A Solomon. First Class- The Meeting, and at First Meeting Loved. 1854. Wikimedia Commons.

“We do not choose others at random. We meet those who already exist in our unconscious.”

Sigmund Freud

The above quotation by Freud is central to the theme of this post. His words help us focus on the role of our unconscious mind in partner choice; it is, truly astonishing how, at a deep level, we know what we need to help and heal ourselves.

• Unconscious Living

However, many people live their lives without any conscious awareness of what lies beneath; such unconscious living  means that we go through life unknowingly. There is no sense of the deeper level of consciousness that actually drives much of our behaviour.

“Consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean.”

Swami Vivekananda

If we choose to live unconsciously, unaware of the inner world inside us, then we are at the mercy of the universe, blown in the wind, lost. We will be totally oblivious of other levels beneath consciousness. It is akin to ways of thinking that there are no such things as viruses or bacteria, because we cannot see them.

Many people live their lives believing only in conscious, rational thought, reacting ‘logically’ to the world around them. In fact, there is a whole ‘other part’ of them, busily active, which they ignore, both when they are alone and in a relationship. Their interaction with another is regarded as wholly conscious.

“The unconscious of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the conscious.”

 Sigmund Freud

They spend their lives studying, working, playing, relating to others and earning money. These activities, whilst obviously important, are much preferred to thinking about how their minds work; yet understanding the fullness of our mind needs to be so central to all of us.

Subterranean Forces – Diego Rivera. 1927. Wikioo.

“Rather than living our lives, we are ”lived” by unknown and uncontrollable forces.”

Sigmund Freud

Some people are very threatened by the notion of the unconscious. They deride it as ‘gobbledegook,’ or ‘mumbo-jumbo.’ The threat is that they might have to face aspects of the self that they do not like, the dark side, the ‘shadow’ side.

That is why it has to be deeply buried. The degree to which this happens varies according to each person’s openness to the inner workings of their psyche.

Inside Looking Out – Christian Holstad. 2000. Wikioo.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Carl Jung

• Becoming Aware Of Unconscious Partner Choice

Let us move on from exploring denial, into the idea of acceptance and understanding of our whole selves. We unconsciously choose loving partners who can complement and complete us. What does this mean?  

We choose our partner on many levels. Whilst we may at a conscious level look for people who attract us and have similar interests and outlook on life as ourselves, the actual choice is also partially unconscious. 

Our partner selection process will inevitably be heavily influenced by our past relationships with parents or caregivers. We all have unmet needs from childhood, powerful bonds that link us to past figures in our life and that keep us fixed in old patterns and ways of relating to others.

We are attracted to another because we unconsciously share some of the same unresolved issues and are stuck at a similar point in terms of emotional development. In Chapter 6 (pp122ff)  of my book Beyond The Smile: The Therapeutic Use of The Photograph (Routledge), I explain the process further:

“Such unmet needs from early life will be awakened in marriage, in an unconscious attempt to use the opportunity to work through the problems associated with them. The hope is that each partner has chosen the other in order to recreate the shared past problems and thus work through them- for one cannot work through a problem without going into it again. But, in this way, marriage can also mean that the partners become desperately trapped in the problems once more.”

Linda Berman.

La Conversation. Henri Matisse.Wikioo.

“Your choice of partners says a lot about how you see yourself and who you want to be.”

 Thema Davis

We seek in another aspects of ourselves that will ultimately make us feel more whole; people who can help us work through our problematic areas.

Childhood difficulties may mean that we ‘lose’ parts of ourselves that were not regarded as permissible by parents, society, or other figures in our lives. These aspects of ourselves become repressed, and we may lose touch with them as adults, forgetting that once we were full of life and had strong feelings. It is hard to risk departing from socially accepted norms and expectations, or being  free-spirited. 

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”

Milan Kundera

(For a fuller explanation of how and why we choose our partners, do follow this link to an extract from Jung’s writings.)

We choose another because, at some level, we realise that they have similar unconscious issues; if, for example, these are about dealing with anger, we may choose someone whom we feel can express anger for us. As we meet the ‘right’ person, we glimpse the self in the other.

“To love is to recognize yourself in another.”

Eckhart Tolle

The seminal work, Marital Tensions, by Henry Dicks, describes the process of partner choice from a psychoanalytical perspective.

“Dicks’s genius was to see how two personalities in a marriage united not just at the level of conscious choice, compatibility and sexual attraction, but also at the unconscious level, where they experienced an extraordinary fit of which they were unaware. Glimmers of lost parts of the self are seen in the spouse and this excites the hope that through marriage unacceptable parts of the self can be expressed vicariously.

Dicks noted that the fit between spouses, their “unconscious complementariness,” leads to the formation of a “joint personality”. 

Scharff & Scharff.

• Projection

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Carl Jung.

Projection is a mechanism of defence; it prevents us from having to face parts of ourselves we do not like. By unconsciously ‘projecting’, that is, attributing, an emotion to another person, we can ‘disown’ this feeling, and even become ‘irritated,’ critical or angry towards the other person for displaying it.

There is an unconscious ‘agreement’ that a couple will do this for each other. Superficially, they may appear to be quite different people, but deep down they are carrying unrecognised parts of the other’s personality.  In fact, they are loaded with a ‘double dose’ of feelings in this regard, their own and their partner’s.

Friendship – William Herbert Allen. Wikioo.

“An optimist is a person who has a depressed friend.”

(Spanish Proverb/origin unknown.)

Quite often, emotions like rage, anger, grief, hatred will be projected onto another person, who perhaps is more able to manage such feelings for the couple. Jung described these kind of feelings as being part of our ‘shadow’ side.

• Taking Back Our Projections: Acknowledging Our ‘Shadow.’

Interior with Shadow – Roy Lichtenstein.Wikioo.

‘Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.’

Carl Jung.

Jung’s shadow refers to the darker parts of the personality of which we may be unaware. If we remain in denial about the existence of our own shadow, as has been seen, it will become even darker and we will tend to project that darkness onto others. Such paranoid ways of thinking involve unconscious projection onto the other of one’s own unwanted or unacceptable fears.

“What I cannot accept in myself, what I cannot handle in the complexity of the world, what I fear in you, often leads me to repress you if I can.”

James Hollis

L’Invidia. Angelo Bronzino. Wikimedia Commons.

“We must examine what we envy or dislike in others and acknowledge those very things in ourselves. This helps to prevent our blaming or envying others for what we have not done ourselves.”

James Hollis

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”

Eckhart Tolle

Projecting uncomfortable and difficult feelings into a partner may work for a while, but in time, the relationship can become out of balance, and deeply polarised. Then there will be problems, accusations, strife. Sometimes, the couple may separate; at others, they may decide to work on their shared issues in couple therapy.

If the couple work long and hard enough, then it can be possible to ‘take back’ some of the projections, and to recognise and re-own some of the feelings that they have projected into the other. This will make them feel more whole, more able to be two separate people within a constructive, loving relationship, rather than being trapped in a state of merged and troubled enmeshment.

In individual therapy, too, we can work on similar unconscious internal issues, allowing ourselves to get in touch with repressed feelings and parts of ourselves that have been long hidden. 

Ukrainian Wedding – Maria Primachenko. 1966. Wikioo.

“The real marriage must first take place within. The Inner Marriage is a slow process of first attempting to understand the true qualities of masculine and feminine, how they manifest in our lives and dreams, and then undertaking a courtship of the inner opposite, activating those latent qualities in our repertoire.”

Toko-pa Turner

I will end this post with a selection of images and quotations highly relevant to its theme. Take some time to peruse them, and to think about their powerful messages and meaning.

Jerry Weiss, Friends. 2003. Wikimedia Commons.

“There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met.”

Jim Henson

Excited People. 1913. Emile Nolde. Wikioo.

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”

 Robert Fulghum

Two hearts in a forest – Jim Dine. Wikioo.

“Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.”

Hafiz

Beatitude 7. Romantic Meeting – Stanley Spencer. Wikioo.

“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”

Alain de Botton.

The Infinite Recognition – 1963. Rene Magritte. Wikioo.

“A soul mate is not found. A soul mate is recognized.”

Vironika Tugaleva