There’s a certain kind of sex that is like the best art. The best art expresses something hidden in the artist’s soul, something that calls, that may inspire and torture until it is revealed, borne through the artist’s medium.
Sex too can be the artistic medium, an expression of what is hidden in the soul, shadowy qualities and callings. But this kind of sex is maybe even more rare, more difficult, more demanding than the best art, for two human beings are required; two human beings collaborating blindly, blindly because they do not understand the contents of their soul any more than does the artist.
No matter how good you are at sex, how much “consciousness” you bring, how “sacredly” you view sex… Sex that speaks from the soul, sex that is like the best art, is always a blind or semi-blind invocation because it comes only partly from us and mostly from forces hidden, the soul’s contents being revealed in each moment – pleasure, then terror, then shame, hope, pleasure again – glimpses of understanding through the eyes of Psyche and Eros, glimpses fraught (as they must be, this is art!) with great danger and mysterious blessings.
And oftentimes no one to see. No witnesses. This art is hung in no galleries. It is mostly secret art.
Pornography attempts perhaps to reveal the soul in sex, to bring it out of hiding and into the cultural eye, but it captures only fragments of a particular frequency. Pornography fails to the degree that it does not only because it omits love; anyone who believes that sex is only (or even mostly) about love is missing the fuller soul message of sex. Love is but one face of soul’s desire.
Great art disturbs. And great sex too. Both pull at the threads of the veil that protects us from seeing too much, from going too deep; there’s a veil that protects us from seeing more than we can fathom. As the veil unravels we are confronted with hidden chambers of the psyche. Whether through great art or great sex, what we glimpse down there disturbs us… longing married to repulsion… tenderness mired in brutality. It’s difficult to know, moment to moment, if we are being created or destroyed, healed or wounded. We lose our innocence, so desperately clutched, and we become initiated.
Many of the people who come to me for help tell me they want more harmony in their relationship, and I like using the idea of musical harmony to help understand what happens between two people in a marriage.
I recently had a client tell me “I love when my wife and I are just humming along at the same frequency.” I think this is true for many; we like humming along at the same frequency.
Reflecting on this idea of harmony and frequencies in relationship some analogies and insights arose –
First, we all tend to have our preferred frequency… And we also have a preferred frequency for our partner. In truth though, while we have a frequency that we strive for, there are actually a multitude of frequencies continually vibrating our psyche and shaping our being, and the same is true for our partner. This is an important truth to acknowledge for reasons we’ll explore.
Musical ideas of harmony indicate a mixing of frequencies, which is a somewhat different notion from “humming along at the same frequency.” Two people at the same frequency isn’t really harmony at all; it’s a monotone.
What is harmony in a relationship?
A harmony is a blending of different frequencies. In a relationship this means a mix of different moods, opinions, perspectives, ways of being. These different moods and ways of being move both in ourselves as individuals, and between us in relation to our partner. If we acknowledge this we see that many different kinds of harmonies are likely.
We’re likely to favour one particular type of harmony in our relationship. Our favoured harmony may or may not match our partner’s.
Different harmonies reflect different moods, feelings, images. Harmonies are organized into various keys or modes. In musical language, a “major” key has a strong unified tone, it drives forward, implies action. A “minor” key lags back, there’s melancholy, uncertainty. Other keys or harmonies correlate with tension, aggression, completion, sadness, joy, and so on.
The classical Greeks understood musical modes (keys) as expressions of various patterns of feeling, the same archetypal patterns or forces that continue to move through us and our relationships today.
When we say we want “harmony” in our relationship, we are usually talking about one particular type of harmony based on our preferred moods, modes, or frequencies. We want to feel one certain type of “feeling tone” in our relationship.
Too often we forget or ignore the multitude of frequencies in and around us, and so we dismiss a multitude of possible harmonies that are being played (or playing us) in our lives together. We fail to appreciate the complex or difficult harmonies woven into our relationship, sounds that to the uninitiated ear sound dissonant, non-musical.
In this sense, it behooves us to broaden our musical repertoire. We may have a strong preference for upbeat pop songs, and so avoid those harmonies that evoke longing, sadness, tension, or other modes of feeling we deem “negative” or undesirable.
The less pleasant harmonies of our lives and relationships may be muffled through our efforts, but they will not be silenced.
The difficult music of composers and improvisers like John Cage or John Coltrane might not match your preferred harmonies, but they may perfectly represent some of that multitude of frequencies that get too little appreciation in life and love.
Music that is built upon difficult, complex harmonies may not get us up and dancing; its purpose is different. Difficult harmonies give voice to the more dark, confusing, or troublesome frequencies that are part of the multitude running through each of us.
In a relationship we tend to reject difficult feelings out of preference for our favoured feelings, and yet if those difficult feelings get no voice they start to rattle and make noise. Harmonies reflect feelings, and feelings are multitudinous.
We may want a “happy” marriage, we may insist upon it, and so try to amplify only those chords that match our desire, but the multitude of frequencies that move us may pull us instead toward harmonies that are more challenging, and these challenges potentially introduce us to further richness and depth. There’s a reason that music appreciation classes are taught in colleges and universities; difficult and complex music requires a special kind of listening. The point of these classes isn’t to simplify the music, the point is to learn how to appreciate it, to listen differently, more deeply, to refine our musical aesthetic.
We can change the dial, always trying to find our favourite song, or we can develop a more sophisticated ear, finding the beauty – perhaps aching or terrible – in all the precious music, all the difficult harmonies running through our life and relationship.
Want more harmony in your marriage or relationship? Try this exercise –
If you’ve ever felt like you want more harmony in your marriage or relationship, try this exercise –
Choose some music that represents the particular type of relationship harmony you prefer. Discover the feeling tone of the music. Give it a name – Upbeat. Intense. Chill. Difficult. Sensuous. Fun. Dark. What music does your partner choose to represent the kind of relationship harmony they prefer?
Now find some music to represent the moods that are actually being played in your relationship. Maybe you resist, dislike, even hate the sound and feel of this music. How do you characterize this music? What sort of harmonies form this music? What’s the feeling tone? Can you let this music move you in some way? Can you find some appreciation for it?
Try having a conversation along these lines with your partner. Listen to different kinds of music together with this kind of metaphorical ear. Make distinctions between the various musical moods you hear and then relate them to the emotional tones that shape your lives as individuals and as a couple.
The literal differences between your musical tastes and your partner’s may become very clear, but try to go deeper with the metaphor. Relate the various musical styles, feeling tones, and “harmonies” to how you think about and experience your relationship. Music, after all, is a metaphor for our lives, and so can be used to glimpse life (and love) from other angles.
The other night I learned a little bit more about communication in relationships when my partner and I went to an acro yoga date night at our local yoga studio.
Acro yoga is short for acrobatic yoga and is also sometimes called partner yoga because it is designed for two people. Typically one person acts as a “base” and provides support to let their partner “fly.” At the event we attended, there was also stretching and some fun partner games.
It was two hours long, and everyone there was able to learn enough of the basics to have a good time. Our acro yoga experience was fun, playful, and physically engaging; all great qualities for a date night.
Acro yoga as relationship metaphor
It occurred to me as I looked around the room that I was seeing relationship dynamics in action all around me. Acro yoga was providing a metaphorical insight into the essence of each couple’s lives together.
It’s been said that how we do something is how we do everything, and an activity like acro yoga will often reveal the something we do that affects the everything we do, especially in relationship with our partner.
“We need better communication tools” is the refrain I hear daily from the struggling couples who call me for help. Partner yoga is all about communication, and it provides a format for practicing communication in an unfamiliar and neutral environment.
Acro-yoga requires qualities like trust, connection, surrender, leadership, collaboration, negotiation and personal responsibility. There’s a give/take sense of leading and following, of giving and receiving. A partner yoga class like the one we attended could very likely help someone see firsthand where they struggle with trust or other important areas of relationship, including –
Asking for what they want or making requests
Offering (or receiving) support
Working co-operatively
Dealing with frustration or failure
Tendencies to blame, shame, withdraw, or give up
Boundaries
If we’re able to use an experience like acro yoga (certainly there are many other experiences as well) to look at ourselves and our relationship, we might also be able to use it to work on ourselves and our relationship dynamic. The context of an acro yoga date night offers a possibility to first see things differently, and then to do things differently.
If the communication isn’t working there on the yoga mat, you’ll know quickly. Then you can use the space as a playground or laboratory to experiment with new approaches. It’s a relatively low-stakes situation, but it’s also visceral, immediate, embodied. You’re literally holding each other up. It demands your attention.
I’m not the only one who recognizes the partner communication benefits of acro yoga. I noticed that our teacher Katie Thacker was quoted in the news –
“Just being able to say ‘hey that doesn’t feel good or that feels really great, or can you please bring me down?’ Being able to express things in those ways helps build communication.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Our teachers Katie Thacker and Brandon Sherbrook were great, and they offer their acro yoga date nights around Victoria and Vancouver Island (see their website here). If acro yoga holds any interest for you, look for classes in your area!
Toxic relationships. It’s a hot topic, and a difficult one. Three related articles passed across my feed recently –
“5 Questions to Ask Yourself If You Think Your Partner Is Toxic”
“13 Subtle Signs Your Partner Is Emotionally Abusive.”
“It’s not your relationship that’s toxic, it’s your partner.”
It occurs to me that as the definition of abuse in relationship continues to broaden, and as terms like “toxic relationship” and “toxic partner” are popularized, fewer and fewer marriages and relationships are going to be deemed healthy or legitimate.
I have no doubt that the light cast by articles like the ones named is valuable and illuminating for some people, but every light also casts a shadow. A possible shadow cast here is the self-righteousness, avoidance, and psychological projection that can slip in when we are quick to define a relationship or a person as abusive, toxic, or otherwise irredeemable.
The exclusive focus on identifying victim and villain / oppressor and oppressed suggests fundamentalist ideology at work and leaves no room for examination of deeper psychological structures, especially your own. If your partner matches the profile of emotionally abusive or toxic, you are apparently off the hook. No self-examination required. Your innocence is just as assured as their guilt.
Toxic partner? Or normal marital sadism?
One of the signs of a “toxic partner” according to this article is –
“…Are they engaging in the actions that they are with the intention of changing your behavior?”
I work with couples daily and I can tell you that this applies to virtually everyone in relationship. We manipulate each other, often subtly and often unconsciously, with the hope of changing each others opinions or behaviours. It is what people do. The question isn’t IF it is happening, it’s HOW… and what will we do about it.
One option is to read articles on the internet and then label your partner toxic and your relationship unhealthy. Probably an appropriate option in some cases.
On the other hand, marriage and family therapists David and Ruth Schnarch use the term “normal marital sadism” to illustrate the point that marriage and relationships inevitably bring out the worst in people as well as the best.
Relationships also provide opportunities to confront our own part in the explicit, implicit, or complicit dynamics of sadism, masochism, cruelty, manipulation, meanness, pettiness, power plays, abdication, and so on that will arise.
Uncovering our own hidden strategies
Another quote from the linked article above –
“Because when your partner manages to change your behavior – when you find yourself increasingly changing your usual way of being in order to avoid conflict with your partner – then they gain power and control over you.
And that’s more than toxic.
That’s abusive.”
When your partner gains power and control over you, it may indeed be defined as abusive. But there might also be other forces at work. If you find yourself “increasingly changing your usual way of being in order to avoid conflict with your partner” you might decide that you’re in a toxic relationship, or you might ask yourself… Why. Why are you avoiding conflict? What is your role in this dynamic? What happened to your power? How did it get away from you?
It may be true that your partner is playing out a domination/control strategy in your relationship. We all unconsciously employ various strategies for navigating life and relationships. Have you adopted a submission strategy for yours? Is “The Martyr” archetype activated in your life? Or maybe “The People Pleaser?”
Sometimes a person will knowingly attempt to overtly control or even gaslight their partner, but far more often what we encounter are two people’s unconscious strategies calling the shots from below conscious awareness.
In a move that can change everything, you might be called on to stand up for yourself in the relationship. Or it might be time for a closer look at how you understand and navigate the many different kinds of power that run through our lives. The author of the article quoted suggests that power is the same as control, but control is just one of many kinds of power (please see James Hillman’s extraordinary book “Kinds of Power”).
Power struggles in relationship, complicity, self-confrontation
People regularly give up their power and also try to wrestle it from their partner through complicated dynamics that are not easily reducible to “toxic relationships” or even abuse.
While labeling a person toxic or unhealthy does give you an easy out (and sometimes that out is necessary), it can also become a crutch, an excuse for avoiding the difficult work of examining the ways we might abdicate our own power and blame others for our feelings of powerlessness.
For example, I’ve worked with plenty of mothers of young children who feel powerless and controlled in their relationship, but when we dig deeper we find that it is actually guilty feelings about taking time for themselves that keeps them feeling stuck in their lives. Where these guilty feelings come from is a good question and another topic, but suffice to say that the “toxic partner” story no longer holds water; in fact their partner may actually be their biggest advocate for change and self-empowerment.
I’ve also worked with plenty of men who panic in the face of a woman’s anger or disappointment. These men betray themselves at the drop of a hat if they feel strong emotions rising in their partner. Paradoxically, the partners of these men, upon deeper inquiry, are often desperate for the experience of being able to express anger or disappointment in their relationship without their partner automatically conceding or shutting down. Neither party are particularly happy with their habitual strategies.
In both these examples, and in many others, it is confronting our own complicity in the power dynamics of a relationship that becomes the true act of empowerment.
Let me be clear, certainly there are times when it is appropriate to label a relationship abusive and get out. But if we use popular definitions to label our partner or relationship without ever examining our own habits we can rob ourselves of potential understanding and even reconciliation.
Not long ago it was generally accepted that relationships had a “power struggle” phase. The new relationship idealism seems not to allow even for this.
Power struggles, “normal marital sadism,” and a myriad other expressions of the darker side of togetherness can be used as evidence that a relationship or a person is fundamentally “toxic” (bad, wrong, narcissistic, gaslighting, hysterical, crazy etc), AND these same expressions can be used as opportunities for expanding our ideas of relationships and of our experiences in them. Of course this is risky territory; the blade of discernment is called for.
I’ve worked with many couples (some of whom have previously had their relationship or partner labelled toxic or abusive by other counsellors) who choose to explore these darker sides of relationship together and have found the experience, though difficult, also illuminating and occasionally even bonding. Of course there are no guarantees.
Portraying relationships as two-dimensional utilitarian transactions to be defined as either “healthy” or “toxic” seems to be the flavour of the day, but this misses a vast swathe of what relationships actually are, which is usually some of both and a whole lot more.
If you’re interested in these ideas, internet articles might be a good start (some of my own are included below), but are no substitute for the depth of thought that good old fashioned books provide. Some of my favourite books on these themes include –
The Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner
Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel
Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly
There’s a certain kind of sex that is like the best art. The best art expresses something hidden in the artist’s soul, something that calls, that may inspire and torture until it is revealed, borne through the artist’s medium.
Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com
