Romantic Love’s Faulty Mirror

Tiffany 18 Comments

Romantic love can take us through the highest heights and the lowest lows. When in the process of falling in love, what we see in our lover and what s/he sees in us are the reflections of the Divine within the observer – not actually from the lover being observed. 

In other words, what we see in our lover is the projection of our own vision of the Divine onto the lover; and if the love is mutual, we carry that same vision from them. We really are just looking at ourselves, at our highest level, embodied within another person. We can continue this dance only as long as both lovers can submit to the projection of their lovers’ Divinity.

As the fires of passion fade, the new view of the lover becomes the shadow of the observer. So when the passion fades we project our worst parts onto our lover and they often do the same to us. This is when the Romance falters; the high has faded. This can also signal the end of the relationship unless the couple can begin to transcend the Romance by forming a lasting or human love. 

In essence, Romantic love cannot stand the test of time. What we love in the other is what we truly love within ourselves. After this fades, we begin to find fault in the other, as a projection of the things we hate about ourselves. Thus romantic love is just us looking at ourselves in another; the best and the worst.

To transcend this type of love, we must develop a friendship with our lover. As friends accept the best and worst in their friends – as they are, essentially we can avoid both the Divinity and shadow projection of ourselves onto others…as well as their projections onto us.

In my humble opinion, first we must become our own best friends. When we truly love and respect ourselves ~ our highs and lows ~ then we are less likely to project our highs and lows onto others, because we already accept their presence within ourselves. Thus, once we are our own best friends, we can then more easily build friendships with our lovers. 

Somehow Western Love downplays friendship within couples. In fact, romance and friendship are in opposition. Romance is a projection of ourselves onto others whereas friendship is the acceptance of who someone is, as is. Learning to love ourselves can be our greatest mission as well as greatest challenge. 

Some cultures, like the Hindu, have figured out that Divine projection and lasting love do not mix. They honor the Divine form of both genders in art work, ceremonies, statues and celebrations. Couples then do not need to find the divine within their lovers. There is a great freedom in this, for couples accept one another as they are and neither needs to carry the Divinity of the other. Humans can only carry the energy of the Divine for so long. 

While we cannot change our cultural views of Romantic Love overnight, we can begin to open our eyes to the harm of continuing to project our greatness and our darkness onto others, particularly in the area of couples. Perhaps this is why the divorce rate continues to climb? 

Concepts taken from We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert A Johnson 

Additional reading:

Michael at Cream of the Planet in Romantic Love: Hearts on Fire

Owning Your Own Shadow 

Namaste

18 thoughts on “Romantic Love’s Faulty Mirror”

  1. This is the reason to know thyself after a breakup, no? As for the divorce aspect, I believe that there are other factors of divorce just as weighted such as coping skills to get through hard issues and a very basic ability/ trait/ outlook on life to be more joyful than apathetic as a rule but knowing yourself as you speak of here seems like the best form to be in to love yourself and others. Thank you for this.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. Thank you for sharing this post and the link to mine 💖 If readers truly think about and grasp the depth of what you sharing, it is potentially a life-changing awakening that can remove a lot of sadness we feel in our love lives. We still need to tend to and celebrate our divine projection but that is our garden to tend to. Art, writing, and fantasy play with lovers are paths we can choose. It isn’t someone else’s role to personify our anima/animus or divine projection. I like where you have gone with your discussion, lessons you have learned and shared with us, and how you are moving towards integrating it into your life💞😘

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Great article. I don’t think I can disagree on any points. I do strongly agree that we project onto our lovers our own perspective of divinity. I also agree that we may end up projecting our own shadows as well.

    In many relationships I’ve been in I can see how I projected my own shadows onto the other person thus “clouding” my perception of the other’s true self.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s