From our teleseminar series for upgraded members, which we had again last night, I wanted to share this installment. Those of you with upgraded membership and, therefore, access to Romantipedia.com will find direct links in this article to explore more there.
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For a potential lasting couple to navigate friendship and love together in this, the Act Two of our love story called human courtship - emotional attraction - we must master the two prime negative emotions – anger and fear, which are the roots of all unhappiness– or else risk the failure of our friendship, and therefore our romance. Othello and Hamlet teach us how we can transcend depression, revenge, and jealousy to discover assertiveness as the only way out of anger. Lady Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar show us how to transcend addiction, fear, masochism, and worry through courage to emerge as an emotionally powerful couple.
Science and the Two Killers of Friendship ➳
Right in the middle of the nine steps of courtship, and this, step 5, we have entered the world of friendship and love, and the main energy that it runs on, which is the happiness of self-esteem. This is where we know what to look for in love and friendship, but now we must guard that self-esteem against all the things that may bring it down, impair, limit, or extinguish it. The one word for the most threatening force that may kill love and friendship is, "Stress."
Since there are two kinds of stress - hurt and loss - then there are two major "killers" of love, friendship and happiness, and we must learn to deal with them both. If the stress called, "hurt," gets into us, then it is OURS, and we now call that, "anger." If the stress called, "loss," gets into us, then it too, is OURS, and we now call it, "anxiety." We need to be able to recognize and label these two killers of love when they appear in our lives, as stress.
The Drama of Anger and Fear ➳
Stress comes at us from the outside, and is negative emotional energy. Our personal boundary is actually the first line of defense against stress, blocking it at the door of our psychology. However, once these two types of stress - hurt and loss - get into us, they are now our anger and anxiety. These two opposite emotions are on a spectrum that explains nearly every negative experience we have, and they are behind much of the drama of the human condition.
The variety of ways that our dramas in our relationships may play out is myriad, as many as there are unique people in the world. However, the psychology does take on certain patterns across the bell curve of people, and for seeing the dynamics of stress with clarity, as sets of averages of behaviors, we will need to employ what we call the Anger Map to guide us in processing anger, and the Anxiety Map, to guide us in the dynamics of our fears.
In the end, the stories about our dramatic emotions also take certain patterns that one may find as themes of major pieces of folklore and literature. The works of Shakespeare for example contain such a rich diversity of human emotional situations that one might nearly see Shakespeare not just as the canon, or compendium of dramatic stories, but as a glossary of all the dramatic behaviors that people are capable of in their psychology. And so we will make use of various Shakespearean stories in our exploration of stressand other impediments to love.
Othello and Desdemona ➳
Anger is often the first stressful emotion that men and women encounter as new couples. It indicates that there is some lack of a resource, that someone needs something and is not getting it, or that some social, financial, romantic or interpersonal damage has been done to a person. The stress called, "hurt," leads to the internal feelings in someone who has been hurt, of getting angry.
The story of Othello and Desdemona teaches us about many of the pathways that angerin us can take, including the path of revenge, with all its permutations, and among them, the "green-eyed monster," jealousy, which has its way with our impulsive, irrational behavior, taking it over as it is powered by anger and the scarcity of well-being, peace and comfort that we suffer of.
Our first foray into Shakespeare has us looking to the interpersonal strife between two men over one woman, and all the inaccurate meanings to be made in that, between the men and between Othello and his wife, Desdemona. It is an appropriate story to lead us deeper into the emotions, since we have completed the step 3 of courtship - where men compete to win the heart of a woman, and step 4 of courtship, where we have seen a man and woman come together to form the beginnings of a friendship.
The Treasure Map of Anger ➳
In getting this far through the Romantic Dynamics material, you likely have learned enough about psychology to see how emotions work, how they are on a spectrum, how our instincts and to a degree, how our decisions have an impact on the emotions.
We will first take on the challenge of a comprehensive look at that first of two killers of love, "hurt," and the anger which it becomes if it breaks through our personal boundary, or if we let it in through a weakness or gap in our boundary.
Central in understanding both anger, and any algorithmic map of it to explain its dynamics, is the notion that we, as humans, are living things. To biologists, a living thing at the least, responds to its environment, and this behavior requires that the response vary on a spectrum from being more unconscious and automatic (which we call an instinct), all the way over to a response that is actually conscious and purposeful, possibly with some logic and reasoning involved (which we call a decision.)
Since the response to the environment, varying from an instinct to a decision, can only have one of two outcomes - destructive (wrong) responses or outcomes, constructive(right) responses of outcomes, or there was no decision at all, then we have three possible pathways for anger that is in us, or gets into us, to be processed to its completion.
We will soon learn that these three options for anger will lead us down a path to the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, or the higher brain, the latter of which is the conscious mind, and the center of character maturity. In the end, we are seeking out the very things we lack in life. These are our treasures, and they represent sources of well-being, or mothering, in our lives - the ultimate treasure, and a spiritual one.
Depression is Unloving ➳
If anger and anxiety suffered of hurt and loss are the two great "killers of love" and of friendship, then depression as one of the three pathways for anger is perhaps the most well-known and common. Depression is "anger turned inward," which is to say that it is anger that we store up and then make no decision about. In fact, one of the terrible things that sends the depressed down a drain of desolation is that depression itself causes indecision and passiveness, which then works against the "response to the environment" as defining life, and reflecting the passion that makes us feel alive, which then cycles back to passiveness and even more depression. Depression feels less than being alive.
In terms of where in the mind depression is operating, we could say that it is a feature of the mammalian brain, the emotional centers of the brain that are also so critical to running our emotional bonding in friendship and love. Depression is therefore also the enemy of love and friendship, and a depressed person may feel both unlovable and also come across as not friendly and loving, which certainly hurts romance.
The Sadness of Ophelia ➳
The story of Ophelia is one of the best in Shakespeare for explaining the dramatic nature of depression and its risks, the symbolism and language inherent in it and the hurt and anger underlying it in its Romantic Dynamics.
Ophelia was to marry Hamlet, when his grief-stricken antics got in the way, and she became so profoundly depressed as to actually get psychotic too, and commit suicide. This kind of tragic event is the natural course of what depression does to our romances. We are hurt, or not getting our need for love met, which then makes us angry on some level. If, like Ophelia, we find ourselves not being able to express our anger at the one who hurt us do to troubles of their own (like Hamlet's), then it has nowhere to go but to send us into depression.
From there, it can store up and store up, and when the lid if going to blow off, it very well may emerge as aggression. In the case of Ophelia and Hamlet, and her love for him amidst his grief, she could not find it in herself to violently attack him, and instead, attacked herself, to take her own life. The origin of the quote, "Depression is angerturned inward" was originally from Karl Menninger, MD, who had actually said, "Suicide is anger turned inward."
The Aggression of Hamlet ➳
In the character of Hamlet, we might be tempted to describe depression, for all his brooding and grief over the loss of his father. Yet his psychology vis a vis his loverOphelia, was one of emotional aggression with his anger. In our Anger Map, you might say that the greatest need of all needs in a boy is for his father, and in this case, the traumatic murder of his father was also a loss at the same time - the worst of that which causes both anger and anxiety, and the ultimate stress composed of that which both hurts, and suffers a loss.
The nature of aggression - doing harm to others with our anger - is seen in his cruel treatment of Ophelia - an emotional violence passed onto her from his reaction to the murder of his father. That aggressive nature is both angry, but also draws a feature out of the anxiety of his loss, which is impulsiveness. The reactionary impulsiveness in aggression makes it a pathway for venting anger that we could term, "reptilian-brained" due to its instinctual, lightning-quick response to the environment. This highlights that which is quick in our behavior is usually thoughtless, which lacks the foresight of Observing Ego spoken to in Polonius in his advice, "To Thine Own Self Be True." Like Ares, aggression is something expressed with the instincts on the environment, an automatic, unconscious behavior preprogrammed to respond to certain conditions with certain behaviors.
Only in the case of aggression, as with many instincts that are not paired with patienceand the maturity of high character, results in destructiveness to those around us - the ultimate win/lose behavior.
The Assertiveness of Horatio and Fortinbras ➳
Hamlet is not without male friends of his own, in the form of Horatio and Fortinbras. These two counsel him to cool his hot temper and think on what he is to do to root out the murderer of his father. Their advice encourages the higher-brained, conscious mature character behavior that we may call, "Assertiveness."
Assertiveness is the use of anger to correct a wrong with justice, to take the hurts we have suffered and correct them, to treat ourselves well, protect ourselves and to heal. With the lack we feel inside, the absence of the self-esteem type called, "well-being," we may use assertiveness to go get that which we lack, and to again fill up on well-being. That is the psychological healing process of both the hurt and the inner lack which cause anger in the first place. To treat ourselves well.
One of the things that friends and romantic partners are called upon to do in mutually growing more mature, is to encourage assertiveness in our partner much like what Horatio and Fortinbras did for their friend, Hamlet. And so the donation of well-beingand the instruction on how to be more assertive are one of the two great actions of loving another person.
Assertiveness is then "higher-brained," or conscious, mature, and carries along with it all those traits of character maturity which also need the personal boundary and Observing Ego - patience, wisdom, constructiveness, a win/win approach that leads to balance and harmony.
The Two Deadly Sins of Anger ➳
When we think of sin, we ordinarily think of religion alongside the sense of doing "right or wrong." Even Christ in terms of his language, Aramaic, sees the word, "sin," translate literally to mean, "to miss the mark." This gives us a clue in terms of how to see "sin" in a psychological framework, as "not being accurate," alongside not being "right." The logic of the higher brain and its character maturity would help us in this matter, because when we are speaking of the "reptilian brain" and its various automatic functions that are designed to save our lives, to be "survivalist" and therefore, selfish, we are using a word that literally means, "the serpent." So the reptilian brain is the domain of sin, when those instincts there are left to their own devices, and in the absence of the goodness, logic, and "right" of the higher brain, the absence of God, so to speak, and the absence of love.
You may then have heard of the famed "Seven Deadly Sins" plumbed by the fourth century Monk, Evagrius Ponticus, and include gluttony, fornication, greed, pride, envy (considered "sadness at another's fortune"), wrath, boasting, and dejection (or depression.) You may have heard some substitutions for some of these, such as Lust, for fornication, and Sloth for dejection or depression. In any case, the origin of these notions comes from Aristotle, and his concept of "cardinal virtues" and "vices."
In the case of the "Seven Deadly Sins," another name used for them is the "Capital Vices," those meriting death as punishment, in the sense of rejection from everlasting life. The two deadly sins" of anger are then Wrath, or Revenge, and Envy, or Jealousy, sadness at the fortune of another person. Both of these are forms of suffering, a lack of mature boundaries, in that they both cause one to be wishing for control of something that cannot be controlled, and only being in the present moment mindset - Observing Ego - is ever really something we do control.
For example, Revenge is anger directed at the past, which is already gone, and which we do not control. So all revenge is suffering and all revenge is aggressive, not assertive. This is "win/lose" behavior in which we are wishing to control the past which is already gone. It comes from a "scarcity mindset," that we cannot move onto a bright future until we "change the past." However, the past is set in stone.
Envy, or Jealousy, sadness at the fortune of another person, is anger directed at the future, in which we naturally assume the other person will continue to thrive, and that somehow that takes away from our own welfare. Thus, Envy is also a win/lose behavior in which we have a "scarcity mindset."
A major lesson in romance then when it comes to anger dynamics, is to root yourself free of revenge and envy feelings, which make you, yourself suffer as much as the other person.
The Escape Route From Stress ➳
We need to move on to anxiety and the Anxiety Map in order to deal with our second "killer of love," which is the losses and threats that cause anxiety. This second enemy of friendship and love usually comes along to new couples at some point after they first encounter anger and lacks of resources which cause anger.
In the case of anxiety, our structure of the dynamics is similar.It is still stress we face, but the name for the stress which causes anxiety is called, "loss."
Now, loss can have many synonyms. It may be an actual physical threat - the loss of our health - or it can be a financial threat, like a large bill or like bankruptcy. Loss may be intimidating, or it may even be fictional, the product of our own creative mind, not even real. Whatever it is, loss, as a stress, does not come in to do destruction, but to take something FROM us.
Therefore, the personal boundary is again the first line of defense. It is like an invisible shield around us - our privacy, the walls of our home, our encrypted passwords, and all the things that secure what we love from the outside world and its potential threats. Like preparation for a fire in our building, we need a plan, an "escape route" from stresses that find a way in through one of the open windows of our boundary which we forgot to close.
The Rescue Map of Anxiety ➳
We need to move on to anxiety and the Anxiety Map in order to deal with our second "killer of love," which is the losses and threats that cause anxiety. This second enemy of friendship and love usually comes along to new couples at some point after they first encounter anger and lacks of resources which cause anger.
In the case of anxiety, our structure of the dynamics is similar. If we are a living creature then by definition, we respond to the environment, and our emotions help us in that, serving as signals that something is wrong. We will then need to make a kind of decision about this wrongful thing which is going on. We will need to respond to that environment, anywhere from at the unconscious, instinct level, all the way up to the conscious, decision-making level.
With anxiety, rather than seeing our pathways to explore as a treasure map leading to well-being, we need to see our task as an "escape route" away from stress, and into confidence. After all, there is a threatened loss which caused our anxiety in the first place, or else simply a lack of confidence in our self-esteem that caused it. Once we are anxious, we have three available pathways just as we did with anger:
We can get impulsive and avoidant, passively letting anxiety drive us to escape the threats, frantically, thoughtlessly.
We can get "masochistic" and "poor me" in attitude, and dump our anxieties on others.
Or we can take the high road through the higher brain, and employ COURAGE against the things which make us anxious.
The Macbeths Had "Issues" ➳
We begin our exploration of the Anxiety Map - the escape route from anxiety - with the story of cowards. It is appropriate on multiple levels since the MacBeth's were married, were seeking goals, and had ample amounts of pathological narcissism in them as characters. And like much of Shakespeare, their story is distilled down to such universal human experiences of stress within a romance, that the story can't help but assist us with an exploration of anxiety.
One of the most well-known scenes in MacBeth and indeed in all of Shakespeare, is the one where having spurred her weak-character husband into actually murdering a rival for the kingship, Lady MacBeth cannot stop her obsessive washing of her hands, over and over again, she tries to dispense with her anxiety in an almost addictive way, to the point her hands are raw.
Meanwhile, her husband finds himself bearing the horrific and justifiably paranoid consequences of his murderous actions, as the trees of Dunsinane literally march up to him, leading to the final duel in which he justly meets his end. One of the lessons he offers us is to be careful what you fear. For if you repeat the fantasy too many times, you may find yourself in a real and deadly threat - the very thing you sought to avoid. Perhaps this is why therapists sometimes say, "What you resist, persists."
Both characters have a mindless, thoughtless way of pursuing their goals without considering the consequences. They are reptilian creatures to the bone, seeking out ambitions without regard to honesty or justice, murderers and cowards. They represent the addictive, reptilian bottom pathway of our diagram of anxiety's escape route - into the avoidance and impulsiveness of the passive approach to anxiety. Devoid of Observing Ego and the consequences of their actions, anxiety causes them to be always reactionary, survivalist, and in the end, to see their dreams, and their lives as the cowardly married couple, die.
Romeo and Juliet Could Have Just Left Town ➳
We explore a second attempted escape route for anxiety on our Anxiety Map, in the form of the drama of the "star-crossed lovers" Romeo and Juliet. Theirs is also a tragedy, a cowardly life, and together, they both meet the same fate as the MacBeth's - which is death. We start to see a theme, that death is the result of cowardice in life. To this day, we so often think of the drama of Romeo and Juliet as a sweet love story, or as the ultimate love, when it is in fact, a despicable tragedy, and all could have been avoided.
Why does not one ever wonder why two adults in love, albeit young, never thought to have the courage to just skip town to Milan or Torino or somewhere in France? They could have made a new life as farmers or peddlers of products on the streets of some other city.
But no. Instead, the young, passionate lovers used the pathway for anxiety over their warring families to be masochistic together - the second pathway of anxiety. It means "the poor me attitude," victimhood as a banner worn on the forehead, and self-loathing and self-destruction. This approach to anxiety is a decision to take the quick escape that leads nowhere, or leads back into an ongoing cycle of worry fretting, fearful imaginations and fantasies the expand and blow up the threats of life to grandiose proportions.
It is what one's grandparents may have called, "making a mountain of a molehill," or making "a tempest of a teapot." A mammalian-brained, emotional cycle of rumination about one's worries that is a branch point to the mammalian-brained ways of depressionand suicidality, just as the reptilian impulsiveness of the MacBeth's is a branch point to the reptilian nature of aggression (MacBeth's murderous ways.)
Like revenge and envy, masochism is a form of suffering of the highest proportions. It "dumps" our anxiety on other people, win/lose, and comes back to bite us anyway as we wish to control the threats in our lives with no more than what amount to repetitive thoughts of the threats themselves. Instead, we should take action on real threats, and subdue the imaginary ones, with courage.
Courage ➳
Courage is not only the antidote to cowardice, but is the most conscious, higher-brained thing that we can do with anxiety. It carries all the other features of mature character virtues in it - patience, discipline, goodness, fairness, justice, harmony, and persistence. It is the constructive, win/win way to address anxiety, and that's even if we fail to get our heart's desire.
The reason for this is that no matter what, courage leads to confidence, that paternal, fatherly emotional energy of self-esteem that we all need in order to be completely happy. Such Shakspearean stories as the hero stories of Julius Caesar, and Henry V tell us of courage on the actual battlefield, while specific characters such as Horatio and Fortinbras guide us at the interpersonal friendship level.
Courage is defined as "doing the right thing, no matter how bad you feel." It always leads to more confidence in us, and benefits our romances with half of the two types of self-esteem that compose love.
Maturity in Friendship and Love ➳
Fully mastering the two threats to love - anger and anxiety - leads us to a place of wanting to do all we can to maximize our friendships. This means exploring the dynamics of how love gets expressed and stress gets blocked or channelled into even more self-esteem.
The four classic modes of love - eros, agape, philia and amour are worth exploring here, because they show us the permutations and combinations possible between two people who are for example, parent and child, or platonic friends, or are mature lovers with mature and lasting romantic love.
All we have learned so far serves us well in terms of romance, but the fact is that each of the principles of the second phase of courtship - emotional attraction - are applicable to any human interaction involving love, such as the friendships and familial relationships above.
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