In a truly loving and spiritually inspired relationship we serve multiple roles with our partner or spouse.
Sometimes we're a coach...
We call out the best in each other and help one another honor our commitments.
We cheerlead or challenge when appropriate and awaken new perspectives, ideas and possibilities.
We support each other in the fulfillment of our potential.
Sometimes we're more of a therapist...
We empathize and unconditionally accept one another as we are, in all our humanity and limitations.
We seek a deeper understanding and recognition of the underlying roots of our personalities and communication dynamics and help one another heal and become whole.
Sometimes we're more of a spiritual companion and mentor...
We reflect back to each other the essence of what we are beyond our personalities, our physical bodies,
worldly accomplishments or failures. We remind one another of the spiritual principles and highest
values at the heart of our relationship and help one another stay attuned to what we hold most dear in life, no matter the circumstances.
And, of course, sometimes we fail to serve in any or all these roles...
A difficult role
One of the most difficult roles to fulfill in a marriage or committed relationship is that of therapist.
More accurately, it is the role of being a healing presence - an unconditionally accepting and emotionally safe harbor in
which our partner can rest and take refuge from the seeming storms of life and the storms within.
It is a place of safety which allows for greater self-understanding and awareness.
To give you a sense of what I mean by "emotionally safe harbor", simply recall the adults with whom you felt totally at ease with as a child.
Perhaps both your parents served this function, maybe just a grandparent? For some it may be difficult to find many examples of feeling totally safe, accepted and secure.
You may recall a moment or image of total safety and comfort, when all was right in the world. Perhaps a time when you were soothed after a fall?
Maybe an old, wrinkled, hand on your shoulder and warm cookies and a blanket over your shoulders?
Most importantly, this place, this person, was a refuge with whom you could share a mistake or
mishap, knowing that while you might receive a correction or even uncomfortable consequences for your actions, you would nevertheless feel emotionally safe, loved and accepted.
It can be challenging to be an emotionally safe harbor in a committed relationship or marriage. A friend's discomfort
or mistake might be met immediately with warmth and acceptance while a mistake by your spouse might trigger any number of less than welcoming responses.
This is not unusual, and could be examined via numerous factors involved in the symbolic significance and psychological
attachment of committed relationships; with their characteristic patterns of control, fears of loss, rejection and insecurities - all depending
on the maturity, unique dynamics and awareness of a given couple.
Under the guise of being a supportive coach or spiritual companion, for instance, you may actually respond more as a punitive, disapproving parental figure.
Or you might feel triggered in a more adolescent or child-like way, becoming emotionally worked up in the face of your partner's fears, insecurities and concerns. The list of possibilities is endless.
As a psychotherapist, if a client makes a mistake in life or reports something for which they feel ashamed, my
immediate and natural response is to unconditionally accept them as they are. It is effortless. Yet in my own marriage, sometimes effort is required.
If my wife brings up a seeming mistake, an impulse may arise to correct it, disapprove or give off a subtle energetic lack of acceptance. I may try to coach her on what to do next time, etc.
I, like so many of the couples I observe in practice, may fail to
first be an emotionally safe harbor, a refuge of love and welcoming, no matter the circumstances.
Gratefully, despite our lapses, most of the time I am that safe emotional harbor, as my wife is to me.
I owe this, in part, to the good fortune of loving parents and an experience of
what it is to be unconditionally loved and accepted. But our capacity to truly be a safe harbor to another goes beyond any strictly psychological explanation.
Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development essentially end in adolescence.
In other words, developmentally, your psychological make-up is pretty much set by early adulthood.
And while Freud's observations clearly illuminate how profoundly our personalities
are shaped by our upbringing, they do not address a critical domain that is at the heart of one's capacity to be a loving refuge throughout our adulthood.
They fail to address the spiritual domain.
I should note here that as a psychotherapist, I work with clients of all perspectives - Atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Spiritual but not Religious, etc.
For many, the spiritual domain has little significance and meaning, and in turn, does not comprise any focus of therapy.
For others, it is very significant. Like any effective and ethical therapist, I respect all perspectives.
Personally, however, I find spirituality to be the most potent and
powerful avenue which supports couples in their capacity to be an emotionally safe harbor with one another. And I don't mean by way of an intellectual exercise - that belief in Buddha,
Krishna or God means you're automatically a loving and safe refuge for your partner.
It is more immediate than that...
Those who devote time, energy and awareness to applying what they discover through spiritual work, teachings, and groups
seem much more capable of overcoming the natural psychological obstacles that keep one from being a safe refuge to another in relationship.
When, through meditation, prayer and contemplation they actually experience an awareness of total safety, completeness or being enveloped in a Loving Presence,
they're much more equipped to be that to others.
In my own life, the quality of my presence
with my wife reflects back to me how much my awareness and attention is
devoted to contemplating a given spiritual principle or practice. The more I devote my heart and awareness to the latter the more loving and unconditionally accepting I am with others. We cannot be to others what we do not experience within ourselves.
Where to begin...
So, in essence, all therapeutic work in relationships begins with you.
If we are not accepting and gentle in response to our own limitations and mistakes in life, how can we be so to another?
How can we be a refuge to another if we have no experience of a presence of love within, of feeling safe and protected in life?
Deeper still, how can we have faith in something greater if we do not have faith in ourselves?
To quote Swami Vivekananda, "Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God."
In closing, here are three domains to contemplate if you are inspired to be an emotionally safe harbor for those you love.
1. Observe how you respond to your partner's discomfort, fears, mistakes and insecurities. What is your first impulse?
Whatever it may be have the courage to simply be with that impulse and feeling without acting on it.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle to being a loving refuge is the fear of being with an awkward feeling that stands in the way.
As you mindfully witness your reactive impulse come up within you, let it be there without acting on it and see what happens.
2. Practice being a refuge with yourself. When you're fearful or self--condemning about something witness those thoughts and
feelings from a larger space of loving awareness. Withdraw into yourself - not to flee from the self-loathing or fears - but to welcome them in a more expansive manner,
much like you would radiate an aura of calm and acceptance in the presence of a distressed child. You would not condemn their fears and discomforts but embrace them.
3. Above all, honor your spiritual aspirations and seek to experience a sense of safety and refuge within yourself by
way of a spiritual practice or teaching that is most meaningful to you. All the great teachings ask us to seek within.
If you struggle to be a refuge to others accept this as a call to devote yourself more to seeking refuge within.
