Moving on to the last type of relationship–k’negdo or being ‘opposite him’ (or in more general terms ‘opposition’) we might see it as only marginally better than loneliness, if that. The main difference is that when we are all alone, when we refrain from connecting altogether, when we sit within ourselves, we are not on speaking terms with the other. While a tension filled relationship may be undesirable in and of itself, at least it remains minimally open to the possibility of positive communication. However, if we won’t talk at all, how will we come to connect?

Quarreling may or may not constitute a relationship proper: Do we only fight when we care (for if we didn’t care we wouldn’t bother fighting)? Does conflict happen when we fail to properly acknowledge the other person or when our own ego blinds us to what actually takes places in the intersubjective realm? Have we committed the crime of stealing away the other and replacing this person with an unrealistic representational image that was fabricated in our mind’s imagination–an intentional or unintentional falsification of our experience? Or, perhaps, it simply is a lack of sensitivity and concern?

‘Ball and chain’ analogies all depict the other as threatening. The threat ranges from a total loss of my independence as if I am absorbed into the overbearing personality of the other, to a condition in which I must think beyond my own desires and make room for differences that I neither agree with nor comprehend. Should my objective in life be to live as conflict free as possible at all times, I might interpret this in one of two ways: I could compromise and incline my will to the wishes of my significant other (peace by continual surrender–a policy of non-confrontation) or I might determine that it is the relationship itself which endangers ‘my’ peace in which case the only way that I can avoid conflict is to avoid relationships altogether. In the former case, my concern is that I will bend to the point of breaking–I may lose myself. Aren’t there some things worth fighting for? Can conflict lead to a more enduring and even-handed peace? In the latter case, conflict becomes an excuse to opt out of a relationship. When things get tough, we bail. Clearly these are very polarizing considerations.

Even in the imaginary comic-tragic caricatures of horrifying after-life scenarios, we weigh the prospects of eternity all alone verses being stuck with people we can’t stand. Perhaps the most famous literary dramatization of this in recent memory is Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit in which three characters have to be locked in together forever with no prospect of escape. Expecting a torture chamber to punish them, they enter into an ordinary room where they begin getting on each other’s nerves. After a while, when they realize that there is ‘no exit’ (not even death because they are already dead), one of the characters exclaims that ‘hell is other people.’

While there certainly are situations where being in a bad relationship is far worse than not being in any relationship at all, human tendencies are to project our own shortcomings on other people, especially one’s spouse. ‘You are the cause of my failing.’ ‘It is all because of you!’ In advanced rounds of the ‘blame game’ it is easy to convince ourselves that we are cleared of any responsibility by virtue of our having someone else around who can take the fall. We ask ourselves incredulously: ‘Why doesn’t everyone want what I want, when and how I want it?’ Such ego-fascism doesn’t disappear with the onset of adulthood but rather is driven underground in the subtle strata of our less mature and unrefined unconscious mind.

Perhaps a revision of the Sartrian fiction would be to say: “When I am consumed by my own ego, I experience ‘hell as other people.’” For the intellectual archeologist, an ancient echo of this same sentiment of No Exit can be unearthed in the text of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes 7:26 where King Shlomo/Solomon documents a similar inescapable conundrum with the other: “And I find the woman more bitter than death.” The woman of this verse designates the relationship which is conflict based, where the unbridled freedom and irresponsible spontaneity of the unrestrained subject is arrested and imprisoned without recourse to escape. Thinking that ‘I’m stuck in this relationship which taxes and tortures me continuously’ is far worse than the often perceived ‘quick pain of death’ which at least holds forth the false-promise of extradition.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to another description of women (our placeholder for the ‘other’ in this discussion) also from King Shlomo/Solomon in Mishlei/Proverbs 18:22 where he asserts: “He who has found a woman has found good.” Which is it–’more bitter than death’ or ‘good’? Both are possibilities for how we view the other. If I accept that the other helps to make me what I am, then even the conflict can be elevated to constructive criticism. Because my ego goes into the marriage like a jagged rock in a stream, my rough patches create an excessive amount of friction within the currents of domestic life as I resist going with the flow. Yet, over time the running waters (external forces largely coming from one’s significant other) will smooth down the contours of myself. Once softened and given a flexible form factor, I work much better with the rest of the world beginning with my spouse. Hence, the other provides a rectification of myself which is the greatest good. When I learn to acknowledge this good (I find the other as other, I have ‘found a woman,’ a particular person and not some impersonal classification as in ‘I find the woman more bitter than death’) then I have experienced the transcendence of the ego.

In his book The Mystery of Marriage, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (pp.1-9) underscores the fine print of the first quotation which on a literal level reads: “‘And I find more bitter than death, the woman’ [whereby] the subject (‘I’) is interposed between the verb (‘find’) and its object (‘woman’), thereby implying that the man is really more concerned with finding himself–i.e. with his own self-gratification.” Projecting the self onto the other (something which frequently occurs covertly in the process of representing the other to myself which usually entails various degrees of ‘social distortion’ due to our lack of impartiality) erects a reflective surface over the face of the other and thus may display images which are more informative of my own inner state and condition that anyone else’s. Reconciliation can only occur when I get out of my own way and become really open to experience the other as other (verses the other as an extension of myself, my desires, my thoughts and my feelings). Consequently, this work of finding another person is not a one time event but a lifelong activity.

While there is still much to be said about the upside of conflict in a relationship, for now let us relocate this third category of relationships based on opposition within the realm of our inner experience of ourselves. After all it takes some doing to get along with ourselves, to reach the point of self-acceptance and to embrace our internal conflicts as positive tensions.

Why are some of the greatest battles that we fight in life internal ones? Who is pulling on the other side of my internal tug-of-war? Freudian psychology, for all of its shortcomings, did borrow some of its core concepts from Kabbalah. While outside the scope of the present essay, suffice it to say that there has now been some substantial academic work done on reconstructing the direct lines of inspiration and the textual trail. Without facing the ‘anxiety of influence’ straight on, we can mark some of the most conspicuous parallels. Very generally speaking, for Freud the psyche splits into an Ego that is pulled by the more degenerate force of the Id (‘just do it, you know you want it, even if you shouldn’t’) and the Superego (‘not so fast! hands off, that’s not allowed’). In the terminology of Kabbalah and Chassidut, the intermediality of the Ego-self would be akin to the nefesh ha’sechlit or ‘intellectual soul.’ Correspondingly, the Id would be representative of the nefesh ha’behamot or the ‘animal soul’ while the role of the Superego is played by the nefesh ha’Elokit or ‘Divine soul.’ The intellectual soul or Ego in this model preserves a kind of neutrality that maintains its openness to the influences of either the Id or the Superego.

Being the ‘man in the middle’ or the human subject who is suspended between positive and negative ‘drives’ that want to take me in different directions, I can immediately sense the build up of internal pressures. If only one of these two sources of tension could disappear then I could have the joy of a tension free life. No reservations or self-doubts. Sounds good! But the reality is that the ideally ‘kosher’ state of existence is to maintain the tension. Internal opposition, far from being interpreted as a sign of weakness or defect in the psyche, actually causes us to ‘chew our cud.’ It is evidence of a proper self-reflection, self-editing, self-auditing system that accepts our ‘infinite’ responsibility. Thus, for ethical and spiritual reasons, I need to maintain my internal ‘otherness’ and continue to converse with myself. Having some degree of inner opposition can elevate my Ego and serve as a tremendous catalyst for self improvement.

In Part Five, we will layer the system of Four Worlds on top of the aforementioned set of relationships in order to glean additional insights.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/relationship-differences-fusion-and-defusion-part-5/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/relationship-differences-fusion-and-defusion-part-3/

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