HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY it feels so good to fall in love? There’s nothing quite like it…the euphoria, the feeling of connection, the joy in having found someone to share one’s deepest feelings with! Is it real, or is it an illusion?

In the earliest stages of a relationship, personal power is at its height. Somehow, seeing ourselves through the eyes of our beloved conveys that feeling that we are perfect, that we are special, that we can do no wrong. Much has been written about the psychology of intimate relationships. Many experts have said that the idyllic feelings we have during romance are unrealistic and cannot be sustained. They speak of the need to reestablish boundaries and protect the separate identities of the two individuals in the relationship, both of which tend to be somewhat lost in the first passions of a love affair.

The "experts" are of course reflecting a strongly entrenched belief system of our society. We value individualism and independence very highly in western culture. Self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and self-awareness are the modern catchwords of the enlightened, and no one questions their value. Love yourself, because if you don’t, you can’t love anyone else either, we are told by the self-help books that line the shelves in almost every bookstore in America. Yet one can’t help but wonder if the blatant egoism of so many people isn’t a result of just a little bit too much self-love, which hasn’t quite managed to translate into a love for others.

In this article, I am going to present you with a theory, one that may challenge many beliefs you hold about the meaning and purpose of relationships. Simply stated, this theory is that in those moments of connection, of passion and of falling totally in love, we become more of who we really are. At those times we are closer to our authentic power, our "God-self", than in our usual, more ordinary states of being. Relationships are a doorway and a signpost to what is possible when we loosen our boundaries and increase our vulnerability. Yes, it can be scary and the possibility for hurt, rejection and misunderstanding is very real, especially as we learn new ways of being together. Still, I feel that ultimately power lies in expansion rather than contraction, and union with another soul can be the first step to reunion with the ONE of which we all are part.

The Roots of Our Experiences
Our first experience of relationship is with our parents or caregivers. The quality of the parent/infant bond and the kind of nurturing received sets the blueprint for all future relationships. The blueprint can be altered, but unless there is a conscious and concerted effort to do so, we are usually doomed to live our lives reenacting the blueprint of our primal relationship(s).

Child-raising methods, and therefore primal blueprints, vary greatly from one culture to another. Some tribal cultures (which we would label primitive but may actually have been more advanced than our own by certain definitions) encouraged mothers to bond so completely with their infants that they were telepathically connected. I remember reading a story about a tribe where the babies never wore diapers, yet never soiled their mothers, in whose arms they spent the majority of their time. When babies needed to relieve themselves, they were simply held over the "toilet area" till they completed their business. An anthropologist asked a young mother how she knew when the baby had to go. The mother answered with some surprise: "Well, how do you know when you have to go?"

In contrast, mothers in our society are encouraged to teach their babies independence as early as possible. Infants have their own cribs and spend many hours isolated from their caregivers. We believe that letting babies cry themselves to sleep is healthy and teaches them early that they cannot control their parents. A mother who goes against this cultural imperative is frowned upon and told she will "spoil" her baby. (Do you see the irony here? The more we fear our children will control us, the more we try to control them! It becomes a vicious circle of control that is later played out in our intimate relationships.)

I was one of those mothers who "spoiled" her children terribly (though in retrospect, I would have "spoiled" them even more had I known then what I know now)! Fortunately, I had read a lot of anthropological literature on "primitive" child rearing, which convinced me that our cultural beliefs about infants and their needs are wrong. I feel that the prevalent idea that infants need to "develop their separate identities by having lots of time alone" is psychologically damaging and may be at the root of many of the relationship difficulties people experience in our culture.

Exercise #1
Go back to your earliest memories. Can you remember what it felt like to be really loved as a child? Do you have any memories of being totally vulnerable yet totally safe in the arms of a parent or other caregiver? If you have no such memories, perhaps you can remember a time when you comforted yourself. You may have felt lonely, powerless and lost, but somehow managed to find a way to comfort and nurture yourself. Think about the ways you compensated for lack of love in your life. Did you turn to eating for self-comfort? Did you find ways to prove yourself worthy in the eyes of others so you could feel good about yourself? Did you compete with others for awards or prizes so you could have that feeling of being worthy of love?

The Ego
Our greatest need, as human beings having an earth experience, is love. Institutionalized children, who are adequately fed, clothed and sheltered, will fail to thrive unless provided with loving human contact. Love, in physical terms, includes the need to touch and be touched. Love sustains our souls the way food sustains our bodies. Just as a reduction in the quality and quantity of food can be less than optimal for our bodies, so a reduction in the quality and quantity of love is also less than optimal for our souls. We may survive, and we may meet many of the ideals our culture has set for a successful life, but I believe our quality of life, as measured by the joy and passion we feel, will be diminished.

Love empowers us to move outside the feeling of separateness we feel while enclosed in our bodies having a 3-dimensional experience. As disembodied spirits, we are love, never separated, always connected to God/Goddess/All That Is. Love is what we are when we first enter into matter, in the form of a helpless infant body, physically dependent on our parents. When that love is not honored, nurtured, returned and encouraged to grow, fear is experienced. "Will I be ok? Will my needs be met?" This fear shifts the child’s focus from a powerful connection with the external environment to preoccupation with the separate self. The "ego" is a term often used for that part of the personality that focuses on self as opposed to others. It arises to our defense when we feel threatened or when our needs are not met. One could say the ego develops out of our fears and the need to protect ourselves from the things we fear, whether real or imagined.

The ego, then, is the boundary we place around the self. The stronger our ego, the more cautious we are about letting anyone else in, and the more difficult it is for us to get out of the enclosure we have created from our perceptions and beliefs. To the ego, personal power is often synonymous with control.

Exercise #2
Think back to a time when you were really in love and things between you and your partner were going well. What was most important to you at that time? Did you find yourself doing things and acting in ways that you normally wouldn’t consider? At what point did conflicts start to enter the relationship? Where do you think the conflicts came from?

Falling In Love
Popular wisdom would have us believe that falling in love is really just sexual desire triggered by hormones and the biological imperative to reproduce. I disagree. Young children often fall in love, a phenomenon that adults call "puppy love", and dismiss as being somehow inferior to the real thing. A strongly heterosexual person my fall in love with someone of the same gender and have no desire for the relationship to be sexual. In both cases, it is simply love, unencumbered by biology.

The impulse to love comes from the soul. It is the recognition of Spirit in another, which evokes the possibility of transcending our feelings of separateness. When we fall in love, we temporarily leave our egos behind and soar on the wings of our souls. The boundaries we have struggled so hard to maintain start to crumble in the face of the overwhelming emotion a heartfelt connection with another brings.

This can be frightening for the ego. By nature, the ego thrives on its separateness from others, and the merging of the soul with another feels like death approaching. The more fearful the ego is of surrender, of vulnerability or control by another, the sooner it will surface to sabotage the relationship. After all, it feels that survival is at stake, and the ego’s prime directive is survival at any cost. Often the only survival technique the ego has developed is to control the personality and the situation. Unfortunately, the other person in the relationship is usually of similar energy with an ego of his or her own! When one person’s ego asserts itself, chances are, the other person’s ego will respond. As soon as two egos have opposing points of view, conflict happens in the relationship. How the conflict is handled determines whether the relationship continues or breaks apart.

Building an Intimate Partnership
My definition of an intimate partnership is where the needs and desires of another person become equal to your own. If your own needs and desires are more important to you than your partner’s, then chances are you are using him or her. A relationship where each simply uses the other may have a certain status quo, but it will not reach the levels of intimacy possible in an equal partnership. On the other hand, if your partner’s needs and desires are more important to you than your own, the imbalance will also work against a true intimate connection. You are playing the martyr when you always place another above yourself, and sooner or later, not having your needs met will evoke the protective nature of your ego and prevent intimacy.

We all have egos, consisting of layers of emotional protection built over time. The initial union and communion of two souls in love cannot be sustained indefinitely as long as our egos/fears have not been transcended. Thus the true opportunity of partnership becomes one of transcending our egos and reclaiming our connection to the divine through and with the help of the beloved. When we connect in a place beyond the ego, empowering another becomes an empowerment of self.

Practical Suggestions for Empowered Partnership
The process of building a partnership beyond ego is complicated and involves many levels of healing. We need to heal the wounds from our primal relationships and we need to heal the wounds from all the failed relationships in our pasts. Here are a few suggestions, and although the list is by no means complete, it should help you make a start:

What Do You Feel?
Ultimately, the way to discern the truth of any theory is through the heart. Take what you have just read and feel it in your heart. If the information resonates, you will have a glowing feeling of empowerment…or an "aha, I already knew that!" reaction. If it doesn’t feel right, then perhaps your path goes another way. Either way, I welcome your thoughts and reactions to this article.

Next month we will talk about raising self-empowered children.

© 2002 Tys Dammeyer

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