To truly love, you need to heal your “wounds of dislike”

Psychologies: You write that the main cause of failure in a relationship is the “dislike wound” that everyone has.

John Welwood: Its essence is separation from one’s own nature. This is her spiritual aspect. And psychologically, it is expressed in disbelief that we deserve love. Such a wound occurs when a child, initially open to the world, does not meet with support and understanding. The original nature of man is openness. All children are born like this. As the child grows, he needs models of how to keep trust in the world in practice.

How can he remain loving, kind – and at the same time remain himself, maintain his boundaries. He needs relationship models, to be taught to recognize his feelings, not to be afraid to express them. It is clear that parents who have not been taught this simply cannot give this to their children. And then the child begins to close. He feels that he cannot just be himself, the way he is – this is not accepted.

So we begin to move away and separate from ourselves in order to become full members of the family. We accept the rules of the game. Adapting to the family and to society, we lose ourselves, we construct a false “I”.

And then two such “I” meet and try to love each other …

That’s it! Most people don’t really know what love is. They are looking for acceptance, support, care – but if no one has ever loved you, then how can you learn this? With rare exceptions, we are surrounded by people who all the time seem to lack warmth and love. Of course, there are compensatory mechanisms – and then there is a cult of youth, beauty, wealth, independence, success. But deep down you will find the same wound.

Is that why you became a psychotherapist?

I grew up in a family where people didn’t interact much with each other. I grew up with a feeling of my own meaninglessness: it seemed to me that they didn’t see me, they didn’t hear me, and the world around me was somehow flat. And so in my teens I became interested in philosophy – I wanted to find out what the meaning of life is! I read existentialists – they just wrote a lot about the meaninglessness of life and how to deal with it. But the existentialists were too gloomy.

So when I came across Alan Watts’ book Psychotherapy: East and West, I knew – this is it! Here is what I was looking for. The problem is not in me, not in life, not in society, but in the ego. That our “I” feels its separation. At university, I chose psychology. Went to Chicago, started reading the Buddhist books that were coming out at the time, especially the books on Zen Buddhism.

My psychology teacher was Eugene Gendlin, he talked a lot about feelings and bodily sensations. About awareness of your feelings: what you feel, how you feel, why, how it can help you develop. And it was terribly exciting. At the same time, I still had a question that I continue to answer to this day: what is the relationship between psychology and spiritual traditions? This is my passion, my main interest.

Judging by your books, you have thought a lot about love relationships. But it is believed that they excite women more than men …

The reason for this interest is the same – my family. In the family where I grew up, there were practically no relationships. And so, when I got married at the age of 27, and then divorced just three years later, I realized that I didn’t know anything about relationships! And I saw that this is what happens to most people around: we just get married and become parents in the expectation that it will work by itself – but it does not work!

And I also realized that in the modern world, marriage, in order for it to survive, must have some kind of deep, if you want, spiritual purpose. Marriage is no longer just about pleasure, security, or finances. Something else is needed.

But don’t we just want to be happy, healthy, and live in love without questioning the spiritual purpose of marriage?

The fact is that very few people grew up in families with easy, loving, open relationships and therefore can be happy. For most, this is a dream that they do not understand how to approach. They have to learn about relationships – how they understand feelings, how they express them, what they expect from a partner, what they want to give and why.

Is it possible to learn this on your own, without the help of a psychologist or spiritual teacher?

First you need to realize that you have a “wound of dislike”. Without judgment, without condemning yourself or your parents – just admit that it exists. Recognize this separation from your nature, the need for unconditional love. Then you need to “make friends” with this wound. Allow all the feelings that are associated with it to manifest – sadness, pain, anger, guilt.

And often this is where the help of a specialist is needed – because we are afraid to show these feelings, we are afraid not to cope with them. I give clients this exercise: I suggest lying down and feeling where this wound is, where these feelings manifest themselves in their body. And imagine that they look at this wound with kindness, warmth and love, accept it, agree with it. I suggest that you treat her with compassion. Agree to live with her for a while. And then it starts to decrease.

You say that love relationships can become a kind of spiritual path for modern people. How exactly?

The beginning of any path is the realization that we need something – we want to find what we do not have. If the relationship completely satisfies us, we are unlikely to find it interesting. But if we feel any need, we can turn the relationship into a path of awakening. After all, any feeling is an openness to reality.

For such openness to become possible, three components are necessary: ​​spiritual practice, psychotherapy and work with the body. And then a person becomes a spiritual being, fully embodied, present in this body in its entirety. In this I see the future of spiritual practices – to teach people to be awakened here and now, in their daily life, relationships. For most of us, relationships are a source of comfort and security. But today it is very difficult to keep them.

Why today, what has changed?

Traditionally, marriage has performed certain social functions. And today we are trying to base marriage on feelings. On the very feelings with which we are almost unfamiliar and are often afraid to meet. In addition, any feeling is changeable – this is the very nature of feelings.

There is a beautiful Greek myth: Eros becomes Psyche’s lover and comes to her at night, but sets the condition that she will not try to see his face in the light of day. And for a while everything goes smoothly, but then Psyche begins to get curious and one day suddenly turns on the light to see Eros. He flies away, and she has to go through a series of tests in order to reconnect with him in the light of day. This myth points to the key conflict of Western civilization between consciousness – Psyche, and romantic love – Eros.

In this sense, traditional marriage existed in the dark, and in the XNUMXth century, the rise of awareness suddenly highlighted the relationship. Now we have to pass tests before we learn to love each other consciously in the light of day. Today, if we want to keep a vibrant, growing relationship, we need to find a new meaning to marriage.

How to do it?

First, we must want to meet our partner on a deeper level. The couple should be ready to honestly answer: “Why and for what are we together?” Do we just want to have fun, or do we want to grow? And if we want to grow, are we ready to turn relationships into an alchemical vessel in which everything that is not conscious, tightly immured within us, can manifest and transform?

Anger, pain, jealousy, hatred – all these emotions should also be placed in a vessel, accepted and recognized. It can be painful, unusual, cause conflicts – and we must be prepared for this too. Perhaps this path suits few couples. But this is the only way to keep the relationship alive. And one day to discover: if we can fully open up to a partner, we can open up to the universe.

John Welwood is a psychologist and author of eight books on feelings and personal growth. Studied the relationship between Western psychotherapy and spiritual practices.