — which amazingly is simply what he loves in her. In other words, when the love is complete between them, God is loving God with nothing in between. Truth is then realised at the same time as love.
TRUTH IS NOT LOVE
You mentioned in your letter how a woman who had been with your master longer than you, surrendered utterly to her abusive husband and one day realised there was no need for him to change as she had previously thought. Your master had counselled her to surrender to the abuse because any resistance was only her fear of pain and death.
Well, what a daddy of a misconception of love that is.
Let me tell you what happened to the woman, or in her. She realised a degree of the truth beyond existence, which is always a delight for me to hear. Nonetheless, anyone inwardly committed (by grace) to truth may do this by total surrender in a continuously oppressive situation from which there seems to be no way out. But there has to be some conscious recognition of God to surrender to; otherwise it is resignation, and resignation is just another aspect of human ignorance.
But for this particular woman there was a way out. The woman could have left the man. She would then have served the man and served the cosmic evolution of love on earth. As it was, she had to do what she did. But I can say that though the woman knows something of the power of surrender, she has not realised the power and fulfillment of love.
Love is not truth. Love is only in existence. And here is where it needs to be where man and woman abuse each other, torture each other and ceaselessly endeavour through such ignorance to live with each other. To put up with an abusive partner might serve the divine self-centredness necessary for realising truth by one individual. But it won’t contribute one iota to love on this benighted planet. Truth here without the mystery and romance of love is like a sea without salt.
What is it that every woman fundamentally craves for? Like you?
Love.
What is man’s fundamental craving? To retain his independence and then (as a substitute for love) to seek power over nature or people instead of over his self. Of course the rare man (by grace) gives his life to truth through the process of self-mastery. But the rarest man after realising the truth gives his life not only to truth but to the awakening (by grace) of the principle of divine love between man and woman.
If anyone who has realised the truth or a degree of it, asks why in that precious moment of truth they knew extraordinary love, here’s the answer.
Your self is all that is in existence. It is the only barrier to the realisation of divine love implicit in every body.
The love of God or the mystical life slowly reduces the virulent ignorance of self. At a point in many people’s lives truth dissolves the self-ishness more or less. In that moment self realises itself (more or less) as love which it always was before being corrupted and burdened by the mind and emotions. And a welling of love occurs, sometimes a great welling.
But such realisations of love are not complete, not enough to bring about enduring vital and fulfilling love between a man and woman here in existence. Not enough to make a difference to the cosmic evolution of love on earth
For that, initially, a woman of real love is needed.
How about you?
She had been deeply moved by Barry Long’s teaching, particularly with regard to love. Now she was with another master, a man who clearly loved God, but his teaching appeared to contradict much of what had been revealed to her by Barry Long about the nature of man and woman.
The new master was emphatic about the responsibility of the individual. For example, it would be avoidance of responsibility to regard ‘unloving actions’ from men as being in any way responsible for the state of a woman. In confirmation of this, a woman in the group associated with the new master had spoken of experiencing deep peace after surrendering to her abusive husband.
A man in the group had been approaching the correspondent over a period of time and had proposed marriage. She didn’t have a wholehearted response to him and was worried about his irresponsible past, including gambling debts. Should she drop her reservations and go with him? Perhaps love would develop in her. Surely a truly loving woman could turn around a man’s weaknesses?
The situation had raised great self-doubt in the woman. Had she misled herself with romanticism? Would coming to see Barry Long help her sort it out?
Barry Long's Reply:
It seems that the most difficult thing to grasp for a sincerely motivated woman like you is the simplicity of truth and the simplicity of love; that they are two distinct qualities or states in divine intellect.
The realisation of truth or God alone does not imply the realisation of real love. Love has to be lived and in this piece I’ll be describing precisely what that means. Although the realisation of truth does not lead to the living knowledge of love, the realisation of love through living leads to the realisation of truth.
TWO MASTERS MEANS CONFUSION
Your main problem is you have two spiritual masters. So you are divided. Give yourself wholeheartedly to one truth or the other — and live it. Either way, if you are ready, will lead you to your death while you are alive. But that’s pretty rare.
The reason it’s rare is because spiritual aspirants expect to get something from the master, instead of being responsible and dying — which means not yielding — to the clamorous ignorance of their human nature. All the master does is point the way according to his realisation. All masters’ realisations differ in method but are the same in end result — provided the master is really a master of truth and love.
There’s no doubt that the master you are currently with is a master of truth. But you keep writing to me for answers. If you come back to my teaching I have nothing to give you other than what is already in my books, tapes, videos and writings — and in my presence and words at my seminars.
While you stay away you are increasingly out of touch with the continuous revelation of my truth. As you would be similarly out of touch with your current master if you left him. You want it both ways which is the human failing in the spiritual life. I can’t give you anything. Best to stay where you are — and really start dying to your troublesome self.
Now to your other problem or confusion.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
You are here to enjoy your life. That does not mean pleasing yourself. The word enjoy derives from the Latin, to rejoice; and the shorter version is joy. Joy in our human ignorance has become synonymous with pleasure and getting. But joy is not pleasure or an effect of getting; it is simply joy. And if you (or anyone) don’t know in your own experience what I’m speaking of you’re dead from the body up.
You are woman, the intelligence of God in female form. That state is realised, made real as your living life, by you becoming more intelligent. And you become more intelligent through experience.
Most experience leads to knowing. Knowing relates to the world: how to drive a car, run a business, be a doctor, a scientist or to do or become anything. It involves an accumulation of experience which is supposed to culminate in what the world would call an expert, connoisseur, genius, or something. That’s knowing. To know anything requires only the senses and the common human intelligence of awareness.
But knowing, no matter how impressive, cannot lead to the realisation of God in female or male form. That requires knowledge.
Knowing is not knowledge.
Knowledge certainly requires experience, but the experience of your whole life from the time you were born. That totality of experience is common to everyone. But what finally produces knowledge out of experience is the capacity to be CONSCIOUS of experience rather than being just aware.
To be conscious of experience is to be free as an uninterrupted state within of personal consideration, which adds up to being free of fear. It also means being free of aimless thought and bothersome emotions. You are then innocent — and life is seen without interpretation for the simplicity it is.
Conscious love between man and woman is the ultimate state of knowledge in existence. It requires a high degree of intelligence or consciousness. That does not mean such intelligence is not within everyone’s reach. The intelligence is there for all — provided the individual has acquired sufficient knowledge of what appears to be love in existence between man and woman.
The most immediately available experience for this is the love life. For love in existence, despite any protestations to the contrary, begins with the irresistible attraction between man and woman. It’s what makes the world continue, or makes the world go round, as they say.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?
What does conscious knowledge of love between man and woman teach woman? What has it taught you about man? I’ll answer for you. Man hurts.
Every woman on earth has been hurt by man’s love. If she hasn’t, she hasn’t lived. But the question is, why does she keep getting hurt? Why does she keep going back for more pain, more passing pleasure and passion, more heartbreak, familiarity, disillusionment, disappointment and confusion?
The explanation, like truth, is simple: after all her experience she still hasn’t REALISED that man’s love, the way he loves, hurts. Oh, she KNOWS it; but it’s still the unconsciousness of knowing, not knowledge. The result is she keeps hoping and trying; and eventually compromises with man’s love; or she cuts off from him in frustration or fear; or turns to her own gender for love; or busies herself in the world; or finds cruel solace in drugs or alcohol.
And yet every woman has yearned within for completion with man which she has correctly intuited (like you) somehow exists. But the message from all the men of truth on the world scene that I know of, is that in having that conviction, you’re a romantic — a pathetic female whose intuition or knowledge of love is inferior to theirs. To me, if love is not continuous romance it’s not love. And what is romance? Romance, to me, is constant delight. But in existence, it takes two.
Your difficulty is that you haven’t learned yet from your experience, haven’t made your intuition real. You are thinking of being with a man who says he loves you, has asked you to marry him and yet you don’t have a ‘wholehearted response back to him’. You say he ‘brings with him a rather irresponsible legacy of gambling debts that you find not very inspiring of confidence in him as Man’. You find your ‘heart sinking at the prospect of taking on yet more turgidity and denseness.’
Are you crazy? You want to go in there again and suffer, of your own volition? You have the usual forlorn hope of reforming man even though you don’t love him (which if you did passionately enough might make a bit of a difference but I wouldn’t wager your life on it). You’re tempted to take on this man and his problems. What a predictable disaster for love on earth.
How could you possibly enjoy your life tied to such a partnership which would certainly end miserably anyway, like all your (and every woman’s) previous love relationships with man?
THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION
There is of course a simple explanation in truth for your seeming compassion for the man; for your considering taking him on — and for your instinctive reluctance to do so.
Woman in essence is a divine creature, all pure love. She is a consciousness, a principle embodying mother, sister, daughter, lover, comforter, nourisher, God — all at once in female form. But only when she is conscious.
Such consciousness is now. There’s no time in it. Without the consciousness woman clings to her various experiences as woman and becomes each one at different times — hence mother, daughter, lover etc. To be all those attributes at once is beyond simultaneous knowing. To have or be that pure knowledge, you can’t know anything. You’re just what you are, action, and stillness within, moment to moment; but with the knowledge that you must be true to love or the indescribable ‘that’ which you are.
Woman today is semiconscious more or less. Instead of being the precious knowledge or consciousness of love that living has revealed to her, she divides herself emotionally into the confusion of being sometimes mother (of her children as well as of man), sometimes lover, sometimes sister, sometimes daughter, nourisher, comforter.
And sometimes — very rarely — she sees in her own experience the futility of trying to change man or teach him about the reality of love. To think that she can change him is her major error.
WOMAN, SOURCE OF ALL LOVE
All love in existence begins with woman. Without woman’s womb there would be no one to love or be loved. Man’s semen may be the means; but it is woman who carries the burden and the pain of giving birth to love. Hers is the first sacrifice for love.
Nonetheless, true love is man’s essence. But it is concealed under great layers of ignorance — of millennia of notions of female inferiority and weakness. This has been nourished by his forceful intellectual knowing and success in exploiting her in all areas of love and relationship.
He cannot be taught by woman. He is too arrogant in the certainty of his knowing. Knowledge he may have, even of God the ultimate truth outside existence. But knowledge of love he no longer has. Only in one way can he restore himself and be restored to the full glory of his divine role in existence.
Man must love woman. Not any woman. Any woman will fall again for his sweet talk, his promises, his apparent well-meaning sincerity, his cute little-boy-lost look, his sexual prowess; and particularly she’ll succumb to her own certainty that her love can transform him. Or she will give in to her feelings of insecurity, her longing to be loved or her imagined sexual need. Or she’ll just use him, mislead him, badger him and leave him in one way or another.
A COSMIC TASK
The only woman man can really love (so that through her he can realise God as love in existence) is a conscious woman, a woman who will not compromise with him in love. This despite something inside her howling for compromise — for all the best possible reasons that her mind and other people will throw up. This is a woman who has realised as her own unshakable knowledge that man’s love, the way he is, hurts and causes ongoing pain.
Not just ongoing pain for her if she compromises, but for all women everywhere.
Thus does the task and knowledge of such a woman take her consciousness beyond the world of personal love which clogs and holds back the evolution of real love on earth. Hers is now a cosmic endeavour, although the woman herself will not know this. Some woman has to do it and this is the woman — a female catalyst in the divine or cosmic plan which even the great masters of truth, by what they’ve left us, have had little knowledge of.
This woman is potential in every adult woman who is prepared to die to self consideration for love’s sake — without expecting a result or to get something in return. Sufficient for her — because she has no choice — is the knowledge and consciousness of real love free of knowing or wanting. She is indeed alone.
Only for the love of such a woman will man give up the selfishness that keeps him from realising the principle of divine love that he is. But where is she? Where is she out there?
She’s not there until man is truly willing to love and change. Then she appears for him. Otherwise he’s involved in a futile search. If he wants her, he must die for love first.
HOW
To love such a woman by dying for love man must give up his negativity, self-doubt, independence, reservations, imagined authority and fear of love. She will not harangue him or make emotional demands on him. To her that would not be love.
He loves her because he can’t help it. He’s humble enough to see the strength of the consciousness in her that will not compromise true love. And yet she never assumes to be that or to be anything special. She is only special to him.
He wants nothing more than to be with her, live with her, be always by her side and to care for her. (All that of course will have a familiar ring for most women. The man really means it from his deepest place within. But something gross and beneath him intervenes — his self, his fear of losing his independence which for a time he was able to suppress in the face of the wonder and glory of love. So he woos her, declares his love for her and after the initial joy of getting together gradually or subtly backs away in familiarity, companionship or disinterest.)
Above all, the man of love realises in his own being (and not because she told him) that while he is subservient to his negative independent self she cannot love him with the conscious God-love that she is — even though she does in truth love him. Above all for her, she must be true to the truth and love she is.
In that way does such a woman bring man back to love — without doing anything apart from being true. And man does it for himself. However, for him to love the consciousness of woman like this, he will have an innate love of God — which amazingly is simply what he loves in her. In other words, when the love is complete between them, God is loving God with nothing in between. Truth is then realised at the same time as love.
TRUTH IS NOT LOVE
You mentioned in your letter how a woman who had been with your master longer than you, surrendered utterly to her abusive husband and one day realised there was no need for him to change as she had previously thought. Your master had counselled her to surrender to the abuse because any resistance was only her fear of pain and death.
Well, what a daddy of a misconception of love that is.
Let me tell you what happened to the woman, or in her. She realised a degree of the truth beyond existence, which is always a delight for me to hear. Nonetheless, anyone inwardly committed (by grace) to truth may do this by total surrender in a continuously oppressive situation from which there seems to be no way out. But there has to be some conscious recognition of God to surrender to; otherwise it is resignation, and resignation is just another aspect of human ignorance.
But for this particular woman there was a way out. The woman could have left the man. She would then have served the man and served the cosmic evolution of love on earth. As it was, she had to do what she did. But I can say that though the woman knows something of the power of surrender, she has not realised the power and fulfillment of love.
Love is not truth. Love is only in existence. And here is where it needs to be where man and woman abuse each other, torture each other and ceaselessly endeavour through such ignorance to live with each other. To put up with an abusive partner might serve the divine self-centredness necessary for realising truth by one individual. But it won’t contribute one iota to love on this benighted planet. Truth here without the mystery and romance of love is like a sea without salt.
What is it that every woman fundamentally craves for? Like you?
Love.
What is man’s fundamental craving? To retain his independence and then (as a substitute for love) to seek power over nature or people instead of over his self. Of course the rare man (by grace) gives his life to truth through the process of self-mastery. But the rarest man after realising the truth gives his life not only to truth but to the awakening (by grace) of the principle of divine love between man and woman.
If anyone who has realised the truth or a degree of it, asks why in that precious moment of truth they knew extraordinary love, here’s the answer.
Your self is all that is in existence. It is the only barrier to the realisation of divine love implicit in every body.
The love of God or the mystical life slowly reduces the virulent ignorance of self. At a point in many people’s lives truth dissolves the self-ishness more or less. In that moment self realises itself (more or less) as love which it always was before being corrupted and burdened by the mind and emotions. And a welling of love occurs, sometimes a great welling.
But such realisations of love are not complete, not enough to bring about enduring vital and fulfilling love between a man and woman here in existence. Not enough to make a difference to the cosmic evolution of love on earth
For that, initially, a woman of real love is needed.
How about you?
Woman and Love
A woman wrote to Barry Long:
She had been deeply moved by Barry Long’s teaching, particularly with regard to love. Now she was with another master, a man who clearly loved God, but his teaching appeared to contradict much of what had been revealed to her by Barry Long about the nature of man and woman.
The new master was emphatic about the responsibility of the individual. For example, it would be avoidance of responsibility to regard ‘unloving actions’ from men as being in any way responsible for the state of a woman. In confirmation of this, a woman in the group associated with the new master had spoken of experiencing deep peace after surrendering to her abusive husband.
A man in the group had been approaching the correspondent over a period of time and had proposed marriage. She didn’t have a wholehearted response to him and was worried about his irresponsible past, including gambling debts. Should she drop her reservations and go with him? Perhaps love would develop in her. Surely a truly loving woman could turn around a man’s weaknesses?
The situation had raised great self-doubt in the woman. Had she misled herself with romanticism? Would coming to see Barry Long help her sort it out?
Barry Long's Reply:
It seems that the most difficult thing to grasp for a sincerely motivated woman like you is the simplicity of truth and the simplicity of love; that they are two distinct qualities or states in divine intellect.
The realisation of truth or God alone does not imply the realisation of real love. Love has to be lived and in this piece I’ll be describing precisely what that means. Although the realisation of truth does not lead to the living knowledge of love, the realisation of love through living leads to the realisation of truth.
TWO MASTERS MEANS CONFUSION
Your main problem is you have two spiritual masters. So you are divided. Give yourself wholeheartedly to one truth or the other — and live it. Either way, if you are ready, will lead you to your death while you are alive. But that’s pretty rare.
The reason it’s rare is because spiritual aspirants expect to get something from the master, instead of being responsible and dying — which means not yielding — to the clamorous ignorance of their human nature. All the master does is point the way according to his realisation. All masters’ realisations differ in method but are the same in end result — provided the master is really a master of truth and love.
There’s no doubt that the master you are currently with is a master of truth. But you keep writing to me for answers. If you come back to my teaching I have nothing to give you other than what is already in my books, tapes, videos and writings — and in my presence and words at my seminars.
While you stay away you are increasingly out of touch with the continuous revelation of my truth. As you would be similarly out of touch with your current master if you left him. You want it both ways which is the human failing in the spiritual life. I can’t give you anything. Best to stay where you are — and really start dying to your troublesome self.
Now to your other problem or confusion.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
You are here to enjoy your life. That does not mean pleasing yourself. The word enjoy derives from the Latin, to rejoice; and the shorter version is joy. Joy in our human ignorance has become synonymous with pleasure and getting. But joy is not pleasure or an effect of getting; it is simply joy. And if you (or anyone) don’t know in your own experience what I’m speaking of you’re dead from the body up.
You are woman, the intelligence of God in female form. That state is realised, made real as your living life, by you becoming more intelligent. And you become more intelligent through experience.
Most experience leads to knowing. Knowing relates to the world: how to drive a car, run a business, be a doctor, a scientist or to do or become anything. It involves an accumulation of experience which is supposed to culminate in what the world would call an expert, connoisseur, genius, or something. That’s knowing. To know anything requires only the senses and the common human intelligence of awareness.
But knowing, no matter how impressive, cannot lead to the realisation of God in female or male form. That requires knowledge.
Knowing is not knowledge.
Knowledge certainly requires experience, but the experience of your whole life from the time you were born. That totality of experience is common to everyone. But what finally produces knowledge out of experience is the capacity to be CONSCIOUS of experience rather than being just aware.
To be conscious of experience is to be free as an uninterrupted state within of personal consideration, which adds up to being free of fear. It also means being free of aimless thought and bothersome emotions. You are then innocent — and life is seen without interpretation for the simplicity it is.
Conscious love between man and woman is the ultimate state of knowledge in existence. It requires a high degree of intelligence or consciousness. That does not mean such intelligence is not within everyone’s reach. The intelligence is there for all — provided the individual has acquired sufficient knowledge of what appears to be love in existence between man and woman.
The most immediately available experience for this is the love life. For love in existence, despite any protestations to the contrary, begins with the irresistible attraction between man and woman. It’s what makes the world continue, or makes the world go round, as they say.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?
What does conscious knowledge of love between man and woman teach woman? What has it taught you about man? I’ll answer for you. Man hurts.
Every woman on earth has been hurt by man’s love. If she hasn’t, she hasn’t lived. But the question is, why does she keep getting hurt? Why does she keep going back for more pain, more passing pleasure and passion, more heartbreak, familiarity, disillusionment, disappointment and confusion?
The explanation, like truth, is simple: after all her experience she still hasn’t REALISED that man’s love, the way he loves, hurts. Oh, she KNOWS it; but it’s still the unconsciousness of knowing, not knowledge. The result is she keeps hoping and trying; and eventually compromises with man’s love; or she cuts off from him in frustration or fear; or turns to her own gender for love; or busies herself in the world; or finds cruel solace in drugs or alcohol.
And yet every woman has yearned within for completion with man which she has correctly intuited (like you) somehow exists. But the message from all the men of truth on the world scene that I know of, is that in having that conviction, you’re a romantic — a pathetic female whose intuition or knowledge of love is inferior to theirs. To me, if love is not continuous romance it’s not love. And what is romance? Romance, to me, is constant delight. But in existence, it takes two.
Your difficulty is that you haven’t learned yet from your experience, haven’t made your intuition real. You are thinking of being with a man who says he loves you, has asked you to marry him and yet you don’t have a ‘wholehearted response back to him’. You say he ‘brings with him a rather irresponsible legacy of gambling debts that you find not very inspiring of confidence in him as Man’. You find your ‘heart sinking at the prospect of taking on yet more turgidity and denseness.’
Are you crazy? You want to go in there again and suffer, of your own volition? You have the usual forlorn hope of reforming man even though you don’t love him (which if you did passionately enough might make a bit of a difference but I wouldn’t wager your life on it). You’re tempted to take on this man and his problems. What a predictable disaster for love on earth.
How could you possibly enjoy your life tied to such a partnership which would certainly end miserably anyway, like all your (and every woman’s) previous love relationships with man?
THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION
There is of course a simple explanation in truth for your seeming compassion for the man; for your considering taking him on — and for your instinctive reluctance to do so.
Woman in essence is a divine creature, all pure love. She is a consciousness, a principle embodying mother, sister, daughter, lover, comforter, nourisher, God — all at once in female form. But only when she is conscious.
Such consciousness is now. There’s no time in it. Without the consciousness woman clings to her various experiences as woman and becomes each one at different times — hence mother, daughter, lover etc. To be all those attributes at once is beyond simultaneous knowing. To have or be that pure knowledge, you can’t know anything. You’re just what you are, action, and stillness within, moment to moment; but with the knowledge that you must be true to love or the indescribable ‘that’ which you are.
Woman today is semiconscious more or less. Instead of being the precious knowledge or consciousness of love that living has revealed to her, she divides herself emotionally into the confusion of being sometimes mother (of her children as well as of man), sometimes lover, sometimes sister, sometimes daughter, nourisher, comforter.
And sometimes — very rarely — she sees in her own experience the futility of trying to change man or teach him about the reality of love. To think that she can change him is her major error.
WOMAN, SOURCE OF ALL LOVE
All love in existence begins with woman. Without woman’s womb there would be no one to love or be loved. Man’s semen may be the means; but it is woman who carries the burden and the pain of giving birth to love. Hers is the first sacrifice for love.
Nonetheless, true love is man’s essence. But it is concealed under great layers of ignorance — of millennia of notions of female inferiority and weakness. This has been nourished by his forceful intellectual knowing and success in exploiting her in all areas of love and relationship.
He cannot be taught by woman. He is too arrogant in the certainty of his knowing. Knowledge he may have, even of God the ultimate truth outside existence. But knowledge of love he no longer has. Only in one way can he restore himself and be restored to the full glory of his divine role in existence.
Man must love woman. Not any woman. Any woman will fall again for his sweet talk, his promises, his apparent well-meaning sincerity, his cute little-boy-lost look, his sexual prowess; and particularly she’ll succumb to her own certainty that her love can transform him. Or she will give in to her feelings of insecurity, her longing to be loved or her imagined sexual need. Or she’ll just use him, mislead him, badger him and leave him in one way or another.
A COSMIC TASK
The only woman man can really love (so that through her he can realise God as love in existence) is a conscious woman, a woman who will not compromise with him in love. This despite something inside her howling for compromise — for all the best possible reasons that her mind and other people will throw up. This is a woman who has realised as her own unshakable knowledge that man’s love, the way he is, hurts and causes ongoing pain.
Not just ongoing pain for her if she compromises, but for all women everywhere.
Thus does the task and knowledge of such a woman take her consciousness beyond the world of personal love which clogs and holds back the evolution of real love on earth. Hers is now a cosmic endeavour, although the woman herself will not know this. Some woman has to do it and this is the woman — a female catalyst in the divine or cosmic plan which even the great masters of truth, by what they’ve left us, have had little knowledge of.
This woman is potential in every adult woman who is prepared to die to self consideration for love’s sake — without expecting a result or to get something in return. Sufficient for her — because she has no choice — is the knowledge and consciousness of real love free of knowing or wanting. She is indeed alone.
Only for the love of such a woman will man give up the selfishness that keeps him from realising the principle of divine love that he is. But where is she? Where is she out there?
She’s not there until man is truly willing to love and change. Then she appears for him. Otherwise he’s involved in a futile search. If he wants her, he must die for love first.
HOW
To love such a woman by dying for love man must give up his negativity, self-doubt, independence, reservations, imagined authority and fear of love. She will not harangue him or make emotional demands on him. To her that would not be love.
He loves her because he can’t help it. He’s humble enough to see the strength of the consciousness in her that will not compromise true love. And yet she never assumes to be that or to be anything special. She is only special to him.
He wants nothing more than to be with her, live with her, be always by her side and to care for her. (All that of course will have a familiar ring for most women. The man really means it from his deepest place within. But something gross and beneath him intervenes — his self, his fear of losing his independence which for a time he was able to suppress in the face of the wonder and glory of love. So he woos her, declares his love for her and after the initial joy of getting together gradually or subtly backs away in familiarity, companionship or disinterest.)
Above all, the man of love realises in his own being (and not because she told him) that while he is subservient to his negative independent self she cannot love him with the conscious God-love that she is — even though she does in truth love him. Above all for her, she must be true to the truth and love she is.
In that way does such a woman bring man back to love — without doing anything apart from being true. And man does it for himself. However, for him to love the consciousness of woman like this, he will have an innate love of God — which amazingly is simply what he loves in her. In other words, when the love is complete between them, God is loving God with nothing in between. Truth is then realised at the same time as love.
TRUTH IS NOT LOVE
You mentioned in your letter how a woman who had been with your master longer than you, surrendered utterly to her abusive husband and one day realised there was no need for him to change as she had previously thought. Your master had counselled her to surrender to the abuse because any resistance was only her fear of pain and death.
Well, what a daddy of a misconception of love that is.
Let me tell you what happened to the woman, or in her. She realised a degree of the truth beyond existence, which is always a delight for me to hear. Nonetheless, anyone inwardly committed (by grace) to truth may do this by total surrender in a continuously oppressive situation from which there seems to be no way out. But there has to be some conscious recognition of God to surrender to; otherwise it is resignation, and resignation is just another aspect of human ignorance.
But for this particular woman there was a way out. The woman could have left the man. She would then have served the man and served the cosmic evolution of love on earth. As it was, she had to do what she did. But I can say that though the woman knows something of the power of surrender, she has not realised the power and fulfillment of love.
Love is not truth. Love is only in existence. And here is where it needs to be where man and woman abuse each other, torture each other and ceaselessly endeavour through such ignorance to live with each other. To put up with an abusive partner might serve the divine self-centredness necessary for realising truth by one individual. But it won’t contribute one iota to love on this benighted planet. Truth here without the mystery and romance of love is like a sea without salt.
What is it that every woman fundamentally craves for? Like you?
Love.
What is man’s fundamental craving? To retain his independence and then (as a substitute for love) to seek power over nature or people instead of over his self. Of course the rare man (by grace) gives his life to truth through the process of self-mastery. But the rarest man after realising the truth gives his life not only to truth but to the awakening (by grace) of the principle of divine love between man and woman.
If anyone who has realised the truth or a degree of it, asks why in that precious moment of truth they knew extraordinary love, here’s the answer.
Your self is all that is in existence. It is the only barrier to the realisation of divine love implicit in every body.
The love of God or the mystical life slowly reduces the virulent ignorance of self. At a point in many people’s lives truth dissolves the self-ishness more or less. In that moment self realises itself (more or less) as love which it always was before being corrupted and burdened by the mind and emotions. And a welling of love occurs, sometimes a great welling.
But such realisations of love are not complete, not enough to bring about enduring vital and fulfilling love between a man and woman here in existence. Not enough to make a difference to the cosmic evolution of love on earth
For that, initially, a woman of real love is needed.
How about you?
She had been deeply moved by Barry Long’s teaching, particularly with regard to love. Now she was with another master, a man who clearly loved God, but his teaching appeared to contradict much of what had been revealed to her by Barry Long about the nature of man and woman.
The new master was emphatic about the responsibility of the individual. For example, it would be avoidance of responsibility to regard ‘unloving actions’ from men as being in any way responsible for the state of a woman. In confirmation of this, a woman in the group associated with the new master had spoken of experiencing deep peace after surrendering to her abusive husband.
A man in the group had been approaching the correspondent over a period of time and had proposed marriage. She didn’t have a wholehearted response to him and was worried about his irresponsible past, including gambling debts. Should she drop her reservations and go with him? Perhaps love would develop in her. Surely a truly loving woman could turn around a man’s weaknesses?
The situation had raised great self-doubt in the woman. Had she misled herself with romanticism? Would coming to see Barry Long help her sort it out?
Barry Long's Reply:
It seems that the most difficult thing to grasp for a sincerely motivated woman like you is the simplicity of truth and the simplicity of love; that they are two distinct qualities or states in divine intellect.
The realisation of truth or God alone does not imply the realisation of real love. Love has to be lived and in this piece I’ll be describing precisely what that means. Although the realisation of truth does not lead to the living knowledge of love, the realisation of love through living leads to the realisation of truth.
TWO MASTERS MEANS CONFUSION
Your main problem is you have two spiritual masters. So you are divided. Give yourself wholeheartedly to one truth or the other — and live it. Either way, if you are ready, will lead you to your death while you are alive. But that’s pretty rare.
The reason it’s rare is because spiritual aspirants expect to get something from the master, instead of being responsible and dying — which means not yielding — to the clamorous ignorance of their human nature. All the master does is point the way according to his realisation. All masters’ realisations differ in method but are the same in end result — provided the master is really a master of truth and love.
There’s no doubt that the master you are currently with is a master of truth. But you keep writing to me for answers. If you come back to my teaching I have nothing to give you other than what is already in my books, tapes, videos and writings — and in my presence and words at my seminars.
While you stay away you are increasingly out of touch with the continuous revelation of my truth. As you would be similarly out of touch with your current master if you left him. You want it both ways which is the human failing in the spiritual life. I can’t give you anything. Best to stay where you are — and really start dying to your troublesome self.
Now to your other problem or confusion.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
You are here to enjoy your life. That does not mean pleasing yourself. The word enjoy derives from the Latin, to rejoice; and the shorter version is joy. Joy in our human ignorance has become synonymous with pleasure and getting. But joy is not pleasure or an effect of getting; it is simply joy. And if you (or anyone) don’t know in your own experience what I’m speaking of you’re dead from the body up.
You are woman, the intelligence of God in female form. That state is realised, made real as your living life, by you becoming more intelligent. And you become more intelligent through experience.
Most experience leads to knowing. Knowing relates to the world: how to drive a car, run a business, be a doctor, a scientist or to do or become anything. It involves an accumulation of experience which is supposed to culminate in what the world would call an expert, connoisseur, genius, or something. That’s knowing. To know anything requires only the senses and the common human intelligence of awareness.
But knowing, no matter how impressive, cannot lead to the realisation of God in female or male form. That requires knowledge.
Knowing is not knowledge.
Knowledge certainly requires experience, but the experience of your whole life from the time you were born. That totality of experience is common to everyone. But what finally produces knowledge out of experience is the capacity to be CONSCIOUS of experience rather than being just aware.
To be conscious of experience is to be free as an uninterrupted state within of personal consideration, which adds up to being free of fear. It also means being free of aimless thought and bothersome emotions. You are then innocent — and life is seen without interpretation for the simplicity it is.
Conscious love between man and woman is the ultimate state of knowledge in existence. It requires a high degree of intelligence or consciousness. That does not mean such intelligence is not within everyone’s reach. The intelligence is there for all — provided the individual has acquired sufficient knowledge of what appears to be love in existence between man and woman.
The most immediately available experience for this is the love life. For love in existence, despite any protestations to the contrary, begins with the irresistible attraction between man and woman. It’s what makes the world continue, or makes the world go round, as they say.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?
What does conscious knowledge of love between man and woman teach woman? What has it taught you about man? I’ll answer for you. Man hurts.
Every woman on earth has been hurt by man’s love. If she hasn’t, she hasn’t lived. But the question is, why does she keep getting hurt? Why does she keep going back for more pain, more passing pleasure and passion, more heartbreak, familiarity, disillusionment, disappointment and confusion?
The explanation, like truth, is simple: after all her experience she still hasn’t REALISED that man’s love, the way he loves, hurts. Oh, she KNOWS it; but it’s still the unconsciousness of knowing, not knowledge. The result is she keeps hoping and trying; and eventually compromises with man’s love; or she cuts off from him in frustration or fear; or turns to her own gender for love; or busies herself in the world; or finds cruel solace in drugs or alcohol.
And yet every woman has yearned within for completion with man which she has correctly intuited (like you) somehow exists. But the message from all the men of truth on the world scene that I know of, is that in having that conviction, you’re a romantic — a pathetic female whose intuition or knowledge of love is inferior to theirs. To me, if love is not continuous romance it’s not love. And what is romance? Romance, to me, is constant delight. But in existence, it takes two.
Your difficulty is that you haven’t learned yet from your experience, haven’t made your intuition real. You are thinking of being with a man who says he loves you, has asked you to marry him and yet you don’t have a ‘wholehearted response back to him’. You say he ‘brings with him a rather irresponsible legacy of gambling debts that you find not very inspiring of confidence in him as Man’. You find your ‘heart sinking at the prospect of taking on yet more turgidity and denseness.’
Are you crazy? You want to go in there again and suffer, of your own volition? You have the usual forlorn hope of reforming man even though you don’t love him (which if you did passionately enough might make a bit of a difference but I wouldn’t wager your life on it). You’re tempted to take on this man and his problems. What a predictable disaster for love on earth.
How could you possibly enjoy your life tied to such a partnership which would certainly end miserably anyway, like all your (and every woman’s) previous love relationships with man?
THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION
There is of course a simple explanation in truth for your seeming compassion for the man; for your considering taking him on — and for your instinctive reluctance to do so.
Woman in essence is a divine creature, all pure love. She is a consciousness, a principle embodying mother, sister, daughter, lover, comforter, nourisher, God — all at once in female form. But only when she is conscious.
Such consciousness is now. There’s no time in it. Without the consciousness woman clings to her various experiences as woman and becomes each one at different times — hence mother, daughter, lover etc. To be all those attributes at once is beyond simultaneous knowing. To have or be that pure knowledge, you can’t know anything. You’re just what you are, action, and stillness within, moment to moment; but with the knowledge that you must be true to love or the indescribable ‘that’ which you are.
Woman today is semiconscious more or less. Instead of being the precious knowledge or consciousness of love that living has revealed to her, she divides herself emotionally into the confusion of being sometimes mother (of her children as well as of man), sometimes lover, sometimes sister, sometimes daughter, nourisher, comforter.
And sometimes — very rarely — she sees in her own experience the futility of trying to change man or teach him about the reality of love. To think that she can change him is her major error.
WOMAN, SOURCE OF ALL LOVE
All love in existence begins with woman. Without woman’s womb there would be no one to love or be loved. Man’s semen may be the means; but it is woman who carries the burden and the pain of giving birth to love. Hers is the first sacrifice for love.
Nonetheless, true love is man’s essence. But it is concealed under great layers of ignorance — of millennia of notions of female inferiority and weakness. This has been nourished by his forceful intellectual knowing and success in exploiting her in all areas of love and relationship.
He cannot be taught by woman. He is too arrogant in the certainty of his knowing. Knowledge he may have, even of God the ultimate truth outside existence. But knowledge of love he no longer has. Only in one way can he restore himself and be restored to the full glory of his divine role in existence.
Man must love woman. Not any woman. Any woman will fall again for his sweet talk, his promises, his apparent well-meaning sincerity, his cute little-boy-lost look, his sexual prowess; and particularly she’ll succumb to her own certainty that her love can transform him. Or she will give in to her feelings of insecurity, her longing to be loved or her imagined sexual need. Or she’ll just use him, mislead him, badger him and leave him in one way or another.
A COSMIC TASK
The only woman man can really love (so that through her he can realise God as love in existence) is a conscious woman, a woman who will not compromise with him in love. This despite something inside her howling for compromise — for all the best possible reasons that her mind and other people will throw up. This is a woman who has realised as her own unshakable knowledge that man’s love, the way he is, hurts and causes ongoing pain.
Not just ongoing pain for her if she compromises, but for all women everywhere.
Thus does the task and knowledge of such a woman take her consciousness beyond the world of personal love which clogs and holds back the evolution of real love on earth. Hers is now a cosmic endeavour, although the woman herself will not know this. Some woman has to do it and this is the woman — a female catalyst in the divine or cosmic plan which even the great masters of truth, by what they’ve left us, have had little knowledge of.
This woman is potential in every adult woman who is prepared to die to self consideration for love’s sake — without expecting a result or to get something in return. Sufficient for her — because she has no choice — is the knowledge and consciousness of real love free of knowing or wanting. She is indeed alone.
Only for the love of such a woman will man give up the selfishness that keeps him from realising the principle of divine love that he is. But where is she? Where is she out there?
She’s not there until man is truly willing to love and change. Then she appears for him. Otherwise he’s involved in a futile search. If he wants her, he must die for love first.
HOW
To love such a woman by dying for love man must give up his negativity, self-doubt, independence, reservations, imagined authority and fear of love. She will not harangue him or make emotional demands on him. To her that would not be love.
He loves her because he can’t help it. He’s humble enough to see the strength of the consciousness in her that will not compromise true love. And yet she never assumes to be that or to be anything special. She is only special to him.
He wants nothing more than to be with her, live with her, be always by her side and to care for her. (All that of course will have a familiar ring for most women. The man really means it from his deepest place within. But something gross and beneath him intervenes — his self, his fear of losing his independence which for a time he was able to suppress in the face of the wonder and glory of love. So he woos her, declares his love for her and after the initial joy of getting together gradually or subtly backs away in familiarity, companionship or disinterest.)
Above all, the man of love realises in his own being (and not because she told him) that while he is subservient to his negative independent self she cannot love him with the conscious God-love that she is — even though she does in truth love him. Above all for her, she must be true to the truth and love she is.
In that way does such a woman bring man back to love — without doing anything apart from being true. And man does it for himself. However, for him to love the consciousness of woman like this, he will have an innate love of God — which amazingly is simply what he loves in her. In other words, when the love is complete between them, God is loving God with nothing in between. Truth is then realised at the same time as love.
TRUTH IS NOT LOVE
You mentioned in your letter how a woman who had been with your master longer than you, surrendered utterly to her abusive husband and one day realised there was no need for him to change as she had previously thought. Your master had counselled her to surrender to the abuse because any resistance was only her fear of pain and death.
Well, what a daddy of a misconception of love that is.
Let me tell you what happened to the woman, or in her. She realised a degree of the truth beyond existence, which is always a delight for me to hear. Nonetheless, anyone inwardly committed (by grace) to truth may do this by total surrender in a continuously oppressive situation from which there seems to be no way out. But there has to be some conscious recognition of God to surrender to; otherwise it is resignation, and resignation is just another aspect of human ignorance.
But for this particular woman there was a way out. The woman could have left the man. She would then have served the man and served the cosmic evolution of love on earth. As it was, she had to do what she did. But I can say that though the woman knows something of the power of surrender, she has not realised the power and fulfillment of love.
Love is not truth. Love is only in existence. And here is where it needs to be where man and woman abuse each other, torture each other and ceaselessly endeavour through such ignorance to live with each other. To put up with an abusive partner might serve the divine self-centredness necessary for realising truth by one individual. But it won’t contribute one iota to love on this benighted planet. Truth here without the mystery and romance of love is like a sea without salt.
What is it that every woman fundamentally craves for? Like you?
Love.
What is man’s fundamental craving? To retain his independence and then (as a substitute for love) to seek power over nature or people instead of over his self. Of course the rare man (by grace) gives his life to truth through the process of self-mastery. But the rarest man after realising the truth gives his life not only to truth but to the awakening (by grace) of the principle of divine love between man and woman.
If anyone who has realised the truth or a degree of it, asks why in that precious moment of truth they knew extraordinary love, here’s the answer.
Your self is all that is in existence. It is the only barrier to the realisation of divine love implicit in every body.
The love of God or the mystical life slowly reduces the virulent ignorance of self. At a point in many people’s lives truth dissolves the self-ishness more or less. In that moment self realises itself (more or less) as love which it always was before being corrupted and burdened by the mind and emotions. And a welling of love occurs, sometimes a great welling.
But such realisations of love are not complete, not enough to bring about enduring vital and fulfilling love between a man and woman here in existence. Not enough to make a difference to the cosmic evolution of love on earth
For that, initially, a woman of real love is needed.
How about you?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
When should you tell your spouse,"We have a problem."
The first thing an ordinary man has to do
to help him realise his spiritual yearnings for God, truth or enlightenment, is to examine his everyday life. He has to see where he is wasting his energies on distractive activities, and start making changes.
Every man has inside his body sufficient energy to take him through to the realisation of truth or God - God realisation, as it’s called.
For God realisation is the original natural state of man. But over the thousands of years of increasing interest in the distractions of the mind and the world, man has in most cases lost the state and the keen spiritual perception that goes with it.
Identifying Distracting Habits & Emotions
Within man’s daily life there are various habits he has to identify. He has to really see for himself that each is a form of distraction. For instance, he may have made a habit of talking too much, or frequently phoning his friends to see how they’re going. He does these things because he can’t stand the silence that is natural in him and because he can’t stand to be alone without a constant supply of information. The habitual reading of newspapers, the regular listening to the radio or excessive watching of TV, all fall into this category of wasting valuable energy.
There are also his emotional reactions which disturb him and others and destroy his spiritual energies. Anger is one of the most destructive. He has to gradually withdraw from this emotional habit. He does this by genuinely seeing that there is no excuse for anger: he is either trying to do the impossible and getting angry about it; blaming somebody for upsetting his life which means he is not responsible for his life; or he is stubbornly trying to get his own way when the situation doesn’t allow it.
Withdrawing Emotional Dependence
The man has to look very closely at his relationships. As a beginning, he has to ask himself, ‘If anyone I love died or left me, would I be in pain?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ it means he has an emotional attachment to that person; for it is attachment that causes pain, not love. He is dependent on the person and therefore they have the power to hurt or manipulate him. Such attachments destroy the man’s spiritual power; while they exist in him he can never really be free. So he has to start withdrawing his emotional dependence on people close to him. If it is his mother for instance, and he is terrified of her dying, he must stop phoning her every day or week when there is no need.
The Distraction of Work
He must also examine his work and see whether he’s a workaholic and what that is doing to his love-life. When he complains, ‘I’m so busy’, is he lying to himself because he’s really enjoying the momentum and excitement - even the problems? Is he aware that he’s on an endless continuity wave that closes him off from much of the rest of his life?
Work is one of man’s main distractions. If he gets too immersed in it he won’t really be able to be with his partner or children when he gets home. Half of him - his mind and emotions - will be on the momentum of work. His attachment will not allow him to leave it behind: for what you are attached to obviously follows you.
Also, after what he calls a hard day at the office he is likely to need a drink or a drug to slow him down and relax him. Really he should have already slowed himself down and been relaxed at work instead of getting emotionally identified with it.
Mastering Himself
As he gradually withdraws from these many distractions in his daily life, the man’s self is going to play up. His and everybody’s self consists of a block of resistance to any form of spiritual discipline or self denial. It is the opposite to the pure intelligence and goodness of the man. Faced with such intelligent action his self will feel restless and threatened. His self loves him to be distracted and doesn’t want him to have the extra spiritual power that is available when he learns to contain the energies he’s been wasting.
That power takes the form of a greater authority which the man realises is coming into him; a greater sense of being what he is. He will not give in to people’s emotional demands as he used to, either in his love-life or in the family. He will get a right aloofness from it all. He won’t be dragged into emotional situations because the people around him will know that’s not his game any more. For instance, he won’t argue with anyone. He’ll say, ‘I don’t argue. I just look to see the fact for myself.’ Eventually he will say, ‘I don’t discuss things. You can ask me a question and I will reply as best I can, but I’m not into discussions.’ Discussions solve nothing in the spiritual life; what counts is action.
The man will continue to love the people close to him, not according to their expectations, but according to the truth in him. As he does that, his inner authority increases and he has a greater perception of freedom. Living this way he sees more clearly through the distractions of existence in which he’s been burying himself, to something indescribable behind it all. He starts to have intimations of ‘the one’, the one unnameable Being behind everything. That’s another name for what I call God, life, love or truth. He will then have quieter moments, stiller moments of communion with that in his own being.
The Process of Containment
What I have described is a process of containment to develop a spiritual consciousness. It is the troublesome and distracting self that has to be contained. The self is a hard lump of emotional cunning that has formed in the subconscious out of all the disappointments and hurts the person has experienced since birth, particularly those of a sexual nature. It is terrified of being seen for what it is and directs most people’s decisions and reactions from the safety of the dark of their subconscious. Being an unhappy entity, its influence spoils good relationships and situations and inevitably makes choices that are soon regretted. Under the light of spiritual scrutiny the self squirms and does everything it can to deflect the attention.
In any situation of self-denial or withdrawal, the self will be felt as an uncomfortable disturbance or restlessness in the belly, as everybody has experienced. It will try to move the man’s body when he is being still; make him go for a walk, read the paper or turn on the TV. It will pressure him to think about giving up the process, to feel that he is being hard done by or even misled. The man must not give in to this. He’s just got to stay with the self and not try to get rid of it, knowing that by containing it he is gradually reducing it. The authority he has gained is the intelligence with which he surrounds his self. But it must be without thought. And any pain is simply his self dying. He must not look for overnight miracles. He must remember that he himself made this restless old unhappy self and it is only right that now he should take responsibility for dissolving it.
Honesty in Partnership
One of the most difficult things for man (and woman) to grasp is how to withdraw from attachment to the partner. For this he has to introduce truth into the relationship. Normally people fall in love, make love and that’s pretty well the end of it - until the misunderstandings and arguments start. When there is truth in the relationship from the beginning, the chances of conflict are reduced enormously. It means putting honesty before the love of the man or woman. The man must see that if he takes his emotions and negative reactions into a relationship - as everybody does - the partnership is going to be problematical. To avoid that he has to be prepared, with his woman, to give up his emotions and find out what causes them, in him and in her.
That requires a pretty intelligent partner, so in this I’m not just talking to man. Woman has to be honest, too. If he finds that she’s emotional, in order to introduce truth or God into the situation he has to be able to say, ‘What are you emotional about?’ And particularly to ask this very rare question, ‘What am I doing to you, or not doing, to make you emotional? If I’m doing something then I want to change that. I love you, so I don’t want to make you unhappy. We’re together to enjoy being together and if there is anything I can remove in myself that has come between us, I will endeavour to do it.’ Of course the woman will say and do the same, if she’s a real woman. And neither must react in the old defensive ways of the past. So the principle is: honesty before love. Otherwise you will have a dishonest love no matter how hard you try.
Honesty in love is the process of detachment. It brings reality into the partnership, reducing selfish and irresponsible emotional expressions. Each one takes responsibility for their own emotions instead of trying to put their emotions on the other by accusing or blaming them and saying, ‘You’re making me emotional’. That’s ridiculous. Only my self makes me emotional.
Loving Woman
A man endeavouring to live the spiritual life has to practise loving woman. For the essence of woman is God or love in existence. Every man knows that woman is what he thinks about most throughout his life - from boyhood to the time of his death. He might say he doesn’t want woman but he will still think about her. He will have thoughts about how he needs or wants to love her; or what he would like to do with her body - he’s always thinking about that. This is true of all men. It indicates that the truth of love for man must be in woman. However, the one major obstacle to his loving her is his sexual lust for her. Now, how does he get rid of lust?
He gets rid of it by loving her physical body. I said loving her not sexing her. Love is utterly different from sex, although love is expressed through the sexual act. To love a woman is to enjoy her. And I don’t mean just to enjoy her for five minutes in physical lovemaking. First man has to see he loves being in the presence of woman for the pure sensation of that enjoyment - holding her hand, walking with her - without any thought process. Any thought process about woman turns to sex. When the physical woman is in front of him, does he need to think about her? No, you only think about what’s not immediately present. If he does think or fantasise about her while she’s there, he is lusting, not loving. And if he thinks about sex with her when she’s not present, he’s still lusting.
The man has to be able to see the beauty of her. If there wasn’t this recognition of her beauty somewhere inside him, why would he think about her all his life? He has to see her intrinsic beauty instead of his own habitual sexual wanting to possess her. He has to realise that he loves her because she has an indescribable essence that he, man, does not have. She is his missing love, the missing expression of God in his existence.
Man’s Sexuality
Man cannot love a woman truly - as woman needs to be loved - while his sexuality is rampant. That means while he excuses his sexuality; while he watches pornographic movies, reads pornographic magazines; while he excites himself with photographs of naked women or parts of her - and any of that sort of distraction instead of loving a real woman’s body; and while he masturbates which means having sex with himself. Also, man cannot make love to a woman while he is fantasising about her or another woman because that’s introducing a phantom woman into the relationship. Man often does this to keep his self excited but it means he’s not really there, and he’s not loving. He has to give it up.
Something man does habitually is to look at women in the street. In doing this he is subconsciously feeding his sexual self. His sexual self actually turns his head and looks out of his eyes at a woman, often before his attention has even noticed her. The sexual self is faster than the mind. There are two ways of looking at a woman. One is to see her beauty. The other is through the sexual self which has a phantom affair with her in a glance. He’s got to give up looking. He’s got to go through a stage where he actually denies himself the right to look at women in the sense I’m talking about. It may be said that that’s suppression. But it’s not, because he knows what he’s doing - he’s practising containment. Suppression is when you feel as though you’re doing something because somebody has made you do it.
Woman of course often dresses to attract man’s attention because she has a sexual self too - due to our sexual society. Some women go to excess and exhibit their breasts more to make them more obvious to man. A man trying to give up his lust has to turn away and not dwell on such a woman as he would otherwise have done. If a naked woman walked down the street, all the men would be gaping for as long as they could see her. But the man practising love would say, ‘I’m not going to do this habitual thing that most men do in their unconsciousness. I won’t look any longer and indulge my sexual self.’
Being True to One Woman
I teach that it is important for man, as soon as possible, to stay true to one woman and take her on. This helps to bring him to his senses and out of his imaginative sexual mind. The key is that he takes her on and together they practise honesty first in their relationship (as I have described) and discover how far they can go together into the mystery of love. If a man still wants other women, how can he take on one woman? He can’t. He’s not mature enough yet. Wanting other women, he will be restless and discontented; or he will dishonestly pretend that all is well and because it is not, emotional friction will arise between the couple - a common cause of disharmony in relationships.
It is imperative for a woman, once she is impersonally mature enough, to have her man’s total focus. But he will not be able to give her this while she is still distracted by her emotions and the lure of the world of experience. Woman has been so disappointed, so wounded by man’s itinerant and casual loving of her, that despite what man and woman think, she cannot yield her love - the essence of her body - to him completely until she knows that he truly loves her. When she realises that - it is a deep psychological subconscious place - she can give her extraordinary divine energies to him in their lovemaking. These rarely invoked energies are the God coming forward through the woman. But while he is half-hearted in his love he cannot bring her or himself to the consciousness of this God within her.
The purpose of physical love between man and woman (who are the dual embodiment of God in existence) is for her to give him what he can never have on his own - the glorious female essence that lures him all his life. This divine energy purifies him immensely of his restlessness and negativity, as it does her.
The Noble Man
I have described man who truly loves his woman as a noble man. He is noble because he is willingly dying to his own notions of love and independence. He is in the process of realising the consciousness of God or truth in his woman and in the reality of his own love. A quality of love or truth shines through him. Whatever he is called upon to do, there will be nobility in his action. For instance a noble man can love his children rightly because he is not attached to them. He speaks to them from a place of divine or impersonal love beyond the fluctuations of clinging and selfish human love. A noble man is he who reveals the human spirit in love, in looking after the sick, in caring for the suffering, in sacrificing himself in wartime or simply not allowing his unhappy emotions to sully love. It’s all a matter of love.
So, the key to man rising within to the wonderful heights which the spiritual life makes possible is to first identify the distractions in his daily activities that are consuming the precious energy he needs. If he is honest, these are always there to be seen immediately in front of him.
He must not look to absolutes, to God, to enlightenment as something to be achieved. If he does he will overlook the immediate distractions that are impeding him - and continue on a futile search.
When I was a young man I used to go fishing off the surf beach of an evening with my first father-in-law. He was catching all the fish, and good ones too. I said, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ He said, ‘You’re doing what most people do. You’re throwing out too far. You’re throwing over them. The fish are right in close at this time of day.’
to help him realise his spiritual yearnings for God, truth or enlightenment, is to examine his everyday life. He has to see where he is wasting his energies on distractive activities, and start making changes.
Every man has inside his body sufficient energy to take him through to the realisation of truth or God - God realisation, as it’s called.
For God realisation is the original natural state of man. But over the thousands of years of increasing interest in the distractions of the mind and the world, man has in most cases lost the state and the keen spiritual perception that goes with it.
Identifying Distracting Habits & Emotions
Within man’s daily life there are various habits he has to identify. He has to really see for himself that each is a form of distraction. For instance, he may have made a habit of talking too much, or frequently phoning his friends to see how they’re going. He does these things because he can’t stand the silence that is natural in him and because he can’t stand to be alone without a constant supply of information. The habitual reading of newspapers, the regular listening to the radio or excessive watching of TV, all fall into this category of wasting valuable energy.
There are also his emotional reactions which disturb him and others and destroy his spiritual energies. Anger is one of the most destructive. He has to gradually withdraw from this emotional habit. He does this by genuinely seeing that there is no excuse for anger: he is either trying to do the impossible and getting angry about it; blaming somebody for upsetting his life which means he is not responsible for his life; or he is stubbornly trying to get his own way when the situation doesn’t allow it.
Withdrawing Emotional Dependence
The man has to look very closely at his relationships. As a beginning, he has to ask himself, ‘If anyone I love died or left me, would I be in pain?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ it means he has an emotional attachment to that person; for it is attachment that causes pain, not love. He is dependent on the person and therefore they have the power to hurt or manipulate him. Such attachments destroy the man’s spiritual power; while they exist in him he can never really be free. So he has to start withdrawing his emotional dependence on people close to him. If it is his mother for instance, and he is terrified of her dying, he must stop phoning her every day or week when there is no need.
The Distraction of Work
He must also examine his work and see whether he’s a workaholic and what that is doing to his love-life. When he complains, ‘I’m so busy’, is he lying to himself because he’s really enjoying the momentum and excitement - even the problems? Is he aware that he’s on an endless continuity wave that closes him off from much of the rest of his life?
Work is one of man’s main distractions. If he gets too immersed in it he won’t really be able to be with his partner or children when he gets home. Half of him - his mind and emotions - will be on the momentum of work. His attachment will not allow him to leave it behind: for what you are attached to obviously follows you.
Also, after what he calls a hard day at the office he is likely to need a drink or a drug to slow him down and relax him. Really he should have already slowed himself down and been relaxed at work instead of getting emotionally identified with it.
Mastering Himself
As he gradually withdraws from these many distractions in his daily life, the man’s self is going to play up. His and everybody’s self consists of a block of resistance to any form of spiritual discipline or self denial. It is the opposite to the pure intelligence and goodness of the man. Faced with such intelligent action his self will feel restless and threatened. His self loves him to be distracted and doesn’t want him to have the extra spiritual power that is available when he learns to contain the energies he’s been wasting.
That power takes the form of a greater authority which the man realises is coming into him; a greater sense of being what he is. He will not give in to people’s emotional demands as he used to, either in his love-life or in the family. He will get a right aloofness from it all. He won’t be dragged into emotional situations because the people around him will know that’s not his game any more. For instance, he won’t argue with anyone. He’ll say, ‘I don’t argue. I just look to see the fact for myself.’ Eventually he will say, ‘I don’t discuss things. You can ask me a question and I will reply as best I can, but I’m not into discussions.’ Discussions solve nothing in the spiritual life; what counts is action.
The man will continue to love the people close to him, not according to their expectations, but according to the truth in him. As he does that, his inner authority increases and he has a greater perception of freedom. Living this way he sees more clearly through the distractions of existence in which he’s been burying himself, to something indescribable behind it all. He starts to have intimations of ‘the one’, the one unnameable Being behind everything. That’s another name for what I call God, life, love or truth. He will then have quieter moments, stiller moments of communion with that in his own being.
The Process of Containment
What I have described is a process of containment to develop a spiritual consciousness. It is the troublesome and distracting self that has to be contained. The self is a hard lump of emotional cunning that has formed in the subconscious out of all the disappointments and hurts the person has experienced since birth, particularly those of a sexual nature. It is terrified of being seen for what it is and directs most people’s decisions and reactions from the safety of the dark of their subconscious. Being an unhappy entity, its influence spoils good relationships and situations and inevitably makes choices that are soon regretted. Under the light of spiritual scrutiny the self squirms and does everything it can to deflect the attention.
In any situation of self-denial or withdrawal, the self will be felt as an uncomfortable disturbance or restlessness in the belly, as everybody has experienced. It will try to move the man’s body when he is being still; make him go for a walk, read the paper or turn on the TV. It will pressure him to think about giving up the process, to feel that he is being hard done by or even misled. The man must not give in to this. He’s just got to stay with the self and not try to get rid of it, knowing that by containing it he is gradually reducing it. The authority he has gained is the intelligence with which he surrounds his self. But it must be without thought. And any pain is simply his self dying. He must not look for overnight miracles. He must remember that he himself made this restless old unhappy self and it is only right that now he should take responsibility for dissolving it.
Honesty in Partnership
One of the most difficult things for man (and woman) to grasp is how to withdraw from attachment to the partner. For this he has to introduce truth into the relationship. Normally people fall in love, make love and that’s pretty well the end of it - until the misunderstandings and arguments start. When there is truth in the relationship from the beginning, the chances of conflict are reduced enormously. It means putting honesty before the love of the man or woman. The man must see that if he takes his emotions and negative reactions into a relationship - as everybody does - the partnership is going to be problematical. To avoid that he has to be prepared, with his woman, to give up his emotions and find out what causes them, in him and in her.
That requires a pretty intelligent partner, so in this I’m not just talking to man. Woman has to be honest, too. If he finds that she’s emotional, in order to introduce truth or God into the situation he has to be able to say, ‘What are you emotional about?’ And particularly to ask this very rare question, ‘What am I doing to you, or not doing, to make you emotional? If I’m doing something then I want to change that. I love you, so I don’t want to make you unhappy. We’re together to enjoy being together and if there is anything I can remove in myself that has come between us, I will endeavour to do it.’ Of course the woman will say and do the same, if she’s a real woman. And neither must react in the old defensive ways of the past. So the principle is: honesty before love. Otherwise you will have a dishonest love no matter how hard you try.
Honesty in love is the process of detachment. It brings reality into the partnership, reducing selfish and irresponsible emotional expressions. Each one takes responsibility for their own emotions instead of trying to put their emotions on the other by accusing or blaming them and saying, ‘You’re making me emotional’. That’s ridiculous. Only my self makes me emotional.
Loving Woman
A man endeavouring to live the spiritual life has to practise loving woman. For the essence of woman is God or love in existence. Every man knows that woman is what he thinks about most throughout his life - from boyhood to the time of his death. He might say he doesn’t want woman but he will still think about her. He will have thoughts about how he needs or wants to love her; or what he would like to do with her body - he’s always thinking about that. This is true of all men. It indicates that the truth of love for man must be in woman. However, the one major obstacle to his loving her is his sexual lust for her. Now, how does he get rid of lust?
He gets rid of it by loving her physical body. I said loving her not sexing her. Love is utterly different from sex, although love is expressed through the sexual act. To love a woman is to enjoy her. And I don’t mean just to enjoy her for five minutes in physical lovemaking. First man has to see he loves being in the presence of woman for the pure sensation of that enjoyment - holding her hand, walking with her - without any thought process. Any thought process about woman turns to sex. When the physical woman is in front of him, does he need to think about her? No, you only think about what’s not immediately present. If he does think or fantasise about her while she’s there, he is lusting, not loving. And if he thinks about sex with her when she’s not present, he’s still lusting.
The man has to be able to see the beauty of her. If there wasn’t this recognition of her beauty somewhere inside him, why would he think about her all his life? He has to see her intrinsic beauty instead of his own habitual sexual wanting to possess her. He has to realise that he loves her because she has an indescribable essence that he, man, does not have. She is his missing love, the missing expression of God in his existence.
Man’s Sexuality
Man cannot love a woman truly - as woman needs to be loved - while his sexuality is rampant. That means while he excuses his sexuality; while he watches pornographic movies, reads pornographic magazines; while he excites himself with photographs of naked women or parts of her - and any of that sort of distraction instead of loving a real woman’s body; and while he masturbates which means having sex with himself. Also, man cannot make love to a woman while he is fantasising about her or another woman because that’s introducing a phantom woman into the relationship. Man often does this to keep his self excited but it means he’s not really there, and he’s not loving. He has to give it up.
Something man does habitually is to look at women in the street. In doing this he is subconsciously feeding his sexual self. His sexual self actually turns his head and looks out of his eyes at a woman, often before his attention has even noticed her. The sexual self is faster than the mind. There are two ways of looking at a woman. One is to see her beauty. The other is through the sexual self which has a phantom affair with her in a glance. He’s got to give up looking. He’s got to go through a stage where he actually denies himself the right to look at women in the sense I’m talking about. It may be said that that’s suppression. But it’s not, because he knows what he’s doing - he’s practising containment. Suppression is when you feel as though you’re doing something because somebody has made you do it.
Woman of course often dresses to attract man’s attention because she has a sexual self too - due to our sexual society. Some women go to excess and exhibit their breasts more to make them more obvious to man. A man trying to give up his lust has to turn away and not dwell on such a woman as he would otherwise have done. If a naked woman walked down the street, all the men would be gaping for as long as they could see her. But the man practising love would say, ‘I’m not going to do this habitual thing that most men do in their unconsciousness. I won’t look any longer and indulge my sexual self.’
Being True to One Woman
I teach that it is important for man, as soon as possible, to stay true to one woman and take her on. This helps to bring him to his senses and out of his imaginative sexual mind. The key is that he takes her on and together they practise honesty first in their relationship (as I have described) and discover how far they can go together into the mystery of love. If a man still wants other women, how can he take on one woman? He can’t. He’s not mature enough yet. Wanting other women, he will be restless and discontented; or he will dishonestly pretend that all is well and because it is not, emotional friction will arise between the couple - a common cause of disharmony in relationships.
It is imperative for a woman, once she is impersonally mature enough, to have her man’s total focus. But he will not be able to give her this while she is still distracted by her emotions and the lure of the world of experience. Woman has been so disappointed, so wounded by man’s itinerant and casual loving of her, that despite what man and woman think, she cannot yield her love - the essence of her body - to him completely until she knows that he truly loves her. When she realises that - it is a deep psychological subconscious place - she can give her extraordinary divine energies to him in their lovemaking. These rarely invoked energies are the God coming forward through the woman. But while he is half-hearted in his love he cannot bring her or himself to the consciousness of this God within her.
The purpose of physical love between man and woman (who are the dual embodiment of God in existence) is for her to give him what he can never have on his own - the glorious female essence that lures him all his life. This divine energy purifies him immensely of his restlessness and negativity, as it does her.
The Noble Man
I have described man who truly loves his woman as a noble man. He is noble because he is willingly dying to his own notions of love and independence. He is in the process of realising the consciousness of God or truth in his woman and in the reality of his own love. A quality of love or truth shines through him. Whatever he is called upon to do, there will be nobility in his action. For instance a noble man can love his children rightly because he is not attached to them. He speaks to them from a place of divine or impersonal love beyond the fluctuations of clinging and selfish human love. A noble man is he who reveals the human spirit in love, in looking after the sick, in caring for the suffering, in sacrificing himself in wartime or simply not allowing his unhappy emotions to sully love. It’s all a matter of love.
So, the key to man rising within to the wonderful heights which the spiritual life makes possible is to first identify the distractions in his daily activities that are consuming the precious energy he needs. If he is honest, these are always there to be seen immediately in front of him.
He must not look to absolutes, to God, to enlightenment as something to be achieved. If he does he will overlook the immediate distractions that are impeding him - and continue on a futile search.
When I was a young man I used to go fishing off the surf beach of an evening with my first father-in-law. He was catching all the fish, and good ones too. I said, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ He said, ‘You’re doing what most people do. You’re throwing out too far. You’re throwing over them. The fish are right in close at this time of day.’
Why Should a Couple Plan to Be with Each Other When They Are the Happiest?
Introduction: One of the most controversial positions I take regarding marriage is that a husband and wife should be together for their favorite recreational activities. Whatever it is they enjoy doing the most, they either do with each other, or they don't do it at all.
Some feel that I am out to destroy marriage with that suggestion, not save it. After all, how can a husband and wife survive each other in life unless they are able to get away once in a while to have some fun.
"You are meddling, Dr. Harley! I need something to look forward to, and _______ is absolutely essential to my survival," is the response I often hear from spouses when first introduced to the idea. "There are some things a man and woman simply cannot enjoy together, and yet are essential to their happiness."
But my advice is not based on ivory tower speculation. It's based on years of observation. Couples who spend their most enjoyable time together tend to have great marriages, and those who do not, tend to divorce. Furthermore, I have witnessed hundreds of couples who have given up activities that only one enjoyed for activities that they both enjoyed. None went crazy, and almost all of them were very happy that they made the change.
My goal is saving marriages, and I achieve that goal by helping a husband and wife fall in love with each other. They fall in love by being with each other when they are the happiest (depositing love units), and avoiding unpleasant experiences (withdrawing love units) when they are together. Since the purpose of recreational activities is to create enjoyment, it makes sense for a husband and wife to spend their recreational time together. It's one of the easiest ways to deposit love units.
And yet, almost every day I am asked to explain again why it's so important for couples to spend their most enjoyable recreational time with each other. The following letter provides me an opportunity to defend my position from a somewhat different perspective. If my answer persuades you to follow my controversial advice, it may save your marriage.
Dear Dr. Harley,
My husband and I just finished listening to the Recreational Companionship portion of the prerecorded Marriage Talk radio programs and I have a question. What if my husband engages in an activity that is VERY important to him, but the group he is with won't allow women to attend. In his case, it is fantasy baseball draft time.
He loves going every year and he stays overnight out of town to participate. He arranges his schedule so he can get off work early to get there in time for the draft. I would love to attend with him, but women are not invited. I don't want to cause embarrassment or put pressure on him, but I do want to be included. He tells me that it is an exclusive male thing. "No Honey - this is just for the guys." Every year I dread fantasy baseball season, first because it is gambling and costs around $1,500, and secondly because I am not included.
I would appreciate any advise that you can give.
Charlene
Dear Charlene,
You ask a very important question because it gets right to the core of what it takes for a man and a woman to be in love with each other throughout life. But before I answer your question, I would like to review what makes a marriage satisfying, and what makes it intolerable.
It's been my experience that the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of marriage is being in love. When most couples first talk about divorce, the most common explanation is that one or both spouses are no longer in love with the other. But when that love is restored, the threat of divorce ends.
After years of trying to save marriages the traditional way, which did little to restore love in marriage and did not save many either, I decided to change my entire approach. If I really wanted to save marriages, I would have to teach couples to fall in love with each other. From that moment in my professional career right up to the present I have been studying what being in love is, what causes us to fall in love, and what causes us to fall out of love.
As it turns out, falling in and out of love is not as much of a mystery as some literature and music make it out to be. Love is simply an emotional reaction that is triggered by repeated associations of very good feelings with a person of the opposite sex. Technically, we can fall in love with anyone of the opposite sex if we feel particularly good whenever we are with that person.
Courtship usually follows a plan that is intended to create the feeling of love. Each person makes an effort to make the other one happy, and if they are both successful, they deposit enough love units in each other's Love Banks to trigger love for each other. And the recreational activities that they enjoy together are usually an essential part of the plan because it's one of the easiest ways to create happiness.
Sadly, once a couple marry, they usually think that their love for each other will never leave them. They do not understand that unless they continue to associate each other with their best feelings (deposit love units), they will lose that feeling of love that motivated them to marry in the first place. So after marriage, and especially after children arrive, they do not make a special effort to spend their favorite recreational time with each other. Mind you, they usually don't put an end to recreational activities; they simply stop doing them with each other. They squander their opportunity to deposit love units into each other's love banks.
There are some couples, Charlene, like you and your husband, who try to compromise regarding recreational activities. They spend some of their recreational time with each other. But they spend their very favorite recreational time apart. Your husband's participation in fantasy baseball draft is a good example.
My problem with his plan is that it not only squanders the opportunity to deposit the most love units in the shortest amount of time, but it also tends to make the time he does have with you much less enjoyable than it would have been.
Contrast has more of an effect on us than most people think. We can thoroughly enjoy a particular activity until something more enjoyable comes along, and when that happens we're suddenly bored with the prior activity. So when your husband has a terrific time without you, the time he spends with you will pale in comparison. It will not deposit the love units that it should, and his feelings for you will tend to suffer. On the other hand, if you choose to spend all of your recreational time together, particularly the time you look forward to the most, you will maximize the love units you deposit.
Of course, if you and your husband were to have had this understanding at the time you were married, we wouldn't be having this discussion. You would either have joined him in the fantasy baseball draft, or he would never have gone in the first place. But just because he has started down the path of leaving you out of his most enjoyable activities, doesn't mean that you can't correct the mistake.
I'm a firm believer that once you're married, everything you do, whether it's with each other or not, should follow the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). The reason I am so adamant in my support of this rule is that even when you are not together, the things you do are likely to effect each other, depositing or withdrawing love units.
For example, your husband's exclusion of you in fantasy baseball draft hurts your feelings. The entire time he's gone he will be losing love units from his account in your love bank. And then, when he returns home, the contrast effect I mentioned earlier will negatively effect his feelings about what you both do together, which will tend to withdraw love units from your account in his love bank. If you and he were to be together for the draft, or find an alternative recreational activity that you could enthusiastically agree to enjoy together, none of these love bank losses would result. Instead, you would both be depositing love units.
The Policy of Joint Agreement would have prevented you from getting into this mess in the first place. But now that you're there, it can help get you out. By simply following the rule now, your husband should not attend this yearly draft unless he has your enthusiastic agreement. Either he gives up the event entirely, or he includes you in it. If this group of men do not invite their wives, perhaps there would be another group where wives are invited.
Escape Together
When you and your husband were dating, you spent almost all of your recreational time with each other. That's one of the reasons you fell in love with each other. And you married because you were in love.
But after marriage, especially after children arrive, it becomes increasingly difficult for most couples to arrange their recreational time together. You probably followed the common strategy of new parents which is for one parent to stay home with the children while the other escapes from it all.
Marriage, and raising children, can force a husband and wife to be together when they are unhappy, because they become partners in situations that are stressful. So after having children, it's even more important for them to spend their most enjoyable time with each other, than it was when they were dating. They need to compensate for the stressful time they spend with each other raising their children by taking time to escape together.
Sadly, most people do not understand this important principle until it's too late. When you lose your love for each other, then you don't want to be with each other at all. Things go from bad to worse in a deteriorating marriage, because the solution to the problem, having your most enjoyable time with each other, is intentionally avoided. When you are out of love, you would rather be with anyone than with each other.
Right now, you want to spend your leisure time with your husband, but if he continues to exclude you from his favorite recreational activities, you will eventually exclude him from yours. Sooner or later, you won't want to be with him because you will have much more fun without him.
Don't wait until that happens to you. While you are still in love, plan to spend your most enjoyable time with each other because your love for each other is one of the most important things you have in life.
I've written two Q&A columns on the subject of recreational companionship that you should not overlook. They are "What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 1)," and "What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 2)." I have posted these two columns to help you find new recreational interests that you can enjoy together when one of you loses interest in an activity that you may have shared in the past.
***NOW AVAILABLE***The Recreational Enjoyment Inventory is now available through the Marriage Buildersﾮ web site. Here is the link:
The Recreational Enjoyment Inventory
On a related theme, another Q&A column I've posted wrestles with the complaint, "We Don't Spend Enough Time with Each Other." Neglect not only withdraws love units, but it turns out to be the single most important reason that women divorce men, and they divorce men twice as often as men divorce women. The article, "Why Women Leave Men," gets right to the core of this issue, and hopefully after reading it, your husband will avoid the pain expressed by so many men who now understand the issue, but find that it's too late for them to save their marriages.
Some feel that I am out to destroy marriage with that suggestion, not save it. After all, how can a husband and wife survive each other in life unless they are able to get away once in a while to have some fun.
"You are meddling, Dr. Harley! I need something to look forward to, and _______ is absolutely essential to my survival," is the response I often hear from spouses when first introduced to the idea. "There are some things a man and woman simply cannot enjoy together, and yet are essential to their happiness."
But my advice is not based on ivory tower speculation. It's based on years of observation. Couples who spend their most enjoyable time together tend to have great marriages, and those who do not, tend to divorce. Furthermore, I have witnessed hundreds of couples who have given up activities that only one enjoyed for activities that they both enjoyed. None went crazy, and almost all of them were very happy that they made the change.
My goal is saving marriages, and I achieve that goal by helping a husband and wife fall in love with each other. They fall in love by being with each other when they are the happiest (depositing love units), and avoiding unpleasant experiences (withdrawing love units) when they are together. Since the purpose of recreational activities is to create enjoyment, it makes sense for a husband and wife to spend their recreational time together. It's one of the easiest ways to deposit love units.
And yet, almost every day I am asked to explain again why it's so important for couples to spend their most enjoyable recreational time with each other. The following letter provides me an opportunity to defend my position from a somewhat different perspective. If my answer persuades you to follow my controversial advice, it may save your marriage.
Dear Dr. Harley,
My husband and I just finished listening to the Recreational Companionship portion of the prerecorded Marriage Talk radio programs and I have a question. What if my husband engages in an activity that is VERY important to him, but the group he is with won't allow women to attend. In his case, it is fantasy baseball draft time.
He loves going every year and he stays overnight out of town to participate. He arranges his schedule so he can get off work early to get there in time for the draft. I would love to attend with him, but women are not invited. I don't want to cause embarrassment or put pressure on him, but I do want to be included. He tells me that it is an exclusive male thing. "No Honey - this is just for the guys." Every year I dread fantasy baseball season, first because it is gambling and costs around $1,500, and secondly because I am not included.
I would appreciate any advise that you can give.
Charlene
Dear Charlene,
You ask a very important question because it gets right to the core of what it takes for a man and a woman to be in love with each other throughout life. But before I answer your question, I would like to review what makes a marriage satisfying, and what makes it intolerable.
It's been my experience that the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of marriage is being in love. When most couples first talk about divorce, the most common explanation is that one or both spouses are no longer in love with the other. But when that love is restored, the threat of divorce ends.
After years of trying to save marriages the traditional way, which did little to restore love in marriage and did not save many either, I decided to change my entire approach. If I really wanted to save marriages, I would have to teach couples to fall in love with each other. From that moment in my professional career right up to the present I have been studying what being in love is, what causes us to fall in love, and what causes us to fall out of love.
As it turns out, falling in and out of love is not as much of a mystery as some literature and music make it out to be. Love is simply an emotional reaction that is triggered by repeated associations of very good feelings with a person of the opposite sex. Technically, we can fall in love with anyone of the opposite sex if we feel particularly good whenever we are with that person.
Courtship usually follows a plan that is intended to create the feeling of love. Each person makes an effort to make the other one happy, and if they are both successful, they deposit enough love units in each other's Love Banks to trigger love for each other. And the recreational activities that they enjoy together are usually an essential part of the plan because it's one of the easiest ways to create happiness.
Sadly, once a couple marry, they usually think that their love for each other will never leave them. They do not understand that unless they continue to associate each other with their best feelings (deposit love units), they will lose that feeling of love that motivated them to marry in the first place. So after marriage, and especially after children arrive, they do not make a special effort to spend their favorite recreational time with each other. Mind you, they usually don't put an end to recreational activities; they simply stop doing them with each other. They squander their opportunity to deposit love units into each other's love banks.
There are some couples, Charlene, like you and your husband, who try to compromise regarding recreational activities. They spend some of their recreational time with each other. But they spend their very favorite recreational time apart. Your husband's participation in fantasy baseball draft is a good example.
My problem with his plan is that it not only squanders the opportunity to deposit the most love units in the shortest amount of time, but it also tends to make the time he does have with you much less enjoyable than it would have been.
Contrast has more of an effect on us than most people think. We can thoroughly enjoy a particular activity until something more enjoyable comes along, and when that happens we're suddenly bored with the prior activity. So when your husband has a terrific time without you, the time he spends with you will pale in comparison. It will not deposit the love units that it should, and his feelings for you will tend to suffer. On the other hand, if you choose to spend all of your recreational time together, particularly the time you look forward to the most, you will maximize the love units you deposit.
Of course, if you and your husband were to have had this understanding at the time you were married, we wouldn't be having this discussion. You would either have joined him in the fantasy baseball draft, or he would never have gone in the first place. But just because he has started down the path of leaving you out of his most enjoyable activities, doesn't mean that you can't correct the mistake.
I'm a firm believer that once you're married, everything you do, whether it's with each other or not, should follow the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). The reason I am so adamant in my support of this rule is that even when you are not together, the things you do are likely to effect each other, depositing or withdrawing love units.
For example, your husband's exclusion of you in fantasy baseball draft hurts your feelings. The entire time he's gone he will be losing love units from his account in your love bank. And then, when he returns home, the contrast effect I mentioned earlier will negatively effect his feelings about what you both do together, which will tend to withdraw love units from your account in his love bank. If you and he were to be together for the draft, or find an alternative recreational activity that you could enthusiastically agree to enjoy together, none of these love bank losses would result. Instead, you would both be depositing love units.
The Policy of Joint Agreement would have prevented you from getting into this mess in the first place. But now that you're there, it can help get you out. By simply following the rule now, your husband should not attend this yearly draft unless he has your enthusiastic agreement. Either he gives up the event entirely, or he includes you in it. If this group of men do not invite their wives, perhaps there would be another group where wives are invited.
Escape Together
When you and your husband were dating, you spent almost all of your recreational time with each other. That's one of the reasons you fell in love with each other. And you married because you were in love.
But after marriage, especially after children arrive, it becomes increasingly difficult for most couples to arrange their recreational time together. You probably followed the common strategy of new parents which is for one parent to stay home with the children while the other escapes from it all.
Marriage, and raising children, can force a husband and wife to be together when they are unhappy, because they become partners in situations that are stressful. So after having children, it's even more important for them to spend their most enjoyable time with each other, than it was when they were dating. They need to compensate for the stressful time they spend with each other raising their children by taking time to escape together.
Sadly, most people do not understand this important principle until it's too late. When you lose your love for each other, then you don't want to be with each other at all. Things go from bad to worse in a deteriorating marriage, because the solution to the problem, having your most enjoyable time with each other, is intentionally avoided. When you are out of love, you would rather be with anyone than with each other.
Right now, you want to spend your leisure time with your husband, but if he continues to exclude you from his favorite recreational activities, you will eventually exclude him from yours. Sooner or later, you won't want to be with him because you will have much more fun without him.
Don't wait until that happens to you. While you are still in love, plan to spend your most enjoyable time with each other because your love for each other is one of the most important things you have in life.
I've written two Q&A columns on the subject of recreational companionship that you should not overlook. They are "What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 1)," and "What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 2)." I have posted these two columns to help you find new recreational interests that you can enjoy together when one of you loses interest in an activity that you may have shared in the past.
***NOW AVAILABLE***The Recreational Enjoyment Inventory is now available through the Marriage Buildersﾮ web site. Here is the link:
The Recreational Enjoyment Inventory
On a related theme, another Q&A column I've posted wrestles with the complaint, "We Don't Spend Enough Time with Each Other." Neglect not only withdraws love units, but it turns out to be the single most important reason that women divorce men, and they divorce men twice as often as men divorce women. The article, "Why Women Leave Men," gets right to the core of this issue, and hopefully after reading it, your husband will avoid the pain expressed by so many men who now understand the issue, but find that it's too late for them to save their marriages.
Love of The Dance
A holistic, integrated approach embodies the essence of the sacred feminine. This missing element in our system of justice and civil process is elaborated on by writer and mystic Andrew Harvey (Harvey and Matousek, 1994). Harvey and Matousek explore what balance and wholeness mean as they delineate three powers of the sacred archetypal feminine: (1) knowledge of the interrelationship of all life, (2) the law of rhythm, and (3) the love of the dance. I’ve included this material to incorporate into this book some of the lyrical quality— the lightness and relatedness— of the deep feminine.
Inherent in the interrelationship of all life are “respect . . . gratitude, and natural compassion for all . . . life”. With this knowledge, we diminish the power of appeals to fear based on they and them. For example, what they think about something or what they might do becomes less important when we see those others in ourselves. Fear-mongers play on our sense of separateness and isolation to whip us into conformity, cruelty, and mob behavior. If we do not feel separate, we deprive the fear-mongers of the raw material they need to do this.
We come to recognize in others something of ourselves. We come to recognize that what goes around comes around— that what we dish out, we get, one way or another, in return. When we treat others disrespectfully, we hurt ourselves, even though we cannot see how at the time.
The governor-general of New Zealand, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of V. J. Day (Victory over the Japanese in World War II), read a prayer that ends this way: “In the end, we will not be truly reconciled until you are as important to me as I am to myself.” (This reconciliation prayer is available in full here.) In the new paradigm, using new mind, we look for mutual benefit and mutual gain.
The law of rhythm is “the knowledge that the universe has its own laws and harmonies that are already whole” and we must “intuit, revere and follow them”. This power recognizes that “to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There is a time to catch the flame of interest in resolving with negotiation, but it is not all the time or any time. Knowing that there are tides and seasons in human relationships and human affairs, as there are in nature, and that they are beyond our control, our greatest success will come from patiently going with them rather than struggling against them.
The love of the dance, in which “life itself, in all its paradoxes, is seen as completely sacred,” allows an appreciation of the intricate web of human affairs and human interactions. It allows life to be appreciated in all its “ordeals and wonders”. This power allows us to accept the fact that others do things that make no sense to us— for good and sufficient reasons that just are not apparent to us at the time. We no longer reject what we do not understand, demanding that it be served up our way before we take cognizance of it.
Inherent in the interrelationship of all life are “respect . . . gratitude, and natural compassion for all . . . life”. With this knowledge, we diminish the power of appeals to fear based on they and them. For example, what they think about something or what they might do becomes less important when we see those others in ourselves. Fear-mongers play on our sense of separateness and isolation to whip us into conformity, cruelty, and mob behavior. If we do not feel separate, we deprive the fear-mongers of the raw material they need to do this.
We come to recognize in others something of ourselves. We come to recognize that what goes around comes around— that what we dish out, we get, one way or another, in return. When we treat others disrespectfully, we hurt ourselves, even though we cannot see how at the time.
The governor-general of New Zealand, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of V. J. Day (Victory over the Japanese in World War II), read a prayer that ends this way: “In the end, we will not be truly reconciled until you are as important to me as I am to myself.” (This reconciliation prayer is available in full here.) In the new paradigm, using new mind, we look for mutual benefit and mutual gain.
The law of rhythm is “the knowledge that the universe has its own laws and harmonies that are already whole” and we must “intuit, revere and follow them”. This power recognizes that “to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There is a time to catch the flame of interest in resolving with negotiation, but it is not all the time or any time. Knowing that there are tides and seasons in human relationships and human affairs, as there are in nature, and that they are beyond our control, our greatest success will come from patiently going with them rather than struggling against them.
The love of the dance, in which “life itself, in all its paradoxes, is seen as completely sacred,” allows an appreciation of the intricate web of human affairs and human interactions. It allows life to be appreciated in all its “ordeals and wonders”. This power allows us to accept the fact that others do things that make no sense to us— for good and sufficient reasons that just are not apparent to us at the time. We no longer reject what we do not understand, demanding that it be served up our way before we take cognizance of it.
The Reality of Soul-Mates
One episode of “Sex and the City” threw away a question: soul mate, is it a reality or a torture device? Then it went on with the questions: what happens to those who think they have found their soul mates but then their marriage goes sour and ends up in divorce. Were their spouses once their soul mates, and now are no longer? Isn’t the idea of a soul mate for good? Or should there be only one soul mate for every person? What about the ideas of several soul mates, those people dear to you whom you don’t necessarily sleep with and whom you can relate with in a deeper level? Is it possible to have seasonal soul mates?
I have come to the conclusion, while it is the most cherished ideal to have that one person who completes you, your perfect match, whom you are so romantically, physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually connected with –presumably till death do you part-- you in fact can have several soul mates at the same time, the people who make every day of your life worth living.
Besides, we know how many marriages are nothing but a farce, not to mention the large number of them which end in divorce. Here is some consolation for those who are still “forced” to be single: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent. And often, embittered split couples, who were once so crazy about each other, can now no longer tolerate each other.
So perhaps unconditional love and care for others, unspoiled by romantic intention and jealousy, makes a more fertile ground for cultivating more lasting soul-mate species.
I personally have a few close friends who are very dear to my heart whom perhaps I can consider as soul mates, if not perpetually at least from time to time, and perhaps each of whom for a certain type of “function.” I might tell certain things to one soul mate only but not to the others. And these people sometimes don’t have to be physically here with me for me to feel their presence, love, attention and support.
Russ was my boyfriend of 9 years. We are still very good friends and care for each other a lot. Though we are no longer a couple in the strictest sense, I still care about him so very dearly the way I would my own brother. No matter what we do, I want to make sure he’s happy and well.
Pantja is my best girlfriend, we usually can talk about everything. Though at times, I find her sometimes too easy going, carefree and “unreliable” (like she would promise a few things but then either forgot them or just didn’t really care to fulfill them) but I have learned to accept her the way she is, warts and all. Overall she is a good, loyal friend and I miss her a lot when not talking to or seeing her in a while.
Benny, he is often insensitive when criticizing my appearance. He will have no compunction commenting on my “wrestler’s arms” or my sometimes bulging tummy or love handles or not substantial enough bosom with a straight face, because he’s really mad about waif-looking girls with thin, long arms and skinny catwalk model appearance. I’m usually very tolerant being abused like that, so I will just ignore him thinking that it’s just a sexually frustrated man’s verbiage, while he himself can be real touchy when I unintentionally exert “my intellectual prowess” over him by calling him –again quite unintentionally- dumb or silly. And once he was real agitated when I was speculating, quite jocularly of course, on his wife’s physique after giving birth to their first son. However, when we are not insulting each other generally speaking we are real good friends. He would tell me some very private stuff about his wife or marriage that I bet he wouldn’t dare tell anyone else and vice versa.
Mr. T, he’s a decent, respectful man and a great father (I’m not sure if he’s a great husband). He’s endearingly funny in his own uncanny way. I adore his decidedly cute kids very much. As a self-proclaimed philosopher –a label he deems as quite apt considering that, he said, all philosophers start as self-proclaimed until long after their death-, his philosophy is often too deep for me to grasp so I’d rather not discuss anything of the sort with him. But somehow he’s got the impression that I’m an eternal spiritual fountain so he will eventually go back to that subject again and again. He is redoing and maintaining my website now.
Bobby, oh…he’s wild. When driving, he will find a way –any way at all- that will prevent him from taking his foot off the accelerator so he fidgets and incessantly swears in such a fashion that would make an Irish Navy blush, mind you LA roads are not that bad to drive on at all. Sitting next to him as he is driving will make an experience of a lifetime. He should come and drive in Jakarta and I bet he will be incarcerated in a mental institution after two weeks. I bought “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” for him to read especially because it contains a chapter on enjoyable and stress-free driving but apparently that book doesn’t do much on him. As a true woman lover (and a self-proclaimed male feminist) and in his tireless quest for an ultimate soul mate, he dates numerous women at the same time, so you’ll find a lot of traces of quite a number of ex-es and currents scattered in every corner of his unkempt house, from the bathroom to the kitchen cabinets. But there is something about him that I adore: his childlike sunny-ness – almost like innocence- and a tender heart beneath his hyperactive and loud persona. We can talk for hours on the phone, 3-4 times a week, sharing our -usually doomed- love lives, among other things, and laugh about them. And he will make sure that he doesn’t spare any fine details of his dates of the week, how they look, measure and taste and what they do together.
Craig, he has this appealing English wit so when we meet we will guffaw like a pair of prepubescent kids. He has his shallow side to him, which I forgive. We will be at each other’s throat when talking about a certain subject like spirituality, so we’d rather discuss things that are palatable to his left-brained predisposition such as reproduction system and methods or the mechanism of how the toilet actually flushes. Despite our apparent incompatibility in some ways, we get along very well and care for each other a lot.
There is also Ann, whom I met in one of my retreats with whom I feel so much connection for the wonderful and gentle spirit that she is. And Andi, my pen –now e- pal whom I’ve known for 11 years and a throng of other more casual friends and e-friends whom I never met but have been a part of my “support system” for quite a while now. These people would send me books and are on-goingly very supportive of what I do, whose friendships have enriched my life and my quest for spiritual nourishment.
These are the people who accept and take us for what we are and in the same way we return the favor to them.
And this soul mate group is potentially still growing.
Sure I still want that very special, ultimate soul mate, like everybody else: that one man who sweeps me off my feet… But I guess I can’t be more blessed for what I already have now. As the adage goes, don’t forget to count your blessings
I have come to the conclusion, while it is the most cherished ideal to have that one person who completes you, your perfect match, whom you are so romantically, physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually connected with –presumably till death do you part-- you in fact can have several soul mates at the same time, the people who make every day of your life worth living.
Besides, we know how many marriages are nothing but a farce, not to mention the large number of them which end in divorce. Here is some consolation for those who are still “forced” to be single: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent. And often, embittered split couples, who were once so crazy about each other, can now no longer tolerate each other.
So perhaps unconditional love and care for others, unspoiled by romantic intention and jealousy, makes a more fertile ground for cultivating more lasting soul-mate species.
I personally have a few close friends who are very dear to my heart whom perhaps I can consider as soul mates, if not perpetually at least from time to time, and perhaps each of whom for a certain type of “function.” I might tell certain things to one soul mate only but not to the others. And these people sometimes don’t have to be physically here with me for me to feel their presence, love, attention and support.
Russ was my boyfriend of 9 years. We are still very good friends and care for each other a lot. Though we are no longer a couple in the strictest sense, I still care about him so very dearly the way I would my own brother. No matter what we do, I want to make sure he’s happy and well.
Pantja is my best girlfriend, we usually can talk about everything. Though at times, I find her sometimes too easy going, carefree and “unreliable” (like she would promise a few things but then either forgot them or just didn’t really care to fulfill them) but I have learned to accept her the way she is, warts and all. Overall she is a good, loyal friend and I miss her a lot when not talking to or seeing her in a while.
Benny, he is often insensitive when criticizing my appearance. He will have no compunction commenting on my “wrestler’s arms” or my sometimes bulging tummy or love handles or not substantial enough bosom with a straight face, because he’s really mad about waif-looking girls with thin, long arms and skinny catwalk model appearance. I’m usually very tolerant being abused like that, so I will just ignore him thinking that it’s just a sexually frustrated man’s verbiage, while he himself can be real touchy when I unintentionally exert “my intellectual prowess” over him by calling him –again quite unintentionally- dumb or silly. And once he was real agitated when I was speculating, quite jocularly of course, on his wife’s physique after giving birth to their first son. However, when we are not insulting each other generally speaking we are real good friends. He would tell me some very private stuff about his wife or marriage that I bet he wouldn’t dare tell anyone else and vice versa.
Mr. T, he’s a decent, respectful man and a great father (I’m not sure if he’s a great husband). He’s endearingly funny in his own uncanny way. I adore his decidedly cute kids very much. As a self-proclaimed philosopher –a label he deems as quite apt considering that, he said, all philosophers start as self-proclaimed until long after their death-, his philosophy is often too deep for me to grasp so I’d rather not discuss anything of the sort with him. But somehow he’s got the impression that I’m an eternal spiritual fountain so he will eventually go back to that subject again and again. He is redoing and maintaining my website now.
Bobby, oh…he’s wild. When driving, he will find a way –any way at all- that will prevent him from taking his foot off the accelerator so he fidgets and incessantly swears in such a fashion that would make an Irish Navy blush, mind you LA roads are not that bad to drive on at all. Sitting next to him as he is driving will make an experience of a lifetime. He should come and drive in Jakarta and I bet he will be incarcerated in a mental institution after two weeks. I bought “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” for him to read especially because it contains a chapter on enjoyable and stress-free driving but apparently that book doesn’t do much on him. As a true woman lover (and a self-proclaimed male feminist) and in his tireless quest for an ultimate soul mate, he dates numerous women at the same time, so you’ll find a lot of traces of quite a number of ex-es and currents scattered in every corner of his unkempt house, from the bathroom to the kitchen cabinets. But there is something about him that I adore: his childlike sunny-ness – almost like innocence- and a tender heart beneath his hyperactive and loud persona. We can talk for hours on the phone, 3-4 times a week, sharing our -usually doomed- love lives, among other things, and laugh about them. And he will make sure that he doesn’t spare any fine details of his dates of the week, how they look, measure and taste and what they do together.
Craig, he has this appealing English wit so when we meet we will guffaw like a pair of prepubescent kids. He has his shallow side to him, which I forgive. We will be at each other’s throat when talking about a certain subject like spirituality, so we’d rather discuss things that are palatable to his left-brained predisposition such as reproduction system and methods or the mechanism of how the toilet actually flushes. Despite our apparent incompatibility in some ways, we get along very well and care for each other a lot.
There is also Ann, whom I met in one of my retreats with whom I feel so much connection for the wonderful and gentle spirit that she is. And Andi, my pen –now e- pal whom I’ve known for 11 years and a throng of other more casual friends and e-friends whom I never met but have been a part of my “support system” for quite a while now. These people would send me books and are on-goingly very supportive of what I do, whose friendships have enriched my life and my quest for spiritual nourishment.
These are the people who accept and take us for what we are and in the same way we return the favor to them.
And this soul mate group is potentially still growing.
Sure I still want that very special, ultimate soul mate, like everybody else: that one man who sweeps me off my feet… But I guess I can’t be more blessed for what I already have now. As the adage goes, don’t forget to count your blessings
How to Overcome Sexual Aversion
Introduction:Sexual compatibility is very important in most marriages. On rare occasion I find a couple happily married without any sex whatsoever, but in most cases, the quality of sex determines the quality of marriage. When a couple's sexual relationship begins to suffer, the marriage is usually suffering. But when a sexual relationship is thriving, the marriage is also thriving.
Usually it's the husband who has the greatest need for sex, but that isn't always the case. I am finding increasing numbers of wives who need sexual fulfillment more than their husbands. However, whether it's the husband or the wife with the greater need for sex, the one with lesser need is at risk for a sexual aversion.
In an effort to satisfy the spouse with the greater need for sex, the spouse with the lesser need often sacrifices his or her own emotional reactions. Instead of sex being an experience that they both enjoy together, sex becomes enjoyable only for the one with the greatest need. And it can become a nightmare for the other spouse. In all too many marriages, sacrifice leads to a sexual aversion, which, in turn, leads to no sex at all.
This column will help you overcome a sexual aversion if you suffer from it. But even if you don't, it may help prevent you or your spouse from becoming its victim.
Dear Dr. Harley,
I have been married for nine years, and have two children. I have no interest in having sex. In fact, the thought of it is repulsive to me. I shudder when my husband reaches over and touches me when we are in bed together. Earlier in our marriage I had sex with my husband because I knew it was important to him, even though I was not interested. Sex was not disgusting to me then, just not enjoyable. Over time, however, I began to refuse him more and more often, and the thought of having sex became more and more unpleasant.
I finally told my husband that I no longer would have sex with him, and asked him to please stop trying. I feel guilty about not meeting his need for sex, but I feel so much better. I can finally go to bed and relax. I feel like a terrible burden has been lifted from me. I feel safe. But I am afraid for my marriage. I don't believe we can go on like this forever. Do you have any advice?
C.R.
Dear C.R.
The reason that you and your husband fell in love with each other and were married is that you were successful in meeting some of each other's most important emotional needs. You deposited so many love units into each other's Love Banks that the love threshold was shattered, and you found each other irresistible.
But you were not necessarily meeting the same emotional needs. He may have met your need for conversation, and you may have met his needs for recreational companionship. He may not have needed to talk with you nearly as much as you needed to talk with him, but he may have spent hours at a time talking with you anyway. And you may have watched football with him on television, not because you enjoy violence on TV, but because you wanted to join him in his favorite recreational activities.
The reason you met your husband's emotional needs is that you loved him, and wanted to make him happy. He was willing to do the same for you. You were both in the state of intimacy (see my basic concept, Negotiating in the Three States of Marriage) and in that state of mind, you were both willing to do whatever it took to meet each other's emotional needs.
But, as is the case in many marriages, you are now no longer meeting those needs. And the source of your love for each other is being slowly but surely squeezed out. Your neglect of each other has probably already taken its toll, and you are probably no longer in love with each other.
It's common sense to believe that spouses should try to meet each other's emotional needs, regardless of what they happen to be. No one has ever seriously argued with me that we shouldn't meet important emotional needs in marriage. And yet, in most marriages, spouses usually stop meeting them. Sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's unintentional. They usually know that they should be meeting each other's emotional needs, and yet they don't or can't do it.
The most common reason that spouses don't meet each other's needs is that they fall out of the state of intimacy and into the states of conflict or withdrawal. In either state of mind, people do not feel like making their spouses happy, because of the way they have been treated. Love Busters, such as angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments and selfish demands quickly destroy the state of intimacy.
If your husband were to be angry, disrespectful or demanding, would you want to watch football with him? If you treated him the same way, would he want to talk with you for hours? Not unless you each had the same needs yourselves. The only way you might meet those needs for each other is if you were doing it for yourselves. You might watch football with your husband because you simply wanted to see the game with someone, and he happened to be the only one around. He might talk with you for hours only if he needed to talk to someone, and you were there to talk with him. But if you didn't have the same needs, he'd be watching football all by himself and you'd be reading a book instead of talking to him.
In most marriages, husbands and wives don't have the same emotional needs, or at least they are not prioritized the same. Your marriage is that way, too. Sex has probably always been a very low priority for you, and a very high priority for your husband. And you may have emotional needs that don't mean much to your husband, either. But when you were in the state of intimacy, you were willing to make love to him as often as he wanted, just to make him happy, even though sex wasn't what you needed. Your husband may also have been willing to meet your needs, even though it may not have done that much for him.
You'd probably still be making love with him today, and cheerfully, if you could have remained in the state of intimacy for the past nine years. But there's no marriage in existence that can achieve that kind of record, and sooner or later your husband was bound to make a mistake that drove you from the state of intimacy into conflict. He withdrew just enough love units for you to fall out of love, and at that moment, he wanted to make love.
You may remember the first time you tried to make love to your husband in the state of conflict, and you probably realized then that it was an experience you would not want to repeat. You never had enjoyed sex that much, but now you were trying to do it after your husband had hurt your feelings. You had taken your first step toward sexual aversion.
What Is an Aversive Reaction?
An aversion is a negative emotional reaction that's been conditioned to a behavior. In other words, if you have bad experiences doing something, you will learn to associate those bad experiences with the task. The very thought of it will eventually create anxiety and unhappiness, and then doing it will make matters even worse.
Some psychologists, for reasons known only to them, like to shock rats. They have shown that if you subject a poor rat to an electric shock every time it takes a drink of water, it will not necessarily stop drinking water. But the rat will become very nervous whenever it does.
Humans go through the same experience. If your boss yells at you occasionally when you go to the water cooler, you will find yourself very tense whenever you drink from it. Your boss's yelling, which gives you a negative emotional reaction, becomes conditioned to your drinking from the water cooler. It's not the drinking itself that's unpleasant, it's the association of drinking with your boss yelling that triggers your reaction.
Aversions can be created in association with anything we do. Unpleasant classroom experiences can create "school phobia," something many children have great difficulty overcoming. An automobile accident can leave people with a fear of driving. Even shopping for groceries can raise anxiety in people who have had a bad grocery shopping experience.
Aversions can also be created when spouses try to meet each other's emotional needs, if the effort is associated with an unpleasant experience. There can be an aversion to meet the needs of admiration, affection, physical attractiveness, domestic support, family commitment, financial support, honesty and openness, recreational companionship, conversation and sexual fulfillment. These aversions can be created in a number of ways, but the most common is when a frustrated spouse becomes abusive when a need is not met to his or her satisfaction.
When one spouse tries to earn enough money for the other and he or she becomes angry with a paycheck that's judged too small, an aversive reaction to earning a living can be created. When a spouse tries to be affectionate and is angrily rebuffed because it isn't done "right" for some reason, an aversion to affection can be created. When a spouse tries to join in recreational activities, but has a miserable time, an aversion to recreational companionship can be created.
In other words, whenever someone tries to meet an emotional need, and finds the experience particularly unpleasant, there's a great possibility that future efforts to meet that need will be associated with unpleasant feelings, an aversive reaction.
That's one of the reasons that it's so important to meet your spouse's needs in a way that you find enjoyable, and why I put so much emphasis on the Policy of Joint Agreement. If you ever develop an aversion to meeting one of your spouse's needs, you'll find it impossible to meet. You will first have to overcome the aversion before you will ever be able to meet the need again.
Sexual Aversion
Sex is a very common aversion in marriage. Suppose a husband is upset with the frequency and manner in which his wife makes love to him. Instead of solving the problem with thoughtfulness and understanding, he becomes verbally and physically abusive whenever sex isn't to his liking. He may not be abusive every time he makes love, and he may be very sensitive on almost every occasion. But whether his abuse is frequent or infrequent, his wife is likely to associate the unpleasantness of his abuse with the sex act itself. After a while, she finds the act extremely unpleasant, and tries to avoid it if she can. She has developed a sexual aversion.
C.R., you have probably developed your sexual aversion the way most women do, as a result of your husband pressuring you to have sex to him when you didn't feel like it. In most cases of sexual aversion, a husband is the source of these unpleasant experiences.
You probably began your marriage not knowing how to enjoy sex, and made love to your husband out of a spirit of generosity. You may not have known how to become sexually aroused or how to climax. But as long as you were in the state of intimacy, the experience was somewhat pleasant for you, because the sex act made you feel more emotionally connected to him.
Eventually your husband did something that made you feel less than generous. He hurt your feelings. It may have been something he said to you that was angry or judgmental. But you made love to him anyway, out of obligation. That experience was downright unpleasant, because you had absolutely no interest in being emotionally connected to him at the time. You probably wanted him to get it over as quickly as possible. Your husband may have had no way of knowing that you were suffering, because you didn't want to confront your husband with your resentment.
From that point on, your sexual experiences became predictably unpleasant. You made love because he expected it, not because you were willing, and you did whatever you could to avoid it or to make it brief. Whenever he would reach over an touch you at night, you knew that the nightmare was about to begin again. You eventually hated his touch. You may have told him how much it bothered you, but he would do it anyway. There was no way to stop him. Eventually, you developed an aversion to sex.
The same thing would have happened if you had tried to watch football with your husband. In the state of intimacy, you would have enjoyed the experience, because you felt emotionally bonded to him. But if he had hurt your feelings, and then expected you to watch football with him, it would have put you on the path of a football aversion.
If you had felt obligated to watch football with him, week after week, with no natural interest of you own, and no feeling of intimacy, it would have felt like torture to you. Eventually you would have felt disgust and revulsion whenever football was mentioned.
Had you started your marriage with an agreement that you would only make love to your husband when, and in a way that, you would enjoy it and respond sexually, you would never have had an aversion. Your sexual interest would have increased over the years.
Unlike football, you are wired physiologically to enjoy sex. If you had made love to your husband on your terms and for your pleasure, it would only have been a matter of time before all the connections would have been discovered. Then, you may have come to need sex more than he does.
But because you did not understand how important your emotional reaction was, you not only didn't try to enjoy the experience sexually, but you also put yourself though emotional pain in your effort to meet your husband's need for sex. Your effort to meet his need unconditionally did you in, and now you're not meeting it at all.
Sexual aversion is usually poorly understood by those who have it. These people commonly report that engaging in sex is unpleasant, something they want to avoid. They may find that sexual arousal, and even a climax is also unpleasant. There isn't anything they like about it, and some actually experience a panic attack in the sex act itself. When they're asked to explain why they feel the way they do, few have a clear understanding of their reaction. They often blame themselves.
Their ignorance comes from a poor understanding of where their feelings come from. People often have the mistaken belief that they can decide to feel any way they want. They can decide to feel depressed or they can decide to feel cheerful. But those who suffer from chronic depression usually know it's not that simple. And when people have a sexual aversion, they cannot simply decide to feel good about sex.
Emotional reactions are not based on our decisions and an emotional aversion is no exception. An aversion is an unconscious, physiological association of a particular behavior with an extremely unpleasant emotional experience. Those who have that association have no control over the aversive reaction that is inevitable.
So when a person has had repeatedly unpleasant experiences making love, and the association of those experiences with sexual behavior has led to an aversion, they experience emotional pain whenever lovemaking is anticipated or attempted.
As in your case, sexual aversion is a disaster of major proportions for couples. Sex is a need that should be met in marriage, but if a spouse has an aversion to meeting it, it becomes almost impossible as long as the aversion exists.
To avoid aversions in the first place, keep unpleasant experiences to a minimum. That's why I am so adamant about couples learning to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If they apply the policy to their sexual relationships, making love would never be unpleasant for either partner. Not only does it help them create a lifestyle of compatibility, but it also eliminates the possibility of any aversion to meeting each other's needs.
Overcoming Aversion to Sex
The symptoms of aversion to sex are fear of engaging in sex, trying to make the sex act as short as possible, finding that you need to build up your confidence and resolve before sex just to get through it, thinking of excuses to avoid or postpone sex, and feeling ill just prior to sex and somewhat depressed afterward. Some people actually experience panic attacks while engaged in sex. Your symptom of revulsion at the very thought of having sex is also a typical symptom.
However, one symptom that is not due to sexual aversion is vaginal pain. It can cause a sexual aversion, but it is not a symptom of aversion itself. If you experience vaginal pain or discomfort when you make love, it is probably due to an infection or a reflex called vaginismus. I cover that subject in my column, (How to Overcome Pain During Intercourse).
Any of the symptoms of sexual aversion will interfere with your ability to meet your husband's need. How can you meet his need for sex if you have even one of these reactions? You can't. You must completely overcome the aversion if you ever hope to enjoy a sexual experience with your husband. And then be certain that the conditions that led to your aversion are never repeated.
Remember how you developed the aversion in the first place? You associated a certain behavior, having sex, with an unpleasant emotional reaction to something your husband did to you. Eventually the unpleasant reaction was triggered whenever you even thought about having sex with your husband, and certainly whenever you made love.
To overcome the aversion, you must break the association of sex with your husband from the unpleasant emotional reaction. The easiest way to do that is to associate sex with the state of relaxation.
Those without a sexual aversion may suggest that you take the direct route: Try to relax next time you make love. However, you and anyone else experiencing this hardship knows that the direct route is usually impossible to follow. The very thought of having sex with your husband probably puts you in a state of near-panic.
So that's where we will begin -- with your thoughts.
Step 1: Learn to relax when you think about sex.
The exercises that I am recommending to you will require about 15 minutes of your time every day. It is very important that you not miss a day, because the process will not work as well if you allow time gaps in the procedure.
Sit in a comfortable chair in a room by yourself with your eyes closed. If possible, play relaxing music in the background. Think of various experiences that you have had. Some of them will help you relax and others will make you feel tense. If you have an aversion to sex, whenever you think about making love, you will probably feel your tension rise and it will definitely feel unpleasant to you.
Stop thinking about sex, and redirect your thoughts to relaxing experiences. Then focus on relaxing each muscle in your body. Begin with your feet and move all the way up to your head, focusing your attention on relaxing every muscle along the way. It may take you five minutes or more before you know that all of your muscles are fully relaxed.
When you are completely relaxed, think about making love again, but this time remain completely relaxed. Don't allow any muscle to tense up. As you think about sex, you will notice that some thoughts don't bother you at all, but others, like making love to your husband, may make it almost impossible to remain relaxed.
Don't think about making love to your husband just yet. Think only about sex, in general. Leave your husband out of your thoughts altogether. Investigate your own reactions to sex by imagining various aspects of sex. If you have any sexual fantasies, think about them, and what it is that makes them appealing to you. Then, without thinking of your husband, think about other aspects of sex that are less appealing or downright unappealing. Be completely relaxed while you are thinking of all of these things.
When your first fifteen minutes relaxation exercise is over, take notes of what you learned about yourself. What sexual thoughts were appealing to you, and what thoughts were unappealing? What thoughts made you feel relaxed, and what thoughts made it difficult for you to relax? The contents of this journal should not be shared with your husband until your sexual aversion is completely overcome and you have a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship with him.
If there were certain sexual thoughts (not related to your husband) that made your muscles feel tense, or made your stomach feel tight, repeat this 15 minute exercise each day until you can think about them without feeling tense. You should also journal after each session to help you think through the reactions you are experiencing.
Step 2: Learn to relax when you think about having sex with your husband.
If you have an aversion to sex with your husband, you will feel an unpleasant tension whenever you think of making love to him. So in this step, the goal is to be able to think about it without feeling tension or experiencing an unpleasant reaction.
As I've already explained, an aversive reaction is created when an unpleasant emotional reaction is associated with a situation or behavior. The way to reverse that association is to try to stop the unpleasant reaction from occurring when the situation or behavior is present. If you can feel relaxed just thinking about sex with your spouse, that also tends to "extinguish" the aversive association that was previously made.
Close your eyes, sit back, and relax. Be certain you are alone and without anything or anyone to distract you. Relax all your muscles from head to toe as you did before, and think about making love with your husband.
You will notice that certain thoughts are more upsetting than others. It could be that one of the ways your husband wants to make love is particularly upsetting to you. (The thought of him forcing his hand over your body, particularly putting it between your legs raises your anxiety level.) Eventually you will find that even thoughts of the most upsetting sex acts will no longer elicit an unpleasant reaction. That's because with proper relaxation, you can extinguish your emotional reactions to almost anything.
The information you learn about yourself in this step will help you in the next step, so be sure to continue taking notes in your journal after each 15 minute session. You should document aspects of lovemaking with your husband that create the greatest stress for you. Even though you will learn to be relaxed when you think about them, you will not want to repeat them when you get back to making love to him again.
Step 3: Learn to relax when you think about having sex with your husband with him in the same room.
As soon as you have learned to be relaxed when thinking about making love to your husband, you are ready for the next step, inviting him to join you in the same room.
At first, he should simply sit somewhere else in the room and read a book. Even though he is not paying much attention to you, you may need to start practicing relaxation all over again. His very presence may make you tense.
If you relax all of your muscles from head to toe, you will eventually find yourself comfortable once again. Then, as you think about making love to him, continue to relax.
At this stage, your husband should not say or do anything but sit and read a book. If he cannot follow that simple instruction, we have serious problems. The reason you have a sexual aversion is that he has tried to make love to you in a way that is enjoyable for him, but unpleasant for you. To overcome your sexual aversion, he will need to learn to take your feelings into account when he makes love to you in the future.
But in this step, if he refuses to follow the assignment, and instead of quietly reading, he starts talking to you, or walks over and touches you, stop the procedure entirely. There is no hope for a successful transition to sex with your husband if he cannot follow your simplest requests.
It is essential for your husband to understand that you, not he, must be in complete control of your recovery process or it will not work. If he cannot or will not agree to that, it not only explains why you have the aversion to begin with, but also explains how his lack of cooperation has prevented your recovery.
Continue these exercises every day until you are completely relaxed thinking about making love to your husband with him in the same room. And don't forget to take notes in your journal that describe your experience.
Step 4: Learn to relax when you talk to your husband about having sex with him.
Now you are ready to tell your husband what you are thinking. Sit back in your comfortable chair and close your eyes. At first, limit your description to sexual situations that you find easy to talk about, and avoid talking about those sex acts that you find particularly disturbing. When you first start talking about sex, you will find your tension rising again, but after a little practice, you will learn to be relaxed as you describe your feelings. He should say nothing to you as you talk to him. All he should do is listen.
As I mentioned earlier, if your husband decides to take charge, and tries to talk you into making love to him after you describe your thoughts, tell him that it is that very thing that created the aversion in the first place. If he cannot follow the program, end it.
Eventually, you should describe as many sexual situations to your husband as you can think of. You may want to refer to your journal to help you remember what some of them were. Whenever you talk about them, try to remain completely relaxed, and you will eventually find that even your most disturbing sexual memories will no longer elicit a tense or anxious response.
Step 5: Learn to relax when you make love to your husband.
You should ease into a sexual relationship with your husband very slowly and comfortably. Continue to spend 15 minutes each day on this assignment so that you do not lose momentum.
First, you should learn to become comfortable with affection, being able to hug, kiss and hold hands without any fear that it will lead to sex. Then, have your husband rub your arms, feet and lower legs, backs, and other non-erogenous zones (avoid breast, stomach and genital areas), again without it leading to sex. Do the same for him.
When you are comfortable being touched by your husband in non-erogenous zones, and you are comfortable touching him, you are ready to begin the first stages of making love.
I have not discussed feelings of sexual arousal with you, because our goal was to overcome aversive reactions. But by the time you are able to talk to your husband about having sex with him while feeling completely relaxed you may have already started to experience feelings of sexual arousal. The affection you experienced may also have led to feelings of sexual arousal. That feeling of sexual arousal is your signal to make love to your husband. Don't ever try to make love without it.
Remember, if any aspect of lovemaking is unpleasant to you, figure out a way of making it enjoyable. Have your husband rub your back in a way that you enjoy, not just a way that he enjoys. Resist the temptation to go ahead and make love just to make your husband happy, because it is likely to set you back. Remember, if this program is not successful, you will probably go back to not making love at all.
When you are ready for intercourse, have your husband lay entirely motionless on his back at first. Sit or lay on top of him so that you are in complete control of the situation. Experiment with different positions and methods of intercourse so that you can learn how your body works to create the most enjoyable feelings. Only relinquish control to him after he has become educated in what it is that enables you to enjoy the experience with him.
Sometimes you will experience what behaviorists call "spontaneous recovery," because your habits will all be very new. Spontaneous recovery is when you suddenly feel the old aversive reactions without any warning. When that happens, it just means that there are residual effects still present that crop up from time to time. You'll find that these unexpected intrusions will decrease over time until they hardly ever occur.
Amazingly enough, if you understand how to turn lovemaking into an enjoyable experience, you will probably want to make love more often than your husband does. Why? Because the more you enjoy something, the more you will want to do it. That's why the Policy of Joint Agreement leads to passionate and frequent sex.
Usually it's the husband who has the greatest need for sex, but that isn't always the case. I am finding increasing numbers of wives who need sexual fulfillment more than their husbands. However, whether it's the husband or the wife with the greater need for sex, the one with lesser need is at risk for a sexual aversion.
In an effort to satisfy the spouse with the greater need for sex, the spouse with the lesser need often sacrifices his or her own emotional reactions. Instead of sex being an experience that they both enjoy together, sex becomes enjoyable only for the one with the greatest need. And it can become a nightmare for the other spouse. In all too many marriages, sacrifice leads to a sexual aversion, which, in turn, leads to no sex at all.
This column will help you overcome a sexual aversion if you suffer from it. But even if you don't, it may help prevent you or your spouse from becoming its victim.
Dear Dr. Harley,
I have been married for nine years, and have two children. I have no interest in having sex. In fact, the thought of it is repulsive to me. I shudder when my husband reaches over and touches me when we are in bed together. Earlier in our marriage I had sex with my husband because I knew it was important to him, even though I was not interested. Sex was not disgusting to me then, just not enjoyable. Over time, however, I began to refuse him more and more often, and the thought of having sex became more and more unpleasant.
I finally told my husband that I no longer would have sex with him, and asked him to please stop trying. I feel guilty about not meeting his need for sex, but I feel so much better. I can finally go to bed and relax. I feel like a terrible burden has been lifted from me. I feel safe. But I am afraid for my marriage. I don't believe we can go on like this forever. Do you have any advice?
C.R.
Dear C.R.
The reason that you and your husband fell in love with each other and were married is that you were successful in meeting some of each other's most important emotional needs. You deposited so many love units into each other's Love Banks that the love threshold was shattered, and you found each other irresistible.
But you were not necessarily meeting the same emotional needs. He may have met your need for conversation, and you may have met his needs for recreational companionship. He may not have needed to talk with you nearly as much as you needed to talk with him, but he may have spent hours at a time talking with you anyway. And you may have watched football with him on television, not because you enjoy violence on TV, but because you wanted to join him in his favorite recreational activities.
The reason you met your husband's emotional needs is that you loved him, and wanted to make him happy. He was willing to do the same for you. You were both in the state of intimacy (see my basic concept, Negotiating in the Three States of Marriage) and in that state of mind, you were both willing to do whatever it took to meet each other's emotional needs.
But, as is the case in many marriages, you are now no longer meeting those needs. And the source of your love for each other is being slowly but surely squeezed out. Your neglect of each other has probably already taken its toll, and you are probably no longer in love with each other.
It's common sense to believe that spouses should try to meet each other's emotional needs, regardless of what they happen to be. No one has ever seriously argued with me that we shouldn't meet important emotional needs in marriage. And yet, in most marriages, spouses usually stop meeting them. Sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's unintentional. They usually know that they should be meeting each other's emotional needs, and yet they don't or can't do it.
The most common reason that spouses don't meet each other's needs is that they fall out of the state of intimacy and into the states of conflict or withdrawal. In either state of mind, people do not feel like making their spouses happy, because of the way they have been treated. Love Busters, such as angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments and selfish demands quickly destroy the state of intimacy.
If your husband were to be angry, disrespectful or demanding, would you want to watch football with him? If you treated him the same way, would he want to talk with you for hours? Not unless you each had the same needs yourselves. The only way you might meet those needs for each other is if you were doing it for yourselves. You might watch football with your husband because you simply wanted to see the game with someone, and he happened to be the only one around. He might talk with you for hours only if he needed to talk to someone, and you were there to talk with him. But if you didn't have the same needs, he'd be watching football all by himself and you'd be reading a book instead of talking to him.
In most marriages, husbands and wives don't have the same emotional needs, or at least they are not prioritized the same. Your marriage is that way, too. Sex has probably always been a very low priority for you, and a very high priority for your husband. And you may have emotional needs that don't mean much to your husband, either. But when you were in the state of intimacy, you were willing to make love to him as often as he wanted, just to make him happy, even though sex wasn't what you needed. Your husband may also have been willing to meet your needs, even though it may not have done that much for him.
You'd probably still be making love with him today, and cheerfully, if you could have remained in the state of intimacy for the past nine years. But there's no marriage in existence that can achieve that kind of record, and sooner or later your husband was bound to make a mistake that drove you from the state of intimacy into conflict. He withdrew just enough love units for you to fall out of love, and at that moment, he wanted to make love.
You may remember the first time you tried to make love to your husband in the state of conflict, and you probably realized then that it was an experience you would not want to repeat. You never had enjoyed sex that much, but now you were trying to do it after your husband had hurt your feelings. You had taken your first step toward sexual aversion.
What Is an Aversive Reaction?
An aversion is a negative emotional reaction that's been conditioned to a behavior. In other words, if you have bad experiences doing something, you will learn to associate those bad experiences with the task. The very thought of it will eventually create anxiety and unhappiness, and then doing it will make matters even worse.
Some psychologists, for reasons known only to them, like to shock rats. They have shown that if you subject a poor rat to an electric shock every time it takes a drink of water, it will not necessarily stop drinking water. But the rat will become very nervous whenever it does.
Humans go through the same experience. If your boss yells at you occasionally when you go to the water cooler, you will find yourself very tense whenever you drink from it. Your boss's yelling, which gives you a negative emotional reaction, becomes conditioned to your drinking from the water cooler. It's not the drinking itself that's unpleasant, it's the association of drinking with your boss yelling that triggers your reaction.
Aversions can be created in association with anything we do. Unpleasant classroom experiences can create "school phobia," something many children have great difficulty overcoming. An automobile accident can leave people with a fear of driving. Even shopping for groceries can raise anxiety in people who have had a bad grocery shopping experience.
Aversions can also be created when spouses try to meet each other's emotional needs, if the effort is associated with an unpleasant experience. There can be an aversion to meet the needs of admiration, affection, physical attractiveness, domestic support, family commitment, financial support, honesty and openness, recreational companionship, conversation and sexual fulfillment. These aversions can be created in a number of ways, but the most common is when a frustrated spouse becomes abusive when a need is not met to his or her satisfaction.
When one spouse tries to earn enough money for the other and he or she becomes angry with a paycheck that's judged too small, an aversive reaction to earning a living can be created. When a spouse tries to be affectionate and is angrily rebuffed because it isn't done "right" for some reason, an aversion to affection can be created. When a spouse tries to join in recreational activities, but has a miserable time, an aversion to recreational companionship can be created.
In other words, whenever someone tries to meet an emotional need, and finds the experience particularly unpleasant, there's a great possibility that future efforts to meet that need will be associated with unpleasant feelings, an aversive reaction.
That's one of the reasons that it's so important to meet your spouse's needs in a way that you find enjoyable, and why I put so much emphasis on the Policy of Joint Agreement. If you ever develop an aversion to meeting one of your spouse's needs, you'll find it impossible to meet. You will first have to overcome the aversion before you will ever be able to meet the need again.
Sexual Aversion
Sex is a very common aversion in marriage. Suppose a husband is upset with the frequency and manner in which his wife makes love to him. Instead of solving the problem with thoughtfulness and understanding, he becomes verbally and physically abusive whenever sex isn't to his liking. He may not be abusive every time he makes love, and he may be very sensitive on almost every occasion. But whether his abuse is frequent or infrequent, his wife is likely to associate the unpleasantness of his abuse with the sex act itself. After a while, she finds the act extremely unpleasant, and tries to avoid it if she can. She has developed a sexual aversion.
C.R., you have probably developed your sexual aversion the way most women do, as a result of your husband pressuring you to have sex to him when you didn't feel like it. In most cases of sexual aversion, a husband is the source of these unpleasant experiences.
You probably began your marriage not knowing how to enjoy sex, and made love to your husband out of a spirit of generosity. You may not have known how to become sexually aroused or how to climax. But as long as you were in the state of intimacy, the experience was somewhat pleasant for you, because the sex act made you feel more emotionally connected to him.
Eventually your husband did something that made you feel less than generous. He hurt your feelings. It may have been something he said to you that was angry or judgmental. But you made love to him anyway, out of obligation. That experience was downright unpleasant, because you had absolutely no interest in being emotionally connected to him at the time. You probably wanted him to get it over as quickly as possible. Your husband may have had no way of knowing that you were suffering, because you didn't want to confront your husband with your resentment.
From that point on, your sexual experiences became predictably unpleasant. You made love because he expected it, not because you were willing, and you did whatever you could to avoid it or to make it brief. Whenever he would reach over an touch you at night, you knew that the nightmare was about to begin again. You eventually hated his touch. You may have told him how much it bothered you, but he would do it anyway. There was no way to stop him. Eventually, you developed an aversion to sex.
The same thing would have happened if you had tried to watch football with your husband. In the state of intimacy, you would have enjoyed the experience, because you felt emotionally bonded to him. But if he had hurt your feelings, and then expected you to watch football with him, it would have put you on the path of a football aversion.
If you had felt obligated to watch football with him, week after week, with no natural interest of you own, and no feeling of intimacy, it would have felt like torture to you. Eventually you would have felt disgust and revulsion whenever football was mentioned.
Had you started your marriage with an agreement that you would only make love to your husband when, and in a way that, you would enjoy it and respond sexually, you would never have had an aversion. Your sexual interest would have increased over the years.
Unlike football, you are wired physiologically to enjoy sex. If you had made love to your husband on your terms and for your pleasure, it would only have been a matter of time before all the connections would have been discovered. Then, you may have come to need sex more than he does.
But because you did not understand how important your emotional reaction was, you not only didn't try to enjoy the experience sexually, but you also put yourself though emotional pain in your effort to meet your husband's need for sex. Your effort to meet his need unconditionally did you in, and now you're not meeting it at all.
Sexual aversion is usually poorly understood by those who have it. These people commonly report that engaging in sex is unpleasant, something they want to avoid. They may find that sexual arousal, and even a climax is also unpleasant. There isn't anything they like about it, and some actually experience a panic attack in the sex act itself. When they're asked to explain why they feel the way they do, few have a clear understanding of their reaction. They often blame themselves.
Their ignorance comes from a poor understanding of where their feelings come from. People often have the mistaken belief that they can decide to feel any way they want. They can decide to feel depressed or they can decide to feel cheerful. But those who suffer from chronic depression usually know it's not that simple. And when people have a sexual aversion, they cannot simply decide to feel good about sex.
Emotional reactions are not based on our decisions and an emotional aversion is no exception. An aversion is an unconscious, physiological association of a particular behavior with an extremely unpleasant emotional experience. Those who have that association have no control over the aversive reaction that is inevitable.
So when a person has had repeatedly unpleasant experiences making love, and the association of those experiences with sexual behavior has led to an aversion, they experience emotional pain whenever lovemaking is anticipated or attempted.
As in your case, sexual aversion is a disaster of major proportions for couples. Sex is a need that should be met in marriage, but if a spouse has an aversion to meeting it, it becomes almost impossible as long as the aversion exists.
To avoid aversions in the first place, keep unpleasant experiences to a minimum. That's why I am so adamant about couples learning to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If they apply the policy to their sexual relationships, making love would never be unpleasant for either partner. Not only does it help them create a lifestyle of compatibility, but it also eliminates the possibility of any aversion to meeting each other's needs.
Overcoming Aversion to Sex
The symptoms of aversion to sex are fear of engaging in sex, trying to make the sex act as short as possible, finding that you need to build up your confidence and resolve before sex just to get through it, thinking of excuses to avoid or postpone sex, and feeling ill just prior to sex and somewhat depressed afterward. Some people actually experience panic attacks while engaged in sex. Your symptom of revulsion at the very thought of having sex is also a typical symptom.
However, one symptom that is not due to sexual aversion is vaginal pain. It can cause a sexual aversion, but it is not a symptom of aversion itself. If you experience vaginal pain or discomfort when you make love, it is probably due to an infection or a reflex called vaginismus. I cover that subject in my column, (How to Overcome Pain During Intercourse).
Any of the symptoms of sexual aversion will interfere with your ability to meet your husband's need. How can you meet his need for sex if you have even one of these reactions? You can't. You must completely overcome the aversion if you ever hope to enjoy a sexual experience with your husband. And then be certain that the conditions that led to your aversion are never repeated.
Remember how you developed the aversion in the first place? You associated a certain behavior, having sex, with an unpleasant emotional reaction to something your husband did to you. Eventually the unpleasant reaction was triggered whenever you even thought about having sex with your husband, and certainly whenever you made love.
To overcome the aversion, you must break the association of sex with your husband from the unpleasant emotional reaction. The easiest way to do that is to associate sex with the state of relaxation.
Those without a sexual aversion may suggest that you take the direct route: Try to relax next time you make love. However, you and anyone else experiencing this hardship knows that the direct route is usually impossible to follow. The very thought of having sex with your husband probably puts you in a state of near-panic.
So that's where we will begin -- with your thoughts.
Step 1: Learn to relax when you think about sex.
The exercises that I am recommending to you will require about 15 minutes of your time every day. It is very important that you not miss a day, because the process will not work as well if you allow time gaps in the procedure.
Sit in a comfortable chair in a room by yourself with your eyes closed. If possible, play relaxing music in the background. Think of various experiences that you have had. Some of them will help you relax and others will make you feel tense. If you have an aversion to sex, whenever you think about making love, you will probably feel your tension rise and it will definitely feel unpleasant to you.
Stop thinking about sex, and redirect your thoughts to relaxing experiences. Then focus on relaxing each muscle in your body. Begin with your feet and move all the way up to your head, focusing your attention on relaxing every muscle along the way. It may take you five minutes or more before you know that all of your muscles are fully relaxed.
When you are completely relaxed, think about making love again, but this time remain completely relaxed. Don't allow any muscle to tense up. As you think about sex, you will notice that some thoughts don't bother you at all, but others, like making love to your husband, may make it almost impossible to remain relaxed.
Don't think about making love to your husband just yet. Think only about sex, in general. Leave your husband out of your thoughts altogether. Investigate your own reactions to sex by imagining various aspects of sex. If you have any sexual fantasies, think about them, and what it is that makes them appealing to you. Then, without thinking of your husband, think about other aspects of sex that are less appealing or downright unappealing. Be completely relaxed while you are thinking of all of these things.
When your first fifteen minutes relaxation exercise is over, take notes of what you learned about yourself. What sexual thoughts were appealing to you, and what thoughts were unappealing? What thoughts made you feel relaxed, and what thoughts made it difficult for you to relax? The contents of this journal should not be shared with your husband until your sexual aversion is completely overcome and you have a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship with him.
If there were certain sexual thoughts (not related to your husband) that made your muscles feel tense, or made your stomach feel tight, repeat this 15 minute exercise each day until you can think about them without feeling tense. You should also journal after each session to help you think through the reactions you are experiencing.
Step 2: Learn to relax when you think about having sex with your husband.
If you have an aversion to sex with your husband, you will feel an unpleasant tension whenever you think of making love to him. So in this step, the goal is to be able to think about it without feeling tension or experiencing an unpleasant reaction.
As I've already explained, an aversive reaction is created when an unpleasant emotional reaction is associated with a situation or behavior. The way to reverse that association is to try to stop the unpleasant reaction from occurring when the situation or behavior is present. If you can feel relaxed just thinking about sex with your spouse, that also tends to "extinguish" the aversive association that was previously made.
Close your eyes, sit back, and relax. Be certain you are alone and without anything or anyone to distract you. Relax all your muscles from head to toe as you did before, and think about making love with your husband.
You will notice that certain thoughts are more upsetting than others. It could be that one of the ways your husband wants to make love is particularly upsetting to you. (The thought of him forcing his hand over your body, particularly putting it between your legs raises your anxiety level.) Eventually you will find that even thoughts of the most upsetting sex acts will no longer elicit an unpleasant reaction. That's because with proper relaxation, you can extinguish your emotional reactions to almost anything.
The information you learn about yourself in this step will help you in the next step, so be sure to continue taking notes in your journal after each 15 minute session. You should document aspects of lovemaking with your husband that create the greatest stress for you. Even though you will learn to be relaxed when you think about them, you will not want to repeat them when you get back to making love to him again.
Step 3: Learn to relax when you think about having sex with your husband with him in the same room.
As soon as you have learned to be relaxed when thinking about making love to your husband, you are ready for the next step, inviting him to join you in the same room.
At first, he should simply sit somewhere else in the room and read a book. Even though he is not paying much attention to you, you may need to start practicing relaxation all over again. His very presence may make you tense.
If you relax all of your muscles from head to toe, you will eventually find yourself comfortable once again. Then, as you think about making love to him, continue to relax.
At this stage, your husband should not say or do anything but sit and read a book. If he cannot follow that simple instruction, we have serious problems. The reason you have a sexual aversion is that he has tried to make love to you in a way that is enjoyable for him, but unpleasant for you. To overcome your sexual aversion, he will need to learn to take your feelings into account when he makes love to you in the future.
But in this step, if he refuses to follow the assignment, and instead of quietly reading, he starts talking to you, or walks over and touches you, stop the procedure entirely. There is no hope for a successful transition to sex with your husband if he cannot follow your simplest requests.
It is essential for your husband to understand that you, not he, must be in complete control of your recovery process or it will not work. If he cannot or will not agree to that, it not only explains why you have the aversion to begin with, but also explains how his lack of cooperation has prevented your recovery.
Continue these exercises every day until you are completely relaxed thinking about making love to your husband with him in the same room. And don't forget to take notes in your journal that describe your experience.
Step 4: Learn to relax when you talk to your husband about having sex with him.
Now you are ready to tell your husband what you are thinking. Sit back in your comfortable chair and close your eyes. At first, limit your description to sexual situations that you find easy to talk about, and avoid talking about those sex acts that you find particularly disturbing. When you first start talking about sex, you will find your tension rising again, but after a little practice, you will learn to be relaxed as you describe your feelings. He should say nothing to you as you talk to him. All he should do is listen.
As I mentioned earlier, if your husband decides to take charge, and tries to talk you into making love to him after you describe your thoughts, tell him that it is that very thing that created the aversion in the first place. If he cannot follow the program, end it.
Eventually, you should describe as many sexual situations to your husband as you can think of. You may want to refer to your journal to help you remember what some of them were. Whenever you talk about them, try to remain completely relaxed, and you will eventually find that even your most disturbing sexual memories will no longer elicit a tense or anxious response.
Step 5: Learn to relax when you make love to your husband.
You should ease into a sexual relationship with your husband very slowly and comfortably. Continue to spend 15 minutes each day on this assignment so that you do not lose momentum.
First, you should learn to become comfortable with affection, being able to hug, kiss and hold hands without any fear that it will lead to sex. Then, have your husband rub your arms, feet and lower legs, backs, and other non-erogenous zones (avoid breast, stomach and genital areas), again without it leading to sex. Do the same for him.
When you are comfortable being touched by your husband in non-erogenous zones, and you are comfortable touching him, you are ready to begin the first stages of making love.
I have not discussed feelings of sexual arousal with you, because our goal was to overcome aversive reactions. But by the time you are able to talk to your husband about having sex with him while feeling completely relaxed you may have already started to experience feelings of sexual arousal. The affection you experienced may also have led to feelings of sexual arousal. That feeling of sexual arousal is your signal to make love to your husband. Don't ever try to make love without it.
Remember, if any aspect of lovemaking is unpleasant to you, figure out a way of making it enjoyable. Have your husband rub your back in a way that you enjoy, not just a way that he enjoys. Resist the temptation to go ahead and make love just to make your husband happy, because it is likely to set you back. Remember, if this program is not successful, you will probably go back to not making love at all.
When you are ready for intercourse, have your husband lay entirely motionless on his back at first. Sit or lay on top of him so that you are in complete control of the situation. Experiment with different positions and methods of intercourse so that you can learn how your body works to create the most enjoyable feelings. Only relinquish control to him after he has become educated in what it is that enables you to enjoy the experience with him.
Sometimes you will experience what behaviorists call "spontaneous recovery," because your habits will all be very new. Spontaneous recovery is when you suddenly feel the old aversive reactions without any warning. When that happens, it just means that there are residual effects still present that crop up from time to time. You'll find that these unexpected intrusions will decrease over time until they hardly ever occur.
Amazingly enough, if you understand how to turn lovemaking into an enjoyable experience, you will probably want to make love more often than your husband does. Why? Because the more you enjoy something, the more you will want to do it. That's why the Policy of Joint Agreement leads to passionate and frequent sex.
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