Is Alone and Independent a Good Thing?
We have glorified individuality in this society. At the same time we have ended up not really understanding how we are supposed to be with each other and how it is that we are supposed to be with ourselves. Believing that we are self-sustaining, autonomous or differentiated in our couple relationships has hidden just how dependent we are on each other. Some of the self-help books for couples on the shelves of our local bookstore suggest that if we are feeling lonely in the relationship with our spouse that we need to find our inner selves and if we don't find ourselves, we are to blame for any angst that we feel.
Loneliness often doesn't have anything to do with being alone. Feeling isolated from the great chain of being has happened over time with all the props from a community of attachment disappearing decade by decade. Part of the freedom we have enjoyed has come at a great cost. Too many couples are feeling fundamentally alone at the core.
The list of issues in marriages stretch from frustration about not receiving or resisting the other's attention; feeling alarmed by a partner's behaviour which creates insecurity, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt and shame in marriage; and the backwash from feeling more connected to peers than a spouse, detaching emotionally from the marriage and staying silent about what frightens us most in an attempt to hide our vulnerabilities. The resulting sadness, frustration and alarm leave us with a pervasive sense of emptiness, loss and disconnectedness. A melancholic feeling of loneliness even when not alone darkens our perspective of coupledom.
It is only when we can grieve this feeling of loneliness that we can better learn to connect with each other and to uncover our vulnerabilities in the safety of an intimate relationship. Fulfillment which is on the other side of grief can give us new eyes for handling our relationships.
Marriage is a form of dependence where there is an oscillating balance of leaning on each other when we need to. Preservation of the closeness of attachment requires invitation, insight and investment. Instead of planning to change our spouses, we can choose reality, grieve what cannot be and within the bounds of our resilience, compensate for flaws. Owning our mixed feelings allows us to mature inside the safe shield of the relationship where we can see that it is lust which impels us into sex. It is romantic love which keeps us together and it is attachment which enables us to keep connected through hormones of attachment. Attachment is that drive or relationship characterized by the instinctive pursuit and preservation of proximity.
Contemporary life tells us to look inside ourselves for meaning. Lonely people know it is not enough. Looking into our relationships through the six degrees of attachment gives us hope that we can be and stay together "for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part".
December 15, 2008
Copyright, 2010 by Susan Dafoe-Abbey. Permission to use this material, either in English or in translation, for educational purposes is hereby granted.
