Soul’s Code

"As a psychotherapist and Episcopal priest, I have counseled hundreds of couples. What I've learned: There is no such thing as relationship problems."

BY DAVID RICKEY — Most of us, when we fall in love, think we have arrived at a true and ultimate "answer" to all of our personal pains and aspirations.

Sooner or later, we find something quite the opposite: Hard work.

I have counseled couples for three decades, both as a psychologist and an Episcopal priest. I have received confessions, and administered absolutions. And officiated marriages.

This is not exactly out of the manual, but the truth is, relationships were never intended to be happy — a noble truth that the marriage of Tony and Carmella Soprano exquisitely brought to life in The Sopranos (in therapy with Dr. Jennifer Melfi in the image above).

There is a long-lost book by M. Scott Peck, an MD who took a leap of faith into depth psychology with The Road Less Travelled. His cardinal insight: the experience of “falling in love” may simply be a “glue” that makes us stick it out long enough. For what?

"To do," as we say, is the real purpose of relationships.

When I do pre-marital counseling, I begin by telling the couple: “You are perfectly mis-matched.”

Once I’m sure I have their attention, I continue:

As much as you think you have chosen each other because of beauty or shared interests or whatever, the deeper reason is that unconsciously you know the other person is going to push your buttons. And the purpose of relationships is for you to discover and work on your buttons.

The hope is that each of you will do your own work, and that you will grow together, becoming more and more conscious of your own inner life as it emerges in relationship to the other.

Relationships are loaded with projections: unconscious images from past hurts, unresolved wounds and unmet needs. Within weeks, months or maybe years these start to emerge, and the work begins.

You will experience the other person “pushing your buttons”.

The Ego reaction is to try to get the other to stop pushing them.

The spiritual work is to examine your buttons. The work is, simply put but not simply done, becoming conscious of those images, owning them in yourself, and choosing to work on them in the context of the relationship. When you find one of your buttons being pushed, step back and ask yourself: “What is that button about?” Go back into your own history to find the origins.

For example, your partner is often late. Yes, it would be great if they were more considerate of you but … I will guarantee that in your history you will find issues about trusting whether people would be there for you when you needed them. That’s your button. When it gets pushed you feel (more accurately, your ego feels) justified in being resentful.

Now the interesting thing is that your partner will also have an issue (button) about having expectations placed on them. They too need to go back in their history to find the source of their decision to protest these expectations by passive-aggressively showing up late.

When both of you are willing to do the work of examining (making conscious) your own buttons, then you can resolve the issues and change the behaviors. They will no longer need to be late and you will no longer need to be angry about it (which anger actually feeds there resistance to showing up on time).

Another dimension of this work, why the universe sets us up this way to find perfectly mis-matched partners, is as you become more conscious, you actually generate a field which helps the entire planet become more conscious. An obvious way is that you won’t be playing out your unconscious behavior on your children (or others). And that will be less work your children will have to deal with as they grow up. Unfortunately, there will still be plenty of work for them, since society also wreaks havoc. So when you fall in love, enjoy it, but know that like most “highs” there will be a payment required. The universe is setting you up to take part in this great evolution of consciousness human beings are a part of.

NEXT: When True Lovers Disappear Together, Free of "You" and "Me"