A theory of romantic relationships.

As a father of a boy and girl (now grown into early adulthood), bterapiaberles I gave witness to both the subtle and blatant differences of the feminine and the masculine. Certainly, each gender has its own agenda in personality building and establishing their worldviews. There are reports, however, that suggest that the major differences between boy minds and girl minds are constructs of society and while there are certainly well defined cultural roles for both, it does not take a psychiatrist to grasp that nature has equipped males and females with their own directives and values. coloradowebimpressions

In ancient times, Greek mythology tells us that once males and females were the same but Zeus, their supreme god, decided to split them apart and since then the two have desired to reunite. What is intriguing about this is that great thinkers such as the philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1903) and the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) were pioneers in suggesting that men and women are united by both feminine and masculine elements. Jung called this the shadow self and named the male component in the female psyche, animus, and the female component in the male psyche, uniquenewsonline anima.

The image of the anima is what we, as male individuals, deem as the perfect woman. She is always a combination of best friend, mother, sister and lover while the image of the animus is more complex and connected to all the male myths of heroism; the dragon slayer, repcohome knight in shining armor and so forth, he nevertheless, is the perfect male in her inner-vision of true maleness. When people talk about romantic attraction between a man and a woman, the more each other correspond to the images within, the more attraction there is. optimalremodel

For clarity’s sake, I will tell you a story about a young girl from a middle class family that I have told many times: Julie was described by her father as, “a saint of a girl”. Julie was indeed a wonderful young woman. She was class president in her last year of High School and an honor student. She attended church regularly. She sang in the choir and served as the substitute Sunday school teacher. In all her nineteen years she had never-that’s right never gave her parents a problem. Then one day during the summer a young man rode into the driveway on a motorcycle-he wore his hair half way down his back and was a display of tattoos. He walked onto the porch and rang the bell. Julie’s mother answered the ring and was a little frightened by the stranger who was asking to see her daughter. Thinking fast Mom said that Julie was sick and she sent the young man away. What was such a ruffian doing in the neighborhood anyway? aslremodeling

When Julie came downstairs, her mother told her what happened and Julie openly admitted that she had been seeing the boy… for a few months. Mom forbade her to see him again and later that evening her father also put his foot down. They had never seen Julie respond so rebelliously, she left the room crying and screaming at them that she was in love. 7mgg

Her parents said that they didn’t care if she was in love or not, that she was not to see the young man again. Don’t worry, they added when you go to college at the end of summer you will be meeting new people and you will forget all about this. manguerose

One late afternoon, however, the boy arrived on his motorcycle, the girl ran out of her house carrying a bag she had packed, climbed on behind the boy and off they went.

No one could believe that this young, sweet girl had done this or even that such a rough and rugged person would ever appeal to her. The truth is that she returned home after a couple of weeks in tears, the romance just wasn’t how she thought it would be. And, she did go off to college and eventually met a man everyone approved of and, as Shakespeare would say, all’s well that’s end well.