Couples Work
Being in relationship with another is Soul’s work. The depth of vulnerability that the intimacy with our partner triggers is often underestimated in its uncomfortability, sadly, we no loger have the community or the elders to guide us through the challenges that learning to love one another presents. us with
We come to relationship often unaware of the hidden wounds that we carry from childhood or adolescence or the unconscious patterns that we have inherited or picked up from society as we grown up into adulthood. We often can be misled by the impression that we are more “together” than we imagined before we enter commitment in a relationship.
A Third Body
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born
in any other nation, or time, or place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not-talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body that they share in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come.
A man and a woman sit near each other;
as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
someone we know of, whom we have never seen.
–Robert Bly
“The Soul cannot become it self without another ”
— Karl Jung