If anyone here is in a romantic relationship, or at one time in their life has been, you have probably been told that if you are having issues in your partnership, it is due to a lack of communication. That’s a no-brainer, eh? Well, of course it is. But that statement leaves us with a belief that if we could only communicate better, then all would be fine. Think again. First of all, what does “communicate better” even mean? “Better?” What’s that?
Communication is just passing words back and forth, isn’t it? I mean, if we speak the same language, isn’t that all there is to communicating? In a certain sense, that is true. So, it really isn’t “communicating” that is the problem; it is being able to understand what is being communicated—not just understanding the words in a shared language, but really understanding what those words mean. At least most of us don’t truly understand another person’s perspective. And I would venture to say this stands true, most of the time, not only for the listener, but for the speaker as well. I don’t think most people understand what they, themselves, are saying. Now, that’s a no-brainer, eh? And that doesn’t apply just to people in romantic relationships.
It is important to point out at this juncture that people are typically rather lousy at listening. And there are reasons for that.
So, we go to couples therapy to learn how to convey what we are thinking, and yes, even what we are feeling. Obviously, sometimes this works, but I would say it doesn’t work for the reasons most of us believe. It isn’t just understanding your partner’s words and feelings; it is empathizing with them, and accepting, to some degree, that what they are hearing has at least a subjective reality. (Most people mistakenly believe the only reality we should be concerned with is an objective one.) We may not share that subjective reality, but if we care about the person we are talking to, we acknowledge that they do indeed experience it.
Even if we know what I just said intellectually, and try to practice what our common sense tells us to practice, it still usually doesn’t work. Why is that? Well, primarily because our rational thinking, intellect, and even common sense, primarily comes from our conscious mind. And the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. The big mass of that iceberg, the part that sunk the Titanic and many other large ships, is underwater. In our minds, it is called the unconscious.
What is the difference between subjective realities and objective ones? Take a hot topic like abortion as an example. Anyone on either side of this debate—pro-life or pro-choice—believes their stance is objective. Actually, they both are objective in their own terms. The fact that one person takes one side and another person takes the other, is a subjective choice. If I like a red car, and believe it is the only color a car should be, and my wife says the same regarding a blue car, our realities regarding the “best color for a car” are subjective. There is no objective truth about whether a red car, or a blue car, is “best.”
Apply this to any argument you might have with your partner, and you will quickly see the importance, in a healthy relationship, of honouring and respecting your partner’s “subjective reality.”
The reason a person chooses a reality that may differ from an objective one (or from their partner’s) is due to an unconscious system that makes them believe their reality is the only one there is (objective), and that everyone, unless they are crazy, believes the same thing.
Obviously, there are objective realities that everyone should agree on. But exactly what are they? We typically do not have fights over truly objective realities, so we would not be concerned with them causing conflict. The problem comes along if we believe our subjective reality is actually objective. And why do we have that problem?
There are a variety of reasons. In archetypal psychology, we would say one of the reasons are complexes. A complex is an emotionally charged cluster of ideas, memories, and feelings sitting in the unconscious, often formed around an intense or traumatic experience. When triggered, it can hijack behaviour without the person quite knowing why.
Another reason could be the effect of shadow elements of activated archetypes. Archetypes are those universal patterns we all carry—Mother, Hero, Child, and the rest. When one gets activated in a relationship, its shadow side (the parts we refuse to own) tends to surface as projection: the partner suddenly becomes the controlling parent, the abandoning one, or the one who must be saved.
Trauma in childhood and the child’s efforts to maintain a safe environment is the cause of complexes: systems that are unconscious that control behaviour. Non-integration of the shadow archetypes is what causes problems with archetypal issues. The child builds protective systems to survive what feels unsafe; those systems stay underground and keep running in adult relationships. When the darker edges of an archetype stay unowned, they get projected onto the partner instead of being seen for what they are.
Some examples of the results of complexes and shadow archetypal material in conflictual aspects of a romantic relationship include:
Shadow behaviour that looks like “neediness,” “withdrawal,” or “criticism” but is really an old protective system still running.
Power dynamics that are not negotiated but enacted (who gets to be the one who is “reasonable,” who is allowed to be hurt, who is allowed to leave).
Archetypal patterns that keep repeating no matter how many communication tools are applied: the Pursuer and the Distancer, the Parent and the Child, the Saviour and the Wounded, the one who must be right and the one who must be safe.
Most modern couples psychotherapy puts little emphasis on these archetypal and complex issues. If they do cover them, they do so from a more conventional perspective such as top-down cognitive behavioural modalities. Contemporary culture has largely lost the habit of looking underneath. It prefers tools it can name, measure, and sell. Unconscious drives, shadow material, and archetypal forces feel messy, non-democratic, and hard to put in a workbook. So the culture keeps offering the same surface map and is surprised when people still get lost. The loss of unconscious awareness is not new, but it is particularly costly in intimate relationships because the unconscious is doing most of the work.
All of the above is the territory I have spent years working in with couples. The usual advice is not wrong so much as incomplete; it never quite reaches the systems that are actually deciding whether two people stay interested in each other. That is why I wrote The Essentials of Successful Coupling—not as another set of communication tips, but as a look at the unconscious, archetypal, and shadow-level forces that keep most relationships repeating the same arguments no matter how carefully the participants word them.
The book is available on Amazon beginning November 2. If the surface solutions have started to feel thin, and you want a clearer view of what is actually moving underneath the conversations, that is where I put the longer version of this argument.
Sorry for the shameless plug, but you all know this book launch is a big event in my life. Thanks for reading or listening, and I do hope this information will bring some enlightenment and a better understanding of relational dynamics.
US Amazon.com (ebook and audiobook only, paperback out on November 2)
Canada Amazon.ca (ebook only, paperback out on November 2)
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If one can remain in the realization that there are as many realities as there are living organisms, then respect for another's reality, whether objective or subjective, will be easier to maintain. And that other reality need not be driven by unconscious complexes but, for example, may be as simple as the fact that I am a woman and will never experience the reality of being a man.