The Myth of Romantic Love
By Cliona O’Conaill for Kindred Spirit Magazine April 2020
Photo by Alberto Rocha on Unsplash
Continued from part 2. Last part in the 3 Part Series
As well as learning new paradigm ways of physically connecting with your partner, it is crucial to learn how to balance the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselves. In particular men need to enhance and live out the inner feminine part of themselves to bring equilibrium back to the planet.
The Myth of Romantic Love
Romantic love, means ‘falling in love’, being swept off your feet, and believing that you have found ‘the One’ – the other half of your soul, who will complement you perfectly and love you forever. Romantic Lovers are transported to an otherworldly, elevated state and are full of insatiable desire and overwhelming passion to be together.
The reason romantic love is so prevalent today is because as children we read fairy tales where Prince Charming rescues the princess. Even though at a certain age we’re told Santa is a fantasy, no one ever tells us romantic love is also fantasy. And we grow up unconsciously or consciously believing that “happily ever after”, is assured when we find Mr or Miss Right. As adults, romantic love is immortalised in myth and literature, and lovers die for their forbidden love like: Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliette. Endless Hollywood films portray these themes over and over again as though they are universal truths, implanting them deeper in our psyches, to the point that most people assume that the primary goal in your personal life must be to ‘live happily ever after’ with The One.
This is not a modern phenomenon. Romantic love actually began in the Middle Ages when the bards and troubadours made up songs, stories and poetry around ‘Courtly Love’. It was considered a spiritual discipline for courageous knights, who, inspired by the love of a Fair Lady, would undertake noble deeds like slaying dragons, and fighting righteous wars to win her favour. But ‘Courtly love’ was never mixed into sexual relationships or marriage according to RA Johnson in his book, “We”4. The fair lady was considered too pure, too perfect and elevated to be sullied by engaging in the sordid sexual act with the knight who worshipped her. She would often be married to a King or other noble man. However, Jean Markle in his book ‘Courtly Love’5 counters that view, saying that, courtly love encouraged adultery5, as in the myth of Guinevere and Lancelot or Tristan and Isolde.
“In the work of Jean Markale. “Courtly Love: the path of sexual initiation.” It is a medieval Christian construct. However, I feel romantic love, although it is not natural but a construct, affects me daily…because I was born into a culture that believes it. It is hard to decouple from a story you have believed from babyhood. My emotional world is invested in it,” says Steph Bradley, writer, storyteller & trainer.
These myths speak to us because the human condition is to seek wholeness and to feel complete, and to live a meaningful life. These needs used to be fulfilled by religion, spiritual practice, and tribal ceremony. But religion and spirituality are inconvenient and incompatible with contemporary mans’ focus on business and mastery of the external world. The only way to fulfil this longing without losing face in the masculine culture is through romantic love.
“Romantic love is not just a form of ‘love’ it is a whole psychological package–a combination of beliefs, ideals, attitudes and expectations,” says Sian Johnson, tantric masseuse4.
In this way romantic love has become almost the single most powerful driver in the Western psyche. In the search for meaning, fulfilment and transcendence romantic love is sought with such zealous fervour that it has become the new religion.
“What we seek constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we also seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness”4, says Sian.
Despite the cult of romantic love being so ingrained in us, it often fails to give us the lasting relationships we desire. The reason it doesn’t work is because we are projecting our inner feminine or inner masculine onto the other. When we are ‘in love’, we feel enchanted and have otherworldly feelings, not because this is ‘true love’, but because the pull from the unconscious psyche to connect with this unknown side of ourselves (man’s inner feminine or woman’s inner masculine), is utterly compelling.
My personal experience leads me to believe that the feelings of sexual attraction towards another are due to the fact we have compatible wounds that subconsciously we believe the other can help us heal.
As it’s unconscious we don’t realise what’s going on and think we have an insatiable need to be with the beloved and we project all our fantasies of our unfulfilled inner lives onto them.
When we are with them, we project our love because we’ve forgotten that we are love, that love is our nature. We say, “I love you” because our beloved is triggering our own love inside us. As most of us are unaccustomed to knowing ourselves as love, we project our feelings onto the other person, making it about them. It would be more accurate to say ‘love is happening’ or ‘love is arising’.
But it’s not just our love we project. When our lovers stop giving us these euphoric feelings of oneness, instead of looking to ourselves, we make them wrong and start blaming, comparing and judging, fully enmeshed in the illusion of separation.
“Romantic love, and many forms of love, have tended to be projections of a person’s inner wishes, needs, lacks or wounds. True love knows that any relationship sooner or later, brings up or mirrors one’s own issues, childhood conditioning, past lives and karma, and the only way to continue to be in a state of love… is to own that love and heal within,” says Dr Swan A. Montague, cosmic energy healer and visionary.
This doesn’t mean that loving relationships aren’t possible. But it’s critical to realise that the passionate and dramatic highs and lows of romantic love that we want, are incompatible with the stable, ongoing committed relationships we say we want. That solid lasting love works because partners love and respect each other but do not need to be ‘in love’. This dissonance is the reason romantic love usually doesn’t work. Couples in long lasting relationships usually work at the relationship and heal their wounds through the relationship or in conjunction with a therapist.
“Romantic love is a temporary state of enhanced mirroring and love connection and projection that, in order to be longer-lasting, must be based in a practice of inner spiritual development, consciousness, honesty and self-awareness…for it not to devolve or get lost in mutual unresolved stuff or unfinished business. Anything that is called love that does not fall within these parameters is illusion,” says Dr Montague.
Now that we understand that romantic love is a myth because it doesn’t work in real life, let’s look at what is possible. We can have a new paradigm loving relationship if we evolve and realise that a relationship worth having is going to require work and compromise.
- When we realise that we’ve been projecting an idealised version of our inner feminine or inner masculine onto our partner, can we begin to see them as they really are, as a human being, not the living embodiment of our soul.
“Often we are projecting our fantasies of who we want them to be onto who they really are. I have to be truthful about who I am and see them for who they are when I take off the rose-tinted glasses” says Sian.
- Fulfilling our longing to connect to our inner feminine (by including the feminine right brain, artistic, creative, intuitive nature of ourselves or the masculine (left-brain focussed, analytical side of ourselves), takes the pressure of our partners.
- As we become more self-responsible – we own our feelings and emotions and take space to process them (doing emotional release/ healing/ meditation/therapy as necessary).
- When we learn how to love ourselves and replace neediness with self-love and self-respect, we don’t desperately seek someone outside ourselves to love us, and we attract healthy love. (Get support if needed).
- When we are able to communicate our needs, wants and expectations from the heart, we aren’t constantly disappointed.
- And crucially, if we are more committed to our own and each-others spiritual growth than we are to staying in this intimate partnership no matter what, we are living in the new paradigm.
We are all evolving and growing as the new paradigm metamorphoses the world around us. Transforming romantic love into new paradigm loving will be a journey, not a quick fix – a journey of emotional maturity, spiritual evolution, empowerment, self-reliance and personal sovereignty. New Paradigm Loving doesn’t mean you have to abandon romantic gestures, but when you are whole in yourself any relationship will be healthy rather than co-dependent and you can play at romance as long as both partners know it’s a game and have embodied all the teachings above. New Paradigm Loving is the synergy of Divine love, sacred sexuality and individual spiritual evolution. Each of our personal journeys, contributes to the evolutionary course of the planet.
Namaste and blessings on your journey.
Bibliography
- Tantric Sex for Men – Michael & Diana Richardson
- Tantric Orgasm for Women – Diana Richardson
- Tantric Love – Ma Ananda Sarita & Swami Geho.
- We: Understanding the psychology of Romantic Love – Robert A. Johnson
- Courtly Love – Jean Markle
6. The Magdalene Manuscript – Tom and Judy Kenyon.
Interviewees:
Alan Jewell, Tantrika and builder.
Steph Bradley, writer, storyteller & trainer, www.StoryWeaving.co.uk
Sian Johnson, tantric masseuse & pleasure educator, http://www.creativesexuality.co.uk
* Dr Swan A. Montague, cosmic energy healer and visionary www.sacredbyswan.com
By Cliona O’Conaill
Copyright 2019